I'm starting on a book, that will be the best of Christian Writings!
Okay, I've only developed the title so far....
Doing Church As A Team That Is Living A Purpose-Driven Life To Make Chicken Soup For The Soul As You Let Go Of The Ring To Say The Prayer Of Jebez And Want A Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire So You Can Have The Best Life Now Instead Of Mere Christianity.
We read so many books about the Bible, instead of reading the Bible...Is it because these great authors write better than the inspired authors (inspired by God, no less) of the original 66 books?
Are we so "marketized" and "media-blitzed" that the ole' Bible ain't good enough?
What about 1 Corinthians 2:1-5?
1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. (NIV)
Look at it again...
1You'll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God's master stroke, I didn't try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. 2I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did--Jesus crucified.
3I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate--I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it-- 4and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God's Spirit and God's power did it, 5which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God's power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else.
(The Message)
It's even worth reading again...
1Dear brothers and sisters, when I first came to you I didn't use lofty words and brilliant ideas to tell you God's message. 2For I decided to concentrate only on Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. 3I came to you in weakness--timid and trembling. 4And my message and my preaching were very plain. I did not use wise and persuasive speeches, but the Holy Spirit was powerful among you. 5I did this so that you might trust the power of God rather than human wisdom. (NLT)
While I'm at it I'll start a church too:
First New Hope Calvary Chapel with the Word of Life Assembly of God
Hmmm, maybe I should just use the shortened moniker--Christ's Body.
Some churches are trying to find a way to draw people to their church with slogans and seeker-sensitive campaigns...
I'm wondering, are we helping the Holy Spirit or are we hindering/working against the Holy Spirit?
Were does Godly inspiration end and for God desperation start?
Would you go/stay at a church that heeded Paul's statement: making the message and the preaching very plain?
How many of my 200+ books should I toss from my "Christian Living" bookshelves and get back to the Word of God?
Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, life-changing books there....But I need to ask myself where I am focused, and if I'm reading more books about the Bible than I am actually reading the Bible...I'm hearing more from the voice of man's wisdom than God's truth and wisdom.
If I'm listening to a pastor or buying tapes of one that always makes me feel good, makes me laugh, and tells me my life is gonna be blessed and better, and happy...Sure that is part of the Christian promise...but there is more, much more and the Word of God point's to suffering, difficulties and a promise that will be met, if not now in this life....in Heaven.
Word
11 comments:
As someone very dear to me would say "read it for yourself, don't take my word for it" meaning that our ultimate source is God's Word! Yes, people's commentaries, and opinions are great, and I too have found myself looking for more books to read about the bible, instead of the bible itself...
And I have to say that I agree with the K-man, so many churches are trying to create creative ways to attract people to their church... But what is our main focus? To have more people in our church, or to do the will of the Father? Please do not get me wrong, I see what many churches are doing, and I think they are doing an awesome job. But what is our hearts intent?
Matthew 12:33,34
33"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. 34You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
I think there needs to be a balance. Using whatever means to bring them to 'Place A' so that they can experience God (through fellowship-love, word, interacting with other christians whose lives are changed because of Jesus).
Yes, thats not the only way to reach folks and we ought to be a light in our world outside the physical church structure taking the gospel to them in different and creative ways.
I had a friend that drew out her own tracts onto paper, copied them and handed them out. She laid it out her way with bible verses and it had a personal flair.
Anyway, church (the structure) should be a tool that we use and try to use to the fullest to glorify Him.
As for the name of the new church.
Casino. Christs ambassadors suffering in obedience...what payoff could be larger than heaven? streets of gold, mansions..eternity with one who truly knows and loves us. No? Kman, I'll come up with more.
"Are we so "marketized" and "media-blitzed" that the ole' Bible ain't good enough?"
Yes.
I know Rod disagrees with me on this (you out there Rod?) but I think the Christian book and music publishing industry is today's equivalent to the money changers that Jesus threw out of the temple (Luke 19:45-46). They see Christians not as an agent to transform the world into the Kingdom of God, but as a marketing demographic. They take Christian writers and artists and hide them away from the very people they want to reach.
