Tommy Tenney makes some convicting points about us as the church in general in his book The God Chasers,

Tenney's conviction is that we claim we know God but in reality we simply know a lot about Him. We spend most of our time seeking His hand(blessing) instead of truly seeking His face(who He really is). Have we become the pharasees that we read about in scripture?
Sometimes I am afraid we have.
We need to return to our passionate love of Christ and at all costs seek His face to find out the desires of His heart so He can reform our own desires.

Tenney says:

We do not have a lock on God because we're not married to Him yet. He is still just looking for a bride without spot or wrinkle, and we need to remember that He already left one bride at the altar and He'll leave another.
I believe that God will literally destroy the Church as we know it if He has to so He can reach the cities. He is not in love with our imperfect versions of HIs perfect Chruch; He is only out to claim the house that God built. If our foul-smelling , manmade monstrosity stands in the way of what He wants to do, then He will move our junk pile aside to reach the hungry. His heart is to reach the lost, and if He spared not His own Son to save the lost, then He won't spare us either.

He goes on to say:

The Lord spoke to me one time while I was ministering and said, 'Son, the services that I like, and the services that you like, are not the same.' I began to notice that too often we categorically design our services to be man-pleasing servies. We craft them to tickle the itching ear, and we want them to have a 'high entertainment index.' Unfotunately, these kinds of meetings have very little of our sacrificial love poured out to Him who alone deserves our praise and worship.

How convicting!!! I don't want to be characterized by the statements above, but I believe all too often in reality I am. Lord help us to know You more. Get our flesh out of the way so that we can REALLY seek you. I don't want to just say I want more of You, I want my life to reflect a true desire to know You. As Tenney says...I want to be a "God Chaser"!

I am reading the book The New Worship by Barry Liesch and he mentions an article by Dr. Harold Best about worship...Good thought provoking stuff. Some of his thoughts are extremely challenging to us as the church and especially those who may be involved in the leading of worship.

Dr. Best says,

Left to itself, worship is a dangerous thing, for it needs an object, a preposition. For it is not how or when or with what degree of quality, variety, and imagination that we worship. It is whom we worship. It is a passion about God that finds its voice. It is the "of-God" worship that begins the separation of authentic worship from inauthentic worship. We may not be idolaters in the sense that we have consciously trampled God underfoot and replaced His entirety with our chosen and crafted interpretation of entirety. But we can, in very subtle ways, include our harvest of idols within the Judeo-Christian fundament. If we make too much of worship without making too much of God; if our attention is on how to make people worship, we have lost from the start, even though we may have developed a dazzling musical, liturgical and methodological arsenal that would make the typical worship-techniques gurus grin like a donkey eating thistles.

He goes on to say:

Worship is not a special event or any sequence of them. Worship is fundamental to humankind itself, so much so, that we must assume that it goes on all the time, all around us, inside of us, and, in a paradoxical way, in spite of us. So before we talk about the specificities of worship, we must first of all understand that there is no one in this world who is not, at this moment, at worship in one way or another: consciously or unconsciously, formally or informally, passively or passionately. For in a most comprehensive way, we are always giving our lives over to something or someone that we consider to be worth the most. Worship does not just apply to specific religious activities and to the deeply religious people who have strong feelings about a nameable god (Judeo-Christian or otherwise), and how that god is to be occasionally encountered, pleased, placated, served, and worshiped. In a way that goes beyond nameable liturgical activities, it applies to our deepest expressions — many of them left unseen or unsaid — of our worldview.

This stuff has made my head hurt. If you have time I would encourage you to read the entire article.(it is extremely long, I still haven't read it all) I think some of it goes a bit far...but a lot of it has really challenged my definitions of worship.

Authentic Worship and Faithful Music Making

To read Barry Liesch's response to Dr. Best check out:

Liesch's Response

Boy it's been a while...a long, long week.

Trying to juggle everything on my plate has proven to be extremely difficult. Pretty much lost my voice this weekend between a cold and a wreslting tournament.
It is difficult to lead worship without a voice. Thank God we have an awesome band with great vocalists to fill in all the gaps. God is good.

