My apologies to all the ladies who play guitar – I can only write from a guy’s perspective.
Saturday afternoon I took my son Ben “guitar shopping” with me. (He knows that going to a music store will not be a quick process, but I quickly silenced his protests with the promise of ice cream from McDonald’s…) This was the second time that week I’d gone guitar shopping. I’ve haven’t bought anything, mind you, and don’t intend to for a while. I’m trying to decide on what kind of electric guitar to purchase. All the while I’m saving up some extra cash.
Why all the time and trouble to look for a guitar? Because I have what is known as “The Fever.”
You can’t just go out and buy any old guitar. There is a special connection between and guy and his guitar, and you have to keep searching until you find the right one. You may not know exactly what you’re looking for, but you’ll know it when you find it. It just feels right.
After you’ve played a guitar for a few years it starts to feel like part of you. I bought my Taylor 414ce in 1997 and it has been a faithful companion ever since. (I love Taylor guitars, by the way. They’re expensive but worth every penny.) You love the feel of the guitar in your hands. The little nicks and scratches aren’t flaws; they’re beauty marks. Even the familiar smell when you take it from the its case is strangely comforting.
When I walked into the music store today, I don’t know if she saw me. But she caught my eye, and I asked if we could visit for a while. She obliged, and once she was in my hands I felt that special something that only happens once in a while. She told me we could make beautiful music together. But I couldn’t take her home with me today. Maybe someday soon we’ll be together.
As I turned to leave, I said, “What’s your name?”
Telly, she said.
I have a feeling it’s not the last time we’ll see each other.
For the last several months I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I turned 35 this year. It seems like a “halfway point” of sorts, and I’ve decided to spend the next year thanking 100 people who have made a real difference in my life. I also plan to post each letter on my internet blog (www.sacredstones.net) because I want to publicly share how each person has influenced my life. You might even call this a “reverse eulogy”—why wait until someone’s gone to tell them what they mean to you?
The order of the letters is not necessarily important. At times I may skip between family, friends, teachers, pastors and others who will receive letters. The important thing is that you’ve made a big difference in my life.
This is letter #5.
December 29, 2009
Dear Mom,
I’ve had this project in mind since the summer, but from the beginning decided that I’d wait until your birthday to send your letter. So happy birthday!
This may be my hardest letter to write. After all, who impacts a person’s life more than their mother? And how can someone like me, who has been blessed with a wonderful Mom, even attempt to put into words how much she means? It can’t be done. So instead of trying to say everything, I thought I would say a few of the most important things. Specifically, here are a few of the most important things you have taught me in life:
1. Care about God. The most important way you influenced Donnie and I was taking us to church as kids. That one single thing, week in and week out, has totally changed the course of our lives. I know it wasn’t always easy to get us to church, and I recall a few times when I stayed home to watch Sunday morning wrestling on TV (I don’t recall why wrestling seemed to appealing to me then). More than anyone else, you are the reason why I am able to teach at a Christian school today, doing what I love. And if God has used me to help anyone draw closer to Him, in the end it’s first and foremost because you took Donnie and I to church.
2. Care about people. I could write a book about all of the ways you have helped your own siblings (and Grandma, until she passed away) over the years. Somehow you have single-handedly been the tie that binds your whole family together. And that’s not to mention all the other people and organizations you have served. I don’t think you realize all the lives you have touched and influenced.
3. Have a good attitude. I can’t think of anyone I know who has a more positive attitude in life. You always have a smile or a good word to say about someone. You have been through hard times in life, both as a child and an adult, and your positive attitude has been a wonderful example to so many people, including me. I don’t ever recall you telling me to have a good attitude; rather, you taught me this through example.
4. Do your best. You have inspired me to do my best in everything because that’s the example you have always set. You always put a little extra effort into everything. I even noticed this on Sunday when I was opening my Christmas gift that had been wrapped “just so.” It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be my best.
Without a doubt, the book I loved most as a kid was “Pierre” by Maurice Sendak. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Ben now loves the same book. The moral of the book is “CARE,” and I can’t think of a better description for your life and what I’ve learned from you.
Happy birthday, Mom. I will always consider it an honor to be known as “Mary’s son.”
This year I have been doing a lot of reflecting on life. I’m 35 years old and by this point, nearly all of my friends from high school and college have settled in their lives. Most of us have families, careers and a life trajectory that will probably not change too drastically over the next few decades.
