What Would You Say? Part 2

by Jessica

This is a post that is also on our family blog... where the conversation originally started. Actually, I'm not sure it is a conversation since there hasn't been much comented but still, I'd like to hear what other people have to say. Go to

our family blog to see how the conversation started.

Anonymous, I started replying to your comment twice but life kept happening... sorry about that.

I think this is an interesting question but one I don't think I really have an answer for because I don't believe that I can convince anyone to turn to Christ at least, not with words. The truth is, cliché though it may be, talk is cheap. I certainly believe that people can and are motivated through the written (and spoken) word and God uses a variety of tools to draw people to Him but I don’t believe it’s my job to convince anyone to believe anything but rather what the Spirit does in a person that draws them to Christ. The dangers that surround trying to convince someone to turn to Christ is that our tone can easily become arrogant and condescending, lacking in love and who wants that?

My desire would be to have a relationship with this person if it was someone I could have a relationship with- which would of course require more contact than one post could facilitate. But here’s the thing, I reject the idea of “friendship evangelism” even after all my years of being indoctrinated with this method of evangelism. If I began a relationship with this person there would be something other than me wanting to convince them of anything, we would have to share life on some level. My faith would never be a secret, but I wouldn’t be trying to manipulate conversations to not-so-subtly point out how they need God. I would seek to be in genuine relationship with this person, no hidden agenda.

If, hypothetically speaking, I could only make one post to this person and not knowing the context of the post or how I even came to this person’s blog, I would do my best to avoid clichés and “preaching” and instead try to be open to them and not act like I have all the answers (because I certainly don’t), speaking with love and genuine concern. As for anything beyond hoping to develop a relationship, I’ll leave that to God.

Smoking Cigar

I found this picture today on a friends photoblog. I had forgotten all about this, taken about 6 months ago at Bill's b-day party. It wasn't the greatest cigar but it wasn't too bad- it was my friends birthday cigar and he shared with me. Nothing like a cigar on a hot, humid, Houston night! The picture just makes me laugh.

*Sigh*

by Jessica

WORSHIP IS NOT MUSIC! Why does this drive me crazy? I sat in a meeting once leading a group in a discussion of the essentials of worship based on Scripture and we spent about 30 minutes debating why music is not an essential of worship but rather a tool and one of many at that. Often I hear a worship gathering (even more often a church) described primarily by it's musical style rather than the content and each time I'm struggle to pay attention to the speaker because I'm arguing in my head with the person that the musical style doesn't define any church or worship gathering as it's just one small piece of the pie. *Sigh* Worship is not music. End rant... for now.

On our family blog was recently asked how I would convince someone that had walked away from the faith to turn back to Christ in one blog post. Before I post my answer to anonymous' question, I'd like to hear what others would say, help me out and share your thoughts.

Oh, and I updated the article of the week link finally.

Te Deum Laudamus

You are God, we praise You. You are the Lord, we acclaim You. You are the eternal Father; all creation worships You.
To You all angels, all the powers of heaven, cherubim and seraphim sing in endless praise: “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of Your glory.”
The glorious company of apostles praise You. The noble fellowship of prophets praise You. The white-robed army of martyrs praise You.
Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims You, Father of majesty unbounded, Your true and only Son, worthy of all worship, and the Holy Spirit, Advocate and Guide.
Come then, Lord, sustain Your people, bought with the price of Your own blood, and bring us with Your saints to everlasting glory.
Amen.

An Apple a Day...

by Jessica

IT has finally happened! I am sitting here writing this (when I should be figuring out what I'm making for company tonight) on our new-to-us Mac PowerBook G4! There is real potential here for some "idol" worship, this machine is great and I'm in love. Why I ever left Mac nearly 8 years ago I'll never really know though it had something to do with a free PC...

Still, dreams do come true!

