Everything surrounding Christmas is beautiful. Houses and trees are decorated gloriously. We have expectations of beautiful worship services. Songs and voices are tied together beautifully. But the true spirit behind Christmas is that everything is NOT beautiful. In fact, we need Christmas because creation is broken. As part of that creation, we are broken. But Christmas comes as a revelation that we can move out of that brokenness. Jesus came to make broken things beautiful.
In an attempt to help students experience this, we did a little exercise at youth service. Students got to get a little crafty in decorating their own, personalized ornaments. Jumping from 1 Peter 2:21, we see that Jesus has experienced the suffering and brokenness we encounter. And through his witness, we see something beautiful revealed. At the end of our service, students had to crack their ornaments and hang them on the tree. Broken ornaments are pretty dumpy looking. But a full collection of broken ornaments assembled on a lit tree look fairly beautiful… and serve as a reminder that, as we celebrate Christmas, Jesus turns broken things beautiful.
(It’s tricky to break the ornaments without totally smashing it to pieces. We had students put them on a pillow and cover them with a cloth, then give them a little whack with a screwdriver. To help contain broken glass, we did everything in a plastic kiddie pool.)
Thanks to a free give away from the local video store, my Christmas has been rocked by a special surprise: Northern Light Orchestra. It’s a Christmas super-group, featuring the likes of Kip Winger, Dizzy Reed from Guns n’ Roses, Bruce Kulick (KISS), George Lynch (Dokken), and more 80’s rockers. I fully expected something along the lines of Twisted Sister’s Christmas album. Instead I got something like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra… BUT with a really strong biblical focus. So if you’re tired of rockin’ round the Christmas tree and grandma’s getting run over by reindeers, check out NLO for something radically different.
To drastically over-summarize, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna asserts the first-century church was far superior to today’s version in terms of discipling believers. The authors note where many of our traditions in today’s church came from, and how they detract from the full involvement of every member in the body.
Personally, I found the roots of a lot of our traditions interesting. I found a few disturbing. But I wasn’t convinced by their assertions that most were qualitatively bad–or, in the least, hindering. I can support their idea that our church should be more organic and reflective of personality of its members. But I’m not in total agreement that a dogma of 1st century idealism is precisely the right path. Afterall, what would freezing the church model in first century snapshots (which we have relatively few of) imply about interacting with culture at large?
What do you believe? As the millenia rolls on, are we becoming better as the church or worse? Are we a more pleasing bride, or on the verge of separation? Did the 1st century fathers have farther reaching church communities than most of us do today?
I wish we knew more about Hebrews–who wrote it, who it was written to, etc…–because it’s a great book. The opening–presented in this post as one of the greatest movie openings, ever–touches on the teachings of Greek philosophers: Plato specifically. In Plato’s mind, every form was perfect. However, the perfect form existed on some other level–a metaphysical level or simply on a conceptual level. In reality, everything in the world was a flawed copy of the perfect form.
God is perfect. But everything in this world falls short of God’s perfection… You could almost say this is a summary of the Biblical narrative: In the beginning was God and everything was perfect. Humanity has destroyed perfection. And the world is in process of restoring that perfect harmony. Instead of leaving it up to us to find that perfect harmony, God interjected perfection into our midst for a short time. Perfection came to visit imperfection in the form of Jesus. Jesus was not a flawed copy of the perfect God. Jesus was “the exact imprint of God’s very being.”
What do we learn about God through Jesus? God isn’t interested in showing glory through the suppression of others. God’s glory comes through uplifting others, through teaching, serving, and loving… loving to the point of self-sacrifice. How are you doing at showing that imprint? Do you think today’s men and women are able to live up to God’s imprint?
Got this from Mark Waltz from Granger Community Church
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“What do you hope people will say about your church at the water cooler Monday morning?”
Well, what do you hope people will tell others after experiencing your church community, ministry, study group… etc?
This past weekend served as one of those awesome experiences when the Spirit shows up in really unplanned ways. I had asked a leader from a para-church organization to come and speak to our students at this weekend’s youth groups. The organization he’s helped begin is pretty amazing. In area’s of Greenville, there are neighborhoods where young men feel they need gang affiliation for safety reasons. So he and some others started a gang… a gang founded on Christian principles and accountability. They’re called 300 Men of Standard. They’re saving people.
