Speaking of hymns...

Since I'm already writing about hymns, I thought I'd post a couple of other hymn-related items.

First, check out this hymn :

Hast Thou Heard Him, Seen Him?
anonymous early 20th century hymn (alt. Kevin Twit)

1. Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
Chief among ten thousand own Him;
Joyful choose the better part

Chorus: Captivated by His beauty
Worthy tribute haste to bring;
Let His peerless worth constrain thee
Crown Him now unrivaled King.

2. What can strip the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not a sense of right or duty
But the sight of peerless worth

3. ‘Tis the look that melted Peter
‘Tis the face that Stephen saw
‘Tis the heart that wept with Mary
Can alone from idols draw

That's pretty much the biznomb. It's a great example of how sometimes a few lines of poetry can say what it would take several paragraphs of prose to communicate. Kevin Twit (the Indelible Grace mastermind) posted it on his blog (and the full original text is included in the post as well).

Second, Brian Moss posted his version of "In the Cross of Christ I Glory" on his blog for downloading. The CD it was on is now out of print, so he decided to give it away. The lyrics are a bit cryptic, but I like the idea of the hymn--namely, that the cross is neither made void by bad times nor made unnecessary by good times. It's similar to the idea communicated by that Matt Redman song, "Blessed Be Your Name," only it centers around the cross instead of my resolve. With some explanation (always a good thing), this could be a useful, meaningful congregational song.

Come, ye sinners

I lead worship at our Sunday church services. Other people participate with me, and my goal is to work toward pushing others toward that leadership role, but for now I lead each week. When I say that I lead worship, I mean that in the service I take a leadership role and try to direct the congregation's thoughts and affections Godward, setting the truth before them, with the goal that we would treasure him more than anything else, and that that treasuring would be manifested in our lives as faithful obedience, sacrificial love, and the forsaking of sin in our lives (among other things).

If you think about it, this is a hopelessly impossible task. We're talking about humans here. Each one of us is a sinner, and we're all, as Bill Hybels says, on the downward escalator. During the week we have been bombarded on all sides with the lies of the world--in advertisements, in our entertainment, and in our culture's values in general--preaching to us that we don't need God, that other things will satisfy us more than him, that he doesn't know what's best for us, or what have you. And the thing is, more often than not we believe this message. We buy it, hook, line, and sinker, and we go back to it over and over again, even though God continually proves it wrong. To put it in the prophet Jeremiah's words, "Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:12-13) To put it like Paul does in Romans 1, we "exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator."

So even though there is nothing in the universe more satisfying than walking with God, not one of us naturally seeks him. I could teach this from a theological standpoint, but for now I'll just say that in my own experience, both from knowing my own heart and from pastoral ministry, this has been evident. And it makes the idea of trying to confront this head-on seem, as I said before, crushingly hopeless. Of course, the Holy Spirit can open hearts and change lives, reveal truth to our minds and put affections in order. But without him we really are hopeless.

Each Sunday morning for the past several months, I have tried to listen to the hymn "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched" both to remind myself of this hopelessness apart from God (lest I fail to hope only in him to actually accomplish something in a worship service) and to remind myself of his promised grace and mercy. Here are the lyrics:

Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus, ready, stands to save you,
Full of pity, joined with power.
He is able, He is able;
He is willing; doubt no more.

Come ye needy, come, and welcome,
God's free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.
Without money, without money
Come to Jesus Christ and buy.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Bruised and broken by the fall;
If you tarry 'til you're better,
You will never come at all.
Not the righteous, not the righteous;
Sinners Jesus came to call.

Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.
This He gives you, this He gives you,
'Tis the Spirit's rising beam.

Lo! The Incarnate God, ascended;
Pleads the merit of His blood.
Venture on Him; venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.

There was a time when I used to think this sort of lyric would be applicable only to the unconverted, and that believers didn't need to hear this; but now I know I need, as all believers do, to be confronted with these truths constantly. I have never found a Spanish version of this hymn, so if anyone knows of one, let me know. If I was leading worship somewhere regularly in English, I might very well start off every service with this song (at least until everyone got hacked off about it and I got in trouble).

