Community Worship Survey Results

About a week-and-a-half ago the worship and programming leadership conducted a survey among a diverse sampling of people in our church regarding the Worship Services at Parkview. This survey included questions regarding every area of our worship service as well as information regarding our Family Ministry venue Family Connection. If you would like to see the general results of that survey, you can view them at this link.

Over all, the general results of the survey were affirming that we are doing a good job in many categories within our services. Perhaps more telling were the comments in the areas that need some refining. As always, when people have the opportunity to share anonymously they can at times be a bit uncharitable in their commentary. Despite this reality, we were able to see trends in everything from preaching to music to communication that will be very helpful as we develop strategic ministry plans for the upcoming school year. If you’re observant, you’ll likely notice some of those changes in the near future.

This survey was strategic in that it generated some good conversation among leaders within the church that will help guide us in many future decisions. In this regard, I am very optimistic that we’ve got an excellent opportunity to blaze some new trails in our upcoming ministry season.

To clarify one thing, I know that some may be inclined to critique the wisdom behind surveying a congregation regarding their preferences. Some may ask, if Jesus told us that if we followed him we would be persecuted, then wouldn’t we be most pleased with results that were critical of our practices? To this my answer is yes and no. If we are criticized for our commitment to worshiping in spirit and truth and doing all we can to share the gospel with the lost world around us, then by all means we should applaud critical feedback. On the other hand, if we are criticized for our inability to engage people in their cultural context, then we should view both criticism and affirmation as resources to help us grow and change. The last thing Parkview’s leadership wants to do is make everyone as “comfortable as possible”. In the same regard we do want to do all we can to participate with God in lighting a fire that ignites a movement of the gospel in people living missionally in Iowa City and around the world.

Yesterday’s Hymns For Today’s Church

This weekend in services I will be highlighting some of the hymn resources available for those who would love to take advantage of the organizations and musical groups working hard to revive old hymn texts by setting them to music relevant to new generations. One of the exciting things about this movement is that it is spearheaded by younger generations longing for connection with a faith that is rich in doctrine and deep in heritage. Though this list of resources is far from exhaustive, the following links will provide some places you can go to tap into this network of music. If anyone has additional links to provide, please consider leaving your link as a comments.

INDELIBLE GRACE MUSIC

Indelible Grace features numerous CD’s and music books. The Indelible Grace CD’s are compilation CD’s from numerous artists. You can also get CD’s here from artists such as Matthew Smith, Sandra McCracken, and Brian Moss. If you follow the links to the music store, you can actually preview the songs under each CD link.

RED MOUNTAIN MUSIC

Red Mountain Music is a ministry out of Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, Alabama. They presently have five CD’s available for purchase and their music is very similar in style to the Indelible Grace music. By clicking on albums you can go into each individual album and listen to audio samples.

LOVE DIVINE

Kingsway Music just came out with this new CD called “Love Divine” which is a remake of hymns by Charles Wesley. The new hymn we’re singing called at Parkview called “Jesus, The Name High Over All” came from this project. It is not available on Itunes, so you’re restricted to getting this one via snail mail. Just so you’re aware, outside of “Jesus, The Name High Over All” this CD has other good songs, but the arrangements are not as strong for congregational singing.

PASSION: HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN

This disk has been around a while, but is part of the Passion organization, which is a movement intent upon glorifying God by uniting students in worship and prayer for spiritual awakening in this generation. The hymn CD can be found at SixStepsRecords or downloaded on Itunes. SixSteps features a lot of other great music for younger generations.

SOUJURN MUSIC

Soujurn Music is part of the ministry at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kenucky. According to Greg Mazunik, our 24-7 worship director, the “Before the Throne” CD is killer good.

PARK SLOPE

Park Slope Church is a church in Brooklyn, NY that has put out this project called Kingsborough Hymns accompanied by those who regularly accompany their congregation in music.

I’ll add more links as I find or hear about them.

Community Worship Survey

As of Friday afternoon we've had over 360 take an online survey that was sent out via email primarily in regard to our weekend worship services at Parkview. This is the first time Parkview has taken an online survey and I must say it's been quite the experience. Though I know web surveys exclude a certain population, I found it interesting that those who have taken the survey are representing Parkview's age demographic and service attendance almost perfectly. If you haven't taken the survey, do so quickly because we will be shutting it down in the next few days.

I will be sharing some of the general results in the future. Some of the information has been very encouraging and some of it has identified areas we need to work on. Though this was a needed and important survey for us, it was really a precursor/test-run for a "spiritual health" survey we are hoping to take church-wide during the Fall semester. More on that later....

