Praise Him With What You Got

I went to a little Christmas program at the Lutheran Church in Kimballton tonight. I was persuaded to go by some girls I teach art to. I am so glad I came. It was a sweet little show that really spoke to my heart.

One line stands out the most. At the start of the play, the lady who ran the pageant said a few words. She said something to the effect of, "Now these kids are going to praise the Lord in their own way of doing so..."

In the next hour, kids read, danced, sang, acted, beat on tambourines, did silly accents all while delivering a message that Christmas is about Christ, the King, Savior of the World. It was glorious. I am blessed to have been there and share their praise.

That's the thing about praising God. We don't need anything special to do it. Everything you need is already built into you. Praising God is taking your talents, your singing voice, your painting skills, your carpentry skills, your good listening skills, your ability to do math in your head... whatever it is that you do best, and doing it in Christ’s name... in a way that glorifies HIM!!!

Today is a great day to praise the LORD!!! USE WHAT YOU GOT!

A Tantalizingly Wonder-filled Coral Reef

"Dunlap's Art is to Art as a Coral Reef is to Architecture"

--Mark Paul Petrick

I was pleased to find a great review of David Dunlap and his work.

I find it interesting that I am thinking of him so much these days. I moved into a new house over the summer. As part of the moving process, I pulled all of my old abstract paintings from storage and relocated them to my new address. Perhaps this is the root of this emerging memory of a professor I hadn't given much thought to recently. But perhaps it has more to do with what I have been reading of late. I see a connection between Dunlap's theory of art, called Art Exhibitionism by Petrick, and the book Praise Habit by David Crowder.

Be glad, good people! Fly to GOD! Good-hearted people, make praise your habit.

--Psalm 64:10 MSG remix

The crux of Crowder's book is that praise is something we are, not something we do. If you are stuck in the old paradigm that praise consists only of singing a couple mediocre songs on Sunday morning, you are missing the point. David Crowder, the leader of his own postmodern/experiemental/emergent worship band/experience opens the reader up to a new way of thinking about praise. It is a new perspective, a lifestyle, not an event. Crowder, using techniques of Sacred Reading (lectio divina) reflects on psalms, writing new parables, poems and short tales about how they effect him. He explains how to develop a habit of praise in your everyday life. A praise habit is not just possible; it’s essential. Its the very reason we were created. We must strive to live in constant awe of God and watch what He does next.

I feel this connection between my artistic nature and my growing pursuit of a praise habit. I see the process of art making more and more intergrated with the idea of worship.

Art Exhibitionism: David Dunlap is a cultivator of relationships, a planter of conceptual seeds, a harvester of images, and a packager of the fruits of his obsessive creative labors in exhibitions that seem to accrete into place like a tantalizingly wonder-filled coral reef.

Doesn't that description sound like what we want here in our little emerging church movement? Don't we want to be cultivating relationships? I want to plant conceptual seeds, and oh, the harvest! Oh the fruits of our creative labor. And ever I aspire for my worship to grow into a tantalizingly wonder-filled coral reef.

Artist-God

What is the first thing we know about God? What is the first thing we learn of him in Scriptures? Flip open the Bible and look for yourself. In the Beginning, God CREATED....

God by His very awesome nature creates and cares for. God, creator of marvelous creation.

I like watching those shows on the discovery channel with anthropologists explaining the origins of man. They love to explain a key difference between human beings and the rest of the animal world. It is their inextinguishable expressive nature that sets Cro-Magnon man apart from everything else. Man makes art. Man adorns his body. Man makes beautiful things.

So, let us look at Genesis 1:27.

God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

If we are made in the image of God, who by His very nature is the creator, then what else would separate us from the rest of creation than an innate artistic nature? It is who we are. We have coded into our bodies the desire, the inescapable urge to rise up in expressive worship and offer praise to our God. There will come the day when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord. Why wait?

Use your expressive nature today to create an offering to God!

We will be sharing some artwork by my bible study youth in the comments area.

Jesus Rising
by Steven Howard

The value of the church

WOW! Today I was really reminded of the value of corporate worship. Church today was so alive. It was so real. The choir sang a haunting anceint hym. The message was so gospel-centered and really spoke to me. It was a challenge to BE YOUR FAITH! Pastor told us to get on the playing field and work for Jesus, telling others of His Good News and His saving grace. It was a powerful experience and was truly edifying.

Too often I am the one teaching and I don't get the change to be filled up. I look for moments to really fill the tank, then focus on others. But today in church, I got a chance to hear what the Lord wanted me to hear. And it was awesome. Pastor sang "In Christ Alone." It is my favorite song that he does. It was followed by communion... and at EHLC I am always moved by Christ's gift in the eucharist. But today I came away from the alter with Scritpure on my lips. 2 Samuel 7 , David's prayer.

