Reflections on church

A housegroup has recently been formed in Orangefield Presbyterian for young adults, and right from the beginning there has been a challenge set in the meetings: how well are we functioning as a church? This does not mean, how happy and comfortable are our members? It means, to what extent are we seeing the kingdom of God enlargened or advanced? How do we see God's hand at work through what we do? These questions are posed in our housegroup, but answers are not handed on a plate. A thought will be thrown out to the group, then people reflect on it and discuss it. When you start to think about it, you start to realise some worrying things.

I recently performed a survey within the church for a college assignment, and every answer I recieved stated that the person in question was, to some degree, not engaging with the worship in our church. By this I mean, they either did not feel free to become lost in worship, they did not feel like they were meeting with God, or they did not feel the time spent worshipping encouraged them in their Christian walk.

This is a very serious thing.

And this is not simply the young people not liking some older songs or any situation like that, these responses came from a wide variety of people, male and female, young and old. Robin Mark states:

"That [God] requires our worship, totally and without wavering, is a Biblical fact."

Our worship is the basis of everything in our Christian life. Without prayer, praise and a firm understanding of the scripture (so, everything we do on a Sunday!) nothing else can function properly. Our community outreach, our fellowship, our mission work... We cannot jump to step 2 without first taking care of step 1. Well, we can, but it will soon fall apart.

A few years ago, I attended Hillsborough Bible Week and R.T. Kendall was speaking. He suggested that if the Holy Spirit were to suddenly be removed from the Christian church in the UK, that the vast majority of churches would continue without noticing a thing. This thought genuinely scares me, that a church could be so misled in it's work that it completely neglects the influence of the very God it's serving. What if that were your church? 

In a situation where people are able to say that their time in worship in their home church is not enabling them to meet with God, it is a time for radical change. To me, that is not something that can be accepted and allowed to continue OR be gradually changed over an extended period of time. The latter is often how we tend to do things. We have "special services" once in a while, where we do something a little out of the ordinary. We dip a toe in rather than plunge; and for the most part, this is the better option. A lot of the time it is a bad idea to change something and just expect the congregation to be okay with it.

But I don't think that is the case here.

I don't think we can continue going about the everyday church procedures while the foundation of it isn't as it should be. 

After thinking about it a great deal over the last few weeks, I would propose 2 things. They are only my own rambling thoughts which you are more than welcome to disagree with, but for what they're worth:

1.

To those who are responsible for our services. So many of our meetings involve lengthy discussions about how long services are to be, or in particular how much time is allowed for different sections of the service. If we fall into a situation where structure is our defining factor on a Sunday then we cannot expect God to get involved. Every week when the worship team meets to pray, we ask God to move, we ask Him to be the center and the focus rather than us, and we ask that the congregation can experience Him. But we're asking Him to do these things within our constraints. Our hearts are not truly desiring those things if there is uproar every time our praise runs on a little longer than it sometimes does. We need to be less worried about the rigid layout of our services. Many of the answers I got to those questions mentioned the worship feeling suffocated, that there was no room for the Spirit to move.

2.

To those who attend our services. NOBODY can make you worship. Nobody in any position of leadership in any church in the world can force you into a time of worship. If you do not come into a Sunday service prepared to meet with God, really hungry to experience His power, then it doesn't matter how the worship is led, you won't engage the way you should. Ask yourself how often you truly prepare yourself before worship to meet with God, to allow Him into every aspect of your life and to ask Him to move.

It is important to remember that we should never seek to make worship comfortable (whether leading or experiencing). That is not the aim. God challenges through worship, He pushes us and moulds us, and a lot of the time this is uncomfortable. 

If you have any thoughts on this stuff do let me know.

The holidays are coming...holidays are coming...