For those of you who work in businesses or churches who would benefit from online surveys. I highly recommend Survey Monkey. It is a powerful service with easy to build professional looking surveys that provide "to the second" analysis as the results come in.

Between Two Worlds: The Cultural Chasm

For a seminary course I am taking, I am reading a book on Biblical Interpretation called “Let the Reader Understand”. In the section I read today the authors discussed an idea called “distanciation” coined by P. Ricoeur. The idea, when applied to Biblical interpretation, refers to the chasm that is created between our time and the time of the Bible. This chasm is caused by our cultural assumptions and forsakes the fact that the first audience (from Biblical times) was not like me at all. Here’s a quote…

We should note that not only is a knowledge of the original culture important, but also a knowledge of our own culture. If we are unaware of our own culture, we will be unequipped to evaluate in what way our cultural conditioning is influencing our reading of the text. And if we wish to apply the meaning of the text to a present situation, we had better understand how our present culture works. (p. 148-149)

The reason I appreciate this understanding is that in my years of church experience, conferences and reading I have been exposed to ministry models that are very culturally savvy, putting great amounts of energy into understanding contemporary culture but little work into carefully interpreting scripture. I have also experienced ministries that are extremely rigorous in their study and interpretation of scripture, but are miles away from having relevant engagement with the present culture. Both models are subject to “distanciation” because they neglect one aspect of cultural understanding at the cost of the other. In most of those cases, they are even adamant in their rejection of the other cultural perspective because, in their mind, embracing the opposite cultural context violates their convictions.

My dream is for churches to take more seriously the need to combine the rigors of good Biblical interpretation with a passion for understanding the present culture and contextualizing the gospel for that culture. There are many churches doing a pretty good job, but countless more, large and small, whose convictions (and presuppositions) are keeping them from God’s mission to reach our present culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Whose Glory Do We Make Music For?

I love Bob Kauflin's heart in this little devotional clip. Good stuff. Who do you play your music for? Is it for the glory of Jesus or for your own? How do we discern if we are doing it for the Lord or ourselves? Are you more concerned about your audience encountering God or about them affirming your abilities?

Prosperity Gospel

My friend Chad just sent this to me. On this video you'll hear some strong language from John Piper in regard to the prosperity gospel. I know not everyone is a fan of John Piper, but the message of this video rightly resonates with disdain for those who are selling so many around the world this false gospel.

Static Mode

Static: Lacking in movement, action or change.

This defines my blog in recent months. Admittedly, it has been an exceptionally crazy season with numerous changes in the church, which include my job description change to "Pastor of Programming and Operations". In this new job I will still be involved in programming (arts and technical) but also carry oversight in church communication and staffing operations. Of course, my gradual change will necessitate other staffing shifts to compensate. Those details are still being worked out at this time.

Over the last few months I thought about shutting down the blog entirely but now that I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, I have decided I may take the opportunity to blog some throughout the summer.

As always, my blogging has been more of a personal journal of sorts. This means that posting frequency will alway come and go based upon the load I am carrying. I know this is not a way to build a following, but that was never the intent of my blog so I am not overly concerned.

Anyhow, this post's primary purpose is to let those of you who check intermittently that I believe I will pick-up posting in greater frequency as the summer approaches. For now, I am just hopeful we can hit 70 degrees at least once this April. One miracle at a time I guess!

Upcoming Easter Season Services

Check out the service times below. At our church website you can actually e-vite someone to the events.

More Snow Comin

Believe it or not (if you live here, you believe it), Iowa City is 1 inch from this being the 2nd largest winter season snow fall total in Iowa City history. This will likely easily happen with tonight's snow fall. Join me in praying that we don't climb to #1 this year! I'm ready for spring!

Upcoming Easter Service Times

Here are the times for the Holy Week activities.

Palm Sunday Weekend, March 15-16

• Saturday @ 4:30, 6:00 pm
• Sunday @ 9:00, 10:30 am

The worship center will combine with the chapel venue for this weekend. This service will feature orchestra and choir.

Good Friday Services, March 21

• Communion Services in Chapel @ 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
• Accompanying Experience in the South Wing from 4-10 pm

Easter Weekend Services, March 22-23

• Saturday @ 4:30 pm
• Sunday @ 7:30, 9:00, 10:30 am

The worship center will combine with the chapel venue for this weekend.

Christmas at Parkview

Blogging frequency has been down as preparations for a busy Christmas season have increased. We had a wonderful "kick-off" this weekend for the Christmas season at Parkview. In the worship center we featured a contemporary Christmas celebration and in our chapel venue a more traditional celebration. Though my involvement in the worship center kept me from the chapel, I heard things went really fantastic. Every account from those in the worship center resounded with positive feedback. Thanks to all of you who poured yourself out to make these services a success for the kingdom.

