Driscoll's New Book Out Soon

Mark Driscoll has a new book coming out in Feb 2008. Co-authored with Gerry Breshears, whom I met briefly at the Continuous Worship Conference earlier this month, Mark promises it is bettter than anything else he's published. Here's more on it from his blog:

It will be titled Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. I am really excited about this book since it is my first hard-bound book and is by far better than anything else I have published to date. Additionally, my friends at Crossway have been great to work with. They are aiming for 50,000 sales the first year, which is a big deal and would put the book on the New York Times Bestseller list but, alas, nowhere near the level of all the books on flying people and the end times. This book is also the first in an entire line of books called Re:Lit (Resurgence Literature). To help get the books sales started, we’ve done two things for you and anyone else you can help me get the word out to.

One, we have created a new website where you will find more details about the
book: http://www.vintagejesus.net/

Second, we have a special pre-release special going that you’ll want to take advantage of. The first 1,000 people to pre-order Vintage Jesus via the link to Crossway at http://www.vintagejesus.net/ will receive the following:

• a 35% discount
• a free PDF copy of the book via email months before the book is published for your reading and blogging
• a signed copy of the book by Dr. Breshears and me; we are flying to Chicago in January to spend a whole day with pen in hand
  

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.

Live from St. Louis!

So a couple weeks ago I was blogging from a worship conference in Seattle, with keynote addresses by Harold Best.

This week I'm back home in St. Louis. Just spoke earlier this morning and it went well. Brad Andrews followed and now Sally Morgenthaler's up.

Sally's asking "What is real in the church? What box do we have worship in?" Generally, in all our worship thinking and tweaking, we are simply rearranging the furniture or the color of the carpet, not changing the location.

She says we are co-creators of reality with God, and we have to start being really creative and think outside the box in terms of how we're doing worship. She takes Labberton's idea and says that biblical worship that finds God will also find our neighbor.

Sally's journey over the last few years has involved an awareness that in some unintended ways she contributed to the disconnect between church and culture in her book Worship Evangelism that she decided to "disappear" from the church subculture. Actually, she said it sort of happened when she saw Worship Evangelism at a garage sale. She began to respond, negatively, to her own book. While she was critiquing seeker sensitive services in that book, somehow the general response by worship leaders was simply to shift around the style of music or the look of the sanctuary. It went from being seeker sensitive to flat out self-centered.

Worship is about realigning use with God so that we can join Him in what He is doing. It is not about us; it's about God. Can worship be saved (from the trappings of worship)?

She goes through lots of stats and numbers that paint the dim picture of the "State of the Church." It doesn't look good, let me tell you, but then that's really no surprise. She seems to be emphasizing not just missional churches, but almost saying missional can't really happen in the "old" models of church. I'm not sure I buy it comprehensively, but I definitely agree with her about our tendencies to develop (perfect them really) ruts.

My questions: So what does this mean for the biblical model of church, with elders/pastors, deacons? The call for house churches (exclusively) seems to swap one system for a different one. And as for missional strategy, aren't house churches just going to freak people who are far from God? Won't the tendency be to go even more inward? And get less diverse? I'm not saying small churches are bad, but not all large churches are either.

And so it goes...

I'm polishing up my talk for tomorrows Abandoned: Worship as Life seminar at Missouri Baptist. It's free, so if you're just checking this out now and you're in the St. Louis area, please come on by. Sally Morgenthaler (of Worship Evangelism fame) is the keynote. The multi-talented Shaun Groves will also be speaking and doing a concert to close it all out tomorrow night. Captain Relevintage, Brad Andrews will also be sharing a talk. I'm looking forward to it.

In my talk, I'll basically be spending some time defining the somewhat nebulous term "missional" and I'll apply that to the church at large, and then specifically to the corporate worship times of a church (based on 1 Corinthians 14). We'll cover what it means to practice missional worship and why that seems to be important to God. Ya'll come!

The Fame, The Fortune, The Journey ; )

I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my fellow co-laborers in the Gospel, Darrin Patrick and Jonathan McIntosh. Not only are they excellent leaders and teachers of the Word here at The Journey, they are also men of integrity and dear friends.

So, I had to post this mention of in Christianity Today's recent feature on Pastor Provocateur, none other than Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

While the story Jonathan gives is a great, and more prominent story, Darrin is quick to remind everyone that Jonathan's name is misspelled and Darrin got the last word! Stay tuned for other articles about famous Christian leaders who happen to mention The Journey!

Introducing New Songs

So, I was browsing the worship blogosphere some time ago and came across Mandy Thompson's blog. I've dropped in a few times over the last couple months and left a few replies here and there.

Last week I came across this interesting post on her blog as well as the replies. I posted kind of late (isn't it strange how "2-3 days" is really old news in blogging terms??), so no one has replied further on that subject, but I wanted to see if anyone else out there has any thoughts on the matter. Read the post linked above, then read my reply, which is pasted below:

I guess I differ a little from the dominant theme I’m reading in these replies. No personal offense intended to those who’ve stated they do nothing but play the song, but I think you are missing an excellent opportunity to teach something if you don’t introduce a new song. Why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to explain why the congregation should be singing this lyric at that particular time for that particular series or sermon or whatever? One of the big surprises for me as a worship pastor has been how infrequently people (even the brightest people in the room) will connect the dots or put the puzzle pieces together.