By the way, there is a tampered-with version of this hymn that became popular during the Second Great Awakening that cuts off the last two lines of each verse (some of the most pointed lines) and adds a sappy chorus. This was obviously done to make it more friendly to the revivalist theology of the day, but it changes the meaning of the song completely. You can buy the good version on iTunes from Matthew Smith's album, Even When My Heart Is Breaking.

Gear in Mexico

Something I don't think I have shared about yet is the interesting experiences I have had playing music in Mexico. The ability to play guitar and sing has often saved me from those inevitable situations in which you visit a church somewhere and they ask you 30 minutes before the service to preach--a lot of times they ask me to sing a song instead, which is obviously much easier.

The fun thing about borrowing instruments, however, is that you never know what you're going to get. I have been handed guitars, for example, with both a nut and a zero fret! Last time I was in Xalapa they asked me to sit in with the worship band, but I hadn't brought my guitar. They had an old Yamaha electric sitting around, along with a tiny Crate amp. I had until then never played electric guitar in public, but I thought that day was as good as any for a debut. Luckily we had arrived early, so I had a few minutes to try to get the thing in tune. Tuning is always an adventure when the strings are old and rusty, but I was able to make it happen, and we had a chance to run through the tunes. The crazy thing was that the lower frets had grooves worn into them so deep that the strings were buzzing on all my open chords, but the tuning got worse the higher up the neck I went. So I was trying to concentrate on avoiding certain notes while also trying to make up harmony vocal parts on the fly. Nothing in the UNT College of Music could have prepared me for stuff like this.

It sort of reminds me of an interview I read one time of Bill Frisell answering the question of how he learned to play the guitar so innovatively and expressively. He said that when he lived in Belgium for a few years in the late 70s he had a hard time finding guitars that played in tune, so he was having to literally bend the neck of the guitar to try to compensate, and that over time taught him to manipulate a new sound out of the instrument. Maybe I'll come back from Mexico someday and play like Bill Frisell. Probably not.

Another fond memory involves me leading worship with a bad roof leak about ten inches from my right arm and having to concentrate on not kicking over the bowl of water it was dripping into. Fun stuff.

Do you think Maggie stands out at her school?

 

Shows that have come to Monterrey since I have been here

[in no particular order]

• Lenny Kravitz
• U2
• Metallica
  
• Rolling Stones
• Air Supply
• Poison
• Bryan Adams
• Kenny G
  

Coming soon:

• Journey
• Pet Shop Boys
• INXS
• Morrissey
• Meatloaf
  

Cultural differences between the US and Mexico

Whew. It has been awhile since the last post. Sorry to those of you who feel betrayed or neglected (all, like, one and a half of you).

I've been meaning to write about my experiences of culture shock in Mexico for awhile. Though Mexican culture and American culture are much more similar than, say, Afghani culture and American culture, there are many important differences. Today I will write about one of the most important and shocking: the difference in permissible uses of mayonnaise. [I'm including here Miracle Whip since, though it tastes different, pretty much serves the same function.]

In the US, we use mayo for sandwiches (including hamburgers) and tuna, chicken, or pea salad. Period. And those salads are the referent of the "salad dressing" description. You may not put mayonnaise on your chef salad.

In Mexico, however, those boundaries are crossed on all sides. Mayonnaise is generously slathered on hot dogs (Costco here has mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, and jalapeño pepper dispensers for their delicious hot dogs), elote (corn, either on-the-cob or in-a-cup), and potato chips, among other things. There is a huge billboard for McCormick Mayonnaise that stretches over the ten lanes of one of the main roads that simply pictures, on the end of a fork, a bite of steak with a big dab of mayo on it. Mmmmm.