My Twitter feed has been alive over the last coupld of weeks with people on two sides of a battle. One the one hand, we have people who from the middle of October are in full-fledged Christmas mode, putting up countdowns, quoting Christmas songs and generally being obnoxiously cheerful. On the other hand, the people who moan about Victoria Square having their lights up before December even starts and snap at anyone who mentions the possibility of putting their tree up. Where am I? I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle. I hate putting the tree up but I love the dinner. No pain no gain, I guess...

I find myself wondering more and more each year to what extent we do take part in the commercialization of Christmas though. As Christians we obviously have a very different approach to and meaning behind the celebration of Christmas. We set a particular time apart each to commemorate the coming of God in human form to take part in the salvation of all mankind. Probably worth a mention once a year, yes?

So how does God feel about his people getting sucked in to the way the world has trivialised it? If we weigh up the amount of time we spend pondering over presents, decorating houses, writing cards, watching the films on tv and even simply daydreaming about a few days off work; against the amount of time we give it the proper focus it deserves, are we really surprised that God is not glorified to the extent He should be? Countercultural living is surely never more important than at a time of year when something profoundly spiritual is abused by marketing and industry.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Christmas, genuinely can't wait each year. There's nothing wrong with that. And even though the world doesn't quite get it, it's still a time of year that seems to promote only love and compassion. But what better chance is there for Christians to shine than when celebrating the birth of Christ? Instead we so often choose to go along with the superficial.

If I had more time I'd also go on about how even the Christian worship folks seem to pounce on the market in order to sell a few CDs of Christmas songs, but for another time...

How does church affect our worship?

Haven't done one of these things since before the summer holidays, and a lot has been going on since then. We've had Summer Madness, I battled through Round 2 with Oxegen, and our church had our summer outreach week, JAM.

So a little overview of these things first to set the scene for something that's been on my mind.

Summer Madness was my ninth year (I think) and my third going with a group of obnoxious sods from Orangefield. We had around thirty-five young people this time round and it was a phenomenal week of worship and teaching. I confess the last couple of years I've felt less and less impressed by the festival and worried that maybe it was just me getting older but thankfully this year reassured me. Martin Smith was a total blessing in the worship and Simon Guillebaud and Duffy Robbins proved that totally different speaking styles can be equally instructive.

JAM was also a third year affair, with 50-odd people staying for 8 days in the church building and three different programmes running every day (check out the podcasts) and the answer to prayer evident throughout the week was unbelievable. The Friday night saw a massive response among the teenagers attending where our designated prayer room couldn't cope with the number of people looking to get in.

And in hindsight there's something that's been on my mind from these two spectacular events.

Anyone who's been to Summer Madness knows that the worship is some distance away from the average Presbyterian church. The songs range from dance-based bouncy numbers all the way to the epic soaring tunes (or, "Coldplay" worship) and it's very involved. There is a lot of hand-raising, people fall on their knees, the band can play for five full minutes without anybody singing anything and the atmosphere of worship is not broken or strained. It's a wonderful experience, and usually a real highlight of the week. And at JAM there was a lot of the same thing. We had a few worship sessions where people entered in in very emotional ways. There was some crying, some response through prayer etc and a lot of hands in the air.

SO WHY DOES THIS ONLY HAPPEN IN CERTAIN PLACES?

I'm not talking about how it happens a lot only in some churches, I mean among our own people. The same people who worship like this at Summer Madness largely don't on a Sunday in a church service. This isn't a problem and I'm not saying it's something that should change, it's just interesting. It seems to imply that our worship comes from a different place in one area than from another. Does it solely have to do with the way the worship is lead? Obviously there is a vast difference between the two settings; our church doesn't boast a powerful lighting show, we don't play hour-long uninterrupted sets on a Sunday morning and we don't hand-pick our worship solely with the teenage listener in mind. But if this is true does it mean that we are too heavily influenced by what happens around our worship as opposed to the worship itself?

Or maybe it's just the place in which the worship occurs. Perhaps it is easier to feel free in the way you worship when you find yourself in a crowd of 6,000 people around your own age, who you don't know, than it is in a church building in which your family and people of different generations are standing. Here the problem presented would be that people feel pressurized in the way they choose to express their worship by those around them. Worried about what would seem appropriate to people rather than before God.