Now I guess if a song is so simple and the lyric is so obvious, maybe, MAYBE you don’t have to introduce it. But you should at least acknowledge that it is new and sort of take the pressure off of people to know it already. Now, as far as a tip on how to introduce new songs, I confess up front that I have probably missed more than I’ve hit the target. But what I’ve landed on is Scripture. Your new song, whatever it is, should be carrying some message attested to in Scripture, and if it isn’t you shouldn’t be singing it, imho. So let Scripture introduce your song. I think this helps because I think bamboosong’s reply was accurate. Worship leaders tend to talk too much, which really means we’re not really saying anything at all. But reading Scripture to introduce your song does at least a couple important things:

1) It shows where our authority is, in song selection, song writing, worship leading and otherwise.

2) It grounds our singing in biblical truth.

3) It helps expose people to Scripture and shows in a very basic sense the important of exegesis and study. Now the key here is to make sure you are faithfully exegeting and studying, but I’m assuming here that it will happen that way. To just plow ahead into the song without some acknowledgment of its newness and some explanation regarding its purpose/intent is akin to dodging our call to lead people in some direction. We have to be careful not let our music do our leading for us.

Any other thoughts out there?

Live From Seattle! pt. 2

This session is the Best. Thanks of course to the helpful thoughts and humble delivery of Dr. Harold Best, who is the primary speaker here at the Continuous Worship Conference. Man, did he just bring it!

Lots of thoughts here. Best is a very humble and thoughtful man who has studied, and continues to study, worship in concept and practice. Pretty much everything he said blew me away. Below are a few things to chew on.

Best gives an appropriate warning to us, especially younger emerging types, who think we can figure out all this church stuff through either over-absorption in/with doctrine or who think they can ignore doctrine and solid theology. Here's what he says:

Numb Orthodoxy is being so loose and sloppy with the faith that you run the risk of forgetting Jesus and not even know it. This is a scary thought and it requires a scary question and answer session with the Lord. “Lord help me see you and know you and believe you.”

Best then hit on this great question: To what kind of life are blood-washed people called? Here are my notes on what Best said.

To what kind of life are blood-washed people called?

• To a life of holiness. We don’t make ourselves holy, but we set ourselves apart, we dedicate ourselves to Him and allow Him to cleanse us and transform us. We are free to use the things of the world without the intent of the world. This is not being set apart. This is how music becomes a mediator instead of a “thing” at our disposal in the worship of God. We act with things, but are not helped by things, in worship.
• To a life of unceasing prayer. We tend to pray about secondary and tertiary things. Primary prayers should be adoration and intercession. Adoration is praise. Pretty straight forward. Intercession is about taking seriously the brokenness of the world and people and begging God to make things right.
• To a life of proclamation. As Paul said, we are ambassadors, as if God himself were making his appeal through us. Witnessing can be compartmentalized, but really what Jesus wants from us is to “say something about him” wherever you are and whatever you are doing.
• To glorify God and glorying in His glory. To live deeply, in joys and in sorrows, in everything.
  

Live From Seattle!

Well here I am at the Continuous Worship Conference hosted by The Resurgence at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. As I type, Pastor Mark Driscoll is doing an excellent job of making sure we understand that worship is really the heart of everything. All our problems stem from our idolatry. Quite interesting stuff. Here are the basics:

A definition of worship must include Glory, Dedication, and Sacrifice. The idea is that glory, which means "weighty" in Hebrew, is the thing around which your values and life are centered. Dedication is the way we publicly declare ourselves as a worshiper. Sacrifice is the functional ways we offer ourselves to that center piece.

Other highlights:
"Worship is for God's Glory, our joy, and the common good."

The opposite of worship is idolatry, which is the default mode of the human heart. We tend to make good things the "best" things, and thereby replace God's place with something or someone else. For example, we don't need "child-centered" homes or "spouse-centered" homes. We need Christ-centered, child-friendly homes.

Calls Pagitt out for comments in "Listening to the Beliefs" where Pagitt says basically that the necessary distinction between matter and spirit and between creator and created is being reconsidered. But Romans 1 (and other places) clearly says that kind of thinking is garbage because God is God and we are idolators and there are no two ways around it.

Cool Driscollisms to throw atcha:

• Most people define what is good and bad worship based on their feelings. and will say "I didn't cry, so that wasn't good worship." Well, I can punch you, and you'll cry; will that make it better?
• I'm a charismatic with a seatbelt.
• Speaking on the danger of making family an idol: "It may be a sin to Focus on the Family.
• Children are a blessing from the Lord, but they are a bad God!
• Jay-Z used to sing songs about how bad it is in the hood. Then he went to Africa, and he saw there's a whole different kind of hood.

I'll post more later...

Abandoned 2007 Just Around the Corner

Check out the vid Brad Andrews and his crew at Missouri Baptist put together for the Abandoned 2007 worship conference I'm speaking at later this month. Nice work, Brad!