Glory

I'm really busy at the moment because I have just finished a week of catch-up from having the flu, and I have been at a church growth seminar... but also, I am busy because I am putting together a mini-worship conference for my worship community at church, but for anyone else who wants to come too.

If you want to come, check out the mini-site I made here... It's open to anyone who wants to come, it's not just my church exclusive :)

Dark Night

I'm off to see The Dark Knight... it better be as good as everyone has said it is, cause my hopes are higher than amount this movie has raked in at the boxoffice over the last few days.

Review to follow.

A document worth responding to.

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

A document is interesting because once it is created, it is then up to the reader to valuate it's importance and weither to pay attention to it or not. The document doesn't have a say in it.

The Treaty of Waitangi, the Bible, a note on the kitchen bench, an article in the paper, a book by C.S. Lewis or a blog by me...they are all documents that are powerless unless engaged with. They all have importance, but only if used. In some weird fashion, the document itself won't change the world, but the response of the reader may.

This week I had to write an overview "document"of all the things I have been learning over the last few weeks of my course, and in doing so have now produced something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since finishing it. But, it is my response to this that will make the change. I can map out what the job is at hand, what the nature of a human being is and what lies ahead - but will I respond to it? Will I commit to the process of letting it change the way I go about doing my day-to-day tasks?

A contemporary worship song - in essence, a creative theological document to music - can pull at my heart strings, tugg at my emotions, and can lead me to sing all sorts of words. I can say the grandest promises to God during the moment, but have I engaged with what I am singing? Have I actually realised what I just said? What the consequences of my words are? (It's also interesting to note how many songs are just plagarised out of the ultimate document, the living word, the Bible.)

It is my response to this document put to an easy to sing, catchy and quite likeable tune that could change wether a poor person eats tomorrow.

It is my response in the car listening to Ryan Delmore's "Break me heart with your love" as to weither I am going to forgive that person I have had the falling out with - and do something about it.

It is my response to telling the Lord that I will go where-ever He sends me, and then actually listening to Him about where that is.

(This one is going to be left un finished as I ponder more on responses to documents.)

A joke?

Yes!

God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, 'Lord, we don't need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other words, we can now do what you did in the 'beginning'.'
'Oh, is that so? Tell me...' replies God.
'Well', says the scientist, 'we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus creating man.'
'Well, that's interesting. Show Me. '
So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil. 
'Oh no, no, no...' interrupts God,
(I love this...)
'Get your own dirt.'

Brennan my-main-man Manning

This is a very powerful communication I thought...

Christian worldview overview underview sideview...

God is a person (1) who has been in relationship and conversation with us since the beginning of His creation spree. In one of these discussions which has been jotted down, God reveals His name to Moses, calling himself "The I AM”. (2) Short words, huge meaning. God is Trinity; Father, Spirit and Son, and through these three “personalities” has engaged with the creation He created after himself. He has engaged as the Creator of all, the King of all and the Saviour of all. (3)

Human beings are God’s image bearers, made in the image of God, for doing the works of God. Paul calls us “citizens of heaven”. (4) We are the extenders of His Kingdom, even though we are fully human here on earth, we live a parallel life as citizens of Heaven, extending and increasing the dominion of God’s rule on this earth. We are invited to take our story and live it within God’s greater story, with Him as the director and us as the actors.

Human beings screwed things up though. The cute Sunday-school-learned Bible story of Adam and Eve is actually one of the hardest lessons to learn as a human being. This is where we took our image-bearing life and trampled it into the ground in an effort to become the one who is greater than bearing image to. Sin entered the world, but God puts a rescue plan into action.

“So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us.” (5) The Son came on a rescue mission, (6) and while He was here, he modelled what a normal Christian lifestyle was to be; one of miracles, signs and wonders, one that was counter-culutural and radical. He restored to us what we had ruined, by dying a criminals death on the cross and over-coming the grave after three days. Jesus became the lamb to end all sacrifices, and became the keys for us to access the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is exactly what the word means; the “King’s” “domain”. It is the places where God’s ruler-ship as King is restored. (7) God has acted as Saviour by sending Jesus as the keys to the kingdom, where sin can be forgotten and a life which is eternal can be begun. But the point of that life is not to just get to heaven when we die, but to live this life taking on the model set by Christ and living as a citizen of heaven now, living as a new creation in Christ (8) and carrying on the extension of the Kingdom revolution.

