I have been puzzling out what to write about the past few days, but recently all my thoughts have been centered on the Splendor and Holiness Seminar. Nathan and I have been working furiously checking and double checking our information so we get it right. And I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say it is going to be good.
As we have started pulling our information together and beginning to articulate what we have learned about worship, we have found that so many of us don’t really understand the full depth and purpose of worship. Our primary definition of worship is often too small and we miss the grandeur of what we are doing. Each new idea that we explore has brought us face to face with God’s creative wisdom in how he reveals himself to his children.
Some of the ideas we will be exploring will be worship as an inspired act, how worship brings unity to the body, and the distinction of description and definition within worship. Worship does more than serve God through music, it is participation in a relationship with the Father, and the depth of our relationship is reflected through many expressions of worship. We will be talking about how worship shapes our culture, and how our culture impacts our worship. We have been encouraged as we have seen how small shifts in our perspective and understanding have opened up the world of worship to mean something far greater than we originally anticipated.
We believed that we were pursuing the right topic for this event, but the doors that have been opened and the resources that have been made available only confirm that this is a matter of utmost importance to the body. Our goal is not to tell you how to do worship, give you the right formula, or even try to persuade anyone to do things differently. We hope that through providing you with some Biblical teachings and perspectives, you will experience the awe that we have encountered as we have begun to piece this all together.
We have been encouraged by the number of you who have shown a desire to know more about worship, and we glad to have those of you who currently serve on the worship and praise teams of your church join us. We are also delighted to have the individuals who want to take their personal experience of worship to a new depth. To be a worshiper is to occupy a place of honor, and our desire is to help us all learn how to fulfill that role even more honorably.
And let me encourage every Christian to see themselves as worshipers. This seminar is not only for those who sing, play an instrument, or participate in the things we have traditionally called worship. It is for anyone who serves our God and desires to know more about his intent for our lives, and how to function as a unified body of believers.
Pray for us all as continue to press forward with one of our favorite dreams.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Christianity is the school of hard knocks
The other day Emily wrote about church not being the same as school. In her post, she states life is the real test. I agree but just when you think you have the answers to the questions, life changes the questions.
Christianity is a lifelong learning process with small pop quizzes along the way. The good thing is the pop quizzes don’t count against your semester grade. What about quizzes do you remember? The questions you got right? Most people remember questions they got wrong.
We all remember the snarky comment overheard by the subject of the comment; the smashed finger and the resulting creative language overheard by the person we talked to about Jesus. The great thing about life is we have the opportunity to re-take the quiz
Also, life provides real world, in the world, in your face, get your hands dirty experience. How many times have you thought “If only I had…” or “I wish I would have…”? The neat thing is you will probably get a second chance to attempt to put action to your words.
The best parallel I can think of, for the Christian life, is the school of hard knocks. We get bruises, scuffs, bangs, and cuts as we live. These heal but the experience gained allows us to be wiser, smarter, and better able to minister to those around us.
So the next time you miss the answer to one of life’s questions, don’t ignore the question. Be sure to take note of what you got wrong. You will get another chance to answer the question.
Christianity is a lifelong learning process with small pop quizzes along the way. The good thing is the pop quizzes don’t count against your semester grade. What about quizzes do you remember? The questions you got right? Most people remember questions they got wrong.
We all remember the snarky comment overheard by the subject of the comment; the smashed finger and the resulting creative language overheard by the person we talked to about Jesus. The great thing about life is we have the opportunity to re-take the quiz
Also, life provides real world, in the world, in your face, get your hands dirty experience. How many times have you thought “If only I had…” or “I wish I would have…”? The neat thing is you will probably get a second chance to attempt to put action to your words.
The best parallel I can think of, for the Christian life, is the school of hard knocks. We get bruises, scuffs, bangs, and cuts as we live. These heal but the experience gained allows us to be wiser, smarter, and better able to minister to those around us.
So the next time you miss the answer to one of life’s questions, don’t ignore the question. Be sure to take note of what you got wrong. You will get another chance to answer the question.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Go ahead, make my day.
You can only teach yourself. You can only learn the technique of learning. –Clint Eastwood
The memorization and regurgitation of facts has become our working definition of learning. As children we are placed in class rooms where our teacher writes a series of words or numbers upon a board, we copy them, and then we recite them when called upon. Seldom do the words connect with our real lives or have any bearing upon our reality. As children we know this. We question when will we ever need to know the value of pie, the dates of the French Revolution, or even the chemical composition of chewing gum (bubble gum is a whole other matter). The good adults in our lives assure us that we will need this information one day and we should be good students and learn what the teacher says.
As adults we then become the ones who perpetuate the myth when our children are the ones asking the question. We tell them that they will one day need to know this information, and we secretly wonder when exactly did we ever need to know what we were taught in school. Of course if we are good parents we never voice this thought out loud, because we don’t want our children to grow up to be idiots.
The thing is even in the midst of what may now seem to have been pointless exercises in obscure facts, we did learn something. We learned our idea of education, of what it means to be taught. We know that if someone is teaching us something they are to communicate certain facts on the topic which we in turn should be able to recite if called upon. We learned that education often has little to do with our real lives, that educators do not teach life lessons as much as they teach us abstractions and principles that we have a hard time integrating in our day to day activities.
Unfortunately, somewhere we adopted this model into our Biblical teaching as well. We turned Bible study into Bible trivia, and Church stopped being a place where went to experience God with other believers and became a place where we learned about God. We studied God, Jesus, and the Bible like we are going to have a test next Friday, so bring your notes. We got points for attendance, memorizing the right verses, and being able to give the proper answer when called upon.
