Giveaway Worship

In a world where the concept of Christian Worship is increasingly commercialised, here’s a radical idea.

Give it away.

The By/For project seeks to:

Enable art in community.
Great art happens in community. By/For desires to strengthen ties between artists and their worship communities, so that both can grow together. God gives gifts in every community, for the edification of the whole Church.

Encourage art patronage.
Patronage of the arts is an ancient idea, and By/For thinks it can be a modern one too. Churches can support artists in their communities and reclaim their historic role as patrons of the arts.

Expand art copyright.
Worship is a gift freely given. By/For projects are licensed under Creative Commons, so churches can freely use the art in worship and other artists can adapt and extend it. Removing profit motives can enrich both art and worship.

Extend art across borders.
God connects His Church across borders. By/For believes the local church can strengthen and support fellow worshippers down the street, across town, and over oceans. Using the Internet and digital media, By/For helps churches and artists share sacred art across borders.

It’s early days for the By/For project, but well worth a look – www.byfor.org

Save Yourself $60 Here…

I’ve written before about the Toronto Airport ‘Soaking’ franchise. Normally you’d have to pay $60 to get this video, but someone’s helpfully put it up on YouTube…

My favourite bits…

• “No talking, no children, no pets”!!

• She says, “The Holy spirit will be touching people with what they need”. Then he says, “If a person begins to react in a way that is disturbing … try to calm them down”!! What does that mean? Is it the Holy Spirit giving the person what they need, or not? Do WE need to calm the Holy Spirit down? I genuinely don’t understand this bit.

As I’ve written previously, when measured against Scripture the Soaking idea fails to make much sense. But I had no idea TACF made it so easy to set up a Soaking Center. At my last church we paid a pastor, when all we needed was the video!

The New Priests

I believe Hebrews teaches that Jesus Christ is the great high priest who took away our need for a human high priest. Go on, read the whole book!

We are able, through Christ’s work, to do what was previously done by the priest in the Old Testament – to mediate between man and God. This separation has been taken away. The curtain of the Holy of Holies was torn when Christ was crucified – a sign that we can now go directly to God without need of someone to mediate. The need for priests has been abolished.

Accept in the Signs’n'Wonders movement, it’s back.

Apparently…

• We can’t hope to experience the work of Holy Spirit without someone to ‘bring it to us’.
• We can’t hope to experience revival without someone to ‘fan the flames’.
• We can’t know how to talk to God without paying someone to explain it us.

The Holy Spirit they talk about is so mighty and so wonderful that He needs to be led by the hand and rationed-out to the lucky few by another man.

This is a shameful distortion of Scripture. If you’re relying on another person to impart an anointing, if your search for blessing frequently finds you following another human being, open the Bible instead. Read the book of Hebrews all the way through.

“May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Hebrew 13:20-21

What’s That Falling From the Sky?

I’ve just been reading this:

“While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:16-31

Paul was addressing a group of people who were seeking out new experiences and teaching (“doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas”).

And what did Paul warn them?

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone…”

So what exactly IS that ‘gold dust’ that seems to be falling on some people? According to the apostle Paul, ‘not God’!

Gripped, enthused and open

I’ve just read an email from a good friend who has summed up in two sentences the dilemma facing many, many Christians:

“There should be a support group for the thousands like us who want to belong but find the whole church thing excruciating!! I’ve come to the conclusion that I can either go somewhere that allows me intellectual and spiritual breathing space, but is also deadly boring, or be excited but intellectually and spiritually trussed into a straight jacket!! Just where are those who are still gripped and enthused, but open?”

Of course, the irony is that the church should be the very ’support group’ we need. Instead it’s often anything but that.

“Gripped, enthused and open” – I think I’ll get that put on a T-shirt.