In regards to how this will all finish up? I will leave this to Mr N.T. Wright... “The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, and he will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of al Christian faith. god is not going to abloish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it and to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it.” (9)

Until then, I’m just going to do my part by living as a new creation, loving Jesus and extending the Kingdom.

(1) Williams and Brown, Who is this God we worship?
(2) Exodus 3:14
(3) Wilt, The nature of a human being
(4) Philippians 2:27 and 3:20
(5) John 1:14
(6) Wright, Simply Christian 
(7) Johnson, When Heaven invades earth
(8) and (9) Wright, The road to new creation

What does it mean to be a human being?

In my Bible, Genesis 1:26-28 has been highlighted for quite sometime, I think about 2 years for verse 26, where it says, “Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves.” It’s highlighted pink. It was probably the only one I had at the time.

Verse 27 has been highlighted in two parts; “So God created people in his own image;” is highlighted orange, and “God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them” is highlighted yellow. A faded yellow. It’s probably been there 3 years, the orange is far more fresh, perhaps one year.

Then, in verse 28, fresh highlighting from only 6 months ago at a conference has scrawled over “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals.” Next to it, I have written “The original commission.”

What does it mean to be human? You only have to look at my Bible, on the first page to realise. We were given a huge privilege...and we ruined it all.

Being fully human means that there is a long, hard fought process to figuring any of this thing out. Wright writes “Wise Christian worship takes into account the fact that creation has gone horribly wrong, has been corrupted and spoiled, so that a great fault line runs down the middle of it - and down the middle of all of us, who, as image-bearing human beings, were meant to be taking care of it.”

My highlighting in my Bible is a perfect example of this. A few years ago, I highlighted the first verse, something in me stirring at the fact that God patterned us after himself. The process began.

Years later, I have had fresh revelation after watching Dan’s video “The nature of the human being” and reading the various media for this week, and the process that has been going in my life through these different moments of reading these verses, has finally been pulled together into a more tidy pile of theological thinking. It is not complete, but it has been pulled together tighter, with a bit more structure, and with a bigger picture painted. But this is just another part of the struggle that rages on, a struggle for my attention between the Creator, and the Fall. I am torn between.

What does it mean to be human? It means a struggle. It means fronting up to the fact that all is not actually “cosy and nice”. It means realising that we took the most amazing gift of all time - being made the imago Dei - and crushed it into the ground in an effort to become higher than it and the One who created it.

And now, things take time to figure out, and things take years to realise. Because of our ego’s, our pride, and our own echo inside us which says “I can be the creator...I can be the one...” we are blinded, side-tracked and quite often have our gaze set shamefully on our own feet, rather than lifted to heaven in adoration of the One who started this whole thing off with a different plan in mind.

The nature of the human being, is being the imago Dei, who ruined things. As John Newton calls the human being in his famous song, Amazing Grace - “a wretch like me.”

It’s weird though, how an understanding of this then opens a can of worms to how amazing God’s grace actually is.

Muxtape

Click here to go "wow" when you get there. 

This is very cool.

2 New Albums...

This one was $6. It's just for some good times really, and a bit of a groove to this almost "pop-hip-hop".  You can't help but laugh at some of the tracks,  but some of them are gems. Memories of cruising with my friend Andy to New Plymouth in his Ford Laser come flooding back upon listening to this one. 

Fun, cheap, can't complain. Not one for the "Rolling Stone top 200" but it's definitely cooler than singing "Wake me up before you go-go" at a Singstar competition in your local mall - 2 out of 5.

This is one I have wanted to grab since I first saw them on YouTube and upon putting the CD in my computer and hitting play, shivers have gone down my spine. This is an incredible sound - there are more strings than a James Bond soundtrack and you would swear Ringo is behind the drum kit at times.

I don't know what the deal is with why, how or when this was all put together by Alex Turner and Miles Kane, but one thing I can note (by just listening and not researching anything) is this: They have taken that beautiful 60's sound of early rock'n'roll/pop and bought it into now so well, you could put this on one of those "Sounds of the 60's" compilation CDs and no-one would notice the difference between this and an early Paul McCartney and John Lennon piece.

