Gunshots In An Airplane

    I may be guilty of some sarcasm in this piece.  I'm not sure but let's start with this idea, since there are so many of us Christians, and we have no real enemies in the world, we can afford to take each other apart in pen and word, attempt to destroy each other's credibility, slander, besmirch, and ridicule without regard to consequences.
    Since the only real problems in culture, society, and the world are those caused by stupid, ignorant, or misguided preachers, blog and article writers, or authors who claim to be Christians we can spend most of our time attempting to dismantle their annoying opinions; especially if we feel they are in the least heretical, liberal, or just sloppy.  We can call them names, albeit in an intellectual way so as to make ourselves look incisive.  We can align them with known malefactors of condemned periods of church history, or even of despised current splinter groups, so that they couldn't possibly be taken seriously.
    Now, let me state straightforwardly that there are bad opinions and bad ideas and these things do have consequences.  There is orthodoxy, and thus there is heresy.  Bad ideas in fact have and can destroy individuals, families, congregations, denominations, and nations.  I really have no problem with identifying bad  ideas, and sometimes bad guys.  What bothers me is a cavalier attitude to the plane in which we are flying.
    I have never been on an airplane that was being hijacked.  I hope I never have to be in that situation.  My hope is that if such a thing did happen there would be a Sky Marshal on board who would protect us from the perpetrator.  I even hope the marshal is armed, but I really hope he/she is well armed and can shoot straight.  Have you ever seen one of those movies where the plane is depressurized?   A hole is ripped in the aircraft and things and people start flying out.  I have sometimes had apprehension of such when using the   toilets at 40,000 feet on an international flight.
    I think we Christians are on such a flight, and we are on it together.  We travel through the atmosphere of a foreign environment, and can easily forget how fragile the aircraft is in which we fly.  I think the way we treat each other sometime in public discourse is akin to untrained Sky Marshals who shoot at anyone who even gets out of their seat.  I think institutions are fragile things, and I also think that much of the younger generation knows little of how much effort, sacrifice, and discipline it takes to create them and hold them together.  I believe local churches are such fragile institutions, and Christian institutions like schools, colleges, denominations.  For a generation who has become enamored with creating virtual cities and empires, and can then erase them when bored, there seems little at stake in making no long term commitments to organizations and institutions, nor even loyalty to friends and brothers.
    Of course, there could be something said simply about learning how to love one another, "....love is kind,.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."  (I Cor. 13:4-7) NIV
    I like and enjoy things that are well written.  I enjoy humor, insightful critique, and even sarcasm.  I just know that sometimes we shoot too quick, too frequently, without aiming well and seem to have little thought of the damage and danger in which we all are placed.  I would think the atmosphere outside the plane was enough for us to be concerned about, but if there is danger on the plane, let's make sure our shots are well placed.

What is your definition of Normal?