Added later: Did you watch any of the opening ceremony for the Olympics? What in the world was with the music? All really bad American pop from the 80's! Italy acually has beautiful music, why did they pick some of the most terrible music in world history? Ugh!

Hasty Ritual

by Jeremy Weber

Oh, how hastily we partake of the blood sacrifice of our Savior, how hurriedly we consume the reminder of the incarnation of our God, and of his substitutionary spilt blood. How easy it is to swallow His death: our rightful recompense. What is the hurry? A moment’s reflection is quickly followed by a hasty ritual. With little time to remember, to reflect on meaning, has the meaning faded into a symbol, the action become a symbol of a symbol? Has communing with God been replaced by a purely physical act? Is the sacrament of communion devoid of communion?

I do not intend to point fingers. These thoughts occurred to me while I served communion tonight. This was my first time to assist in the distribution of the elements in a church gathering. Oddly enough, the last time I contributed anything to this blog was related to communion as well (see Surprised by Beauty a while back in the archives). Tonight we heard from a man who has known much suffering as a result of giving his life to Jesus. He was an outcast in his own village and his family, lived off the streets and has seen religious genocide first-hand. Hearing his story, of how his family believed that their ancestors demanded blood sacrifices in order for them to intercede for his family to God, and how, being introduced to Jesus, he easily understood the spilt blood of Jesus as the end of all other blood sacrifices, seemed like a tale of an ancient world, like the stories I’ve read in the Old Testament. And yet, there he stood, in the present, telling us an ancient tale that has taken place within our lifetime. By first grade, he was trained to perform the rituals involving the killing of animals to his ancestors. How real for him was this story of God becoming man, shedding His blood to put an end to empty rituals. How real he made it appear to me as he shared about his life, ripped apart because of his faith in God and somehow transformed into a beautiful new life of meaning, hope, obedience and purpose.

After the speaker had finished sharing his story with us, our pastor led us into a time of silent reflection, broken only by a meaningful responsive liturgy, reminding us of our brokenness. He moved easily into an explanation of the elements of communion, breaking the bread as a reminder of Christ’s brokenness, thereby creating a link between ours and His, suggesting the mystery of how His brokenness mends our lives. He then invited us all to continue in our act of communion with God by taking into ourselves the symbols of Christ’s sacrifice. With a hint of trepidation I took my position, holding the cup, trying to recall the words to say. The first person came up, and after hearing the first set of words, I effortlessly say: “this is the blood of Christ, shed for you.” What an honor, sinner though I am, to hold the symbol of my salvation in my hands, and to share it too. And how appropriate. What grace we are given.

This is when I noticed how quickly people were passing by, how precious few stopped for the teensiest moment before the elements and waited for the words to be uttered, words of significance, reminders of meaning. I cannot judge what was going on in anyone’s heart, but I can share what I observed. To me, there appeared to be a big difference between the meditative moments of communion that preceded and the physical expression of communion.

“This is the body of Christ, broken for you.”

“This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”

Take time to acknowledge the meaning behind the elements, be attentive to the words spoken to you, the One who gave us everything deserves another second of reflection. Thanks be to God.

Repeat Posting

I'm behind in my posting- again but I have a really good excuse, I promise. Ok, you may think this a little cheap but I'm going to re-post the very first post we made on this blog 'cause it's better than nothing... Right now I'm recovering from a miscarriage and setting up my new previous but I'll get back on the blogging horse again soon. So here goes the old post:

What's the Point? by Jeremy and Jessica Martin-Weber

With so many different voices out there calling for what true worship should be, I sometimes wonder what we could possibly add to the conversation. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer material and resources available for and on the subject of worship. And when you try and follow the next big thing in the worship revival, too late you find you're already behind the times and committing the latest worship crime against the church. Last years buzz words are this years cringe points and you're hit full in the face that in some places the worship wars aren't over. In fact, they've either only just begun or just look a little different. So, what's the point?