It's like an audio version of it's visual counterpart "Back to the Future" and I am liking it very much - 4 out of 5. 

Working with what we already have

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Last Thursday, the under-25 year old “men” of the church, took on the over-25 men in a game of indoor soccer. I am a bit of an active-challenged person at the moment, and the game took my body by surprise. In protest, my body responded with a huge blister/callus thing on the sole of my right foot.

During our camp this weekend, I was playing some more soccer and noticed something flapping around in my sock. I removed my shoes and socks to find a large piece of skin, which was about the size of a matchbox. (Sorry about how gross this all kind of is...)

The weird thing is this; upon holding that piece of skin and looking at it, the Holy Spirit used it as an opportunity and I found myself looking at it in awe, saying “No human hand has ever been able to make this stuff.”

I looked down at my other foot which still had my shoe on it. My shoe was made of materials that man had manipulated to create various kinds of leathers and rubbers.

My clothes were made of different kinds of cottons, again, just a material that man has made by taking a cotton plant and spinning it into yarn or thread. Again, just manipulating something that already exists.

In my hand, I held a piece of skin. Something that mankind has never and I even boldly write - will never - be able to make out of thin air.

Skin, cows, tree sap and cotton plants all have something in common... We didn’t make them. He, the Creator, did.

Dan Wilt puts it pretty good in this quote “Our wildest creations as human beings, with all due respect to the great scientists of this world, have always begun with something that God already created. We have yet to make our own dust out of which to make a human being. We have yet to create a new colour, a new air to breathe or a new building block of life. We work with what is, and we manipulate what is in order to discover, explore and rejoice in the world for which we are made.”

I feel privileged and humbled to be where I sit in the order of things. I'm not the creator, but I have the privilege to be able to manipulate to create from what He has created first.

Bruce.

After an exhausting weekend at camp, I got home last night, put on one of the Springsteen Live vinyls, lay on my couch and listened to the "Thunder Road" track. 

After a big weekend, listening to Bruce singing with just a piano is like a sheep shearer drinking a cold beer after a long day in the shearing shed.

JR, Dave Kane, Anthony Bartlett and Dave Darcy, you are the lucky ones. You know darn well why too...

The new Generation

Just a post-camp thought this morning during my devotion time...

There’s a new generation on the loose;
One who’s hearts leap in response to the Message.
One who’s hearts jump to the sound of a well-hit drum kit.
One who’s hearts break for the things on our Father’s heart.

Winterstock 08

It's our national Vineyard winter camp this weekend! It starts tonight, and runs through till Sunday. I am so excited about what's going to go down. I have been part of the organisation team and everytime we have got together to pray, God has been putting amazing words on our hearts - things like "a new song for this generation" and "a breaking down of the walls of the past to build a new platform for the future"...

Expecting big things! 

Songs for the present reality (ICEWS, e*b 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This week's pondering has been right at home for me. I love the Kingdom and I love the lifestyle it calls out of us, and incredible change when we respond. And to put my two favourite things together- the Kingdom and worship, is like putting Cadbury's chocolate sauce all over a bowl of Cadbury's Top-Deck ice-cream, and then covering it with chunks of Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate... 

One major pondering I have had was this: Is our worship lining up with the "heaven when we die" thinking, or more towards the "the Kingdom is here and now, the rescue mission has been complete!" kind of thing. I can see now, I need diagrams to make my point:

"I'll fly away, oh Glory, I'll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away." To me, this song is expressing and declaring a thinking which leaves the church stagnant, which leaves it just buying time and which leaves it not functioning in power, but rather complacency and apathy. The thinking is that "the Kingdom" is the heaven we go to when we die. It leaves us just waiting, just biding our time till we pass from this world into the "golden palace in the sky". We live our lives the best we can, we die and we go to heaven if we have done a good enough job. 

Not something I would sign-up for, that's for sure. But this on the other hand... 

Paul writes that we are "citizens of heaven" and that we live as "ambassadors". When the rescue mission took place, when Jesus came and was sacrificed on the cross and was resurrected from the grave he did not just grant us eternal life. He gave us the keys to the Kingdom, he handed over authority to do what He did as the Word who became flesh. 