    As I read various articles on the "normal" Christian life, and debates on whether or not we should call people to be "radical" it leaves me a bit puzzled.  I am just wondering where all these so-called "radical" want-to-be Christians are anyway?  It just doesn't seem to be a real problem.  Are people rushing into cities to save them, or save the people of the cities?  I just sort of feel left out, like I missed the stampede.
    I see gentrification sure enough.  I see young white people moving into cities and pushing to get jobs, internships, fellowships, etc.  I see them living pretty much normal middle class jobs, or attempting to break into business, education, or government careers.   Is that radical?  I thought it was just attempting to maintain the status quo, and in that I see very little prospect of Kingdom witness, let alone transformation of the cities, especially among the poor.
    Not that I despise these young Christian adults who want to make a cultural impact on the city, or the world.  Not at all, it is just that I would love to see them become part of churches that really want to include the poor in their church life, which is to say to include them in their economic, social, and cultural lives.  I would love to see the average, normal, middle class urban Christian be part of a church that makes the poor part of their family life, and not simply a service project.
    Of course to do that one has to have a vision beyond one's self, beyond the "normal" way of doing church or doing life.  One can be as isolated from the poor in the cities as in the suburbs.  It is not a new piece of data to realize the place with the fastest growth of poverty is in the suburbs, or at least selected suburbs.  Where else are the displaced supposed to go if no one has fought to provide a place for them to stay in the cities close to the services they need but now can't reach?
    Market forces aren't the only thing that can determine where people can live, sometimes vision that goes beyond a fast profit, that includes set asides, that includes preserving communities can actually create new circumstances.  I think the poor need the middle class, and they don't just need them to move in and be a good neighbor.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is absolutely essential, but the poor have always needed a more aggressive love than that since their lives have become so dysfunctional. Preaching the Gospel to the poor creates certain relationship implications.  That is one reason churches of thirty something middle class people who move into poor communities with no overall church strategy or vision to do mercy and development with wisdom and care invite their members to become exhausted.  The really poor are too much for them, if they just live "normal" lives among them.  The end result can be a new callous detachment, and a cynical fatigue by being overwhelmed by systemic issues and problems.
   I would like to be a Biblical person myself, in the whole counsel of that idea.   Intensely pious in my love for Jesus, broken in my need for mercy and grace, loving in my relationship with all men and especially my brothers in the Faith, and full of faith and action when it comes to mercy and justice.  I want to be as extreme as Jesus in calling people to follow him, since I take it I am an just an echo of his call.  I expect to have to pull my own weight, to get an education, to hold a job, to support my family, to participate in my local church, to be a good citizen.  I also expect that I, and all who name Jesus as Lord, would seek those good works to do which he has ordained for us to do, and not just assume that caring for myself and my own is all that Jesus asks for me to do.  That would take a forced deafness, a determined distortion of Scripture, and an all too selfish agenda.

The News Gets Depressing

   It was one of those days where the culmination of one depressing cultural erosion after another just gives you a sense of sadness and dreams of revolution.  The horrible story of the Philadelphia abortion doctor, and then President Obama praising Planned Parenthood.  Then the basketball player telling the world about his sexual preferences, and tying it in with his Christian background, then President Obama calling and congratulating him.  Then a sports commentator expressing his disagreement with the practice of homosexuality while expressing tolerance for a fellow athlete, then being attacked and dissed by various organizations for his so called "hate."
    Then I see news of the Pentagon hearing from a certain individual, who thinks that open Christian witness and proselytizing is evil and dangerous, and wants to limit the behavior of military Chaplains.  It is pretty amazing how powerful simple name calling is when it comes to attempting to marginalize Evangelicals.  Mike calls us "monsters."
    On top of that I watched an NBA game and saw that hockey rules have evidently been introduced into playoff games, such as the physical beating going on at the Warriors versus Pistons game. Man, what is happening to the world?  Obviously some of these things are more important than others, some more evident of cultural erosion, some more telling of the death of morality and Truth and the elevation of worship at the idol of "freedom."
    Freedom is such a wonderful and beautiful thing, but without definition it is any man's weapon not simply to be but to take whatever he self-defines as his.  Freedom without foundation, without boundaries,  is no freedom at all but the colliding of electron like individuals, movements and causes, that tend to smash what would give them direction or form.
    Sometimes I feel the fuse burning of anger in my reaction to the maligning, slandering, mocking voice of those who (ignorant of history, ignorant of the constitution, ignorant of what is built on what) declare the patriot, the faithful citizen, the meek religious obedient tax payer to be dangerous and an enemy due to his audacity to express his religious opinion of what is disintegrating around him.  Wow, that was a long sentence.
   Today I was reading in the book of Psalms, Psalm 92 specifically.  "The senseless mean does not know, fools do not understand, that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.  But you, O Lord, are exalted forever.  For surely your enemies, O Lord, surely your enemies will perish; all evildoers will be scattered."  (92:6-9)  Another version translated "senseless" as "stupid."  I took it  that God was calling me stupid, and after thinking about it I would have to agree with him.  I often forget that God is bigger than America, bigger than politics or cultural movements, bigger than loud mouth antagonists of my faith.  My anger is usually a sign of my weak faith in the fact that our sovereign God cannot be defeated or thwarted.  No plan can succeed against him.
    Oh, I do think culture and politics matter, and I think the weak, helpless, and children perish because of the injustice that is brought about by evil thinking.  Yet, my hope must be in a God who is still in control, and will be in control even if someone threw someone else in a fiery furnace for not bowing down to an idol.  "our God will deliver us O King, and even if he does not, we will not bow down."  (The book of Daniel).