The problem is we forgot that life is the test. You can’t cram for this one, and like it or not being able to quote the proper verse doesn’t get you a one hundred. Somewhere along the way Christianity stopped being relational and became something that happens after opening prayer but before the fried chicken. Being a good Christian became more about how many Sunday mornings you actually made it to a building and less about loving your neighbor. We turned it into an exercise and not a walk.
Maybe this is why we have a hard time with the transition from the class room of the church to real life. We don’t know how to make our faith a part of our life. Maybe when we started referring to the church as a place with class rooms and teachers, instead of as a body of believers and a family that we lost sight of the fact it is about more than knowing the right answer. Maybe when God became a school teacher and not a father, we forgot that he loves us and doesn’t just give us a grade.
Maybe this why so many people have become disillusioned with Christianity. We have presented it like a list of facts to memorize, and life is a problem to be solved. Maybe when we started teaching Christianity as an abstraction and principles instead of as a way of life, we forgot how to make the shift from information to understanding. Maybe when we stopped teaching people the technique of learning and told them the answers we bypassed an important step in our faith. We skipped the beauty and joy discovery through experience and learning.
We don’t grade relationships by the number of facts we know about another person. We don’t rank friendships by another’s ability to rattle off random thing we may have said. We don’t keep score with people we really love by totaling up their right answers to our questions. We gauge the depth by how well they understand us, by how much they affect our lives and vice versa. Everything else is a byproduct of the time we spend experiencing their presence. And we should all know that knowing about a person is not the same as knowing someone.
It is in the experience that we learn to know someone, that we learn how to learn about them. We discover how to ask a question, how to read their expression, or hear what they are saying beyond the words.
So study, read your Bible, gather with other believers, but do it so that you can experience the one who made you. Do it so that you can learn about this God who loves you more than you can imagine, but remember he isn’t an algebra problem. We don’t get to solve him, figure him out, or define him. That is not our job, our privilege is to know and experience him in this life, in this reality. The disciplines teach us how to draw near to God, being there teaches us how to learn from him.
The memorization and regurgitation of facts has become our working definition of learning. As children we are placed in class rooms where our teacher writes a series of words or numbers upon a board, we copy them, and then we recite them when called upon. Seldom do the words connect with our real lives or have any bearing upon our reality. As children we know this. We question when will we ever need to know the value of pie, the dates of the French Revolution, or even the chemical composition of chewing gum (bubble gum is a whole other matter). The good adults in our lives assure us that we will need this information one day and we should be good students and learn what the teacher says.
As adults we then become the ones who perpetuate the myth when our children are the ones asking the question. We tell them that they will one day need to know this information, and we secretly wonder when exactly did we ever need to know what we were taught in school. Of course if we are good parents we never voice this thought out loud, because we don’t want our children to grow up to be idiots.
The thing is even in the midst of what may now seem to have been pointless exercises in obscure facts, we did learn something. We learned our idea of education, of what it means to be taught. We know that if someone is teaching us something they are to communicate certain facts on the topic which we in turn should be able to recite if called upon. We learned that education often has little to do with our real lives, that educators do not teach life lessons as much as they teach us abstractions and principles that we have a hard time integrating in our day to day activities.
Unfortunately, somewhere we adopted this model into our Biblical teaching as well. We turned Bible study into Bible trivia, and Church stopped being a place where went to experience God with other believers and became a place where we learned about God. We studied God, Jesus, and the Bible like we are going to have a test next Friday, so bring your notes. We got points for attendance, memorizing the right verses, and being able to give the proper answer when called upon.
The problem is we forgot that life is the test. You can’t cram for this one, and like it or not being able to quote the proper verse doesn’t get you a one hundred. Somewhere along the way Christianity stopped being relational and became something that happens after opening prayer but before the fried chicken. Being a good Christian became more about how many Sunday mornings you actually made it to a building and less about loving your neighbor. We turned it into an exercise and not a walk.
Maybe this is why we have a hard time with the transition from the class room of the church to real life. We don’t know how to make our faith a part of our life. Maybe when we started referring to the church as a place with class rooms and teachers, instead of as a body of believers and a family that we lost sight of the fact it is about more than knowing the right answer. Maybe when God became a school teacher and not a father, we forgot that he loves us and doesn’t just give us a grade.
Maybe this why so many people have become disillusioned with Christianity. We have presented it like a list of facts to memorize, and life is a problem to be solved. Maybe when we started teaching Christianity as an abstraction and principles instead of as a way of life, we forgot how to make the shift from information to understanding. Maybe when we stopped teaching people the technique of learning and told them the answers we bypassed an important step in our faith. We skipped the beauty and joy discovery through experience and learning.
We don’t grade relationships by the number of facts we know about another person. We don’t rank friendships by another’s ability to rattle off random thing we may have said. We don’t keep score with people we really love by totaling up their right answers to our questions. We gauge the depth by how well they understand us, by how much they affect our lives and vice versa. Everything else is a byproduct of the time we spend experiencing their presence. And we should all know that knowing about a person is not the same as knowing someone.
It is in the experience that we learn to know someone, that we learn how to learn about them. We discover how to ask a question, how to read their expression, or hear what they are saying beyond the words.
So study, read your Bible, gather with other believers, but do it so that you can experience the one who made you. Do it so that you can learn about this God who loves you more than you can imagine, but remember he isn’t an algebra problem. We don’t get to solve him, figure him out, or define him. That is not our job, our privilege is to know and experience him in this life, in this reality. The disciplines teach us how to draw near to God, being there teaches us how to learn from him.
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