I mention this simply because I enjoyed leading worship massively at JAM, always do. It's genuinely one of my favourite things about the week, seeing people respond to God freely. If you have any feelings or general musings on the subject fire away!

Things to change

The world's perception of Christians and their God

"I do not find in orthadox Christianity one redeeming feature."

- Thomas Jefferson

"In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."

- James Madison

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

- Karl Marx

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorse exactness. It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere."

- Samuel Clemens

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."

- George Bernard Shaw

Our attempts to achieve our own standard of perfection

"According to the Bible, God responds more to desire than he does to competence...that's good news if you're messed up!"

- Bart Campolo

"Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt." 

- Antionette du Liger de la Garde Deshoulieres

Spare some change?

 

"You know why banks are closed on Sunday? 

Cos if they wasn't, church would be empty!"

- Chris Rock

 

Chris Rock is one of my all-time favourite stand-up comedians. If you can get past the some of the more lewd subject matter and live with his incredibly foul mouth then you discover he is miles ahead of anyone else on the modern comedy scene. The key to his genius rests almost entirely on his ability to look at topics that are important to our society such as politics, race and religion, and put them forward (with humour) in an unashamed and totally straight-on style. There is no sugar-coating, no delicate nature and no dancing around things.

So if he's spot-on in his narrative and perception, how does this quote make us feel?

This line comes from a routine about people's obsession with money, and while it's directed at Americans it offers a chilling depiction of a culture in which, whether we like it or not, 'church' is becoming more heavily rooted. You see, churches tend to mimick the world in an attempt to bring people in. The world has fast-paced pop music, so Christian music moves into the same style. The world has clubbing, and there are Christian dance venues opening up across the UK. This isn't a bad thing of course, the church has to change with culture otherwise it will lose it's relevance. But would we notice if we were gradually adopting other aspects of the world? 

I recently found myself struggling money-wise as I was getting less and less hours in work, and it was looking like I would have to pull out of a couple of things I'd planned to do over the summer. It really stressed me out. I made it out to myself like it was the end of the world. I'd gone and bought a ticket to Oxegen and wasn't going to be able to go because I couldn't afford the travel costs. I'd committed myself to helping out at Summer Madness with my church youth group and wouldn't be able to afford it. As it happens, without me mentioning this at all a member of our congregation gave me some money because they felt I needed it, which was an incredible moment. But what does it say about the things I lean on that as soon as the money dries up my life is thrown into disrepair? Is that a sign that I rely on money too much? Is my hope truly built on nothing less that Jesus' blood and righteousness?

I'm a member of a church which is still working it's way through paying off a £3million building, and as such an awful lot of what we do is in some way associated with money, whether it's paid events or monthly donations. Now I'm not saying at all that our church is misplacing it's focus, but it certainly becomes messy when you try to rely on God as well as the things that money affords you. Especially when we read stories in the New Testament about how people met in houses and sold their possessions. It can kind of feel sometimes like we're getting gradually better and better at storing up earthly treasures. Or at least blurring the line of seperation between what's a necessity and what's an indulgence. Does a church need incredible lights, fabulously comfortable chairs and a sound system that could power Glastonbury? Or are those just things we subconsciously think give the image of our church that we want people to have? Seems like an important line to hold on to. 

"He who has no rule over his own spirit is like a broken down city without a wall."