"THESE PEOPLE ARE INNOCENT!"

    I have waited to write about Boston and the bombing at the end of the Marathon.  I didn't want to react too quickly and especially wanted the perpetrators to be identified and caught.  I did have an immediate reaction(s) of course, and one was to the declaration made by some folks as to the innocence of those who were killed or maimed by the bombs.
    I certainly agree that the people who were killed or injured were innocent in the sense that they had no prior offensive relationship to the bombers.  They were not attacked because they had done some wrong to these two brothers, in fact if anything the circumstances seem to suggest otherwise.  America had welcomed them, Boston had made a place for them, they were given opportunity by the collective community and the crowd at the finish line was representative of that welcoming and embracing community.
    There seemed to be such an outrage and shock that this event, (this very democratic and individualistic athletic contest where people run as individuals, some with friends, some with family, some with ad hoc groups but not so much as commercial teams) was targeted.  Yes, there are national representatives, there are some professionals who make a living running, but the marathon is overwhelmingly made up of individuals are who running more against themselves and the clock than against other runners.  These are the healthy people, those who are running to overcome age, weight, disease, a sedentary life, a life without challenge.  Their triumph is to finish, their joy is to be alive.
    But are they innocent?  I think one good thing that could come from this horrible incident is that maybe the bombs would blow away the illusion of detachment. I took the statement in some part as a declaration that these people are not involved in our international fight, that somehow these folks deserve a pass from the conflict that has been visited upon us.  It led me to think of the many folks up in Ivy League land who enjoy the blessing of this land of plenty and opportunity, enjoy the benefits of liberty such as running in a race whenever they want to do so,   and somehow don't participate in the fight to preserve those liberties.
     Let me be fair, it is not just folks in New England, or those who go to Harvard, M.I.T. or Yale, but the vast majority of middle class and upper middle class folks who do not serve in the military or risk their lives in battle to preserve what they so easily enjoy.  The statistical reality is that very few families have borne the burden of the war we will continue to fight, and our government has attempted to shield those who pay taxes from the monetary cost of that war by its continued borrowing.
    I am in no way implying that the folks who were attacked deserved to be attacked, what was done to them was despicable and evil.  As an American I do not for one moment believe we deserve the hatred or the vicious attacks brought against us by radical Islamists or by any other group that fosters hatred for us as a nation and society.  What I am implying is that none of us can stand apart and act as if it is not "us" who are being attacked.  We are attacked precisely because it is "us," we the people of these United States, and what we represent.  The folks who have enjoyed such a pleasant life of personal enrichment, fulfillment, and even entertainment are now forced to sacrifice life and limb in horrific ways though they think they never signed up to do it.  While the "pursuit of happiness" seems sometimes to lead to self-centeredness it cannot be maintained without the sacrifice of many.
    I imagine some would want to compare the victims in Boston to the innocents who die from drone attacks but I would have to differ from that view.  Although I totally agree that targeted killing of declared enemies needs much more accountability and careful congressional oversight it is nevertheless "targeted" killing.  It is not the carpet bombing of Viet Nam days, it is the most precise kind of strike we can make absent a bullet to the head of those who are engaged in war against this nation.  Do innocents die, do children and family members get killed?  Yes, just as they always have in war and this is why all war is horrible and disgusting.  This war was not begun by us but we certainly fight it different than the enemy does, though not without some hypocrisy for which we as a nation must be vigilant to reject.  I speak of torture especially.  This is one reason we do not purposely attack the funerals of those we kill in drone attacks, although sometimes a thousand men are ranting "death to America" at such events.  In every war bad decisions are made, and some would have to be considered war crimes, but in this war we do not purposefully plant bombs in civilian crowds nor have we purposefully bombed civilians.
    One of the important legacies leaders in democracies should leave their people is that we are different in our values from those who are totalitarian, despotic, and homicidal in their hatred of us.  Those values are not just in what we say we stand for but also in how we make war, or try not to make war.  Another legacy democratic leaders should leave to all members of that democracy is the challenge that democracies only stand as we participate and pay for it, not only in its fruits but in its responsibilities.  If our best educated, healthiest, and most economically mobile continue to stand aloof from national service and sacrifice, while they enjoy a materialistic lifestyle provided to them by those who bear the burden, then paying the butcher's bill for simply living or being in this country may come due more often.
    My point is that we are not innocent of being Americans, not innocent of living in a land full of freedoms.  We are the target of the envious, the bitter, the covetous.  Though these brothers were welcome to enjoy all that the rest of us do there was inside them something that did not want that opportunity except on their own terms.  What set these two brothers off is yet to be made clear but certainly we should have learned by now that there are many like them who would do the same to us if they could.  Because of that our society needs constant vigilance and guardians, and it is time that those who participated in that sacrificial service came from a greater cross section of our nation.

