To sing worship music from more than one generation is, in part, to communicate our larger identity as the people of God. We hail from many backgrounds, families, races, and tastes, but now we are joined together through the blood of Jesus Christ, who has reconciled...
Feelings are great liars. If Christians only worshiped when they felt like it there would be precious little worship that went on. Feelings are important in many areas, but completely unreliable in matters of faith… We think that if we don’t FEEL something there can...
The contemporary obsession with spirituality, among Christians and pagans alike, surely betokens something worthy of the church’s attention. I am not convinced, however, that the current vogue for spirituality should be embraced without making important historical and...
Is not formal worship, some ask, an irrelevant waste of time? Perhaps it can be so construed. For candles and flowers are as irrelevant as the song of birds, hymn and chant are as non-utilitarian as a lover’s kiss, prayers and litanies are just words—cheap as...
The tapestry of worship is formed by the various threads of conversation that occur in interweaving fashion: God’s Word being communicated to the gathered community (both individually and corporately), worshipers responding to God under the prompting of God’s Spirit,...
How will we teach Christianity’s specialness if the music in our worship services imitates the superficiality and meaninglessness of the general world and our sermons talk about subjects that those in the pew can learn from psychologists, sociologists, and the local...
“Praise” that uses only “upbeat” songs can be extremely destructive to worshipers because it denies the reality of doubts concerning God, the hiddenness of God, and the feelings of abandonment by God that cloud believers going through difficult times. I have counseled...
To say that we believe that God loves the poor, judges in their behalf, wills their deliverance but do nothing ourselves to free the poor, to hear their pleas, to lift their burdens, to act in their behalf is an empty faith indeed. To say that God is love and not...
The bedrock of my faith—mind you, I didn’t get to it easily—is that we are loved by God. He loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way. We are loved by God, and that’s what gives us value. We don’t achieve value. It’s not because we have value that we’re...
Lent is a time to take the time to let the power of our faith story take hold of us,a time to let the eventsget up and walk around in us,a time to intensify our living unto Christ,a time to hover over the thoughts of our hearts,a time to place our feet in the streets...