How? Well for the most part, when a Christian artist signs a publishing deal with a Christian publishing house, his music will be sold in Christian bookstores and in the Gospel section of regular stores and basically, the only people who will visit such places are other Christians. On top of this, their agent will book him to play on one of the hundreds of Christian music festivals that travel throughout the US. But that's a good thing right? Well, no again because these festivals only have Christian artists on the line up and the primary marketing targets are mainline evangelical churches.
I get sick to my stomach every time I think about it. If we are saddened by the steadily declining standards on television and on the radio, we had better take a good look at the plank in the Christian music industry's eye. By segregating Christian artists away from the industry at large, we are abandoning them, and when we remove Christ's presence, we should not be surprised when we see programming that would have been borderine soft-core porn a decade ago.
It would be one thing if the Christian entertainment industry would market their artists to both the Christian market and the marketplace at large but it doesn't. It focuses on selling its wares to Christians.
Now I know there are exceptions like Switchfoot and Sixpence and U2 but they are the exception rather than the norm...and their crossover success only took place only after they left the Christian record lables for regular record lables. Had they stayed within the Christian entertainment industry, nobody but Christians would have ever known about them.
And here's another thing. The Christian music industry tends to follow trends set by regular music lables. When hair-metal was big in the 80's, they gave us Stryper. When rap gained popularity, Christian rap artists appeared. When grunge hit, that sound entered rotation on Christian radio stations soon after. And again, the worst part is that these derivitive Christian music groups were only marketed to a Christian artist. One could make the argument that the Christian entertainment industry specializes in being of the world but not in it.
What scares me most right now is the movie industry. Because of the success of Gibson's Passion movie, there are lots of Christian businessmen who are salivating at the thought of a Christian film industry. (Oh, I want to swear so bad right now...but this isn't my blog) We need a Christian music industry like we need the anti-Christ. We don't need a seperate industry for Christians, what we need are gifted Christian writers who can craft great screenplays. And we don't have them. Mel Gibson has said in interviews that he's been swamped with screenplays from Christian writers but none of them are worth making.
The Left Behind movie? Garbage. (the movie) Joshua? Rubish. The Omega Code and it's sequel (can't remember the name)? Worse than refuse...more along the lines of what runs through sewers. The only reason these movies got made and the only reason these movies mad any money at all is because they were marketed to Christians who were told that by seeing these movies, they would make Hollywood take notice and start playing these movies at more theaters and that would redeem the movie industry. I don't know, maybe the people who came up with that marketing stragegy really thought that might happen. But they were wrong. Maybe they thought that was just a clever way to get Christians to see a poorly written, poorly made movie.
Look, I'm going to stop now. I'm getting ill from thinking about this. If you like Christian music, if you think some of those movies were great, I'm sorry. If they help you through the day, if it provides a safe alternative for your kids that you don't have to worry about...well, I'm not a parent so I won't go there.
If I've puqued your interest at all regarding Christians and the arts, I highly recommend the book, Roaring Lambs by Bob Briner.
Blah, I think I'm going to take a shower...I feel all dirty talking about this.
randall
http://lonetomato.blogspot.com
randall, what are your thoughts on Ben Hur or Cecil's Ten Commandments?
*gulp* I...uh...haven't seen either of those movies, at least not from beginning to end. Also, it's hard to judge those films today because the style of moviemaking has changed so much. However, one surefire test of a quality work of art is the test of time. Both those moves are still talked about (and usually favorably) today, which is not true of most films marketed to the Christian subculture.
Here are some of my favorite films about faith:
1. The Third Miracle - it's hard to find but well worth the search. Ed Harris plays Father Frank Shore who investigates miracles for the Catholic Church to see if they are genuine or not. In the course of his work he's found numerous fakes and frauds and that's damaged his faith. The movie is centered around his latest investigation, but it's really a movie about faith - about a man who desperately wants to believe but because of his line of work, it's not easy.
2. Dogma - this is one of those movies that people (especially Christians) either love or hate. It's about a woman (who works in an abortion clinic) who is chosen to stop two fallen angels from inadvertently unmaking the universe. Sounds silly and vulgar...and it is, but it's also about how many churches and Christians have forgotten what faith was supposed to be about.
