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| I was checking my e-mail today and found a response from David Sessions to my open letter to CCM Patrol (now Patrol Magazine, www.patrolmag.com) so I thought I'd post it: Steve,
Thanks for your letter. I apologize for not responding 6 months ago ... I guess we were getting so much email that I overlooked it. Then I happened to see your xanga post on Google today, so I figured I would respect the time it took to express your concerns.
First, I certainly understand (and agree) that God probably uses music that we hate. (Though "hate" is a strong word ... most of our appearance of "hate" was manufactured for the sake of humor). But there are plenty of people proclaiming the (real or imagined) virtues of Christian music, and not nearly enough people calling it what it is. For every one CCM Patrol, there were five other major websites establishing the notion that the CCM industry was "God's music." The landscape has changed pretty dramatically just since we started in 2006, which is one reason we stopped focusing exclusively on Christian music. But that said, your point is well taken, and we have wrestled quite a bit with the problem of "bashing" something that might have been used for good.
On the other hand, can't really identify with finding "secular" music "empty and meaningless." Or the question of whether God would rather us listen to Coldplay or Casting Crowns. I don't think that's something we can answer, or necessarily have any business asking. Having mature spiritual eyes hardly means sacrificing quality for "Christianism"; and I am most emotionally and intellectually moved to marvel at God and his creation by the most awe-inspiring, excellently-executed music or other creative work. Using explicit Christianism to compensate for quality is something like shock comedy ... if you're truly clever you don't need to be shocking or perverse to get laughs. Similarly, if you're truly an inspired artist, you don't need to overuse God's name or simplistic theological concepts to make a powerful statement.
Once again, thanks a lot for your intelligent feedback (it's nice to get emails from people who can spell! :). If you haven't followed us in the past 6 months, we're now at http://www.patrolmag.com.
Sincerely,
David Sessions
Patrol Magazine First of all thank you, David, for responding to my concerns and doing so in such a respectful and articulate way. Not to be cynical, but I wasn't really expecting a response. Thanks for proving me wrong. I still don't entirely agree with the idea of the majority of Chritian music being diluted by "Christianism". At the very least, I believe that the vast majority of CCM musicians are truly using their music to express their hearts to God, even if it does come off as repetitive and watered down. And I do believe that we must give some credit to them for having the right intentions. As the old saying goes, the forrest would be an awfully quiet place if only the best birds sang. I think that applies to artists too. That said, my guess is that we probably agree on much more than we disagree. In a lot of ways I find the articles in Patrol Magazine artistically refreshing. All of us should seek to give our best to God whether that be through our work, our relationships, or our creativity. Nothing less will suffice. So thanks again David Sessions for your response and what you do. I pray that God will bless you in all your endeavors and keep you in His presence. In Christ, Steve | | |
| Alright, I said I was going to put up this post and I'm going to stay true to my word. (not like anyone reads this thing anyway).
My New Year's Resolutions!
Traditionally I have always made a single New Year's Resolution every year: to not make any New Year's Resolutions (which by it's paradoxical nature automatically breaks itself)
However this year I was feeling a little frisky and decided to actually resolve to do accomplish some things in the next 365 days. So here is my general list:
1.) Read at least 15 books this year
2.) Exercise at least twice a week
3.) Read scripture every day
4.) Pray continually
5.) Fast regularly for increasing periods of time
6.) Give to charity regularly
7.) Learn to play piano proficiently
8.) Grow in my ability on acoustic and electric guitar
9.) Have healthy relationships with everyone around me
10.) Fellowship regularly with other believers
11.) Memorize 50 verses
12.) Finish writing my book
Nothing extraordinarily profound there but all things I am committed to doing.
However I made one more resolution which is much deeper and far more difficult than any other:
*Let the question “What would God think of this?” dictate everything I do this year and journal about my attempts daily.
Last year I spent a good amount of time thinking about this and decided that if I could live my life with this question as the crux, I would succeed in greatly improving in the area of doing the will of God.
