Just another weblog
Let me tell you about two twentysomethings I encountered around Christmas. They are a study in contrasts.
The first is the nephew of a friend of mine. He was in town briefly before the holidays and my friend asked if I would talk with him, because he was interested in helping out Katrina victims. I met with him and his traveling companion. Both young men were in their early twenties, and both were excited. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Twenties”
On every church’s web site, there’s always a statement of faith — the “what I believe” part. This isn’t a church site, but here’s what I believe. It’s from a note I wrote to my wife back in January.
I believe that I should be giving my money away now to people who need it, rather than saving it for my own future use, just in case I live so long that I can’t make money anymore and no one cares about me. I believe I shouldn’t be saving for my kids’ college education, just so they can get high-paying jobs and start saving for the time when they also are too old to make money anymore.
I believe that if my life is too noisy to listen to God, then I should take drastic measures — like quitting my job — to quiet it down.
I believe that it’s more important for me to teach my kids to recognize and obey God’s voice than to do anything else. If they succeed at that, then everything else will be given to them.
The thing is, every other Christian will say that same things. It’s the ones who actually DO it who are different. My prayer is to be someone who is different.
Isn’t it great to hear a good report about your children? I heard such a report the other day, and it went a long way toward validating what we’re doing at home.
I was picking up a couple of my girls from the youth group meeting, and was chatting with one of the adult volunteers. He told me that the leader had asked the following question: “Who here thinks you can change the world?” Two hands went up immediately. The volunteer told me, “You can guess whose hands they were.”
This is the kind of person we are trying to raise…one who thinks she can change the world. One who is convinced that she was put onto this earth to make a difference. Not simply to get an education, find a job, marry, have kids, and repeat the process.
Our church is having a parenting class right now. I wonder if this is being taught? Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s a “tips for Christian parenting” class. Not that this is bad, but by itself it’s simply not enough. Jesus didn’t teach his disciples “tips for Christian living”. He taught them that they could be world changers, and apparently, he was successful. I’m hoping to follow that pattern.
Here’s a video we created for a recent youth group meeting.
Tim Schmoyer’s post of a post about worship teams resonated with me. There are two thoughts there; the one I am interested in here is the way we present the worship team. (Although the cross icon really bugs me, too).
I noticed it when I first started attending this seeker-sensitive church. The three or four singers stood across the front of the stage, and sang the songs while making eye-contact with the audience. I say audience, not congregation, because it really did seem like a concert to me.
When I joined the worship team as a musician, I heard one of the singers encourage the rest to make this eye contact, and engage the people. This also seemed weird. It was weird, I guess, because the tradition I came from did things so differently. In that tradition, the worship leader would be close to center stage, but the other singers would be off to the side. The leader would often focus on the audience, but the backup singers never seemed to do that.
It struck me as odd that when singing words like, “we give you glory,” the singers would be looking straight out at the people. Where should they be looking? I don’t know, but whatever you do, don’t look at me!