Why you should check out Ross King's worship music

Ross King is a worship pastor/recording artist/sonwriter in the Bryan/College Station area. He has been releasing singer-sonwriter type records for years, but in the past few years he has come out with a couple of outstanding records of music written for use in corporate worship. Specifically, I'm talking about To Make God Famous, vol. 1, To Make God Famous, vol. 2 and Soulspeak. On each of these three records you'll find several songs that will be immediately useful for worship leaders in corporate worship settings for at least the following reasons:

• Ross writes from a profound understanding of the centrality of the gospel. In other words, the gospel is explicitly the theme of many of the songs, and we can never have too much of that. Indeed, there is an ironic and tragic shortage of such songs in contemporary corporate worship music.
  
• The songs remind us that sin is basically idolatry--that is, the worship of other things in place of the God to Whom all worship is due.
• Ross's writing demonstrates an excellent practical understanding of the doctrines of grace. I say "practical" because it's not necessarily expressed in the theological language we're used to using when we discuss Calvinism--but it's there nonetheless. This actually leads me to my next point...
• Ross is good at taking familiar truths and stating them in new ways to make us see them from new angles. He actually wrote an article pertaining to this on his website a few years back that is brilliant and sure to offend (in a good way). The way he has his site set up I can't figure out how to link to it directly, but I strongly recommend that anyone interested in writing songs for corporate worship give it a read. If more worship songwriters would take him seriously the Church in the English-speaking world would benefit tremendously. Go to Ross's website, click on "Writings", and then find the article called "On worship songwriting".
• The music is solid, but not necessarily anything groundbreaking (which Ross readily admits in the liner notes), but I say this works to your advantage, because that way you'll feel less tied to the album arrangement and more motivated to come up with something creative with your own group.
• My friend, supporter, and object of my man-crush, Nathan Kawaller, plays bass on Soulspeak.

If you're only gonna get one of these, get To Make God famous, vol. 2--almost every track is great. If you can only get a few songs (the link above takes you to the eb+flo website, where you buy individual tracks), get 2, 4, 6, 9, or 10 from that same album.

5 minute trip through the past

In 1999, the first year Melissa and I were married, we lived in an apartment on Stella Street in Denton, which is in an area that everyone used to call "Cement City". That was the apartment we brought Anna home to when she was born. I was driving a delivery truck for Suburban Propane and serving with the music team of DBC's college ministry, College Life. As part of that, I had a Bible study that met on Sunday afternoons--a bunch of guys who were music students at UNT. They were all much better musicians than me, and, what made the study so intimidating to me, they were all smarter than me. I remember getting into some really interesting discussions about the justice of hell, predestination, etc. We were going through a study written by Ben Laugelli called Structure (which, sadly, no longer exists).

I'm extremely proud of all the guys that were in that study. One is now in Austin working for a super-cool web design company. One is in medical school. One is, along with his wife, emulating the heart of our Heavenly Father through foster parenting and adoption. One is doing graduate work at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (and apparently continuing to jam while doing so). One is in a new Austin band that has a new CD out. Two of the dudes have been laboring faithfully to lead their local churches in the worship of the living God (and train others to do the same), one in Vancouver and one in Denton (who is also fixing to go to Argentina as a missionary). Four of the guys are in a band called Midlake, whose appearance on NPR started me on this trip down memory lane.

(Manny Rios, I didn't forget about you. I just don't know where you are. If you read this, give me a shout, bro.)

Interesting things in my world 1

Carlos let me borrow a travel coffee mug last week when we left from his house to go check out a place for the baptism service. Later I noticed that it was no ordinary travel coffee mug--this one has an RCA jack. Obviously it's mono, and I don't know whether it's RCA in or out, but one thing's for sure: this is the most rockin' cup of coffee I've had in a long time.

