Genuine Worship vs. ???

Here’s an interesting quote from the latest issue of Church Production magazine:

There is an element of ecclesiology here that cannot be missed. For example, a portable church that takes the approach of engaging the culture directly with production elements that allow for a culturally genuine worship experience will need to use a different though process than a church whose primary goal in corporate worship is to maintain a tradition or comfort level.

Wow, that statement is packed with presuppositions. Apparently you can choose one of two goals for corporate worship:

• the goal of engaging the culture directly
• the goal of maintaining a tradition/comfort level

Is magnifying and honoring God a possible goal for worship?

Another presupposition: apparently you cannot “engage a culture directly” without the use of certain “production elements.” In the context of Church Production magazine, the implied elements would be video, sound, lighting, staging, etc. It is possible to obey the Great Commission and make followers of Christ without $20,000 video projectors broadcasting live Twitter feeds during the sermon?

Another presupposition: either you can have a culturally genuine worship experience (utilizing these “production elements”), or you can have a culturally ________ worship experience. The opposites of genuine include words like counterfeit, insincere, or false. This seems to be a dominant perception today: either you have culturally progressive worship, or you have insincere worship. There is no other alternative.

Esther Grace Lovegrove 11/29/2009

Logos Bible Software 4 + a Big Monitor

Just how much information can you fit on one screen? I don’t usually use a setup quite this complex, but just for the fun of it I tried to see how much helpful stuff I could get onto my 23″ monitor (I realize that some people prefer dual monitors, which also work great with L4 because you can float resources in their own windows). In the screenshot below, you can see that I have:

• my custom guide for the passage
• my favorite Bible
• my favorite cross reference resource (NTSK), with Power Lookup displaying the cross references for me
• my favorite Greek and Hebrew Lexicons (see the HALOT tab behind BDAG)
• a frame for commentaries on the passage
• the cool new “cited by” tool, showing me where this reference is cited in any portion of my library that I choose
• the text comparison tool, showing me the translation differences in versions that I have chosen
• and the Bible explorer, showing me info about important people/places/things in the text (not helpful on I Cor. 10:23, but elsewhere)

I don’t actually use this layout (too busy for me, and too hard to get everything to follow just right), and there are many other things that could be added, but this gives you a glimpse of just how much L4 can give you on one big screen.

Reading on the Pentateuch

18 pages into John Sailhamer’s brand new The Meaning of the Pentateuch. Hooked already. These are the men you want to learn from: not those racing to meet deadlines as they churn out books to keep their publisher happy, but those who have made the study of some portion of Scripture or theology their life’s work.

New Online Class on Creation Science

My friend Dr. Chris Osborne is teaching a new online class called “A Biblical Worldview of Science.”  It is “an inexpensive online course tailored for science teachers at Christian schools or any high school student or adult interested in creation science apologetics. This course fulfills the requirements for 3 semester units of continuing education credits for ACSI.” The course is offered through San Diego Christian College.

Chris is especially skilled at helping Christians think through the various biblical models for understanding origins, ultimately helping them to understand the biblical and scientific evidence pointing to a young earth, 6 literal day creation.

The course begins January 11, so if you are interested it would be good to contact Dr. Osborne soon. His email is cosborne{at}sdcc.edu.

Overcoming the Curse

The November issue of Fast Company features a fascinating article by David H. Freedman called “The Gene Bubble.” He traces the turn-of-the-millenium hype that surrounded human genome-related medical treatments. For example, The New York Times claimed that “new cancer drugs … could send conventional radiation and chemotherapy the way of medicinal leeches.” Billions of dollars poured into biotech companies that were going to use DNA discoveries to revolutionize medicine. 

Freedman tracked down the top fourteen of those companies (that received the most hype or money). Thirteen are essentially out of business.  Virtually no genome-related treatments are even on the horizon, much less in use. Why? “Genes turn out to work not as simple disease switches, but in impossibly complex networks.” Ahh, the power of evolution to create that which is so impossibly complex that the world’s smartest people financed by billions of dollars can’t begin to figure it out.

Freedman’s final paragraph begins with the words: “But I guess we’ll keep hoping for that magic bullet.”

