Dang Los.

Making me cry on a Friday morning sitting alone in my house.

My dog now thinks I am crazy.

Go sponsor a child.

Make a difference.

I really haven’t written much.

I guess because I didn’t have much to say.

Well. With words. I believe in speaking through whatever moves you.

Lately, it has been pictures.

But I have had something on my mind the past couple of days.

And it involves the church.

Let me start this off by saying that I am not bashing the church, religion or anything like that.

I have just been quietly wondering what the church is. Should be.

I haven’t been to church in like a month. Perhaps more. I can’t remember.

I do remember the last time I went. I was so unfocused it wasn’t even funny.

Daily quiet time? Nope. haven’t been doing that either.

And I honestly feel the same spiritually as I did when I was going to church regularly.

I still pray. I still talk to God sometimes when I am in my car and periodically in my head throughout the day.

Does this make me a heathan? A backslider?

And what is the church?

Does the church look like this or does it look like a group of bloggers going to Uganda to make a difference in the lives of people they have never met.

Help me out.

I was reading the latest issue if Relevant magazine. In it there is a really excellent quote by Rob Bell about how he deals with facing critics.

…there are around a billion people in the world who don’t have clean drinking water, and 46 million Americans don’t have health care. That means if they get sick, they don’t have anywhere to go. Half of the world, 3 billion people, live on less than two American dollars a day, so the world is an emergency. It’s on fire. It’s drowning. It’s an absolute crisis, and when followers of Jesus can think of nothing better to do with their time than to pick apart and shred to pieces the work of other followers of Jesus who are trying to do something about the world, that’s tragic, and I don’t owe those people anything. The world is desperately in need of people who will break themselvesand pour themselves out for the reconciliation of all things. When a Christian can find nothing better to do with their time in the face of this much pain and heartbreak, you start realizing that some Christians need to be saved. How a person would have energy to take shots at other Christians is just mid-boggling…

It is a great article in a great magazine. I encourage you to check it out.

This post started as a thought in my head as I read comments on Los’ blog about the drummer boy song they did.

I thought it rocked. Others thought it was a little “much” for church.

That got me thinking.

Is there a right way? Or a wrong way?

As long as it is worship, aren’t they all the right way?

I like to think that the Psalms were contemporary for their time. Just as the hymns of old were probably cutting edge when they were introduced.

We are taught to do everything we do for the glory of God and to do it with all of our heart.

Why does that mean that when we worship we should do it any other way than all out?

Now I am not saying that there is anything wrong with hymns. They are beautiful. I love singing them.

But that doesn’t mean they are the only way to worship in song.

And neither is rocking out.

Worshiping is done in your heart. And it doeesn’t matter if the lights are on or off, you raise your hands or leave them down, the music is blaring or acoustic, or the preacher is live in person or live on screen.

You see. In the end. None of that matters. As long as the focus of the end product is on God.

That. Is what matters.

Recent posts

steven.russell is proudly powered by WordPress and designed by XiAP Design Studio.