Despite these victories, there is more yet to come with another celebration next weekend as well as services on Dec 22-23 and Christmas Eve. Your prayers are still coveted as many things continue to come together for these upcoming weekends.

As I close, I thought I'd let you all know that on Friday we were able to add "evites" for the remaining December services to our website. To invite a friend all you need to do is click on "evite" on the main page and it will instruct you how to automatically email an ecard with the artwork and information for the remaining Christmas services. Hope you can take advantage of this great tool.

A New Kind of Hymn Story

Mars Hill is using the following videos in their present message series. As you'll see, the videos are powerful mini-biographies of hymn writers. Mars Hill is far from a traditional church so I think these videos illustrate how new generations long to have a connection with the rich heritage of faith that precedes them. In a culture that is always promoting "bigger and better" people are longing for a connection with something that doesn't change, something that has powerfully transformed lives for generations. This something is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 11 and 12:1-3 illustrates for us how important it is to look back at the "great cloud of witnesses" that have gone before us. Their testimonies encourage us to fix our eyes on Jesus the founder and perfector of our faith.

Spurgeon on Thanksgiving

But when you glorify God as God, and are thankful for everything—when you can take up a bit of bread and a cup of cold water, and say with the poor Puritan, ‘What, all this, and Christ too?’—then are you happy, and you make others happy. A godly preacher, finding that all that there was for dinner was a potato and a herring, thanked God that he had ransacked sea and land to find food for his children. Such a sweet spirit breeds love to everybody, and makes a man go through the world cheerfully.”

Charles Spurgeon
Sermon on Romans 1:20-21

Simple Church Continued

Here’s another excerpt from Simple Church a book I’ve been reading lately that totally hits the nail on the head in regard to church vision and strategy. As I stated a few days ago, the basic premise of the book is that simple churches are effective churches. Here are the four main characteristics of a simple church as defined in chapter 3. Simple churches have…

• CLARITY: The ability of the process to be communicated and understood by people.
• MOVEMENT: The sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment.
• ALIGNMENT: The arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process.
• FOCUS: The commitment to abandon everything that falls outside the simple ministry process.

Some of you may have no clue or concern about how a church operates strategically, but the previous characteristics are so huge in the “big picture” of church life. By the grace of God, if we can communicate and live out God’s mission with clarity, movement, alignment, and focus I believe we will truly be maximizing our potential to participate in God’s mission to reach our community and the world with a movement of the gospel.

Altar Calls: 10 Reasons Not to Do Them

It's interesting that my friend Zach blogged about this several days ago. Lately I'd been thinking a lot about the validity of the "altar call" after hearing Kevin, a seminary friend, explain how he dealt with people who commonly requested that his church do altar calls. I used to be part of a church that did altar calls, so have lived on both sides of the practice. I must admit that the practice seemed a bit contrived. Of the handful of folks who came forward after a message, the majority of them were "regulars" who were always up there crying and repenting of something they did during the previous week. Every once and a while I have people ask for us to do them at Parkview. This is why I appreciate that Ryan, the teaching Pastor at Zach's church, recently put together 10 reasons why they don't do altar calls. Pretty interesting.

1. The altar call is simply and completely absent from the pages of the N.T.

2. The altar call is historically absent until the 19th century, and its use at that time (via Charles Finney) was directly based upon bad theology and a man-centered, manipulative methodology.

3. The altar call very easily confuses the physical act of “coming forward” with the spiritual act of “coming to Christ.” These two can happen simultaneously, but too often people believe that coming to Christ is going forward (and vice-versa).

4. The altar call can easily deceive people about the reality of their spiritual state and the biblical basis for assurance. The Bible never offers us assurance on the ground that we “went forward.”

5. The altar call partially replaces baptism as the means of public profession of faith.

6. The altar call can mislead us to think that salvation (or any official response to God’s Word) happens primarily on Sundays, only at the end of the service, and only “up front.”

7. The altar call can confuse people regarding “sacred” things and “sacred” places, as the name “altar call” suggests.

8. The altar call is not sensitive to our cautious and relational age where most people come to faith over a period of time and often with the interaction of a good friend.

9. The altar call is often seen as “the most important part of the service”, and this de-emphasizes the truly more important parts of corporate worship which God has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing).

10. God is glorified to powerfully bless the things He has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing), not the things we have invented. We should always be leery of adding to God’s prescriptions for His corporate worship.

