Live from St. Louis! Part 2 - Shaun Groves

All I can say about Shaun's talk is...wow! This guy brought it, seriously. I confess that I don't know a whole lot about his music. I've only gotten to know the little that I do know about him over the last couple months as Abandoned approached.

But dude, this guy is a teacher and passionate about apparently everything in his life, from music to changing diapers. For a more comprehensive live blog capture go here. Here are some of my thoughts inspired by Shaun's talk.

Isaiah 6:4,5 for an idea of the awesomeness of worshiping God, knowing our place, like the seraphim who covered their eyes, unworthy to look upon God's glory; covered their feet because their feet were unclean ( a confession of uncleanliness).

The hot coals of forgiveness (thus the pic above) that only Jesus offers, the forgiveness that can obliterate everything, a forgiveness so comprehensive that it is, in a sense, dangerous. We tend to play around with our forgiveness, to take it for granted, or ignore it. And when we do that, we forget God's greatness and God's holiness. And of course we tend to minimize our own failures and sin and depravity.

Shaun walked through many of the Greek and Hebrew words for biblical worship. The basic idea is that worship is not just music, that it is being a slave to Christ, being a slave and a son at the same time. Good stuff.

Here's my concern, though, and it's similar to my concern with Sally's talk: it's easy to for people to knock the church because it's really "knockable." Everybody is saying that church sucks and it's all our fault and it's definitely not all about music. But it just sounds like it's too easy to knock it, and much harder to be in it and to know it like family and change it from the inside. Is church growth wrong? Isn't there a possibility that church growth can be a symptom of a healthy church? Is spending money on technology bad? Is singing every week bad?

At least Shaun acknowledges, in his own words, that "mixing ministry and income can be a tricky thing." I guess I'm in that dilemma a bit. It's easy to critique it from the outside and expose all the flaws of the church and then high-tail it out of there...I just don't want that to be the final word.