We probably could have planned things better. We did a lot of adjustments on the fly. But both nights of youth group were pretty amazing. From start the finish, the whole night came together in a way that left us with the impression that God is in control… from the leaders down to the students. And that’s an important message for students in turmoil to hear. The 300 MOS presenters were able to communicate to many students with a level of authenticity on some topics I can’t speak to like that–I haven’t “been there.” It’s important to be authentic, but it’s not always possible to provide that when we need to go to address situations we haven’t experienced. There were some places our students needed to go… and I couldn’t take them there–but God is in control and the 300 MOS met them where they were.
I guess leaders need to know their own limitations. Leaders need to be humble enough to step aside and let those who can speak truth and authenticity do so. As ministers, we need to continously seek to “keep it real”… and that can sometimes mean that we need to let someone else address the needs of the flock.
Both nights, the presenters concluded with an invitation to prayer. I’m now convinced that this is something that those in programmatic ministry need to do ALL THE TIME. It moved our students to a level of intimacy would otherwise take months to develop. And, as 300 MOS leaders prayed for St James students, and St James leaders prayed with 300 MOS students, it provided a beautiful glimpse at the true body of Christ.
We spent the weekend talking about 1 Corinthians 15:50-58… tied into Halloween. I sometimes think that other cultures look at us in the West and think we must be crazy. Halloween celebrates everything that is unpleasant and dark. That’s got to look weird.
But what if Halloween wasn’t really about celebrating death, and fear, and evil and all those negative things? A lot of Christians distance themselves from Halloween because they see it as a celebration of those things. What if Halloween were, in fact, more about mocking those things? What if we dressed up as ghouls and ghosts on Halloween, not because they scared us, but because we could celebrate we no longer feared those things? Isn’t that what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 15 (death has been swallowed up in the victory of Christ)? All Saints Day–the day after Halloween–the day we celebrate those who have passed from this perishable world into God’s imperishable kingdom, makes Halloween look kind of stupid. Evil, fear, and death no longer have a hold on those we remember on All Saints Day.
Acts records a cool story about Paul. During his visit to Ephesus, some local business owners got a mob riled up against Paul and pooled everyone together in the amphitheater. Instead of fleeing in fear, Paul wanted to get into the amphitheater, too–to talk to people about Jesus. There’s a man who had no fear of death. Paul grasped that he was in a perishable struggle, but his life was imperishable.
As we concluded our time with students at this weekend’s youth groups, we invited students to rewrite 1 Cor 15:54… naming someone they’ve seen swallowed up in victory or a fear they hold that they need swallowed up in victory to move forward in Christ. We read our re-writes as prayers. It worked well as a way to get students participating in prayer without being intimidated in front of a group.
For some reason, as a teen my impression of youth group was that it wasn’t a safe place to ask questions. That probably wasn’t the case, but it was my perception. As a questioning teen, I felt that I needed to have answers to some of the doubts and questions I had before I could really get into youth group. So I hope to give our students at St James enough comfort to ask their questions about doubt… We’re hosting Doubt Night (thanks Rob Bell) to allow students to give voice to their doubts and, hopefully, get some reasonable answers in return.
We’re allowing students to anonymously text in their doubts ahead of time using Wiffiti. What’s kind of cool is that they can see what others are asking. What’s even cooler is that we (the leaders) can see the questions ahead of time. Sweet stuff… check it out by clicking the image above.
One of the great parts about being in ministry with young people is the satisfaction derived from seeing students impacted by something you’ve said, done, or witnessed to. (That comes across as really narcissistic, but I mean it in the healthiest way.) This past weekend, in an attempt to flesh out 1 John 4:7-12 with some students, I showed them the “Something to Believe In” video by Poison. It’s dated. It shows my age. But they still dug the rock…
Schmaltzy as it is, the video displays a number of the frustrations most of us have with faith. We have those who claim to be faithful acting worse than most others… we have people mistreated and abused in the world… we have an abundance of have-nots and very few haves. How can our God allow all that?
So, if you could blow up the church sanctuary and, without regard for space constraints or resources, replace it with your ideal worship space, what would that space look like?
This is not the author of "Pagan Christianity"
I’ve been reading Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola (not the former Twins pitcher, I was surprised to learn) and George Barna. The historical information they provide is fascinating. Much of the book is dedicated to revealing where many of the traditions we hold fast to in the church come from–sometimes they’re from surprising places. The information is good. I could do without the dramatic claims they derive from some of that information–like that steeples are anti-New Testament (I’m not defending steeples as they may not have a very important place in church architecture, but if most people don’t perceive them as being against the Gospel, can they really be anti-New Testament?). In the book, Barna and Viola claim that some of our traditional ways in which we organize our worship space detract from community and participation. We’ve all probably lamented some of the limitations of any given worship space.
So if you could totally create your ideal space for connecting with the creator, what would it look like?