LOOKING FOR CHANGE THAT IS HONEST

 In my city we have a certain zip code that has made an amazing transformation.  It has gone from one of the most dangerous places in our city to what I have heard is the fastest gentrifying zip code in our nation.  When I was a pastor in that neighborhood the intersection of where we met for church was the number one address for murders.  Today there is sculpture, art work, coffee shops, restaurants, start up companies, new and remodeled housing scattered all over the place.  Hipsters abound.
  Not only has the neighborhood been transformed but a bunch of churches are vying for space to plant or start new churches.  I am not sure if there will be space for them all, or if they will all survive but somehow, somewhere, the decision has been made that this is the place to plant a new church and they all seem to be seeking to enroll the same demographic.  I admit that Hipsters need good churches too.
    My experience with the neighborhood began around 1970 when a Presbyterian Elder who had a small factory/shop on one of the side streets told me of his burden to reach the people that he saw everyday wander close to his business.  Many were some variety of alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, male transvestite prostitutes, and the children abandoned by their fathers.  There were some stable families, there were some churches, but most of the churches were made up of commuters who drove in and drove out, and the stable families weren't seen very much.
   This Elder took an interest in me as I told him of my desire to minister in that very kind of neighborhood.  Eventually this was where our church would meet from 1972 until 1985.  The churches that were present when we worshipped there began to move out, and hardly any made any effort to reach the inner city, urban poor that dominated the community.  When our congregation outgrew the facility we were in and moved to another neighborhood we not only left ministries in place and continued to minister there for years, but started ministry in other impoverished neighborhoods. 
    For our city this zip code represents success, it represents progress, and it breathes of money.  I really like urban culture, appreciate art, appreciate innovation, and love hip architecture.  For many reasons I am glad the neighborhood doesn't look the same.  At the same time I recognize failure and a Christian culture of non-missionary church planting when I see it.
   The failure is in facing reality.  The reality is that displacement is not transformation.  Removal is not renewal, and ethnic cleansing via market forces and city planning doesn't mean we have changed anybody's life.  Last week in church I saw a man who was there with his wife and a couple of children, and he had grown up and lived in the neighborhood of which I speak when our church was there.  He escaped being another statistic and is now in the Body of Christ.  His old neighborhood is gone but we reached him there, and he was saved there, and he is a different man because of it.  There are others who came to Christ, others who now serve God, and they needed a church that would pursue them and love them, and serve them, rather than simply gather them so they could support the church.
    I remember seeking to organize that neighborhood so they could get some community development money from the government.  Their streets were busted up, the sidewalks crumbling, the once beautiful stone walls holding up the yards were falling down.  They succeeded, the money was obtained, the breach in the walls was repaired and the streets were restored.  Today the streets still look good, but the people whose lives needed restorative grace just live somewhere else.
    Our contemporary churches of the thirty something generation seem to enjoy urban ambiance.  They seem to want to engage the culture, use its music, use its art, and even create some of their own.  What they seem to be lacking is a missionary sense of sacrifice of going and ministering among a people who don't seem to have a lot of tangible art and culture to offer.  We can all celebrate how the Blues came out of misery, we can take intellectual stimulation from the naked and raw poetry of rap music and original hip hop, but the hard reality is that the stories of the Blues and rap come from an abused and abusing, suffering, addicted, illiterate, immoral, ignorant, violent, broke, and abandoned by legitimate centers of power population.
   This is not to stomp on the people at the bottom, for they are indeed people, and because of that the image of God is in them.  They have dignity and there is beauty, and courage, and endurance, and stories of amazing triumph over trouble, and friendship and faithfulness.  Yet, if the truth be told and I am trying to tell it, the Church doesn't go there.  My experience tells me that there are testimonies waiting to be consummated among these very people.  They will be told one day, by someone who met an invader to their block, someone who was loved by a stranger, someone who was told a message they didn't at first ask to hear.  My experience tells me that there will be a few missionary type church planters, Black, White, Latino, Asian, willing to risk their comfort, their security, the unknowns for their children.  Church planters who aren't after the fast and thrilling rise of numbers or money to somehow prove to his peers God has blessed him.  I have learned not to label something conspiracy nor blessing just because it seems to look like one.
    It is okay with me if neighborhoods look good but I think it is better if the poor get saved, become blessed by education and resources, take control of their own communities, and transform their neighborhoods into beautiful places.  Beauty reminds us of God so I'm in favor of that.  I know that there will always be godly grandmothers, some refusing to leave faithful dads, and loving mothers who either find Jesus and/or know Jesus, and will transmit the Gospel to their own poor children.  This will happen for some.  It is not sufficient for amount of people who die without hearing or seeing the Gospel, it is not fast enough for those living in the oppression of poverty.  They need the Church militant, invasive, missionary, sacrificing, serving, loving, and life laying down committed to the communities of the poor.  Missionaries who not only love the people but love the culture and heritage too, and bring the Gospel to enrich and transform it.  Then the repaired walls and streets will be indicative of substantive change, and not just a change of demographics.