Corporate worship forms

Bob Kauflin is on vacation, but his blog doesn't cease to be brilliant while he's away. Yesterday he posted this quote from Harold Best's book, Music Through the Eyes of Faith:

The Scriptures include or allude to just about every approach to worship there is: organized, spontaneous, public, private, simple, complex, ornate, or plain. Yet there is no comment anywhere about any one way being preferred over another. Rather, it is the spiritual condition of the worshiper that determines whether or not God is at work. This fact alone countermands the tendency to assume that if we could just find the correct or fashionably relevant system, all will be well and God will come down. This doesn’t imply that we have no responsibility to make intelligent and sensitive choices or to be creative. But whatever these choices eventually are, they are incapable all by themselves of establishing the superiority of one system over another.

I have alot to say on this matter, but I'll save that for a future post. For now, I'll just ask this question: If this is true (and I think it is), then why in most churches in America do we spend 95% of the time talking about forms and stylistic preferences instead of "the spiritual condition of the worshiper"?

Related article...

...in the latest issue of Lark News.

Speaking of acoustic guitars...

People are always asking me what kind of guitar they should buy. Of course, the general answer is that you get what you pay for, although ocassionally a cheaper guitar might sound better than it's price might indicate (and vice versa). But I have been in some stores and played a few of these Epiphone Masterbuilt acoustics, and they sound better than their price range. Musician's Friend is having a clearance on them right now, which I guess either means Epiphone is no longer making them or that Musician's Friend is no longer carrying them. If you have 500-700 bones to spend and are in the market for a guitar, I would recommend these. I know, I know--you were thinking more like $200. But the only way you're going to score a guitar this good for $200 is to buy a vintage guitar on eBay that's in need of some major repair, in which case you A) need to know what you're doing, and B) are going to end up spending a few hundred dollars more anyway.

This is what has been missing from my worship leading

Dean is now making a Flying V acoustic guitar. I mean, seriously, do you know how humiliating it has been all these years being up there trying to shred all my worship licks on a dreadnought-shaped axe?

Worship en español

In preparing a sermon in Spanish this week on corporate worship, it has been interesting trying to figure out what word to use for "worship". There simply is no word in Spanish that communicates exactly what that English word means. The words people generally use are "adoración" (adoration), "alabanza" (praise), maybe even "culto" (which would refer more to the liturgy), but none of those have the range of meaning of the word "worship". The good thing is that many of the problematic uses of the word are therefore avoided (such as equating "worship" with the singing time, etc.), though "adoración" and "alabanza" have their own set of problems. In any case, using the whole "worth-ship" thing is out of the question.

In the end, I called Carlos Astorga Solis and he advised me to go with "adoración corporativa" and explicitly make the connection of the word "corporate" with the body of Christ.

Cheesy worship technology

Quentin Schultze has written an interesting, if rather brief, article on the use of technology in worship (HT: Justin Taylor). I like his criteria of "fittingness". This last part needed to be said, and I'm glad it was said by someone who's not young:

Young people tell me that a lot of the high-tech worship is "cheesy." Yet adults think that such worship is what "kids" want. Ironically, older adults tend over time to be greater supporters of the use of PowerPoint and video in worship than do younger members... Young people witness some of the cheesy video and computer "art" in worship and they see it for what it is: kitsch. Stock clip art. Old-fashioned, 19th-century background images under song text: the sun shining on the Cross, running streams, baby faces -- all of the stereotypical images that say, "Christians are crummy artists and naive sentimentalists." To them, such kitsch is like handing out illustrated kids' Bibles to high school students and telling them that these images represent the depth of insight and excellence of the Christian faith.

Obviously, the greatest danger in the use of technology in worship is not just that it be cheesy; if it's not well thought-out, it can easily be downright misleading. I remember hearing a recording of Bob Kauflin lecturing at SBTS in which he commented that he's not a big fan of images in worship for various reasons. A background image of clouds, he said, doesn't help us think of holiness--the cross of Christ helps us think of holiness. Clouds just make us feel, well, dreamy. But isn't that way more typical of what we see in worship service across the country?

We take great care to make sure that what is communicated from the pulpit be the intentional, studied, faithful preaching of the word of God, and rightly so! If a picture is worth a thousand words, why would we let the images we introduce on our worship be chosen and prepared by someone who is less a theologian?