3. The Apostle - written/directed by Robert Duvall, who also plays the main character. If you have not seen this movie, turn off your computer right now, head down to Blockbuster and watch this film!.
No, I didn't forget to list Mel Gibson's The Passion movie.
Can't write a lot now...almost my bedtime and I need my beauty rest.
BEN HUR and TEN COMMANDMENTS
The most notable version (3 versions)of Ben Hur was released in 1959.
As quoted from Reel Classics...The most honored film of all-time, BEN-HUR (1959) won eleven of the twelve Academy Awards for which it was nominated -- and deservedly so. More than just an almost-four hour long Roman spectacle of pomp and pageantry, BEN-HUR has become known as an "intimate epic" -- that is, a film that doesn't lose sight of its characters and their personal struggles amidst its large-scale production values and grandeur. It is a spectacle; it is entertainment; and therein lies the film's initial attraction. But the human drama of the characters, their struggle with each other and with themselves, makes BEN-HUR a picture worth more than the sum total of all its sets, costumes and special effects. It is a story of a man, and therein lies its eternal appeal."
The original novel was written by Union General Lew Wallace in 1880, titled,"Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ".
Cecil B. DeMille directed Ten Commandments (1956)The film was adapted by Aeneas MacKenzie, Jesse Lasky Jr., Jack Gariss and Fredric M. Frank from the J.H. Ingraham novel Pillar of Fire, the A.E. Southon novel On Eagle's Wings and the Dorothy Clarke Wilson novel Prince of Egypt.
DeMille had previously made the film in a silent 1923 version.
The world is a different place now (or is it?)....We didn't question the existence of God outloud so much back then...or did we?
hmmm,
The Kman
We're to be salt and light to the world. In my opinion, having a seperate Christian entertainment industry is like keeping the salt on the shelf or hiding your lamp under a basket. Christian art and artists have to get out to where the sick and the hurting are - in the music festivals that the music industry as a whole puts on, not the ones put on by Christian promoters marketed to Christians.
I'm not saying that there's absolutely no place for Christian merchandise. Worship music isn't a genre that has a place in the music industry at large so I have no problem with worship music being sold through Christian venues. Same with Christian books (non-fiction...don't get me started on Christian fiction). There are some Christian books that are meant for a Christian audience and they should be sold as such.
But going back to music, maybe I can state my case this way: just about every Christian band will say that they want to use the gifts that God has given them to make Christ known. By limiting them to Christian radio stations and Christian music festivals, the Christian entertainment industry is keeping them from the very audience God has called them to reach.
You stated, "And, even with his faith restored, how many has [Bono] led to the Lord? In fact, show me and example of secular Christian artists that are effective in evangelism. The list will be terribly short and the argument that this is the path to spreading the Good News obliterated."
Saving people is not the only litmus test as to something's worth. For every song by U2 or Evanescence or Switchfoot that's being played, that's one less song about objectifying women or about how meaningless life is or about glorifying drugs. The call to share the Gospel is not the only call placed on Christians. We're also called to redeem the culture within which we live and that can only happen if we're engaging the culture - entering their camp and changing them from the inside out.
Forcing art into utilitarian boxes is a sure-fire way to end up with mediocre art. Judging the worth of a Christian artist operating in the music industry at large by how many people he leads to Christ is missing the point of art entirely. Everything that God has created expresses God's power and his "divine nature" (Romans 1:20). But when's the last time a cloud led someone to the Lord, or a sea urchin, or a llama?
I'm not saying we should not have Christian movies or Christian music or Christian books. I just think they should be released into the general marketplace, not segregated away within the confines of the Christian subculture.
Signed,
randall, a worthless Christian who's never led anyone to Christ firsthand.
Pulled from:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/commentaries/secularsacreddivide.html
Secular, Sacred, or Both?
Some Christian artists "cross over" to the mainstream, and some have been there all along. They might argue that the line between the secular and sacred is a blurry one—if it exists at all.
By Kate Bowman | posted 07/11/05
As a college freshman, I was introduced to, and subsequently transformed by, Steve Turner's seminal treatise on Christianity and the arts, Being There.
