A networking resource for all worship leaders and worship team members, serving as a catalyst to facilitate better worship in the local church
This weekend was missions weekend for us. It was a great celebration of what our church is doing around the world in the area of missions. It was a great chance for our body to see how we are a part of a bigger picture than what we see on a weekly basis.
Here was our Set:
Our choir sang with us for the first two songs. We had a pretty small choir this time, only about 10 total, Luckily I didn’t need to direct, so I could hop in the choir and sing tenor. Since choir is still a new thing for us, I’m still working on training our choir to think of choir as a year round commitment and not as a seasonal group. I know this is backwards from what most of you are doing, from what I can gather, most churches only have a seasonal choir, if they have a choir at all. I know there are still churches out there that are doing choir and doing it well, but as a trend, choirs are trending down.
This year has been good for our choir, in terms of starting to build a core group of committed people, people who are willing to make a sacrifice for a bigger picture than they can see right now.
For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.
This was a fun weekend. As you might remember, this group is a group I’m working with to try and break out of our shells a little bit, and to get a little more creative with our playing. I want to get one of our groups to start playing music that comes out of us instead of only playing music that we hear on the recording. So, that’s what we started doing a couple of months ago, and this weekend was a good move in that direction.
That’s not to say that everything we did was original, some of it was right off a recording. That’s also not to say that there’s anything wrong with doing it like the original artist did it. All I am saying is that as musicians and artists, we need to work harder at times to come up with our own music and not only rely on what others have already done.
Here was our Set:
It was great to get to work on some stuff in a way unlike we normally do, to just play and give people a chance to work out their own part and come up with something of their own. I think the musicians in our churches around the world hold great potential in terms of creating new music that the church can be proud of.
For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at the The Worship Community.
First it was our good old friend Ray Boltz who decided he needed to break down the door of his closet, and now we have another one, Ms. Jennifer Knapp. You can read the full interview with her on Christianity today.
Yet again we’ll have to deal with the questions. And the answers are still the same regardless of what arguments Jennifer is making on Christianity today. Homosexuality is a sin, it is not an old testament sin, it’s right there in 1 cor. 6. 9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
I cannot speak to the state of her soul, it is not my place. I can only speak of what I know. And that is that Homosexuality has become something other than what it actually is. Imagine that someone you know is addicted to Meth. They come out of the closet and tell you that they are a Methosexual. When you confront them about it, they argue that they were born that way and that it is by God’s design that they need to take Meth. Or imagine that you have a friend that is addicted to pornography. They decide to come out of the closet and tell you that they are addicted to looking at porn and that they are okay with that because they were born that way. They call themselves a Pornosexual.
We have a problem with certain sins, but because of the constant barrage we receive in our society from the media, pounding us over the head with equality we have grown weak on this sin.
Don’t get me wrong, God’s grace is sufficient for all. God’s grace is sufficient for addicts of all kinds. God’s grace is more than enough for anyone who struggles with any sin. What bothers me is when people who have been leaders in the Christian realm in some way or another get angry at the church for holding its beliefs that are true.
I don’t think it’s very wise for Jennifer to be smacking the face of the hand that fed her and got her started. Without Christianity, Jennifer Knapp would not be a name readily recognized. Yet, she feels that the church has and will treat her unfairly: “The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith. I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”
When asked about how she deals with what the Bible says about homosexuality she says this:
“The Bible has literally saved my life. I find myself between a rock and a hard place—between the conservative evangelical who uses what most people refer to as the “clobber verses” to refer to this loving relationship as an abomination, while they’re eating shellfish and wearing clothes of five different fabrics, and various other Scriptures we could argue about. I’m not capable of getting into the theological argument as to whether or not we should or shouldn’t allow homosexuals within our church. There’s a spirit that overrides that for me, and what I’ve been gravitating to in Christ and why I became a Christian in the first place.”
While she makes her arguments, I’m sure she’s convinced that Homosexuality is and old covenant, old testament thing. As I stated earlier, the truth is that it is not. She may feel clobbered by those verses, but the thing is, they are the truth. What I gather from her interview is that truth has become relative for her. That this spirit that overrides that for her is a spirit of relativity.
Just a few verses later in 1 Cor. 6, Paul says this: ” The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” God created us and our bodies to glorify Him. And even though we all sin and struggle with sins of some sort, hopefully we are all trying more and more to turn ourselves over to Christ and to be controlled by His spirit and not by our own.
I guess the reason I’m writing this long article is that I’m bothered. I have my own sins, as we all do, that I struggle with. But I keep fighting with them. I keep fighting my flesh and try to turn more of it over to the Spirit. I’m not perfect, I’m far from it. But, I’m not about to start pointing the finger at the church for my problems. I’m not going to be up in arms at other Christians because I’m still struggling with something. I recognize who and where I am and where I need to go. I recognize the truth of scripture and it’s authority in my life. I recognize that there is a story that I’m a part of that is much bigger than I and that the things I struggle with are things that will shape me for the rest of that story and I long to see that.
It frustrates me to see another musician, and person whose music I’ve worshiped to as some point in my life choosing to quit fighting, to give in to sin and to get angry at anyone who decides to stand in the truth and against them. It frustrates me that there will be those among you who will be angry with me for taking a stand about the truth. It frustrates me that the truth is questioned within the Christian community, and that we are allowing the enemy to sneak in among us and divide us in such a way. I don’t want to perpetuate that, I want to be a catalyst for change. Real change. Well sort of, change back to the truth.
Join me if you wish, slander me if you want. Just know this, you can say that this is true for you but not for me, but there is a truth and I believe it, and one day we will all see clearly the truth as we all have entered into Heaven through the way, the TRUTH and the life.
Pray for Jennifer and that she will not give up the fight against her sin and that she will stop fighting those who supported her for so many years. And continue to fight the good fight yourselves. Don’t become another headline, another story that we have to deal with.