My granddad

My granddad went into the hospital last Friday. They thought he'd had a stroke, because he was having a hard time moving his left leg. It turned out not to be so bad--some blood had clotted between his brain and skull, so they were able to take care of it fairly simply. So he'll be going home any day now, with half his head shaved. I wish I could have been there to visit him in the hospital.

The public reading of Scripture

Good post by Josh Otte over at Eucatastrophe with some tips for scripture reading in corporate worship. (Thanks for the recommendation, JD.)

Though he does address it in point 4 when he talks about preparation, I would emphasize that your reading of the text (meaning out-loud) will depend heavily on your understanding of the author's argument. The way your voice inflects will change depending on how you understand what the author is saying. So I'd say it's important for those who read scripture to have a basic exegesis of the text in mind before they get up to read--perhaps the preacher could give this to the scripture-reader in a phone call during the week.

Regarding the monotone reading of God's word, I'd say a church needs to carefully choose who's reading publically just as they do with those who preach and sing. Some people read aloud well, and some don't. I guess erring on the other extreme would apply as well--you wouldn't want someone who's distractingly theatrical.

Avoiding the "wall of sound"

I'm fixing to get with the guitar players in my worship band and have a little heart-to-heart about playing less. The deal is that, in every song, from beat one until the end, both the electric player and the acoustic player play full chords in a steady strumming pattern. They're never not playing, and what they play is pretty much always full volume. (We also have a keyboard player who does the same, but that's another story.) Their philosophy is, basically, the more notes you can cram into the song, the better. I know playing too much is a temptation for everyone, because I used play in Denton with some professional players who had that tendency as well. But I think things are magnified for these guys because of their background in Mexican folk guitar styles (like rondalla, where several guitars all play the same thing all the time), as well as because they simply haven't been exposed to alot of music that makes successful use of dynamics.

My plan is to listen to a bunch of good music with them (the easy part), and also try to get them to buy into the idea that, when playing with a group, the goal is to play as a group. I was impressed several months back by a post on Andy Osenga's blog in which he was talking about his old band, the Normals:

One day we were talking about symphonies, and how they’re a group of musicians who make this amazing sound, but everybody only plays one note at a time, whereas we had two guitars and a piano banging out big, six-note chords while the bass player played the bottom note right along with us. Somehow our sound was much less stirring and beautiful.

We started experimenting with what we played. Instead of playing chords, we tried to each play a melody, like a symphonic instrument, that would all add up to voice the chords. Eventually we got to the point where we didn’t feel a song was done until we could sit aroud and each sing our parts individually and know that the song still made sense. This gave our sound a real depth and complexity that it had never had before, and we were all doing less. It’s usually easier to just play chords, but this really set our band apart AND we all became much better musicians in the process. Not that we became the best band in the world or anything, but this philosophy really transformed the band, at least to us.

Obviously, in a worship band, where we have a limited amount of rehearsal time, we're not going to realistically be able to create individual parts for every instrument on every song. But I like this kind of thinking. Plus I dug the Normals' last album alot.

The High Road

Here's where I share with you some music that moves me. For a musician, or for that matter anyone who loves music, it's always painful trying to get someone to appreciate some musical moment on a favorite record, only to have them ask some unrelated question right in the middle of the part that sticks out to you as being so awesome. So I figure if I do it on this blog, at least I can't hear you talking over the brilliance.

If you go to the ANTI- Records website, you can download for free a Bettye LaVette performance of a song called "The High Road". Do it. No, seriously, do it.

I listen to alot of music, and a lot of good music, but rarely do I hear recordings where the songwriting and performance come together so effectively. The copy on the ANTI- Records site says that the song was written by Sharon Robinson especially for LaVette. This song has that pathetic quality where you know the grandiose declarations of stoic resolve you're hearing barely mask deep, regretful, and perplexed wounds, almost as if she keeps talking just to keep from bursting into tears. These days, all the hit break-up songs have the female victim hurling a scathing deluge of vengeful one-liners that essentially say, "I hate you, you %^$@#*!", but this song, like all good art, is worth a thousand words.

