and the christmas nonsense begins...

i love christmas this much

goodbye national title hopes...

in honor of the death of LSU's chances to win it all, i offer two videos; for some reason, these songs popped in my head after the horrible loss today.





i hope to see you again next year--

inaugurating worship--a response

here's chapter one of j.d. walt's worship seminary videos. i'm gonna just react to these; i think they hold some cool ideas, questions, and truths.



i love, LOVE, the symbol of the candle of His presence; ever burning, ever present in the sanctuary, the light of the world, ever-illuminating and all-consuming flame! it's Jesus who gives light, for He is light. we who have seen His light and responded to it are welcomed into the mystery of light. we become light as He is light--paul calls us children of light, who were once in darkness, but no more...

children of light taking in light, consuming it as it consumes us, bringing light as it creates light...wow

in 1 chronicles 16, the ark, which marked the very presence of God, was being brought back to jerusalem, back to its proper place in their culture. david knew that the presence of God had to be restored to its proper place in their lives, to be given the honor and reverence He is due. his instructions to the levites were specific: to celebrate and thank and praise the God of isreal (v. 4), or more specifically to be about the praise, celebration and thanking of God. to be ever praising--it became their job, their task, their aim...their reason for being. without giving too much away of whats coming up in the series, this point is very important. people set aside for the praise and thanking and celebration of God...

i think there's a link between positioning God in His proper place and even having the ability to respond with celebration, thanksgiving and praise to God. the isrealites had lost the ark, the symbol of God's power and presence, to their enemies years before, and even when Saul was king, the ark was not positioned back into the temple in jerusalem. the temple was central to almost all of the social aspects of jewish life, all the rituals of worship, remembrance and cleansing, and above all reminded the people that God was to be central to all of their actions and interactions. when God was not the center, every aspect of life lost what gave it its meaning, and through that, their culture of faith was weakened.

so if this occasion marked the beginning of the continuous worshiping of God by the people set apart for those purposes, it must noted that it accompanies the positioning of God in His right place, in the place He deems best, right, and good in their lives.

or, to simplify things a bit, lives centered around God are marked by continuous praise to God.

could it be assumed, then, that where there is a lack of worship, there is also a lack of proper positioning of God?

perhaps positioning is the wrong term--it implies we put God where we want, when i don't think that's necessarily the case. instead, it implies a relationship between the placement of God and our everyday living--that's something we do have control over. what relationship do we have with the presence of God in the details of our day? how do we make choices that make Him central to all those things? how do we as a church encourage and even enable people to centralize Christ in their everyday?

sold

for anyone who's ever asked for a sign when considering who to vote for:

J.D. Walt and worship seminary

i came across the blog of J.D Walt today; J.D. is the Dean of the Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary (where hopefully soon i'll be a student). on his site, he linked to a youtube channel that hosts videos of his teachings and processes on worship:

click here to check it out

i've watched enough of them to know that i want to watch them all a number of times; i think i'm going to start blogging on each one...thoughts, questions, etc...

go to the channel and check them out if you have time. i'll post the video with each of my responses as i go.

oh-and if you have $10 to drop on an album, go buy Jessica Reike Heine's album Finding a Fugitive on itunes. she lead worship here a while back during the big 5 series we did at hope, and her husband jeff preached that morning along with preaching the d-now weekend we did. this record is amazing, and i'm sure you'll agree.

and it begins...

today's the first day of the advent fast; happy first-day-of-the-advent-fast day!

it's funny how unfamiliar the practice of fasting is to most believers, including myself. since the advent season is about celebrating the arrival and birth of the Messiah and on preparing oneself for His return, i think to fast without adding these two dimensions into your practices may miss the point. steve and i were talking this morning about beginning our fast, and how we both decided not just to withhold certain things from our routines or diets, but to add another element to it: to celebrate and prepare (or anticipate) everyday in some way.

which brings up something strange for me: purposed celebration. it's not weird to me to celebrate something on purpose; but it is weird that i have to "make" celebration a part of my everyday routine. i guess i celebrate when there is something to celebrate, but i'm already seeing that there's never not something to celebrate because of Christ. and if i'm honest, i think i do a horrible job of celebrating (and this is not a cry to be encouraged or anything like that...more making a point to myself...i'm weird, i know). real, true heart-felt celebration looks so different then my mild hoorays-- it's dancing, leaping, creating, shouting from the rooftops; it's loud, it's proud, it's full of awe, of wonder, of almost disbelief at what has occured; it makes you do crazy things, it makes your hoarse from telling, it's the moments you relive over and over...

