Question for Worship Leaders: Lent Song Selection
I’m slowly piecing together liturgy and songs for our Lent season, and I am wondering what songs you might be singing during this season. Let me know what you have in mind; I’ll post some of my ideas next week.
Covenant renewal in the church is something that greatly intrigues me. I have a growing obsession with using baptism well in the church (especially with the idea of baptismal renewal), and I also love when churches who have a covenant structure as part of their membership (like my church does) take that covenant agreement seriously, and call their members to renew their commitment to both Christ and their community of faith periodically.
The church behind this link is the one my brother Josh pastors in Baton Rouge: The Ring Community Church. They have taken 30 days every year to pray together through their covenant commitment as a church since their inception. This link leads to their prayer guide for this year. I figured I’d share it as a resource for those looking to do something similar in their own context. Enjoy.
MLK’s “I Have A Dream…” It is amazing to me how popular it is to reference this speech, but how few have really watched and listened to it, especially the full version of it, since their days in high school. So here’s your MLK challenge: listen to the speech and think about how this transfers into our world, into our (or your) local context, into issues like race and ethnicity in your town, your church, your life, and the call to love and serve all, family, friend, neighbor and enemy, as the people of God in this world.
My friend Trevor gives his take on Crowder and Co.’s latest musical/liturgical adventure. I’m downloading this album this morning, and hope to get to really take it in today. for those who have heard it, what did you think?
Seedbed launches later today! Seedbed is an online resource featuring a number of incredible voices from the diverse community and network at Asbury. Check it out here!
Are You Living A Blessed Life?
Blessing. This term has huge currency in our world, in the church, in Scripture, even in my own vocabulary. In a generic sense, someone who is blessed is usually seen as someone who has (as opposed to someone who doesn’t have). I saw an interview yesterday with Jamie Foxx where he talks about how blessed he is to work with Quentin Tarrantino and Leo DaCaprio.
Blessed=to have, in his case, an amazing opportunity to make a movie.
Most of the time Christians see blessings as gifts from God. We acknowledge with Scripture that God is the giver of all good things (James 1:17), and in calling someone blessed, we credit God as the gracious provider of what we see as good in their (or our) life.
Blessed=to have.
The root word in the OT is barak (yes, like our president), and it has interesting overtones in its meaning. In some contexts, the word can mean to make fertile. God blessed both the creatures of the world and the man and woman in the garden when he commands them to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:22, 28). In other contexts, blessing is synonymous with empowering someone for a specific purpose, like God’s blessing of Abraham to make his name great that he may be a blessing (Gen 12:2). Every covenant made between God and man has blessing as an accompanying promise- when God enters relationship with man, blessing results. Blessing is part of the divine grace and love of God; it is life-giving and empowering, and more than material things, it is the direct result of God’s covenant loyalty and mercy towards his people.
Blessed=in relationship with a gracious God.
This is why I was floored reading Peter’s sermon in Acts 3 this morning. He concludes with this:
“God, having raised up his servant (Jesus), sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” Acts 3:26 (ESV)
Blessed by Jesus=turned away from our own wickedness by Him.
As Peter preached to his Jewish brothers and sisters, he reframed God’s intentions in sending Christ. Christ was sent to bless his people, but not simply by making them people who had good things, or even as people who has a relationship with a gracious God. Christ wanted to bless them (to empower them, or to make them life-givingly able) to leave their wickedness behind.
When Christ turns us away from our wickedness, we are blessed. The aim of the sending of Christ by God was to enable us to live a blessed life, and such a life is impossible when we are fully engaged in our own wickedness. But do we want this kind of blessing?
Do we want a blessed life as Jesus defines it, one where we welcome his grace to turn us away from our destructive sinfulness? Or would we rather just be people that “have”?
That’s what I’m wrestling with today.
"Worship should evoke memory, our common memory especially. And here we have a steep hill to climb: for many the stories of the Bible are either such a distant fading memory or unknown completely that the songs we sing can’t make sense. Read the Bible and the songbook will come alive; ignore the Bible’s stories and the songbook will gravitate to personal experience songs."
“Only corrupt fruit grow on a corrupt tree.” - John Wesley, “Salvation by Faith” (sermon 1)