And LaVette's performance is as convincing as it could possibly be. As she sings, "I'll walk away with my head held high, Forgive and forget--uh, uh, daddy--not this time", you simultaneously burn from her scorn and hurt from her pain and weakness. In his review of the album at Reveal, Josh Hurst says:

And for her part, LaVette sings each song with a sort of lived-in passion, as if it’s her last night on Earth and she’s hell-bent on telling her life story. She may be a soul singer by trade, but don’t let that fool you—here she channels something more akin to black magic than traditional R&B, singing in a pained hush one minute and spitting her way into a righteous fury the next.

I'm a huge fan of this kind of production, and the band takes a masterful "less is more" approach in the performance. They accompany her so minimally in the quiet parts that it seems on the verge of exploding when they build. Check out the drum fills at the end of each major section--I don't think I've ever played with a drummer who'd be willing to play such a thing.

Anyway, as outstanding as each of the elements is--the songwriting, the accompaniment, the vocal performance--it's really the way they all combine that brings me into this character's head.

Comments?

Substantial worship music

God is glorious. He is worthy of praise, and for very good reasons. Here's a quote from John Piper's Desiring God:

The death of Christ is the wisdom of God by which the love of God saves sinners from the wrath of God, and all the while upholds and demonstrates the righteousness of God.

God's glory has facets as diverse as holy wrath and saving love, and yet he does things that reveal that he in fact harmoniously possesses these attributes more than anyone else in the universe. He is dependent on no one. No man can stay God's hand as he sovereignly rules the universe, and yet he does it with unlimited knowledge and perfect wisdom. Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

There is obviously lots more to be said, but my point is this: there are absolutely compelling grounds for the praiseworthiness of God, but for some reason the almost universal trend since the 2nd Great Awakening has been to ignore all that. Instead of making God the subject of our songs, we like to make our praise the subject. And that's in the songs that actually make sense. More often, the songs that are coming out today are just an incoherent stringing together of pious-sounding phrases, as if they were written using a P&W edition of those poetry refrigerator magnets. I'm reading this hilarious book by a British writer named Nick Page, called And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense, in which he makes a plea for worship songwriters to write songs that say something coherent and meaningful. I think that's a timely exhortation.

But more than that I want to ask why we think it's more worshipful to ignore all the reasons the scripture gives us to praise God, and go for pure emotional fluff. Don't hear me saying that emotions have nothing to do with worship--I'm with Jonathan Edwards that "true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." But you don't just come right out of the hatch with cathartic affections. People don't come to church on Sunday with hearts bursting forth with praise to God for all he is and does. They have to be given a vision of God to respond to. You have to labor to paint them a huge biblical vision of God with a view to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, awaken those affections in them.

That's why I love old hymns. Not all hymns, mind you--most hymnals published in the last 75 years are 75% garbage. But the great hymns are ones that present to us something about God's nature or characture or acts that elicits a response of praise (or joy, or godly sorrow, or some other holy affection). I'm glad groups like Indelible Grace are writing new music to these hymns, and I've done that a bit myself.

But I'd like to see some completely new songs written that will feed our faith with truth presented memorably, that will remind us of who God is and what he has done, and that will be our favorites, not because they sound just like Coldplay, but because of how much the truth they communicate has carried us through difficult times.

Here are a few examples:

• "He Is Altogether Lovely" - written by Eric Schumacher, pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He wrote the words, and suggests they be sung to the hymn tune called "Hyfrydol", which you may have heard with the lyrics "Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners" or "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus". This hymn is based on the content of Jonathan Edwards' sermon on "The Excellency of Christ". When was the last time you sang a song in church that was explicitly about the greatness of Christ? Seriously, when?