I returned to the balony and flipped a pew bible open to that location and read it. I began to weep freely. Why me? Why has He poured His favor on me? It is the question I return to often. So I prayerfully returned to the Confession in our bulletin and there in the balcony read back over the words quietly, just between me and God. This time through they held so much more meaning. I confessed to God that I am nothing without Him... that without His life altering grace I am lost on a angry sea.

Everything came together, the choir, the musicians, the pastor's sermon, his singing, the bread and the wine. Isn't that what corporate worship is supposed to be? Sharing His truth as one body, sharing our time and our talents to the Glory of Jesus?

I love my church. I am so thankful that we cling to the Word, the Truth, the ancient wisedom- and also that we confess boldly that Christ is King.

So as I ponder this entire notion of Postmodern Worship and praise habit, I must remember that our diet of praise must be a rich one. We must feed our soul with a variety of communion experiences. Corporate worship is one type of meal, quiet time is another. Contemplation is richly edifying as well as rocking out in the mosh pit at a Crowder concert. I do want to see my time with God as every moment of my life, and church is my time with like-minded fellow believers all focusing on God at the same moment.

An aura of worship

Back in college, I had an amazing painting professor named David Dunlap. He was a character. David didn’t really ‘paint’ or ‘draw’ per say… but he was the quintessential artist. He preached a message that art isn’t a product. It is creative human beings interacting with the world. In fact, art becomes an aura of creativity that surrounds the artist. It moves about him throughout the day and the artifacts of this creative process, drawings, paintings and sculpture are left behind. These things, while often highly valued by society, are actually secondary to the act of expressive living. I loved David Dunlap and wove his lessons into my being.

I will never forget his ‘lessons’. He would roll into painting class, late, and stand behind me silently looking at my most recent painting for a few minutes. Finally he would speak in his deep, mellow voice, “Oh… painter, painter!” He’d smile, pat me on the shoulder and then walk away. That would be his instruction for the week. To this day, I have absolutely no idea what that meant. But it encouraged me to continue to try new things to get my inner voice out to the public.

More and more, I am beginning to see worship in the same way that David Dunlap viewed art. It shouldn’t be a program at church. It isn’t merely the sum of the hymns, choruses and responsive readings that we go through every Sunday. In fact, it shouldn’t even be anything that we go to do. It’s something more—something wonderfully sublime. Worship should be… and must be an aura about us as we expressively live in communion with God. It’s Isaiah 45:23, every knee bowing, every tongue shouting. It must become woven into us, becoming more instinctive than breathing. It is the believer interacting with the world in the artwork called life.

I want a living, breathing faith; an expressive faith- a growing faith. I want the artifacts of my worship to enrich the world.

God, lead me to worship you more deeply and more ardently and may my worship become integrated with every aspect of my life. AMEN.

Jedidiah

This past Christmas break, Chad Jacobsen, Calla Johnson and I created a three day discipleship camp.

We met each day at one o’clock at Chad’s grandparents’ old farm house. Our sessions began with some bible study and prayer. Then we headed out for a day of service. We returned each night to make dinner followed by worship in the basement.

The first day we drove to Des Moines and volunteered at Hope Ministries. Some of us helped prepare a meal at the shelter for battered women and their kids while others of us sorted clothing at a processing center for their thrift store.

Day two we volunteered at the Girls and Boys Club in Adair. This was a great time of fun and fellowship with these school-aged kids.

Day three we had a fun day of bowling before we made homemade pizza, an intensive bible study/worship/prayer meeting and a late night New Years Eve party.

Thoughts:

At first I was a little disappointed with the turn out. But God put the right number of people in our group each day. We were so blessed to have Ashley Danner and T-Rob, two college kids back to help. They are the best- strong Christians and good hearts. It was great to see the bond that Ashley and Kiah have. They were close during wrestling last year and that connection was rekindled.

Isn’t this what the EC is all about? We had no building, no titles, no boundaries. We had the bible, our love of Christ and our willingness to share His love with each other and the world. This model of discipleship is what I long for. No longer do the stage and pageantry of the big mega-churches impress me. I want a small circle of believers that will hold hands, pray, sing, laugh, read, share, serve, love—and cling to Christ.

Lord- may the emerging church flourish. AMEN.

PEEW??

So what is PEEW you ask? It stands for Postmodern/Experiemental/Emergent Worship.... Its the renewing of the body of Christ through a wide range of new expressive ways to commune with God. There is a good online paper about this by Matthew Campbell. You can check it out at the link below.

http://www.cpinternet.com/~robbfc/pwarchive/html/PEEW_paper.htm