Proverbs 25:28

Don't get me wrong, money is a phenomenally grey area. Christians throughout the world sit at both ends of the spectrum, and none of them have the authority to judge any of the others. But surely we can at least agree that we have to try hard to have rule over our own spirit. Ask any Christian and (I hope!) they will tell you that they want God to have a higher grip on their spirit than money does. So if we take hold of our own spirit then we can totally make it God's. The first thing that comes to mind with me is that when I work, I feel like I've earned it. My job is dull, depressing and makes me get out of bed at 6 in the morning! I feel like I earn my week's wages! But not once do I ever thank God for the money. In a world where people die of starvation, a world where £2 a week can feed a family through some charities, not once do I thank God for the £50 I get every week. To me, that sounds like a key factor in offering my life to something other than God. The moment I forget to see something as a gift from God is the moment I have lost my focus; the moment I have lost rule of my spirit. 

If you feel the same or agree at all, let's change it starting now. Maybe after a while the image people have of the church won't be that they're in church because the bank's closed :)

Light in the Dark

Just over a year ago I got a craving to do something. I wanted to shed all modern comfort. I wanted to go somewhere where I would encounter the most godless people and situations. Somewhere were the rain beats the earth into an uninhabitable state. Somewhere that would truly test my ability to cope with the conditions.

As such I went to Oxegen music festival.

I absolutely loved Oxegen. I am returning this year and can't wait for it. However it would be fair to say, it's a good thing Summer Madness is right before it because you certainly jump into a sinful place! Don't get me wrong, the rumours of violence and danger are totally untrue, it's a very friendly place, but you are constantly surrounded by drinking, drug use and sexual promiscuity from the moment you enter the grounds to the moment you leave. And yet there was a moment in that weekend that will stick with me to my dying day.

On the Sunday night Sproule and I went to see Mumford & Sons. We had seen about twenty bands over the weekend, we were tired, unwashed and while it's not the way it should be, we had become climatized to the sin around us. Mumford & Sons were the last band we would see that weekend and it was a truly incredible gig. Then they started to play a song off their album called Awake My Soul, and it was a very unusual experience. To anyone who doesn't know the track, it canters along in their lovely folk style, and then finishes with a stomping chant. And at that point in the song 8,000 people packed inside a massive tent all raised their hands and sang in unison 'Awake my soul, for you were made to meet your maker.' Most of the band's lyrics come with spiritual undertones and as I understand it Marcus Mumford is indeed a Christian, but it was a strange moment to see so many people who were living in such an ungodly way sing such godly lyrics. Obviously the words were not sung by the people in any kind of worshipful sense, but it stuck with me as a reminder that God's light not only breaks into dark situations, but in fact that is where it is the most noticable.

I have mentioned to many people that I have attended or am attending Oxegen and their response, while never condemning or judgemental, is that they wouldn't go to a music festival because a lot of what goes on there contrasts with their spiritual views. Fair enough. I don't go to clubs for that reason (and the fact that the music is the worst thing about the world). But how often do I pray God's light into clubs? How often do people pray for the people who go to a music festival to drink themselves stupid or take substances to help them forget about the rest of their lives? We can all list places in Belfast (or wherever we live) that we wouldn't like to walk through on a dark night but how often do we pray for them? There is so much that Christians can readily identify as not of God, but we never seem to want to change that. Maybe it's because we forget that God's power is greater than our own and He can change what we can't. Or maybe we automatically assume that if we don't want anything to do with it neither does God.

But these aren't the truth.

The truth is that God wants the whole world to be His. One day every tongue will confess You are God, one day every knee will bow. We sing these words, we should also mean them. We shouldn't just be praying for and reaching out to the contemplative people who we occassionally chat to about our faith, but also those who live every day of their lives directly in opposition to us.

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

John 3:17

In a world that offers so much evil and glorifies a person's right to do what they like, it's hard to believe that the situation can really be made right, but we have to believe that the slightest touch of God on a life, whether it's a discussion that arises in the workplace, or song lyrics sung to a huge crowd some rainy evening in Ireland, can radically change a situation.