This is also the age where some hard realizations begin to set in. Despite having success in one form or another, everyone realizes that certain things will probably not come to pass. Some of the dreams you had ten or fifteen years ago will never become a reality.You realize you are getting older and it’s time to let go of the “what ifs” and “might have beens.” You may never have the job, notoriety, family situation, body, business or whatever else you thought would make you truly happy.
I have a question for you. What makes you truly satisfied and happy in life? What is the real source of your joy? For many Christians, the real answer is, “Christ, and _____.” We fill in the blank with all kinds of things: children (and their performance in school or sports), a career, our ideal image of the perfect husband or wife, church involvement, positions or titles or degrees, financial success, and a hundred other things. We would never admit this, and we certainly don’t mean for this to happen, but it’s there all the same.
God is helping me to see that Christ is truly enough. For many years I have trusted Christ as my Savior, but I haven’t always looked to him as my Lord and the source of my true contentment. For a long time I looked to my ministry/career as my source of real joy. As long as that was going well and people liked what I was doing, all was well. But whenever I was criticized or people didn’t respond as positively as I’d hoped, I felt discouraged and depressed. But that’s what happens when you try to find joy in temporary things.
By God’s grace, I am learning to let go of my expectation that my career, other people, material possessions, or my performance in life will bring real contentment. I work hard and do my best to make a positive contribution in my job and in other areas of life. But those roles, titles and positions of influence will eventually fade, and I don’t want my joy to fade with them. Rather, I want my joy to be based on something that doesn’t fade away.
I may or may not be a sought-after worship leader or speaker. I may or may not be the most popular professor. I may or may not be famous, have books published, or be “the man.” I have limited control over those things anyway. There are many Christian leaders today whose sense of self-worth and self-identity is very closely tied to their perceived “success” in ministry. My heart breaks for them because it is a dark place to live and I don’t want to go there again. Ministry can become its own form of idolatry if we’re not careful.
I pray that you would understand one thing: Christ is enough for you. He is enough for your strength, contentment, self-worth, satisfaction, and joy. He has called you to serve in whatever you’re doing, but don’t look to external measurement of “success” to measure your worth. Your worth as a person–and your deepest joy–comes from knowing that Christ loves you deeply as his uniquely created child…without condition.
The writer who has helped me explore these things more than anyone else is Henri Nouwen. Earlier this week I took part of an afternoon and re-read In the Name of Jesus, the single book (besides the Bible) that has influenced my thinking more than any other. I just started a newer book of his called Spiritual Direction. I would highly recommend his works to any Christian who wants to grow in their love of Jesus.
For those of you who to go church regularly and participate in contemporary worship, I have a question for you: Have you ever noticed that worship leaders and those who are singing and playing on stage sometimes close their eyes? This occurred to me tonight as I was leading worship at our Convocation service at St. Louis Christian College. I was on stage with the worship team and during the last couple of songs (“Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Revelation Song”) I noticed myself closing my eyes.
This has always seemed to be a natural response for me when leading worship, especially during slower, more intimate songs. But what does closing your eyes really accomplish?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I close my eyes or step away from the mic for a few moments it’s a way to focus on God and the meaning of what we’re singing. I guess it’s also an attempt to shut out my view of the people facing me. When you’re on stage with a guitar and a mic, and lots of people are in the congregation, it’s very hard to escape the notion that on some level it’s a performance. When I close my eyes I remember that this is for God, as well as the people.
I don’t claim to be anything special when it comes to leading worship. In fact, I feel a little bit rusty these days and have been longing for the opportunity to do it again week to week. But one thing I do know: it is tempting to overestimate the importance of the human factor in worship. It’s easy to “pump up” the crowd when you know the songs they love and what kind of things will draw a response from that particular group. But the point of worship is not to get people excited, it’s to help us re-tell and re-call the Gospel, which is the content of worship.
Worship leaders are like dinner hosts–we prepare the table and invite the guests, but it’s God who provides the actual nourishment. I think if we faithfully serve what God has provided, it frees us from having to rely on manufactured emotion to make worship worthwhile.
So if you see me on stage and I close my eyes while I’m supposed to be leading, it’s because I’m trying to remember that despite all the appearances of modern worship, it’s not a performance.