Simple Church

OK, OK, I know my blogging has been extremely inconsistent. I have always maintained that my blogging is not motivated by maintaining high readership or by being a "quality filter" for numerous other blogs and information sources. Blogging is my opportunity to journal and share things God is teaching me. If I am busy, then blogging will be one of those things that slips off the radar on occasion. Anyhow....

Church leadership at Parkview are presently immersing themselves in several strategy books as we seek to implement our new mission and vision as a church. One of the books I have been reading is called Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. I have only read the opening chapter, but it resonates very deeply with so many of the things I am quite passionate about. Today I thought I would share a brief excerpt from page 14...

The significance is that, in general, simple churches are growing and vibrant. Churches with a simple process for reaching and maturing people are expanding the kingdom. Church leaders who have designed a simple biblical process to make disciples are effectively advancing the movement of the gospel. Simple churches are making a big impact.

Conversely, complex churches are struggling and anemic. Churches without a process or with a complicated process for making disciples are floundering. As a whole, cluttered and complex churches are not alive. Our research shows that those churches are not growing. Unfortunately, the overprogrammed and busy church is the norm. The simple church is the exception, yet our research shows that should not be the case.

In an ever complicated world, people are crying out for clarity and simplicity.

Celebrity Worship

Christians (especially ones involved in worship ministry) love videos like this.



We should like videos like this because it reminds us that worship is truly about the creator and the cross. Sometimes our commercialized worship culture conditions us to, figuratively speaking, “admire those admiring the sunset” rather than admiring the sunset itself.

Here’s my problem. Today I was a guest lecturer to grad students at the University of Iowa who are in the Sacred Music program. My job was to teach them about the ins and outs of a contemporary music/arts ministry. All in all things went very well and it was a good learning experience (hopefully for them and me). I worked hard to set-up a solid biblical and strategic basis for some of the choices we make within the Evangelical church movement when it comes to communicating the gospel of Christ. Our main priority being to communicate this life changing message in a way that engages our culture. I also honestly talked about the dangers of a CCM industry that tends to make decisions based upon the bottom line of what sells. When I came to the point of the lecture where I began showing the class contemporary worship resources, I went to Praisecharts.com and Songselect and was totally surprised what I saw when I looked at those sites through the eyes of these students. On the main page of both these sites are pictures of “worship celebrities". Upon seeing these web pages some students actually laughed out loud while I said something like “yes, here are some of the worship celebrities”.

My concern is that we all get very excited about songs and media that proclaim our allegiance to the King while at the same time pandering to consumer culture by making worship leaders into celebrities. The outside world looks in and laughs at the hypocrisy.

How to Look at Art

In this post artist Fred Sanders gives eight tips about how to get more insight in a painting. His goal is to help the "average person" maximize their experience (dare I say "enjoy their experience") when visiting an art museum.

(HT: Challies)

Early Sunrise

These are some pics I took in front of my house the other morning. It's amazing how God can make an early morning sky ablaze with light.

20Somthings Care Less About Music Style

This is a pretty interesting post claiming that 20somthings are not as concerned about music styles as previous generations. Trevin Wax's thoughts don't really surprise me, but I do think they are interesting. My take-away is that we still need to uphold the values of cultural relevance, excellence, and artistic diversity, but that we also need to quit expecting music to be the magic bullet for reaching this new generation. It seems community and teaching may be their primary point of engagement. Of course, this is just one man's opinion, but I do think his view holds at least some nugget of truth. Here's a clip from Trevin's post...

- - - -

Music does not bring people to church. People bring people to church. At this year’s Southern Baptist Convention, I was distressed at how many times I heard pastors mention “updating our music” as a way to reach my hard-to-reach generation.

Sorry to burst the bubble. But changing the music is completely irrelevant.

I talked to a handful of 20somethings who dropped out of church for a few years and are now back and engaged. When I asked them about the worship style of our church (we’re a mix between blended and traditional), the answers were all different. Most of them indicated that they would rather we sing less and get to the preaching quicker. “That’s what we’re there for,” said one. Others mentioned how much they loved the organ. A couple mentioned that the “hymns” could be hard sometimes, but that they wanted to learn them anyway, as they felt they were important.

My generation is musically fragmented. Some of my classmembers like Country music. Others like P.O.D. and Disciple. Some are into soft rock. One loves anything Classical. The majority like folksy rock, but there’s no consensus. The Iraq war veteran in our class (tattooed and tough) has a soft spot for the Carpenters, Celtic chants, and the crooners of the 40’s and 50’s. iTunes and iPods. We are a generation of many styles.

The idea that a “contemporary” music service is going to reach my generation just makes me laugh. No one in my class is there for the music. They are all there for the relationships and the Bible teaching. Not that the music is unimportant… it’s just not central.

(HT: Vitamin Z)