The Modern Worship Scene

I imagine that many of you would be familiar with contemporary Christian music whether you listen to CDs or sing the songs in church. You may even know your Tomlins from your Redmans better than I do. Now I've found myself in many an argument in the past based on my musical preference, but lately Christian music has just been driving me up the wall and I'm venting :)

Over the years I have steadily collected a vast library of music, a fair portion of which is worship music. For the longest time I've listened to these records happily, some of them I have played to death, some I have used in our youth fellowship, and there was always a flicker of excitement when a new song was used in a church service and I thought, 'I know this one!' Lately though, this has become less and less the case.

I can't honestly be the only person who's noticed that the lyrics of every Christian song these days are exactly the same? The same shallow, uninspiring phrases shared back and forth between the writers. I'm thinking largely of Chris Tomlin's Our God as I write this. (I'm genuinely not looking to single anyone out, that's just what crept up on my iPod on the way to College this morning.) A couple of references to things Christ did and then a list of comparative terms describing God. And that carries on throughout the entire album. It feels as if some songwriters just scribble down a handful of clichés, throw them up in that air and go with whatever order they land in.

Now I mentioned that I've been in arguments before around music, and they usually find me trying to point out that Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Tinie Tempah... (the list is endless) are shallow momentary celebrities and nothing more. A big part of this is to do with the lyrics, which are consistently empty and devoid of any meaning or originality. (Not that this is the fault of the singer in question. I mean come on, it's not like they write them) So I accept that other people may feel differently about the importance of the lyrics in a song from myself, but surely nobody could deny the importance of what we sing when we are praising God? Surely that is of a greater importance than what we listen to on the radio?

Another thing that I've found trying is the epic and theatrical nature of these songs. Again, not pointing fingers at specific people, but last year a group of us went to see Hillsong United performing at Whitewell Tabernacle in Belfast. It was a hugely enjoyable night and a great gig, but it was just that. A gig. As I stood there, singing along and watching the lasers and flashing light, becoming slightly engulfed in the output of the smoke machines, I kept thinking to myself, "this is how they do church." Every Sunday, these lights, effects and pyrotechnics. The choir of twenty people providing swells and overwhelming background sounds. The string orchestra brought on to highlight the emotionasl pinacle of each song.

Not so long ago a Christian bookshop in Belfast closed down and in their everything-must-go sale I picked up a few albums. There was a Hillsong acoutic set, the new Chris Tomlin, a Michael W Smith one and a Paul Baloche album from a few years back. The first three all fell into this category, with songs builing up to that emotional moment, where you could just picture the lights exploding on and everyone throwing their hands into the air for the final chorus. Songs that wouldn't be out of place at Glastonbury. The last one however, reminded me of what worship music can be. Paul Baloche's 'Live In Asia' is just a typical five-piece band praising God across the world, and it's an outstanding experience. There was no attempt to push the audience into feeling emotional or responding the way the leader wanted, just honest and beautiful songs written in worship.

And this is why Paul Baloche is not the household name that Tomlin is. Paul Baloche wrote the song Open The Eyes Of My Heart, which according to CCLI was at one point number 2 in the list of songs most widely sung in churches worldwide. Also on that list was Baloche's Above All (number 22). Yet Baloche has not sought the same status of Christian rockstar that so many others have. Somebody recently told me about a trip they had made to the church of a well-known Christian singer. The worship band played they're songs and everyone sang along. Standard church service, yes? But then, the artist came on, and the band left while the singer was greeted with cheering and screaming from the audience. Is this church? Is God glorified by one person being idolised? I see this at Summer Madness every year as well, certain artists who reach a point in the Christian scene attract a fanbase, and as soon as that happens things are in danger. If you give in to that success then you are no longer solely trying to glorify God, but meet people's expectations and hold on to the admiration of man. Do we really believe Chris Tomlin didn't spend a portion of his songwriting time for the new album thinking about how to best please his devoted following? How his fans would recieve this new music? How well it would go down on the tour to promote the record?

I'm well aware that I am offering no answers to any of these problems, and I don't think there really are any finite answers out there to problems like this. It's just one person's opinion, and it's just his way of mulling the thoughts over: plastering them on the internet ;)