Proclaim The Power of God!

Psalm 68:34 tells us to tell it, to proclaim the power of God.  Paul prays, I think for us as well as the Ephesians, that our hearts may be enlightened in order that we may know...the hope and riches of our inheritance...and, "his incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand above all rule and authority, power, and dominion and every title that can be given..." (Eph. 1:19-21) NIV
    When we have those moments where we finally realize that something we have prayed for has been granted, that is the power of God.  When we realize that what could have been a fatal illness, wasn't, that what could have been a horrific accident wasn't, that we have children who lived, that we have a job, that we are surviving somehow without one, all of these things are evidences of the power of God.  "Escapes from death come from the Lord," the Psalmist tells us.  Some of those escapes we know about, some we will discover when we get to heaven, how the Lord spared us and we didn't even know.
    King David seemed to be a man who lived in the most immediate awareness of the power of God, the prophets did, and the Apostles.  We seem to be in a moment of Christian culture where the narrative we seek is one of constant, consistent, forgiving, grace giving love.  The power narrative seems to be associated with hell, fire, and brimstone.  Power seems a negative thing if we envision a God of judgment, retribution, punishment, and intolerance.  Imagine that, an intolerant God?
    Such a selective Gospel is short sighted, ultimately anemic and weak.  Grace is nothing if not the power of mercy unleashed on those who had no power to change themselves.
Without the power of God there is no hope for there can be no rational basis for it.  How can we be delivered from sin, the Devil, and death without the power of God?
    "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
      who daily bears our burdens.
     Our God is a God who saves;
       from the Sovereign Lord comes
           escape from death." (Psalm 68:19-20) NIV
   The concept of the power of God is troubling, since if he has all power, is Almighty, is omnipotent, then why doesn't he use it like we think he should, when we think he should?  None of us seem to mind the power of God to deliver us, to heal us, to forgive us, to provide for us.  We mind it, that is we disapprove of it, when he seems stingy with it, or uses it in what we think is an immoral fashion such as killing people we think are innocent, destroying trailer parks, washing away villages, possibly unleashing the dogs of war.
    We don't always connect the dots wherein the judgment of God is revealed against evil, and evil men, by allowing them to be consumed with their own sins, giving them up to wickedness, and essentially allowing humans to be as bad as they want to be.  We don't realize when judgment is already come, we caricature the placarded fanatic who in the face of Godzilla stomping on Japan cries out for people to repent.  I imagine a movie where he meets souls on the way to judgment saying, "I told you so." We create segmented theologies where God is powerful for good things, but "my god would never do that" is our refrain when events go south.  Well, maybe your god would never do that because your god really has no power, he either has all of it or he isn't God.
     "Surely god will crush the heads of his enemies,
   the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins."  (Psalm 68:21)
We are told to proclaim the power of God, and in that truth and reality is all our hope.  The Gospel is not simply a work of His love but an exercise of his power.  It is the hope of the poor,
   "Sing to God, sing praises to his name,
  extol him who rides on the
     clouds-
his name is the Lord-
    and rejoice before him.
A father to the fatherless, a defender
        of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families,
    he leads forth the prisoners with
         singing;
but the rebellious live in a sun-
     scorched land."   (Psalm 68: 4-6) NIV
   What is lacking in not God's power but our faith, and that is why Paul prays for believers to be "enlightened."  When it is dark light is what we need, and faith gives us light to see beyond our temporal and circumstantial darkness.  If God is powerful why does it seem Evil moves so powerfully ahead, why is my life a mess, why are my prayers unanswered?  In the face of God's power we come to this conclusion about ourselves; we are not as powerful as He.  We are not omnipotent, and neither are we omniscient.  In short, we are to proclaim something by faith about which we only know a part.  We don't know all the "whys" and "why not-s."  Certainly not now in this life will we ever know all the whys and wherefores, but we know Whom, and we must not shrink from believing in His mighty power for if we do all is lost.  It would have been lost for David against Goliath, lost for David against Saul, lost for Daniel against the lions, lost for the three Hebrew boys in the furnace.  "Our God is able to deliver us, but even if he doesn't we will not bow down," they said.  I think they could say that since they lived in the awareness of his power and his faithfulness to use it in their behalf.  So, I proclaim it to you, and may our God give us power not to forget it in the day of trouble.

