My Bible ripped today...

Yeap, it happened. That time when your favourite Bible's cover falls off. I grabbed some tape and hacked a repair job to it, but it's probably not going to hold it for long...

Hardcore? More like nothing-core

Hardcore kids think they are so tough, but not all the hardcore bands in the world put together can send a shiver down my spine like the look on the Boss's face in this one... great song, great performance.

A brief theology of worship leadership

Worship is the debt being paid back to God for the atonement of our sin (His sacrifice of sending his Son to redeem us once and for all on the cross). This is not just a song sung in a worship service, instead, Romans 12 paints a picture far bigger than that and states that we are to “give [y]our entire bodies to God, letting them be a living and holy sacrifice“ (1) It is our response both personal and corporate to God for who He is, and for what He has done, expressed in and by the things we say, and the way we live. (2)

We worship a God who is Creator. In Genesis He creates man in the imago Dei (image of God) and makes mankind the chosen creation to mirror himself. (3) God is the creator, and He made us sub-creators. We take what He has created first, and we manipulate it to create our own expressions of creativity. We create from a palette placed into our hands by God first. (4) Music is an expression and outworking of this creativity. A worship song is a story-telling document which is put expressively to music in an effort to gather people together in a shared way of creatively learning and expressing that story.

The Kingdom is established by having the king ruling there (Kingdom literally means, ”King’s“ ”Domain“). (5) Worship draws our attention to God, and to who He is as the Creator, King, Saviour and Trinity. It also draws us to his agenda of justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty. (6) Worship teaches us and creates in us a lifestyle that is continually permeating with these echoes of God, making us Kingdom extenders as we go about our lives as living sacrifices to God and mirroring who He is to this broken world.

The first hurdle to overcome as a worship leader is tapping into the bigger picture. One can easily get trapped into thinking that our worship set of five songs on a Sunday is the ”worship time“, dividing the rest of the week into a time that isn’t. Worship is a lifestyle, so we should be encouraging those we lead into that lifestyle - one that is rich in understanding of who God is, what He has done, what He is doing and what He will do. We can not lead this if we have not gone there ourselves. (7)

We worship a God who has created us as his image bearers, as creative people. Artistic creativity should be used to show people glimpses of what this lifestyle of sacrifice should look like, but the music itself should not take over our focus and become the main thing we aim at. Our worship (lifestyle) should richly and continually be centred (aligned) on God, and our leading should be mirroring that weither - weither it is with artistic creativity or through normal day-to-day tasks.

(1) Romans 12:1 NLT

(2) Louie Giglio, Worship - That thing we do DVD, Session 4

(3) Genesis 1:26-27

(4) Dan Wilt, The nature of the human being, p4

(5) Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth

(6) N.T. Wright,  Simply Christian

(7) Dr. Peter Davids, The importance of scripture study for modern worship leaders

Sermon points from last night..

So here's my quick-blog-overview-with-bullet-point-notes from what I spoke on last night...

Luke 13 - The Parables of the mustard seed and yeast

1. Who am I in this parable? - It's interesting to note that when reading parables, we often forget to do this, and sometimes we aren't what we expect to be. In this parable, Jesus explained that the Kingdom was like a mustard seed, or the yeast. so we are not those things. So what are we? The soil, and the dough. This is important to realise.
2. The tiniest seed, the smallest amount of yeast - The smallest of seeds still have the potential to grow into the biggest of crop, and the smallest amount of yeast permeates deeply into the dough. God doesn't plant something with the intention of it staying small, He sees the potential outcome it can become and calls forward growth. 
3. Growing and baking - This is what these parables are all about. It is about the growth that the two different things go through.
4. Soil, light and water - These three things are what a seed needs for growth. In Luke 8, Jesus already taught on what kinds of soils we can be (as remember, we are the soil in this parable) so what about the other two needs? Psalm 119: 105 and 130 beautifully paints us a picture of the word of God being our lamp, our light to our path. So one of the things we need for growth? Light. Which is what? The word. Isaiah 44:3-4 then talks about God pouring his Spirit out upon his people, like water to a withered plant. Our other need for growth? Water, which is God's Spirit.
5. Balancing act - Too much water and the plant drowns, too much light and the plant withers. We have to have a balance of both the word and the Spirit. We can't just get by on having fun with the Spirit all the time, because we too will drown. We can't just stick our noses into our Bibles and debate and argue over minor details, cause we then become dry.

That's a rough and very shortened version for you, I hope it blesses you in some way :)