For the last several months I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I turned 35 this year. It seems like a “halfway point” of sorts, and I’ve decided to spend the next year thanking 100 people who have made a real difference in my life. I also plan to post each letter on my internet blog (www.sacredstones.net) because I want to publicly share how each person has influenced my life. You might even call this a “reverse eulogy”—why wait until someone’s gone to tell them what they mean to you?
The order of the letters is not necessarily important. At times I may skip between family, friends, teachers, pastors and others who will receive letters. The important thing is that you’ve made a big difference in my life.
This is letter #4.
January 3, 2010
Dear Ben,
This is the perhaps the strangest of these letters I’ll write. In fact, I put the project on hold for several months because I just wasn’t sure how to approach yours. I wanted to write your letter on your first day of kindergarten, but missed the opportunity. So here I am, early in the morning, writing the second of two letters—the first I read to you on Christmas morning, and a second one you will hopefully read years into the future. Continue Reading »
Have you heard this song by Jim Brickman and Kristy Starling? I heard it for the first time last year, but it was actually released a few years ago. When I heard it the first time, doggone it if it didn’t bring tears to my eyes (and still does). It’s a sappy Christmas song, but it’s OK to be sappy once in a while.
As a follow-up to my previous post describing my experience with the online service at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, I wanted to share a few random thoughts:
Most Christians today still hold the mindset that we have to attend church in a physical location on Sunday morning. But this mindset has been challenged over the last couple of decades with mid-week worship (i.e. Willow Creek), Saturday night services, home groups, and now online church. Online church is simply one more addition to the growing number of alternative to traditional Sunday morning worship. Or is it? Is there something fundamentally different about attending an online service?
Yes and no. Probably the most notable difference (from a worship standpoint) is that you can’t participate in congregational singing while sitting at home. On the other hand, it’s also possible to sit in a sanctuary with 1,000 people and not participate either. In fact, you can pretty much do everything “alone” at a physical service if you want to. It is entirely possible to walk into church and not speak to anyone, sing, or participate in any other way. It is not difficult, especially at a large church, to come to a service and leave without speaking to a single person. My point is this: if your main criticism of online church is the fact that people experience at home alone in front of their computers, this solitude isn’t necessarily corrected just by being in a church building with others on Sunday morning. Attending a physical megachurch service doesn’t guarantee that you have any real relationships.
I would make the same case for communion. In most evangelical churches, communion is not really a corporate activity. We pass trays, we each take bread and juice, and it’s a very individualized thing. There is not much that is truly “communal” about it. That’s why I like celebrating communion in a fashion where you interact with people or have to get out of your seat.
What about the fact that Central doesn’t celebrate communion weekly? This seems pretty radical for a Restoration Movement church. I confess I don’t know why they don’t celebrate it weekly, but I assume they have good reasons for doing so. The New Testament doesn’t command weekly communion, but it was the practice of early Christians to do it weekly. I don’t think a person’s faith lives or dies by weekly communion. I prefer it weekly, and that’s what I have done my whole life, but there is no biblical command to do it weekly. Continue Reading »
One of my responsibilities as a Professor of Worship is to keep tabs on new developments in my field. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to try out “online” church. Over the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few different churches and share a little of what I experienced. Since I didn’t have any teaching or music responsibilities at my church this morning, I thought I’d attend church “online” and see what it was like.
Central Christian Church in Las Vegas is the only Christian Church I know that has an online service, so this was my default choice. They have two options: the online campus and the Facebook campus. I brought up both pages and the Facebook video stream seemed a little better, so I logged into FB and experienced the service this way.
The service opened with a worship set, and as you’d expect, the music was very good. The worship team opened with a really creative blending of “Joy to the World” and Chris Tomlin’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” that began with the string riff from Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” It was a brilliant arrangement. The rest of the set was fairly standard guitar-driven modern worship, but done well. I was intrigued by their cover of Mercy Me’s “Little Drummer Boy,” and thought it was interesting to use as a congregational song. (On a less spiritual note, I also thought one of the guitar players looked a lot like Jon Favreau, the actor and director of Iron Man, but that’s beside the point.)
So how does it work to participate in group singing in the comfort of your home? I guess it depends on your perspective. I turned the sound up a little louder for this section of the service to try and duplicate the feeling of being at church. This worked to some degree, but the bottom line is that you can’t really duplicate congregational singing sitting in front of a computer alone. I did, however, really enjoy and appreciate the music and sang along part of the time.
