Greatest Need In the American Church

Scotty Smith, Tim Keller and others give solid answers to a question that cripples my mind, until I am realize that I am responsible to give an answer too. How grateful I am that these men are giving cogent, compelling answers.

Scotty starts his, "The greatest need in the American church is to worship “worship” less", which I really like.

Amazing 12 yr old drummer!

Revved Up with Dr. D. Ray Montgomery

You have got to drop by this guy's video post on Xn music. Very funny.

John Stott n Worship

My new friend, Curtis, is a Jesus-lover and a student of God's Word. He's 27 and teaches freshman composition at the University of Tennessee. He chuckles after everything he says. I like Curtis. We established a camaraderie after I introduced myself to him at Starbucks a couple months ago. Now every Sunday morning we see each other and talk about our theological heroes, what we're reading, and how God is directing in our lives. This morning, while the worship band ordered their fraps, coffees, and lattes, Curtis handed me his copy of John Stott's commentary on Romans. Almost every leaf of this 406 page tome is highlighted with yellow, pink, green, orange and blue, and underlined in blue, black green, and red. The sides have exclamations, stars, asterisks, arrows and circled stars, and on pages 311 and 312, the words "for West" (also underlined with an arrow) lie beside a few bracketed, powerful paragraphs that I will share with you now:

"It is of great importance to note from Romans 1 - 11 that theology (our belief about God) and doxology (our worship of God) should never be seperated. On the one hand, there can be no doxology without theology. It is not possible to worship an unknown god. All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and Scripture, and arises from our reflection on who he is and what he has done. It was the tremendous truths of Romans 1 - 11 which provoked Paul's outburst of praise. The worship of God is evoked, informed and inspired by the vision of God. Worship without theology is bound to degenerate into idolatry. Hence the indispensable place of Scripture in both public worship and private devotion. It is the Word of God which calls forth the worship of God.
On the other hand, there should be no theology without doxology. There is something fundamentally flawed about a purely academic interest in God. God is not an appropriate object for cool, critical, scientific observation and evaluation. No, the true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship, as it did Paul. Our place is on our faces before him in adoration.
As I believe Bishop Handley Moule said at the end of the last century, we must 'beware equally of an undevotional theology and of an untheological devotion'.

Has it ever been put any clearer?? This is "worship that is in spirit and in truth" (John 4).

Cravings and Conflicts

C.J. Mahaney believes that "when we quarrel and fight, God sees war and murder." He gets that from James 4.1, 2. In a powerful article, relevant to all of us, Mahaney unpacks these verses to show that, when we are in conflict, it is because we basically aren't getting what we want.

There's been an individual who has made a point of pointing out what I was doing wrong my entire time at my church. I've tried to be friendly in my responses, but have always been very bitter about his critiques. But after reading Mahaney's winsome article, I am convicted that I am the one in the wrong, and that I'll need to spend time searching my heart for what exactly it is that I am demanding. Then I intend to write this man a short letter, confessing how I've sinned. Up to now, I've been just trying to figure out the best way to prove to him that I'm right (which is probably the very thing I am demanding - to be right).


Peace,
-w