The Leaving of a Worship Pastor

Worship is a large part of my life, and my meaning. However, as you may have discerened, I'm concerned not only about the "quality" of worship, but about how worship teams function. this was originally written in March, 2006.

After a wonderful year, the Worship Pastor at our church decided it was time to leave. Her decision was a difficult one to be sure: the team has been spriritually challanged and deepened; worship has been permeating our services like I've not seen before. Who would not want to stay and see this continue?

Click the post title to continue reading...But, the personal cost was too great. As far as I understand, she needed to take time to reconnect with her family. She and her husband worked different scheudules, and as I know from personal experience, trying to maintain a relationship in that environment is more hard work than it really needs to be.

When she came, I was cautious - sceptical might be too harsh a word, but not far from it. What she was proposing, pushing, us into was far from my concept of worship, or, at least, ordered worship. She was all for emotional outpouring, fully throwing yourself into worship of God with every fibre of your being, simply to be with Him, and experience Him again and again like you never have before.

My worship background has always been in mainstream churches, mostly of the Anglican variety, but also more recently in a contempory style. The change in me has become evident I think in how I've approached it. Worship becomes more involved, more approachable to a contemporary congregation in a contempory setting. Being not so much my old myself, there's no doubt I've become freer in worship, and to worship in ways that express my heart for God.

Obviously we clashed on a number of things - it always going to happen when people have a different view than your own. But, in the wisdom of hindsight, I think that her perspective enhanced my own a little. And for that I thank her.

What was the Garden like?

Some thoughts generated by a sermon I heard a while ago, "Where did I come from?"

I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses.y But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old, and I reply and say, well presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well, and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action, and therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.

Sir David Attenborough, from the BBC documentary Life on Air

Interesting, eh? How much of nature is as God originally intended, and how much of it is a result of our corruption of nature, due to our part, walking away from God?

Click the post title to continue reading...It's hard one to get a hold on. Sometimes I feel that being human, and being Christian is more of a partnership with God, than in Him ruling and dictating my life.

Back to creation. In the quote above, Attenborough alludes that nature is inhernently violent. I wonder what he has seen, what ends up on the cutting room floor, that is just too much for our already violently soaked TV. I think we get glimpses of what it means to be wild from these programs, but only glimpses. Lions tear down wilderbeast, kill them, and rip them apart for food when barely dead. Fish hunt and eat other fish using all sorts of deception to ensure their own survival at the expense of another. Lizards eat birds eggs. Even mating dances may be seen as the careful coercion of the opposite sex, rather than the love based, beautiful ritual we make it into. This is not just niceness and all things soft and lovely. This is a world in which animals fight for survival. In which there is conflict, where rarely do creatures die becuase of old age.

And God created it like this. Sure, He added the butterflies and the roses (with lovely thorns too, don't forget), and they have a part to play in that wild realm, but essentially, nature is wild, and harsh, and violent. And God looked on it, and said it was good. What does that mean?

Well, that was where the original post ended. I still think the question is a good one, although I think was planning on answering it! I'll leave it open to comment.

Told you I wasn't dead...

Well, I'm back. Or at least, I intend to be.

A lot is going on right now, in all areanas of life. Family. Church. Work. Life. You name it, I feel like I'm swimming through dorm school custard in a darkened room.

And God is doing is something challanging and positive in my life. Changes are afoot. I'll tell you about them sometime.

But first, let me round off a few posts that have been hanging around. They won't be as polished or complete as I'd like them to be, but at least they'll be out there.

Sorry for the long wait.

Blessings,
pk