After the music the worship leader encouraged people to greet one another, and said hello to people attending online. (I said hello to the others attending the Facebook service – I recall there were about 13 of us.) Then there was a video just for those online, and host mentioned that around 4,000 people had given their lives to Christ via the online campus, and over 2,300 had followed through with baptism. The host also encouraged us to donate online and thanked those who give online on a regular basis. He also mentioned that about 3,000 people a week attend an online service at Central. Continue Reading »
Remember the hit movie “Titanic” that came out in the 90’s? The director, James Cameron, has another movie coming out next month, titled “Avatar.” I would be hard pressed to describe the story, but it looks interesting. (And judging by the 3D trailer I saw in front of “A Christmas Carol” yesterday, it looks great.) Below is an interview with Cameron from 60 Minutes. (I think there is one mild curse word in the interview, just FYI.) The most interesting part of the interview to me was the discussion near the beginning about the story vs. special effects. “Avatar” looks like a feast for the eyes, but Cameron stresses that the story is really the key element.
The most memorable movies have stories that connect with people. They may feature great visual effects, but the movies that last and are universally loved and remembered are the ones with a great story. On the other hand, movies that are long on special effects and short on story and character may do well at the box office, but are quickly forgotten. (The “Transformers” movies immediately come to mind.) Any good director will tell you that visual effects must serve the greater purpose of telling a good story.
Special effects change over time. What was innovative a few years or decades ago seems hokey and out-of-date today because of the constant advance in technology and the tastes of audiences. So visual effects aren’t bad, and in fact can be quite helpful. But they shouldn’t exist for their own sake.
It’s much the same with worship. Every tradition of worship features some form of “special effects.” These can range from the evangelical emphasis on music and technology, to the liturgical and Catholic use of vestments and bells, and to the Orthodox use of icons and incense. Every Christian worship tradition has practices and elements that help people to worship. However, they don’t exist for themselves, but rather to help us remember and enter into God’s great Story: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Re-Creation. They support, enhance, and focus worship, but they should never become the focus themselves.
This Christmas season, I encourage all of us to remember the heartbeat of Christmas: worshiping the God who gave himself unselfishly. The shopping, Christmas music, church programs, TV shows, Christmas traditions… all of those are great, but what really matters is the story of salvation embodied in a tiny child born in a manger.
This semester (which is just about to wrap up) I’m teaching a course called “Theology and History of Worship.” Yesterday’s learning topic dealt with sacred space in worship–how the people, furniture and symbols of worship are arranged to best allow people to engage with God and one another. I had planned on doing a lecture, but then decided to approach it a different way. Since the lecture would be based mainly on the reading they had done (I would be reviewing the main ideas and adding more info), wasn’t this a little redundant?
I came up with this instead: I wanted them to put into practice the things they had learned through the reading, and what I would briefly review in class. I had them get into 3 groups, with this assignment: design a worship space for a particular area and tell us why you designed it that way. What are the theological and practical reasons for your choices? Group 1 designed a sanctuary for an urban church meeting in a leased office space, Group 2 designed a space for a suburban church plant, and Group 3 designed space for a rural church youth ministry that emphasized the arts.
The results were interesting, and the students took it more seriously and engaged in the process more than I expected. A couple of the groups were very detailed in their designs. I was pretty impressed.
I’ve only been teaching for a few years, and have a lot to learn (trust me on that one, or just ask my students!). But one of the things I do know is that active learning (participation and engagement) allows students to interact with and process what they learned from reading and lectures. The lecture format can be done effectively by some teachers and for some topics, but I am learning some new, different, and often more effective approaches to help students learn.
By the way, here is good quote I used in class: “Space, it has been argued, needs to be redemptive space. It needs to reflect the work of salvation, which we celebrate. Therefore, adequate space for gathering, for the hearing of the Word, for the celebration of the Eucharist, and for music and the arts that accompany these acts is a priority. The major shift that has taken place in worship space is the shift from longitudinal space to a more centralized space, a space in which the worshipers become participants. ” (Robert Webber, Worship Old & New, 146)
My apologies to all the ladies who play guitar – I can only write from a guy’s perspective. 