The idea is that before I make a decision I would ask myself, "What would God think of this?" At any time there are three possible answers:
a. God would want me to do it
b. God would not want me to do it
c. God doesn't really care if I do it
Does God care what I have for lunch? Maybe, maybe not. Does he care how much TV I watch? I would guess yes. Does he care what I do in my ministry? Obviously yes.
The process of answering these questions will force me to go deeper with God on an almost constant level. To try and find the answer in a given situation I will need to seek his will and continuously learn about his nature which requires me to spend a lot of time in prayer and in the word. Not to mention using my own common sense and logic to determine the best course of action.
To be honest, so far it's been pretty difficult to really apply this to my life, but I think I'm getting better at it.
I'll keep updating here about my experiment and see what I learn in the process.
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| Ok so originally I was planning my first blog of the new year to be a list and explanation of my resolutions. Don't worry that's coming (and with it probably the most challenging thing I've ever tried). But I was reading through Christianity Today magazine this morning and came across a letter I just had to respond to.
For those of you who attend, or attended, Eastern University I'm sorry but I'm going to rip on one Mr. Tony Campolo.
To give a bit of background on this, in the November issue of Christianity Today Stan Guthrie wrote a critical article about a new Christian-group called the Red Letter Christians. You can read that original article here: Why Red is Blue
The article makes an interesting pint that I think could be debated eternally, which honestly I'm not all that interested in at the moment. What does interest me is the response letter Tony Campolo wrote to the magazine. You can read that letter at the end of the article.
Specifically what interests me is a couple of sentences from that letter. Tony writes,
"After all, Stan, didn't Jesus himself make this same point in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said his teachings about marriage and divorce were to replace what Moses taught? Don't you think his red-letter words about loving our enemies and doing good to those who hurt us represent a higher morality than the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" kind of justice that we find in the Hebrew Testament? Is it really so hard to accept that, as God incarnate, Jesus set forth the highest law in the Bible, and therefore that law is more important than the Kosher dietary regulations we find in Leviticus and Deuteronomy?"
Woah, woah, woah. Hold on a second. It's time to resolve this issue once and for all. This isn't the first time I've heard this particular ecclesiatical argument, but it is the first time it's been stated so clearly by such a major leader in the Christian movement.
Let me make this abundantly clear for everyone. Jesus DID NOT replace Old Testament law with the Sermon on the Mount. That is incredibly shoddy biblical scholarship. Let me clear this up once and for all.
The Old Testament, specifically Leviticus and Deuteronomy, outlines a very specific structure for the theocratic state known as ancient Israel. God gave the israelites these laws, not merely as moral guidelines, but as governmental mandates to keep the peace, preserve and protect the religious culture, and provide for the common good of the people of Israel. At their heart lies morality, but not every single mandate is necessarily an ethical obligation. In other words just because something is legal or illegal does not necessarily make it moral or immoral (for instance it is legal in our society to get drunk, but the bible makes it very clear getting drunk is immoral).
The problem comes when we start looking at all old testament law as addressing the issue of morality. It was not inherently immoral for the Israelites to forget to bring sacrifices at the prescribed festivals and ceremonies. It was however immoral for them to disobey God. That relationship between law and morality is an important one to understand.
Now fast forward to the Sermon on the Mount. In this instance Jesus was speaking solely from a moral context. He wasn't intending for the religious leaders to hear his words and rush back to the temple and start crossing out the old levitical law and replace it with his words. When he was talking about marriage and divorce, basically what he was saying is "Just because it's legal doesn't make it right."
This is seen most clearly in the ever-taken-out-of-context passage on loving your enemies. You see the whole concept of an "eye for an eye" was originally a judicial mandate. The idea was that when punishment was determined for breaking the law, proper measure should be given based on the infraction. In other words the punishment must fit the crime. It's an eye for an eye, not a leg for an eye. It's a tooth for a tooth, not an eye for a tooth. That concept still dictates the judicial process of most developed countries in the world today (in theory anyway).