we can even celebrate as we anticipate things...and it's weird how these two things hold hands in the redemption story; celebration and preparation. re-telling, re-living and celebrating what God has done through the coming of His son brings those things into our moments, into our story, and because He lives, we celebrate with Him and those that are His in what He has done and is doing, and even in what He will do. He will return; He will finish the restoration He began on calvary, He will redeem fully what He has already redeemed...and because of this, we prepare, we act, we change our routine to shout this out, to celebrate it by living in a way that testifies of its validity, of its truth. its almost like we cannot prepare without celebration being woven throughout everything...

sad to say i missed this...

i found out last night that God's gift to finland, hard rock, and all things both pseudo-christian and pseudo-undead, the band LORDI, was in louisville last month, and i missed it. i fear it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and i am contemplating shaving my head to show my soul's state of mourning.

seriously, though, this band is over the top...



and if you have the guts, go to youtube and look up Devil is a Loser by lordi. they call the devil their...well, don't listen to it at work or in front of kids. i don't understand it, but i still laugh at it.

plus all their videos genuinely scare me. watch them on full screen in a dark room at night, and i bet you don't sleep.

my postsecret crush

a confession:

sometimes i get crushes on other people's creative ideas

as of late, there are two artistic crushes i have: one can be seen at the website www.postsecret.com , and the other is on the new aqualung album Memory Man.

postsecret, a community art project started by frank warren, began as frank sent postcards out to anonymous people and asked them to anonymously submit their secrets to him on postcards...hoping to make them into a collage and exhibit in their area. he began getting cards from people in the area, then people outside of the area, and now from people all over the world. go to the site and read some of them. i'm still trying to pin down what i find so profound about the project: perhaps the (perceived) honesty on some of the cards, or the idea of being confessional to a group of people. i don't think it's odd for that to be attractive to me; confession is supposedly a part of both my faith and my community of faith. i note supposedly because i don't know if it always is, and especially in the later of the two. i'm fairly comfortable being confessional with God, at least most of the time. but being confessional with the body of Christ? why does that feel so odd...

perhaps thats my confession #2: i don't feel comfortable confessing to the body...

but i do...but i still don't. it's weird. i like the concept of confession, and i agree that its essential to our faith. confessing is agreeing with the truth of God about the reality of our actions. it's owning our wrongs and their consequences. it's exposing our flaws, failures, and faults, in the hopes of not returning to them. and i agree with derek webb, who thinks the best thing that could ever happen to any of us is that everything we've ever done be projected on a screen for everyone to see; it would make us be honest with everyone else and with ourselves. and the one thing i think postsecret doesn't accomplish is healing and restoration from the junk we do keep inside; we need the Lord's truth and other's encouragement and correction (and accountability).

but still...one thing i've always been told, perhaps to my detriment, is that i, as a leader (or as a church staff member, or paid clergy, or whatever other distinction one makes between lay leaders and pastoral professionals...geez, it all sounds so horribly professional), am not supposed to be all too confessional with the body. that confessing creates doubts in leadership, that it would be costly to the ministry as a whole. i know it contradicts itself, but it seems like socially those of us in ministry as a profession are taught to hide our stuff--and yet, ironically, thats what leads to all the big church scandals and whatnot...people hiding their struggles and those eventually eating them up, along with those around them. i just wonder where the balance is--you know, like how open can i be with the body? is it with just certain people, but not with everyone? how do you draw those lines? is it just with the socially acceptable struggles (or vague ones) like pride, lust, or lack of discipline, or can it be more that that? and how can i expect a community of people i'm a part of to become honest, open, and confessional if i'm not truly allowed to be that among them?

so i'm a little frustrated. my first reaction to warren's project (aside from "how brilliant--i hate him") was "if only the church could be like this..." and i honestly feel like its socially impossible for me to be a part of a community like that for someone in my profession, or at least impossible without anonymity. is that weird?

enough rambling for now...check out aqualung on your own...