Of course I’m in favor of medical research and any medical advance that can help ease human suffering. These things are gifts from God. But the genome hype is a good reminder that scientific progress will never overcome the curse. Christ already did, and we wait for the consummation of that work, including a new “eternal” body that needs no DNA mapping.

Monday Morning Ritual: Logos Sermon File Add-In

It’s time for a Monday morning ritual: putting yesterday’s sermons into Logos Bible Software, via the Logos Sermon File Add-In. This is a fantastic tool that allows a pastor to reap the fruits of his previous labors. Once my sermons are transferred into Logos, they are fully searchable like any other resource in my Logos library. More importantly, when I transfer the sermons into Logos I enter the key passages and key topics. That allows my previous sermons to show up immediately in topic and passage searches. Very nice! My only complaint is the  $69.95 price tag, which seems a little high since the content is my own. But I don’t have much room to complain about the price – they had a promotion a couple of years ago where they gave it away free to pastors, so I actually didn’t pay anything for it.

A Follow Up on Dawkins

I just came across this quote from Dawkins about his book:

“I suppose anybody who reads it should no longer be capable of thinking that the world is 6,000 years old, should no longer be capable of thinking evolution isn’t a fact,” he said. “I’d like to think there’s got to be something wrong with people who finish the book and don’t think that.”

I love it! Wouldn’t we all love to say that: “There’s got to be something wrong with anyone who disagrees with me.”

The Greatest Show on Earth

The Greatest Show on Earth is the title of Richard Dawkins’ latest book, arguing that there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that evolution is a fact of science. I haven’t read the book, but I was interested by the review from The Economist in the September 5 issue.

The Economist generally charts a fairly moderate course on most issues, making the (expensive) weekly issues a very readable and helpful survey of world news. But apparently they have no such moderation when it comes to the question of origins. Their review of The Greatest Show is hardly a review, but a combination advertisement (for the book and evolution) and polemic (against any suggestion of a Creator or Intelligent Designer).

Among the cute anecdotes from the article: creation scientists are “a ragbag of nonentities, mostly engineers or chemists rather than biologists.” We have a PhD biologist in our church who also happens to be a creation scientist. I’m humored to learn that he is actually a nonentity!

I was also intrigued by their claim that the “immensity of pain” in the animal kingdom (and the world at large) is a fatal blow to any suggestion of an intelligent designer. They claim that “among the many puzzles that evolution explains so well are the futility and suffering that are ubiquitous in the natural world.”

Is survival of the fittest really the best explanation? The Bible pegs the moral climate of our modern world (Rom. 1:24-32, II Tim. 3:1-5), the religious climate of our modern world (II Tim. 4:3-4), and the pain and heartache of our modern world (Rom. 8:21-22, I Thess. 4:13). It also explains the universality of these problems (Ps. 51:5, Rom. 5:12, Jer.17:9, Eph. 2:3) and their impact on creation (Rom. 8:22). These things provide a remarkably thorough worldview, explaining “the futility and suffering that are ubiquitous.” To claim that such futility and suffering “defies explanation” by any theistic view is to demonstrate a gross ignorance of the Bible. The Economist should do better.

Unlike Darwinism, the Bible also provides the answer, because God has provided the answer (Rom. 5:15-17). Because of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, even the creation will someday be set free from its slavery to corruption (Rom. 8:21). That will be the greatest show on earth.

Rancho update

The Trues had a good, exhausting trip to South Carolina. Now it’s time to start firming up some of our plans for the church in Rancho, with the launch less than a year away. Would you pray for these things:

1. We’re excited that we are already starting to get contacts that may be interested in the new church. We started “cold turkey” in Menifee and didn’t really have any contacts (one family). It is wonderful to begin making contacts in Rancho now. We’ve had some phone calls and even a couple of families attending our church because they are interested in the new church. Pray for the Lord to give Eric wisdom as he interacts with these contacts. We would love to start a Bible study in Rancho in the spring.
2. Pray for Grace in Menifee, that God would provide the leadership and finances to strengthen GBC after the new church plant.
3. Pray for the provision of a permanent facility in Menifee, and the provision of the right starting facility in Rancho.
4. Pray for the Trues and others as they face a year of big changes and uncertainties preparing for the transition to Rancho.