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...

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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)

Only Hope on You Tube

I stumbled across this video on youtube the other day (so far the video has over 100,000 hits). It is Charles Edward's piano duet arrangement of "Only Hope", the song made popular by the Christian group "Switchfoot". I am linking to it because it is a really nice arrangement that got me thinking about the power of a great melody. The best songs are a marriage of great lyrics and a great melody. At least that's where it's got to start. I'd love to see more song writers today (especially in Christian music) committed to creating really great melodies for their music.

Desiring God National Conference

My lovely wife and I have been enjoying attending the Desiring God National Conference entitled “Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints”. All of the sessions have been fantastic. A written summary and the mp3 from each session are posted within an hour of the session. Tonight Dr. Helen Roseveare spoke. Helen is an 82-year-old physician who has been single all her life and for much of it, served as a missionary in the Congo. Earlier in her ministry in the Congo she was kidnapped and held for 5 months. Throughout that time she was beaten and raped numerous times. After getting rescued she was sent back to England for medical attention and forced, against her wishes, to stay there for one year. Once she was permitted, she returned to the Congo to reach these people God had laid upon her heart with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is just something so beautiful about an 82 year old woman with snow-white hair speaking about living your life to the end, serving Jesus with all of your heart. Truly inspirational! Her session as well as all the sessions are being posted here on the blog. I’d encourage you to check out the sessions when you have time.

Nebraska Senator Sues God

My friend Chad just sent this my way. This was in today's Omaha World Herald. As a former Nebraskan I can attest to the fact that Senator Ernie Chambers has always been quite the character. Read below...

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LINCOLN (AP) - Saying that God has caused "fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes," Nebraska's longest-serving state senator says he is suing the Almighty to make a legal point.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha filed a lawsuit against God in Douglas County District Court last week, saying that God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

He's seeking a permanent injunction against God.

Chambers, a self-proclaimed agnostic who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, said he filed the lawsuit to show that anybody can file a legal action against anybody for any reason.

That, he said, was recently illustrated by a federal lawsuit he said triggered his lawsuit against God.

Tory Bowen, 24, sued a state judge who barred the words "rape" and "victim," among other terms, in the trial of Pamir Safi, who Bowen says sexually assaulted her. Bowen said Lancaster District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront violated her free speech rights.

Chambers said Bowen's lawsuit is inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters.

"This lawsuit having been filed and being of such questionable merit creates a circumstance where my lawsuit is appropriately filed," Chambers said. "People might call it frivolous but if they read it they'll see there are very serious issues I have raised."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, in an order last week, expressed doubts about whether Bowen's lawsuit "has any legal basis whatsoever" and said sanctions may be imposed against Tory Bowen, the accuser, and her attorneys if they fail to show cause for the lawsuit.

The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge's language restrictions.

Cheuvront declared a mistrial in Safi's trial in July, saying pretrial publicity made it impossible to gather enough impartial jurors.

Bulletin Bloopers

OK, I know a few of these are as old as the hills and a few cheesier than a Packer's game, but there were some good ones in here worth sharing. Thanks for the forward mom.

• Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at St. Martin's Church. Please use the large double doors at the side entrance.
• The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
• The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water." The sermon tonight "Searching for Jesus."
• Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
• Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands.
• The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
• Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.
  
• Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "Hell" to someone who doesn't care much about you.
• Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
• Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again," giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
• For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
• Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
• Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Father Jack's sermons.
• The Priest will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing "Break Forth Into Joy."
• Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
• A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
• At the evenin g service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice.
• Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
• Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
• Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
• The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
• Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
• The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
• This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
• Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done.
• The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
• Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
• The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
• The Priest unveiled the church's new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours!

Worship and Arts Vision

This evening I was asked, with the Pastors over every ministry in the church, to give a 10-minute summary of how our new vision statement will impact our ministry area. I took advantage of the time to share a number of things that have been on my heart and mind likely. In retrospect I realize I over intellectualized things a bit, but hopefully it is to some benefit. Here is the first half of my talk narrowed in specifically on the “movement of the Gospel” language within our vision. The question I was trying to answer was how the indicatives of the Gospel should be reflected in the Worship and Arts ministry. Please comment with any constructive feedback you may have. I appreciate the input.

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Parkview’s Vision is…

Parkview strives to be a movement of the Gospel through the University of Iowa, Iowa City area, and the world by developing servant leaders through personal conversion, community formation, and cultural transformation.

To start I would like to consider the statement “movement of the Gospel” and how this vision distinctive is reflected within the Worship and Arts ministry at Parkview. The statement “movement of the Gospel” is the indicative statement of our vision. Theologically speaking, a Biblical indicative is defined as a statement about…

a. Who God is
b. What He has done in Christ
c. Who we are in Christ

It is in these indicatives of the Gospel that much of what we do in the Worship and Arts ministry resides. In this regard, let’s take a moment to consider the songs we sing, the art we create, the ordinances we observe, and the community we experience.

THE SONGS WE SING
(Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16)

Let’s first consider the songs we sing… From “Crown Him with Many Crowns”, to “In Christ Alone”, to “Before the Throne of God Above”, to “Everlasting God”, to “Uncreated One” it is our commitment to sing songs that center on the indicatives of the Gospel. Now and in the future our music, art, use of technology, and service programming must be unwaveringly committed to upholding a Gospel-centered, Christ-centered, Cross-centered focus in all we do. Though our forms and styles must change and continually adapt to the culture, we must never back down from the central focus of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

THE ART WE CREATE
(Romans 1:20, Exodus 35-37)

Now, let’s consider the art we create. Good art displays the nature of God both in His creative power and in His character. From the Old Testament narrative to passages like Romans 1:20, we see how God’s creation of nature, the arts, and music can be a testimony of who He is and of His creative nature woven in and expressed by the hearts of men and women. This is why those of us in the Worship and Arts ministry try to excellently express worship through a diversity of different Arts forms such as music, dance, drama, technology, and visual art. The diversity and excellence of our art both reflects the essence of our creator while also making our artistic expressions relevant to the culture we are trying to reach.