Although it was published almost eight years ago, Turner's essay has maintained its relevance, proving as fresh and enlightening a read now as the first time around. In a prelude to his later, full-length book Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts, Being There challenges evangelical Christians to remove their heads from the sand of their own subculture and become active participants in developing mainstream cultural life.
Sound controversial? It was—and still is. In his very first paragraph, Turner argues somewhat cantankerously that mainstream culture lacks a noticeably Christian contribution "because there are no distinctively Christian people contributing."
When Turner wrote these words in 1998, he was making only a minor overstatement. While Jars of Clay had recently charted with "Flood," few Christian artists had even attempted what we now call a "crossover"—an effort to bridge the perceived divide between "sacred" music and secular.
But in the years since Turner's little booklet, things have changed. Christian artists are not only selling records in the mainstream, they are making active efforts to engage it on its own terms. Whether they've read his pamphlet or not (and many have), more and more musicians of faith are participating in the wider world of mainstream music, from quiet folk to hip-hop to indie rock.
Some of them, like now-independent singer-songwriter Sarah Masen or former Vigilantes of Love frontman Bill Mallonee, are in the mainstream as refugees from CCM—not because they "crossed over," as with a band like Switchfoot, but because their music overstepped industry boundaries. Most of these artists, however, admit they never found a place in CCM in the first place.
Take, as the prime example, Sufjan Stevens. He is a Christian college graduate. His lyrics are explicitly confessional. Mainstream critics agree that if the lyrics on his Seven Swans CD (2004) were sung by anyone else, they'd belong on a worship album or as the rallying cry at a youth group jamboree. Stevens seems like a shoo-in for CCM stardom. Yet he never caught the notice of the industry's executives—let alone that it never even occurred to Stevens to darken the doorstep of Nashville offices or studios. He dove headfirst into the gritty New York music scene, and emerged, to everyone's surprise, as the darling of the same indie rock critics who generally disdain such overtly religious lyricism.
For some Christian artists, the divide between sacred and secular is not only obsolete—it never existed in the first place.
What drew Stevens to the world beyond Christian music labels? Surely it was more than the creative freedom often lacking in CCM publishing—although Stevens' occasionally morbid subject matter and unusual performance-art leanings might have been considered off-putting, in the same way that Flannery O'Connor would have had a difficult time getting her novels published by the Christian Booksellers Association.
Ultimately, this movement among Christian artists like Stevens is a theological one, linked to the same factors that brought about Masen and Mallonee's forays into the wild of independent music: a refusal to separate one's faith from one's involvement in the world at large, and a recognition that although the entire creation is broken, God's grace and truth continue to permeate all spheres of life.
In other words, for Christian artists like Stevens, the divide between sacred and secular is not only obsolete—it never existed in the first place. Some expressions of Christian cultural theory imply that evil and sin can be avoided by listening to particular music; my local Christian radio station, for example, advertises with the slogan "Hear no evil," as if the results of the fall can be avoided by tuning to a particular bandwidth. If we simply avoid mainstream culture, the thinking goes, we will be safe from the influence of darkness.
Of course, this is a lie—one that makes sin escapable rather than pervasive, a disease that is "out there" rather than something that plagues all of us. And the inverse of this lie, that the only place that God can be met and Christianity can be lived is safe within the confines of our own evangelical subculture, is just as insidious. As David Dark (author of Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, the Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons) is fond of saying to refute this dualistic attitude, "There is not a secular molecule in the universe." Everything has been tainted by sin, but sin has not destroyed the original, image-bearing quality of that which God has created and proclaimed Good.
Turner, too, addresses this problem in Being There: "We imagine a sacred part of our lives which involves praying, attending church, singing hymns, and reading the Bible, and a secular part involving eating, drinking, reading the newspaper, and painting the house. Is that the way God sees it? Does he wish we'd hurry through the mundane but necessary activities of sleeping, child rearing, and earning our keep until we get down to the real business of Bible study … ? Would a really 'spiritual' life consist of a seven day week full of church-centered activities, or was the Dutch art historian Hans Rookmaaker right when he said that Christ didn't die in order that we might go to more prayer meetings but in order that we might be more fully human?"