He called us to walk as citizens of the Kingdom, walking our story at the same time as the Kingdom around us, drawing from it with the authority we have been given to do so. 

In a nutshell, this is why my blog is titled "not just a ticket to heaven", we are not on a quest to live as nicely as we can before heading off to the clouds, we are called to live, to sing, to create and to worship as citizens of heaven NOW. 

We walk double lives, we are beings of earth, but we are carrying a Kingdom passport. 

The Kingdom and the King

This is my answer to this week's question for my Essentials*Blue worship theology and worldview course. Thought I would post it here for you to have a glance at. The question is based out of reading section two of N.T. Wright's book, Simply Christian and watching a great bit of media by Dan Wilt entitled The Nature of God...

Upon reading this section of the book, I found myself leaning back, putting my hands through my hair, widening my eyes and sighing out heavily. “This thing is just so BIG” I thought to myself. And it is because of that intense “bigness”, I am feeling passionate, excited and thriving on every time the “Kingdom” pops up in our discussions.

Let me ground something here. I love the “Kingdom theology”. I have studied it, I have poured myself into trying to live a Kingdom lifestyle for years now and if you get me into a cafe for a coffee, we won’t leave without me at least once talking to you passionately about something to do with “the Kingdom”.

And I think that is what has challenged me, yet again. (When will you learn Dan?!) The Kingdom is a huge topic. It is not something we just read in a few pages of a book, or listen to a Wimber teaching, or pray a few prayers and we have then mastered. The history, the characters, the positioning, the timing, the attitudes, the blessings, the war, the outcomes, the struggles, the faith... and so-on and so-on... It is a life pursuit that lies before us. 

“Seek first the Kingdom” Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, and I see why. When we let other things become first, the Kingdom isn’t anymore. And when the Kingdom story isn’t in the front of our thinking and manifesting in our actions, we start thinking about other things which aren’t so important and send us down a side-track of time-wasting, people-pleasing or ego-feeding instead.

As for the four theological ideas on the Nature of God, I immediately struggle and debate which I would isolate as the one to use. But after biting the clicker-bit off my pen and procrastinating and changing over my vinyl I was listening to, I am reminded of how when the word “Kingdom” is broken down, it means the “King’s domain”. 

It would be impossible to raise up a strong Kingdom-influenced church without worshipping the King, learning about the King, and declaring who the King is in our worship. 

Joel Auge

I just checked out Joel Auge from a recommendation by Dan Wilt.

Verdict? I like it very much. I have only checked out his tracks on his MySpace page and I haven't stopped listening to his track "On the blue". What a song. With vocals that remind me of Ryan Adams a little, and lyrics that are so relaxed - yet challenging, it is one very tidy song.

Here are the lyrics...

Take me to, take me to 
Where you took Peter and the boys 
Calmed the stormy noise 
Made it so they knew 
They had to trust in you 
Walk with me 
Talk with me 
I want to know what you would say 
If you had me face to face 
What would I do 
With my feet out on the blue 
What would I do 
With my feet out on the blue 
Would I know that I was safe 
By your side out on the waves 
Would you tell don’t look down 
Keep your eyes fixed on me now 
When the waves wrap at your feet 
Don’t you worry, look to me 
Make me move 
Make me move 
I want to be what you’re about 
And not have any doubt in you 
Be what you want me to 
Even as my brain tells me that I should drown 
I still so believe that you would never let me down 

The Worship Artisan title reflection (ICEWS, e*b08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology course with Dan Wilt.

A person making coffee in Italy takes about four years before they earn the title of a "coffee barrista." Four years of falling in love with the coffee, of learning how it works, growing more and more passionate about their coffee.

Here in New Zealand, a place far less passionate about coffee than Italy, a kid can walk into a cafe and get a job for the weekends, and call themselves a coffee barrista after being just shown how to use the machine. The result unfortunately, is really bad coffees. But they are carrying and representing a title that is meant to be earned and honoured.

It's a similar situation in worship circles; we call ourselves "worship leaders" when we have actually only been shown how to sing some songs and perhaps pray some prayers and read some scripture out, but unfortunately, this is not doing the title any justice.

