from singers to servants

I read an article today by Shaun Groves entitled “From Singers to Servants” that started out like this:

I go to church with 5,000 singers. I can’t call us worshipers yet because many of us come to church only to feel better, be served and hear our favorite songs while our kids are kept in short-handed pre-school classes. And after church, on Monday, you won’t catch many of us singers at the reitrement home writing letters for hands too bent by age to hold a pen. A few miles north, in East Nashville, you won’t find us playing basketball with a child of another ethnic background, giving his mom a dress or a job. And down the street, few will bring blankets, tooth-brushes or a kind word to the rapists and thieves in the county jail. We’re great singers, but, to be honest, some of us are lousy worshipers.

Wow. I’m really convicted by that statement. I have to ask myself, am I a singer or a worshiper? I wonder how so many churches are content being full of singers, but in actuality contain very few worshipers. I wonder how church leaders can justify focusing almost exclusively on facilitating opportunities for people to sing and hear a sermon, but not so much on opportunities for people to truly worship. I wonder how so many people can go by the title of ‘worship leader’ when in actuality they are only functioning as living juke boxes that churn out the latest and greatest worship songs for people to sing along to. Do we go to church to feel better? Why do we live by the concept of “going to church” when in actuality we are supposed to be the church, 24/7?

Shaun later points out that “‘Worship’ in our English bible is never translated from a Greek or Hebrew word meaning “singing” or “songs.” So where is the disconnect in churches today? Does our modern view of worship distort the truth and allow us to justify lives that aren’t lived in such a way as to reflect the true meaning of worship? Can you find instances of people in scripture who encountered Jesus, became his disciple, and yet their lives were not radically disrupted for the sake of God’s Kingdom? Were there comfortable worshipers who suffered little sacrifice? Or, like the rich young ruler (Matt 19, Mark 10, & Luke 18), is it the people who are not willing to radically disrupt their lives for Christ that miss out entirely on knowing God?

I have to believe that these are questions that we, the bride of Christ, should wrestle with. Is a church that’s full of ’singers’ a beautiful church? What do you think?

name

Okay, it’s time for us to give this thing a name.  As long as we continue to call this the “3rd Sunday Service” it’s going to be hard for us to think of this as more than just a… service.  This is (God willing) a movement.  Services are events.  Movements are organic.  Movements cannot be controlled by man, are often radical in nature and result in a change of some sort.  Movements are bigger than any one person or group.  Like ideas, they have the ability to make lasting change.  After all, ‘movement is a sign of life’. 

This movement is not about events…it’s about transformation.  It’s about restoring the beauty of the church.

So, I’m going to list our current name ideas below.  This is your chance to leave a comment to this blog entry with either new name ideas to add to the list, or to vote for which one(s) you like best.  Let’s make it our goal to name this by the end of the month.

Soma                  (Greek word for ‘body’ as in the Body of Christ)
Elevation
The Gathering
Numa                 (Greek word for ’spirit’ or ‘breathe’)
Kalos                  (Greek word for ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’)
Ekklasia              (Greek word for ‘church’)
Plathos              (Greek for assembly or multitude…as in after Acts 2)
Cairo                  (Greek abbreviation for ‘Christ’)
Mosaic
Journey
Church without Walls
Z-Church
Zume                 (“ZOO-may” – Greek for ‘yeast’)
Sunodia             (“soon-a-DEE-a” – Greek for ‘a journey together’)

That’s what we have so far.  Let us know your favorite(s) or post some new ideas.

mission trip

I was thinking back to a couple really awesome mission trips that I went on in high school. We went to Alaska one summer, Portugal the next. I remember that the preparation was pretty intense…training, planning, raising money, gathering supplies, packing…if you’ve been on a mission trip, you know what I’m talking about.

Back when I went on those trips (now a little over ten years ago) I used to think that it was funny that only young people went. I knew that when you got old it was tough to get off of work for a couple weeks, but I still thought that it was weird and even sad that adults hardly ever went. It was always the youth group that was going. And you know, those were some of the best weeks of my teenage years. We served people daily, built stuff, tore down stuff, chopped down trees for new churches to be constructed, evangelized in every creative way we could think of…

I got to use a chainsaw for the first time, got to preach at a church for the first time, prayed with people to receive Christ for the first time, worked all day every day for two weeks for the sake of the gospel…for the first time. It was sad to me that for the most part it was only the youth who got to experience all of that each summer.

Recently I had a new realization. Those things that we experienced when we went on those trips, they are what life is all about. They are what being the church is all about. Why is it that we feel like we have to go away to some other place to be the church?

Why can’t we go on a mission trip to our neighborhood? Better yet, let’s get rid of that word “trip” that sounds so temporary. Let’s be missionaries right here in Hampton Roads!

I’d like to imagine that we all just got off the airplane. We’re totally exhasted by jet lag and a long flight. We came here to share the gospel with anyone and everyone who will listen. We understand that our culture (the culture of those of us who were brought up in ‘the church’) is very different from those we are trying to reach who are far from Christ. It’s almost like we are from a different country.

And now, we have to decide… what do we do next?

the movement has begun…

Let’s take a moment to imagine. What would it look like if God decided, in His great mercy, to open up the heavens and pour out his Spirit and anointing on Hampton Roads? What if we saw a transformation so significant that it shook the very foundation of our social, political, and economic structures? What if prisons were closed because they were no longer needed and abortion clinics were turned into houses of prayer?

What if the term ‘church’ no longer referred to a service or a building…but a movement. Something so great and awe inspiring that it could not be contained. It’s strength and beauty overwhelming. Walls could not contain it. Man could not be victorious over it. Wait, this is sounding familiar. Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16 that “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell will not overpower it.”

If you’re reading this blog, consider yourself invited into something bigger, more powerful, and more terrifyingly beautiful than any man, or building, or company, or nation, or idea could ever be.  The gates of hell are powerless against it… It’s the bride of Christ.

Let’s explore, study, and imagine what we think the church should be.  Let’s dream together, and then with God’s help, let’s make it so.