"1Be careful what you do when you enter the house of God. Some fools go there to offer sacrifices, even though they haven't sinned. But it's best just to listen when you go to worship. 2Don't talk before you think or make promises to God without thinking them through. God is in heaven, and you are on earth, so don't talk too much. 3If you keep thinking about something, you will dream about it. If you talk too much, you will say the wrong thing.4God doesn't like fools. So don't be slow to keep your promises to God. 5It's better not to make a promise at all than to make one and not keep it. 6Don't let your mouth get you in trouble! And don't say to the worship leader, "I didn't mean what I said." God can destroy everything you have worked for, so don't say something that makes God angry. 7Respect and obey God!" Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 (CEV)

As I start up this blog to enter into an already existing conversation I feel that we must first remind ourselves of the point. Why are you here? Is it to learn what the latest trend is? Is it to have your feelings or viewpoints validated? Is it out of a fear of being left out? Is it to escape spending time with God? Is it to feel empowered as you enter into the conversation? To learn more about worship forms, thoughts, ideas or something else? Some of these aren't bad motivations, but to me, it seems that we can talk an awful lot about worship and forget why we're having that conversation in the first place. Any one of those reasons can easily become the whole point. So before we enter into any kind of discussion on music selection, experiential elements, tech solutions, video or sound, worship style, life-style worship, complex worship philosophies, or anything else related to worship, we need to remember that worship is serious business. Before it's anything else, it's a time shared between us and God, individually and collectively. In our excitement to learn and talk about worship, could we be leaving God out of it? Have we made promises to Him that we have neglected? The passage above from Ecclesiastes has some very important cautions that we throw to the wind far too often as we get embroiled in the complexities of this new ipod world. The cautions: Be careful. Keep your promises with God. Shut up. Listen. Obey. Mean what you say. Remember Who you worship. Worship.

What happens when these other reasons, good as they may be, become an end in themselves? What if talking about worship becomes the point? Perhaps we need to consider the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God" Exodus 20:3-5 (NIV). We must ask ourselves, are we worshiping the Lord our God or are we worshiping worship and therefore ourselves? Have we fallen into a kind of idolatry of worship? In the quest to discover true worship I sometimes fear that we allow talking about, reading about, and thinking about worship to substitute for actual worship. Real worship has nothing to do with worship wars, traditional vs. contemporary, liturgical, non-liturgical, seeker-sensitive, purpose driven, postmodern, emerging or anything else that's likely selling on Amazon right now. All of these topics are worth our consideration but in the midst of impassioned debates we must be very careful to still be worshiping. God has no desire for our philosophy of worship to be sound if we are profoundly lacking in the area of actually worshiping Him. God desires our obedience to Him as our worship, not all that we can learn. It's time for pastors, worship leaders, worship teams and committees, church leaders and indeed all of the body of Christ to ask themselves what it is we are worshiping. When was the last time that you sincerely spent time in worship, time invested to bring glory to God alone. Not time to learn more about worship, not to analyze the latest trend, or to critique someone elses worship but honest-to-goodness poured out and broken worship of the One and only True God. Being up to date on the latest worship trends isn't all that important. Fighting for the traditions of meaningful worship experiences is not the intense battle to be spending all your energy on. Constantly looking for what true worship looks like is no excuse to neglect worshiping our Lord. I look forward to discussing worship but as we begin I want to be sure we don't neglect God's Word and remind ourselves of the point, to worship Him. For some of us it may be time to log off the computer, put down a book, put a conversation on hold, turn off a CD, cease the studies, and worship.

But the time is coming--it has, in fact, come--when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself--Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration." John 4:23-24 (The Message)

How High would you bid?

by Jessica Martin-Weber

You can send an atheist to church- seriously. A guy in Chicago is giving people of any faith from anywhere the opportunity to send him to church be selling his church going self on ebay, go check it out and let me know what you think. I've been following the auction since Monday and find the comments that people are making really amazing actually. Let me know what you think.