Applying these rhetorical questions to popular culture, Turner may well have found their answers embodied among this new crop of Christian musicians who believe that the earth and everything in it belong to God. Take, for example, a conference held every other spring at Calvin College. Here, artists and audiences, critics and academics gather to exchange ideas, listen to each other's music, and participate in the weekend-long conversation known as the Festival of Faith and Music, or FFM. Although their music inhabits a variety of genres, from avant-garde to hip-hop to folk, these artists are interested in good craftsmanship, in producing original, creative bodies of work. Their faith also spans denominations—dyed-in-the-wool Catholics give workshops alongside happy-clappy evangelicals—but they come with a common longing: to see God's hand at work in the music they love, and in the music they themselves make.
"Art is … a reflection of a greater divine creation. There really is no separation."
- Sufjan Stevens
For artists like Stevens, this conference is an opportunity to air their suspicions that this type of music cannot and should not be confined to a subculture. "Art is … a reflection of a greater divine creation. There really is no separation," Stevens told the Grand Rapids Press just before the festival. "There's a fullness of being in the world that takes into consideration the supernatural and the natural, and everything we do and say is evoking and expressing eternal things without even knowing it."
During a keynote lecture at FFM this year, David Dark made the same point in a less esoteric way, proposing a quippy new slogan for Christians: "Culture: You're Soaking in It!" Dark elaborates: "Like it or not, you're already in it. You can't get away from culture. When Christians talk about whether or not they should 'engage culture,' I want to say to them, 'Too late!'" Working from a Reformed perspective, he argues that human beings were charged by God with a mandate to cultivate the whole earth—which, of course, leads to culture. Humans can't not be cultural; we are, by nature, participants in the world which is our home—warts and all.
By the same token, particular industries that designate themselves as religious do not have a lock on the truth. Christians are beginning to recognize—and many artists intuitively realize—that sequestering oneself with only like-minded believers eliminates the possibility of God's revelation in the general culture.
Additionally, this means that "Christian music" need not be limited to songs that explicitly mention God or make overtly evangelistic appeals. A Pitchfork Media critic who reviewed Sufjan Stevens observed that Seven Swans "deals with the stories of his Christian faith most directly. Which is not to say that Michigan [Stevens' previous release] and its tales of personal grief and acceptance of one's suffering were any less Christian in ethos." To my knowledge this writer is not a Christian, but in that final sentence he captures the premise from which many believing musicians outside the CCM industry write: the whole of life is available to believers as the substance of art. Simply because it does not overtly confess Christ does not mean it is exempt from possessing truth.
As T-Bone Burnett (an award-winning producer and in-the-world forebear) puts it, "You can sing about the Light, or you can sing about what you see because of the Light." Both expressions are valid artistically—but Burnett goes on to say that he prefers the latter. Judging from their work, so do many Christian artists working in the mainstream today. They are able to illuminate the stories of everyday people and, thus, reflect the Light even if they do not explicitly name its source.
At the end of Being There, Turner gives a charge to Christian musicians. "It is important to write from your heart," he says. "Write like a person and not an instruction booklet. … Create art that convinces people that this is about real life because it has all the shadows and complexity of real life—light and darkness, certainty and uncertainty, joy and sorrow, humor and seriousness." This is a calling of any Christian artist—and I think Turner must be pleased that in the years since he published his little booklet, so many musicians have begun answering it.
Kate Bowman lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Copyright © 2005 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.
worthless christian future pastor,
that book sounds interesting..I think I may purchase a copy. Also, I think the effect of contemporary christian artists is hard to quantify. e.g. we can't say for certain how many people a particular artist has led to the Lord because they don't all jump up to be counted...
but...
If YOU were to start a church. What would it be like. Say you had unlimited resources. how would you train your staff. what would your church motto be? how would you create the atmosphere condusive to that of reaching the seekers and at the same time nurturing the newbies?
I'm not called to be a pastor...as far as I know.
My calling right now (besides my band - www.harrisonsound.com) is to support Christian artists and to encourage them to get their work out into the world. To that end, a few artist friends and I are working on organizing...something, we're not quite sure what it is yet, what it'll do, or what it will look like...but it's exciting and challenging and far larger than our ability to pull off, but that's where God does his best work.
lt,
thats cool. and I dig the music too.
will be praying for your plans.
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