The more dependent I am on Him the more powerful our worship time is. I had one of the best compliments I could have recieved from someone at church. She told me that she hasn't even noticed me up there leading worship...say what?
She said she has been able to worship without being distracted because we have been hiding behind the Holy Spirit in worship. WOW!!! what a compliment.
Some spectacular things can take place when we just listen to the Lord's prompting and allow Him to direct our very thoughts.
We are to do the things we have been called to in a way that brings all attention to the Father, Son, and Holy Spririt.
I continue to pray, remove me from the spotlight so that all glory, honor, and praise is given to God Most High.

If you are serving in an area God has called you to then He will provide all things for you to be able to accomplish His will. Keep in mind though that when You begin to take the glory and think of yourself more highly than you ought then you are no longer accomplishing His will.

If you don't feel like you have been empowered to do the work you are in then check two things.
1. You may be in the wrong area
2. Your motives may be for your own glory and you may not be as humble as you really thing you are.

God is Faithful to complete the work he began in you... so just let Him.

Here are some interesting thoughts about the direction the church may need to go to remain relevant to the emerging culture. Some of these I think are right on...some I am still chewing on.

Check out the complete article Working and Churching


Let's continue with this work analogy: An increasingly large proportion of the population are finding themselves engaged in part-time, casual and temporary jobs, either because of a shortage of full time options, or simply because of the flexibility it adds to their lifestyle. Some people may have to work a multitude of these jobs to create a satisfactory income. Likewise with church, more people find themselves engaged in what has been called 'portfolio church' - Participating in a number of church and quasi church groups and activities, in an attempt to cobble together a sufficiently satisfying experience of worship, faith and community.

Is this encouraging us to be a consuming people or is this a viable way to contribute in multiple places?

• Maintain a view of Church, not church, which goes beyond dialogue – Feel free to allow people to come and go, share experiences and opportunities. Potential leaders who are free to and blessed in going to other congregations will often provide unexpected returns to the congregation which sent them. Relationships are built between churches, ministries combine and flow back and forth, and individuals can return even more skilled and talented than when they departed.

• Salvation isn’t found just on Sunday – Some people may never feel comfortable in established forms of church. That does not mean that they are backsliding, lacking faith or even worse, ‘liberal’! The church is God’s people and they can always be found in the most unlikely of places. In local ministry based groups; in loose collections of Christian friends who gather on semi-regular basis; in educational institutions; even through online communities on the internet. We can argue over the pros and cons of each, but to a certain individual, each of these could be their connection point to the Church.

• Encourage creativity and imagination – These are increasingly valued and encouraged tools in our workplaces, yet originality, creativity and imagination often find themselves in hostile territory in our churches, with the emphasis on tradition, conformity, and truth.

• Give up competing to be the saviour of your community – Many churches are working more cooperatively in trying to reach their community, which is fantastic. However, in my own experience there often exists in many churches an underlying desire to be ‘the best’. That doesn’t necessarily sound bad, but I believe can have some unconstructive consequences, such as a possessiveness of leaders and members, a focus on numbers and quantifiable outcomes, and a trend to copy other patterns of ‘success’ verbatim without uncovering the narrow path that God might be trying to show us.

• Encourage the informal, open-set groups that may cluster around your congregation – These are the groups which are often most able to form these positive networks and be flexible and responsive enough to take on the challenge of the post-modern era, and thus, if embraced or at least supported by the established church, will help build the path for the broader church to follow in due time. They also provide a suitable forum and place for belonging for the disenfranchised and ‘awkward’ Christians, which isn’t too disassociated from the mainstream church. Provided, of course, that they are given relative freedom and autonomy to define their own existence.

Eddie Chapman

Had a great Thanksgiving break...also had two high school students where I teach killed in a car accident before Thanksgiving. Hard stuff...

You never know when your end on this earth will be. It makes me think of my own mortality and what I hope people could say about me when I am gone. I want to leave behind a legacy that points to the power of the Holy Spirit in my life.
Lord take me deeper still.
I want to abide in You and You in me.
Apart from You I can do nothing of eternal value.
I saw today the difference between: being empowered to do the work You have called me to... and just getting through it as best I can.
I want to live in the power of Your cross so that everything I set my hand to will be You at work and nothing of myself.