The problem in Jesus' day was that the people had taken a judicial concept and forced it into personal situations. Someone starts a bad rumor about you? Start one about them, it's an eye for an eye after all. Were you lied to by a close friend or was a promise broken? Then you don't have to be honest or trustworthy with them. Tooth for tooth. But that is NOT what God ever intended. So when Jesus talks about loving your enemy and turning the other cheek he is saying that these circumstances do not warrant legal injunction so the eye for eye concept doesn't apply. Instead we should take the moral high-ground and show love first.
Jesus DID NOT replace the concept of "an eye for an eye". Rather he RESTORED it to it's original intention. The same is true for teachings on marriage and enemies. Jesus did not replace some sort of lower morality with a high form as Mr. Campolo claims, but rather restores the original biblical passages to their proper governmental context.
In light of that, we see that ALL scripture is divinely inspired and useful for us when we truly understand the original intentions of God. However when we don't look at these passages in the light in which they were intended, our bad exegesis leads to a complete misunderstanding of the Bible.
And frankly I am deeply saddened by the fact that a biblical teach as prominent as Tony Campolo does not understand this.
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| Well it's been a few weeks so time for another one of my annoying rants. Ready? Here goes...
So I got the latest issue of Worship Leader Magazine today and this months emphasis is social justice. Throughout the magazine are articles, interviews, and opinions dedicated to this whole topic of social justice. It's social justice saturated!
Is it terrible for me to be sick of a movement just as everyone else seems to be embracing it?
So for those of you who have had your heads in the sand for the past few years, social justice is the new "in" thing. It's the latest cultural movement. The church has embraced it. Secular society has embraced it. And in the process it's been twisted and reshaping in numerous ways.
It's been politicized. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is basing his entire campaign on promises to help the needy, speak up for the under-privilidged, and take down their oppressors. Never mind that Mr. Edwards lives in a muti-million dollar house and gives less that a hundredth of a percent of his assets to charity in any given year.
It's been commercialized. Everyone cheered when Bono and the One Campaign joined forces with leading corporations including Gap Inc. to announce the Red Campaign, where corporations donated money to charity when someone bought a given red-colored item. The campaign made 25 million dollars for charity; Bono spent 250 million dollars promoting it; the corporations walked away with untold profits after they increased the markup of Red items to line their own pockets.
It's been culturalized. Last season American Idol gave back with a charity concert in the middle of their contest to help the poor in America and Africa. The event boosted the shows ratings and raised 70 million dollars to give to a charity that was then going to distribute it to other charities who were in charge of even more smaller charities. The money was raised, an idol was ousted, and the show went on without any further mention of the plight of the impoverished in America or Africa.
Yes, it's happened. Social Justice has become a true cultural movement, touted by celebrities, politicians, and large conglomerates. And the church has jumped right on board.
So what's my problem? Why am I so skeptical of all of this? Didn't Jesus say to help the poor, the widow, the orphan?
He absolutely said that. That is an enormous part of the mission of the church. In fact I believe that a church separated from the calling is a church separated from Christ. As Jesus said, to serve the poor is to serve Him. Not figuratively, actually.
My problem is that I don't like cultural movements in general, especially of this nature. Cultural movements are self-serving. Helping the poor has become cool, so that's why we help them. And as we proclaim or sudden compassion for those who live on a dollar a day we shout out loud our intention to help them so the whole world can hear. "Look at me," we cry melodramatically, "I am helping this poor orphan. You should be like me!" And all the while the ones we are "helping" wait for us to stop grabbing the attention of the world and start really trying to help.
Sooner or later this cultural movement will end. Some other cause will grab the attention of the masses and the church will follow blindly. And all those people who proclaimed the need will forget the need. And the only ones left to help will be the ones who were there before this movement ever started.