THE ORDINANCES WE OBSERVE
(Mark 14:22-25, Matthew 3:13)

Let’s consider for a moment the ordinances that we observe in obedience to Christ’s teachings. These ordinances represent the indicatives of the Gospel, what God has done in Christ and who we are as a result. These ordinances are the Lord’s Table and baptism. Over the last couple of years, those of us in the Worship and Arts ministry have worked with Pastor Jeff to increase the emphasis on the ordinances within our worship services.

With the Lord’s Table we have tried to use creativity regarding how communion is performed within the service, our goal being to make communion a memorable event within each service it is observed. We have also started making our baptism celebration a part of the main worship service by using pre-recorded video testimonies followed by live baptisms in the chapel which are simulcast to the worship center.

We see both baptism and the celebration of the Lord’s Table as immensely valuable, encouraging, and unifying activities commanded by Christ to take place within the community gathering of believers.

THE COMMUNITY WE EXPERIENCE
(1 John 3:1, Colossians 3:12-17)

As we consider the indicatives of the Gospel in regard to who we are in Christ, we realize that the gathered church in our community worship service is nothing less than a family and that the community we experience flows from this family identity. In response to this, we are working to prioritize community participation in all aspects of the service from our singing, to the reading of scripture, to the times we greet one another, to every aspect in the service where participation and community can and should be experienced.

Food Drive Update

Today we finished up the food drive following church services. It was a very encouraging and unifying experience for the church family. I loved walking around the grocery store and seeing people from Parkview everywhere filling their green colored grocery lists for the Iowa City Food Pantry and The Spot our ministry for at-risk youth. The people that worked at the Coralville HyVee were amazed by how busy the store was with people buying up food for those in need. What was more surprising to me was the three truckloads full of food you can see below. We've got a lot of sorting to do this week! Thanks to all of you who helped with organization and collecting the food items. If you didn't get a chance to hear Josh's message this weekend on doing justice, be sure to check it out at the Parkview website this week. It should be up by Monday afternoon.

Doing Justice

This weekend Josh Malone, our Pastor of Young Adults is delivering an excellent message on doing justice in our world. In it he discusses the purpose for doing justice and why, as believers who have been saved by the gospel, we should view evangelism and justice (i.e. social justice) as two wings on a plane. Obviously, this kind of balance makes us unrecognizable to a world anxious to ask if our church is a Republican or Democrat front. The gospel should definitely make us unrecognizable to either affiliation.

Following the message we encouraged the congregation to apply the message immediately by swinging by one of two area grocery stores to buy groceries for Iowa City’s food pantry or our ministry to “at risk” youth at our southeast location “The Spot.” I’ll post in a few days with updates on how much was donated.

Josh’s comments regarding political affiliations reminded me of this quote form Oz Guinness in his book “The Call”. It is a thought-provoking quote on the importance of avoiding the politicization of the church.

The problem of politicization is the lack of “tension.” Called to be “in” the world but “not of it,” Christian engagement in politics should always be marked by tension between allegiance to Christ and identification with any party, movement, platform, or agenda. If that tension is ever lacking, if Christian identification with a political movement is so close that there is not any clear remainder, then the church has fallen for a particularly deadly captivity… But to the degree that Christian activism in public life becomes a politicization of the church – an identification with political movements on either right or left without critical tension – to that degree Christian activism will betray Christ and stoke the fires of its own and the church’s rejection. There are signs that an American equivalent of Europe’s antipathy to politicized faith is already beginning to build. Few things are more fateful for the future of faith in the modern world than to see that this development stops.

Here's a few pictures of our food drop-off locations.

Battery Hack

Check out what is inside an A23 12 volt battery! Crazy!

(HT: Challies)

New Trends in Church Music

This was posted on Tim Hughe's blog a few days ago. Tim is the guy who wrote "Here I Am to Worship" and "Beautiful One" to name a few. Pretty interesting.

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Below is an extract from an American Newspaper objecting to new trends in church music.

“There are several reasons for opposing it. One, it’s too new. Two, it’s often worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style. Because there are so many new songs, you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances making people act indecently and disorderly. The preceding generation got along without it. It’s a money making scam and some of these new music upstarts are lewd and loose.”

Who were they attacking? It wasn't Delirious? or Matt Redman. They were attacking the hymn writer Isaac Watts, famous for writing ‘When I survey,’ in 1723! The old hymns once upon a time were radical and cutting edge. Our music and our songs must also always be pushing new ground. Let's go for it.

Piper on Cultural Engagement in Worship

The frightening freedom of worship in the New Testament is a missionary mandate. We must not lock this gospel treasure in any cultural strait-jacket. Rather let us find the place, the time, the dress, the forms, the music that kindles and carries a passion of the supremacy of God in all things. And may our communion with the living God be so real and the Spirit of God so powerfully present that the heart of what we do becomes the joy of all the peoples we are called to reach.

John Piper, “Our High Priest is he Son of God Perfect Forever” (Sermon)

(HT: Worship Notes)