GET YOUR PRAISE ON!

   One of the greatest joys of my life is to worship.  It is a time when a lot changes for me, especially inside my head and my heart.  I am glad to stop thinking about myself, glad to stop thinking of what bothers me, or about my needs and desires.  It is good to think about God, good to think about being forgiven, good to think about God's love, and good to rejoice.
    I believe that the Scriptures teach us how to worship while at the same time giving us a great deal of freedom, within the boundaries of what is taught in the Word of God.  We are the most in trouble when we stray outside those boundaries, and sometimes our cultures not only take us outside the boundaries of Scripture but then institutionalize a practice that should never have existed in the first place.  It is good to constantly reexamine our practices of worship to make sure they are pleasing to God, and not just what we have become used to doing.
    It is interesting how we can become off target either with tradition or with innovation.  All traditions were once innovative, and some may even be within the scope of Scriptural teaching, but then we made them mandatory (even though Scripture does not prescribe them to be done routinely) and made people feel that if this element wasn't in the worship service we haven't worshipped and God isn't pleased.  So we ask ourselves if we really are worshipping God, or our traditions?  This is how good things can become bad.
    I don't see anything wrong with a communion table, but once I had a lady rebuke me for putting my Bible (it said "Holy Bible" right on the cover) down on the communion table (this during a non-communion Sunday).  I figure we can have communion even without a communion table, since I don't really see anything about it in the Bible.  Nor do I see anything in Scripture about what side of it I should stand when I serve communion.  I don't see anything wrong with taking the offering, nor with ushers bringing the plates up to the Pastor.  I don't see it necessary for the Pastor to take them up to the altar (whatever and wherever that is) and elevate the plates to God, but if he wants to do it I think that is fine, but I don't see that anywhere in Scripture.  As long as the people of God bring their gifts I don't really see any Scriptural instruction about how to do it.  In some ways I see lifting up money as sending entirely the wrong message.
    I am not sure where "options" came from for communion.  Is it a bow to consumerism or to health or conscience?  People lining up to take their choice of wine, juice, common cup, gluten free, etc.  Then in certain churches where they give you no choice but that you have to take some of it from a woman (and I don't find anything wrong from taking the tray from a woman), who proceeds to give a priestly type  comment about what she is giving you.  I am always a little bothered to be invited to celebrate communion and have my mind taken off Christ and realize someone is trying to make some kind of point.  I love the Gospel, I love the invitation to broken sinners to come and receive the bread and wine, but wonder why I too often hear the administration of the supper with no warnings attached when there is more of that in Scripture than there is invitation.  The elements reveal and demonstrate the Gospel, and that should be celebrated and done with thanksgiving, but the holiness of it and its consequent danger is often frivolously discarded.  I love almost more than anything in worship the Lord's table served well.
        Cultures tend to like certain kinds of music, and someone having come to love a certain kind of music can really feel uncomfortable when having to experience worship in another cultural setting.  Uncomfortable is probably a fairly common experience when crossing culture, the danger is when the worshipper stops worshipping and becomes judgmental and censorious, condemning what they are not used to hearing or seeing and despising brothers and sisters. Always the question has to be, "is this of God, is this according to His Word?"  If it is, then the problem lies with me and not the practice.  It doesn't mean that I necessarily have to force myself to try and like what is uncomfortable, but it does mean I have to humble myself and not cause anyone else to stumble because they know I am not pleased.