Listen to me. Help the poor. Give money to charity. Donate food. Serve in a soup kitchen or a retirement home or a prison. Give back. And do so without expecting anything back yourself, without any fanfare. Don't follow a movement, follow Christ. And long after the charity concerts and ad campaigns and political rhetoric, you can continue to make a difference in the lives of people who don't need a giant production, but merely a hand stretched out in love.
Don't follow the hype. Follow Christ. | | |
| Well I just returned from a 4 day trip to Atlanta to attend the National Worship Facilities Conference and Expo with three other staff members and two lay-persons from the church. "What the heck is a 'worship facilities conference'?" you ask. Well in short it is a conference dedicated to the planning and building of new worship facilities.
Yup it's all about bigger churches.
Currently our church is in the process of investigating and planning the construction of a new worship center that will be able to seat nearly twice the people we currently seat now. The final numbers haven't been determined yet, but the whole project will definitely cost in the millions of dollars.
Yes, millions. With an M.
Now I know how my generation would react to this. "You want to spend millions of dollars on a building? Do you know what that much money could do in the lives of the poor around the world? Your church must be just another one of those selfish Christian-clubs that have no sense of social justice and exist only for your own gratification!"
Ok maybe no one would come out and say it quite like that, but many Christians (especially young ones) believe that.
And to be honest I can't entirely blame them.
As a Christian for basically my entire life, attending the same Church for 15 years, I have seen the natural tendency of Christians to disengage from the world and turn inward because it is more comfortable (and by the way, it's that natural tendency that causes cliques in every level of academia and most levels of business in the secular world as well). Instead of launching out into the unchurched world and totally relying on God to provide everything we need (which He promised to do), we hide amongst those with our common identity taking solace in a common language, culture, and society. And we have justified ourselves by espousing our personal spiritual growth and maturity as evidence of the working of God. But that's not what God called us to do.
God called us to go. He called us to get up out of the places we feel most safe and go to the places with the most risk and trust Him to use us as He will. And frankly, most Christians do not do that (that doesn't include the vast majority of full time missionaries who gave up their entire lives to share to love of Jesus to the peoples of other countries).
So in response to this trend, the upcoming generation has grabbed hold of the social justice movements and reject anything that even smells of materialism or narcissism (large churches included). They believe in saving the world through saving the planet (eco-evangelists), saving the poor, widowed and orphaned (socio-evangelists), and seeking multi-cultural expressions of worship (multi-culturalists). And thus at the dawn of the twentyfirst century a new movement is sweeping the church that will define it for the next half century (in my opinion at least).
Is anyone else as tired of church "movements" as I am?
At the conference I got the chance to listen to a pastor named Craig Groeschel speak about his church and they're journey. Honestly I can't remember much of that story but I do remember what the real point of his message was. He asked all the attendees to consider two words: "What if?" I've been thinking about this yesterday and today and have come up with a few questions that I think pertain to this subject of the future of the church. Here goes:
What if...?
What if the church stopped defining itself by cultural movements and started defining itself by the movement of the spirit?
What if the church truly embraced BOTH commandments, to love God and love others and explored all of what those two statements meant?
What if instead of chastising, critiquing, or copying what "that other church" is doing, we spent true time on our knees seeking God's will for this group of believers in this time?
What if spiritual maturity was defined, not by ones ability to adhere to a list of rules or a certain theological, political, or sociological supposition, but by the fervor with which a person desires God, His will to be done, and His kingdom to come to this fallen world?
What if young Christians embraced the wisdom of older Christians, and older Christians embraced the passion of younger Christians and they worked together, unified in the love and grace of Jesus Christ?
What if we stopped using Christianity as an opportunity to be right, and started seeing it as an opportunity to do right?
I know most young Christians hate large churches. And I know most older Christians hate the irreverence they perceive in the younger Christians. But at the end of the day it's really not about whther several million dollars could be better used in helping the poor overseas or building a sanctuary to attract the unchurched in the community. In the end it's really about doing what God desires us to do.
Now that's revolutionary. | | |
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