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This happens to me ALL the time……

I have shared with many people that the thing Christians call ‘worship’ is a struggle for me. Its not that worshipping God is a struggle, just that doing so as a result of, or as influenced by a formulated and rather repetitive song is tough for me. We should all know that ‘worship’ is not exclusively a musical thing but i find myself wondering if many of us do know that. But this post isn’t about that particular issue…..

Anyway, music stirs up ‘unexpected moments of worship’ within me, music by ‘secular artists!’

This post is inspired by an article in Relevant magazine – you can read the full article here – you should. Reading it helped me gather my thoughts on this subject and pushed me to blog this. I say ‘pushed’ because for some people, this is controversial or risky ground.

A couple of weeks ago i mentioned a need to pause and NOT sing during Church and to assess in my own heart if i was singing the words truthfully. As the Relevant article points out; ‘So many songs seem to address lots of the bright and shiny emotions we feel about God, but sometimes, we can be left feeling detached when trying to worship.’

I don’t want to just re-blog everything the article says so i’ll just say that for a long time i have experienced more ‘unexpected moments of worship’ than i could possibly count. So much so that id say they are no longer ‘unexpected.’ Moments of ‘worship’ during singing in Church are slightly more unexpected if i am honest!

There are many examples in the U2 back catalogue. Seriously, have you ever heard a song of ‘worship’ as amazing as Yahweh? Crumbs from Your Table? I am only thinking of one album with these two suggestions, i could quote U2 for days on end!

A more recent example for me is Josh Ritter’s album So Runs the World Away, it provides a few amazing moments – in the song ‘Lark’ he sings;

“I am assured, yes I am assured yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can yes surpass the speed yes
Of my understanding and my need”

I could rattle on here and quote song lyrics all day but my point really is that we can & do limit our worship experience by assuming God only shows up in the words of songs written by Christians who are in the ‘Christian music industry.’

Much of the music i hear within the ‘Christian genre’ is really bad. Outside of the confines of that industry, the music is better – it just IS –  but also, the so-called ‘secular has more chance of inspiring ‘worship’ in me. Perhaps thats due to the honesty of the artists? Perhaps because they are spilling out the emotions of their heart into a song and not trying to create the new worship hit song?

God just does NOT define and categorise things like we do & an industry that is boxed in and confined to ‘Christians’ only making Christian music might just be very silly sounding to God – He works outside of all the rules we make!

A little while ago i was asked to contribute to the ideas for the renovation of our Youth Hall in Church

So, i won’t disturb the visual aspect of this post too much.

Upon being given the new name for the Youth Hall i created this logo

This following 4 images are presented as shown and are 600x600mm prints of photographs taken by Navyblur - all the images are places within our Church building – so technically that has nothing to do with me but we love the images so i need to show them…

The following two images were created by Cherith and I – she built the paper house you see below, genius!

Our initial thoughts were to use 2 verses/passages of scripture that could resonate across all age groups in our congregation, and reflect them graphically in some way without it being too cheesy or cliche’d – we hope we achieved that. These are 1200x800mm prints and are side by side on a wall at the coffee bar.

I need to thank those who involved us in the process, it’s been a blast but also to our friend Laura who appears in the above image.

There will be good images of the opening coming soon from Navyblur, promise!

“What is church? It’s people, broken people … pretending not to be broken … and that’s what breaks it…”

The quote is from Phil Groom’s blog post – here / The clip is from Rev, a new BBC sitcom – here – its profound!

I think what’s so great about Rev is, its not making fun of God but it is highlighting how absurd people are.

This clip exposes the ‘Jesus is awesome’ mask brilliantly – if you can watch the full episode on iPlayer, you must do so! It highlights so much of what is wrong with our “21st Century Church” but also shows a beautiful and genuine Christian reaction to such false behaviour. Like i say, profound stuff!

“If Bible teachers could only remember that the ‘Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’ and gave us divinely inspired truth, and never for one remote moment meant to give us anything to satisfy our intellectual curiosity, they would realise that the prophets meant to give us truth to transform spirit and soul and bring us into holy living and holy believing. They never intended that we should have theological baby rattles to entertain ourselves.”
A.W. Tozer

You have to admire Tozer’s ability to just ‘say it like it is.’

I just started reading one of the ‘never before published’ titles that landed recently – ‘Living as as Christian’ – and in typical Tozer fashion im blown away in the first chapter. Challenged is perhaps a more apt way to describe BUT…………yes there is a big BUT!!

How often are we challenged by a book or by a sermon to the point where it brings about change? Let me explain….

“Today we sing songs that are so dishonest that i sometimes hesitate to sing them. Yet when we sing the average hymn, if God Almighty compelled us to be entirely 100% honest, we simply could not sing them because their words would not be true of us.” A.W. Tozer

I read that Tozer quote yesterday afternoon and as i stood in Church last night i stared at some of the words and found myself not singing…i couldn’t help but be stopped in my tracks as i pondered the words and whether i meant them or whether we were all just entertaining ourselves.

I don’t say this to boast because these moments are rare – i promise you that – i am no saint!

Each of you can examine your own heart – so, feel free to chuck away this blog post as another aimless rant if you have this all nailed down!

Sometimes i just don’t care about what theological subject you are a ninja with, how well you can argue for dispensationalism or what kind of worship you prefer………its a baby rattle!

I know some of you will say “but its truth, and this is the right way to do things” which is lovely, but how is your life? How is the Holy Living working out for you? Do others think of you as a rude arrogant sod who knows a lot about the Bible? Do you have all the doctrine hammered down tight but yet can’t look a brother in the eye to say hello to him?

Has all the knowledge and intellectual thinking changed who you are?

If not, then what are you rattling, what theological/doctrinal toy are you playing around with?

Holy living and Holy believing…..NOT Holy entertainment! Thats what we need………

Buy the book thats kicking my ass – here – let it kick yours also!!

Truth is, we stood around, sat around, ate some lunch and basically made fun of each other all day on tuesday while Xander & Christine clickety clicked on their camera’s – we love the end result! All the images are awesome!

The above pictures are from ‘madeinBelfast‘ which deserves a mention – for the awesome food but also for allowing us to clown around while they served other customers during lunchtime….look them up next time you are in Belfast.

About a year ago i was eager to encourage the kind of talent and creativity that Navyblur have and also to see it ooze into the Church more, but also for that talent to be encouraged and supported by the Church. Slowly over the past year that has started to happen for us in High Kirk and i’ve gotta say that puts such a big smile on my face, which some of you know is quite an achievement!

There is a bigger picture in this creativity lark and these kids get it which is amazing – im not sure i get it yet! ha!

Iv gotta say that our wee country is bursting with talent in and around the Church – musical, creative, arts and everything your mind can imagine – its all going off right now in Northern Ireland so if you can encourage or support it, please do!

Ok, enough of my rambling and go see the pictures on the Navyblur Blog……