A title which is new to my ears, "The worship artisan", is an incredible title to sit and ponder upon. It paints a far greater picture of what a worship leader is and what responsibilities they carry. It paints a picture of a passionate person, who is in love with their God-given craft, who grows and extends their craft, putting in the hard work. It paints a picture of someone who is excited about worship's past, present and future. It paints a picture of someone who is excited about the bigger story, and the role that they play in it.

It's time we call a "coffee barrista" a coffee barrista when they are one.

Buildings of theology. (ICEWS, e*b 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology course with Dan Wilt.

A thought I have not been able to shake has come from a testimony story that Dan Wilt shares in his video "The Rise of the Worship Artisan". Dan is sharing about his memories of going to church as a boy and talks about the beauty of the stained glass windows, and the story they tell.

I recently attended a worship conference called Noise, which was held in The Holy Trinity Cathedral here in Auckland, New Zealand. I had never been there before, nor had I ever attended this conference. This conference has only just moved to this amazing venue this year, and in past years had been held in a stadium type venue.

I was having a meal with one of the members of my worship team during the conference and asked them what was the main difference between the conference of earlier years and this year's one, and her reply was "The venue is amazing."

I immediately saw what she was saying. It is the peaceful serenity, the beauty of the architecture and art, and the presence of something that can not be found in just an any old stadium. It is only found in a place that has been built, grown, journeyed and moved through time with a goal in mind that I had completely missed until that meal. I knew that building was there to glorify God,  but I had missed what that entailed: to lift people's gazes to the heavens, to teach people theology, to show them the story, to paint a bigger picture for them. 

"Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord!" is how the Psalms sign out. Let me, a human who has had life breathed into me by the Creator, with every breath, with every thing I do while I still have a heartbeat, praise the One who first breathed into me. Whether it be the common default, and sometimes melancholic of singing, or whether it be in the lesser recognised, the more subtle praise, by creating with my hands, or by looking with my eyes, or listening with my ears.

Breathing in...

In relation to an earlier blog this week... I am taking a moment to breathe in before breathing back out.

Juggling between my end-of-term youth event for Friday (it's our Short Film competition's, Academy Awards, which is pretty much our biggest social event of the year for our youth and their families) and my worship theology course, it has gotten very easy to neglect that simple thing of stopping and breathing Him in.

Did I mention that I am loving my new devotion book "A life of Miracles" by Bill Johnson? Cause I am, very much! Great "breathing in" material...

Well, I am in Wednesday of my chaos week and I have finally made a dent into it. I have got the church magazine finished, I have completed a huge chunk of reading and watching of video for my worship course, and now I am processing for the next day or two before posting a blog of thoughts. But gosh, my brain is mush right now cause I thought I new a thing or two, but it turns out I have been leading off the sniff of an oily rag from a worship conference I went to when I was 14. I am reminded of this classic Johnny Cash moment, at Folsom Prison... This course is a huge breath of fresh air into what has been a sweatshop operating out of a closet.

"Ya know, standing back there in your shop catching my breath, I've come to admire you even more. You see, I've never had to do hard time like you. Although, I have on occasion, got myself busted... ...well anyways, I felt tough ya' know? Like I'd seen a thing or two ya' know? But that was till a moment ago, cause I've got to tell you. My hat's off to you now. Cause I ain't ever had to drink this here yella' water you got here at Folsom!" 

Ok, so let the processing begin.

New Planetshakers album is ok...

I picked this up the other week after seeing Henry Seeley (one of the leaders) at a worship conference the other week and really liking the things he had to say in the clinics. 

The album is quite awesome to have pumping in the car, and there are some useable congregation songs on here, but like so many of these albums (Planetshakers, Hillsong United etc...) I find myself asking the same question... "Where is the grit?" There are glimpses, but it feels spread thin at times. They are great albums to listen to, and they have some powerful moments, but I sort of shrug my shoulders at the songwriting's depth and breadth. But boy, are they catchy songs, some of them really do get stuck in your head!

I give it a 3 out of 5. My 1 being "Marilyn Manson could write better songs than this one" and 5 being "Your love reaches me" which is an older Vineyard album which for me is one very powerful album.