    One of the worst kind of worship services (to me) is one that is insipid and safe.  It would be better to have no singing or music at all if is not only bad music but sentimental and syrupy words without connection to Truth.  I have heard the phrase "vain repetition" used to condemn (black) Gospel music that stays a long time on one phrase, and heard it used to condemn Reformed hymns that attempt to spell out every theological doctrine (in one hymn) with innumerable stanzas that most everyone has stopped thinking about after becoming brain numb.  People think in different ways at different times, so it is usually best not to be too quick to condemn what one isn't used to hearing.
    I have heard Pastors condemn clapping, even when used in praise or thanksgiving, while ignoring the Scriptural admonition to "clap your hands all you people."  I have walked into church seeing Scripture used to keep me quiet, "Let all the earth be silent before him," while ignoring the more relevant worship command to "make a joyful noise all you people."  I understand and sympathize with a cerebral people who frown and grunt when in agreement but fail to say "amen!" when they should, and I can understand and sympathize with people who don't think about what why they saying "amen!"  Such as when the congregation says "amen!" all through the announcements.  I sympathize but I don't necessarily "amen" the practice.  I wish people would think more about how Scripture tells us to worship then just do what we have become accustomed to doing.
    Some of my greatest joys have been in worship, some of my greatest emotional moments.  A few times I have worshipped so much that I was exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally but exhilarated spiritually.   I realized that I was not yet ready for heaven, where finally we will have the capacity to give glory to God with everything we've got.  It will be Sunday everyday, and we'll never grow tired.  Down here there are far too many worship services where I'm tired just as things are beginning, but not from involvement or joy, but rather from boredom and mediocrity.
    What I am advocating is worship that makes sense to the worshippers, so that enter it with understanding and not confusion.  I am advocating "explaining" things to the people.  I am advocating for Pastors and Worship Leaders to think about the what and why of the service and how it leads or distracts us from God.  Use the candles to burn the vestments, organs, bells, hymn books, overhead projector and the microphones if any of those things are more important than the moment with God.  Tell the writer of Responsive Readings to shut up if the mumbling of the congregations is without thought or sincerity.  Tell the impulsive and spontaneous prayer warrior to sit down and be quiet if their prayers are simply verbal fireworks and fluff without theological thought or humility of heart.  Give us joy in our praise, understanding and meaning in ritual, simplicity and sincerity, and the presence and power of God in our midst.
    God forgive us for making what we have been made to do repulsive to so many, and often irrelevant to ourselves.   God forgive us when we have lost our children because of our own selfish and ignorant opinions and cultural captivity.  God forgive us for the wasted time when we could have been carried to greater heights, moments of serenity and ecstasy, moments of awe, moments of heart crushing conviction and repentance, moments of incredible deliverance and the lifting of horrible burdens.  "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple." (Psalm 27:4) ESV.