• "Awake, My Soul" - A great song written by Sandra McCracken, who is married to Derek Webb and has contributed songs and vocals to all of the Indelible Grace albums. Her album, The Builder and the Architect, is one of the best worship music records I own.

• "Indescribable" - written by Laura Story, recorded by Chris Tomlin.

Music recommendation: Matthew Perryman Jones

I'm gonna play to my strengths on this blog and do some music recommendations, since people are always asking me for them. I have bought an absolutely ridiculous amount of music on iTunes since I moved to Mexico--more than I care to admit, actually. I also buy alot of CDs of independent artists that can't be found on iTunes.

I'll start with a CD I recently received in the mail: Throwing Punches in the Dark by Matthew Perryman Jones. Matthew is one of my favorite male vocalists, so I knew this CD was going to be good. (Actually, I very impatiently anticipated its release.) He has sung a few songs on each of the four Indelible Grace records. His last few records have been more stripped down and folky for the most part, but they were both full of great songs performed well. This record is a full band record, produced by Neilson Hubbard (who produced Glen Phillips' new record--more on that later). Turns out it's even better than I thought. You have to order it through the link on his MySpace site, but it's worth it.

Legalism seen from an eternal perspective

I just saw this post on Justin Taylor's blog about the recent resolution passed at the Southern Baptist Convention. I wholeheartedly agree with Justin's thoughts, but what stood out to me more was part of a John Piper sermon that he quoted. Speaking of an amendment to his church's constitution in which he seeks to abolish the requirement that all members be teetotalers, Piper (a teetotaler himself) says:

I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves. And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism. If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment, after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement. Satan is so sly. "He disguises himself as an angel of light," the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 11:14. He keeps his deadliest diseases most sanitary. He clothes his captains in religious garments and houses his weapons in temples.

The pastor of my home church always says (something along the lines of) that the bad thing about legalism is not that it makes Christianity too hard, but that it makes it too easy. In other words, legalists easily follow their rules and think they have earned God's favor, when an essential truth of Christianity is that no one can (see Romans 3).

I love it when someone brings this kind of biblical clarity to bear on these issues.

Leading worship: disclaimer

I am, among other things, a worship leader. That means I get the opportunity of leading the gathered Church in the worship of her Creator and Redeemer. And in my church circles, that almost always means through music, though many would (rightly) lament the fact that "worship" has come to be synonimous with "singing"--more on that in a future post.

Though that's an unspeakably wonderful privilege, it's also a sobering responsibility. I love Jesus Christ, and I love his Church, and so I have some strong feelings about worship in the Church in America. So that's a topic I'll be posting on frequently. If you're interested in worship leading, first go and read everything at Bob Kauflin's blog before you waste any time on what I have to say. Bob has much more valuable input than mine, and it's always expressed so well and with such grace that you can actually learn alot just from observing his manner. Before he dives into some topic regarding worship leading, he'll first talk to you about the gospel, and in that way he'll lead you to worship before he's even started dealing with worship leading. I have tremendous respect for the man, and I have benefitted greatly from what he has offered just in the few months he's had a blog.

Subject matter

Oh, I forgot to tell you what this blog is gonna be about. That's probably a good thing, since that last post was getting so long (and booooring).

Anyway, you can tell from the blog description what I'm into. Those things are what I'll post about. So you can see it won't be a very focused blog. Hopefully it will be thought provoking, and hopefully it will generate some interesting discussion.

Speaking of discussion, please feel free to comment. But if you think I won't delete your comments if they're obnoxious, you're wrong.

Welcome

Welcome. Wow, that really makes it sound like you're on my turf, which seems a little presumptuous considering the only thing I did to earn this blog was choose a url that was available. It took me several tries, actually.

Speaking of being on someone else's turf, that's what the name of this blog means: extranjero. I'm an American living in Mexico, though I don't typically refer to myself as an American, since that apparently offends everyone north and south of the border, as if I'm implying that the only nation in the Americas is the USA. I have no agenda to imply that, and given the fact that I am on their turf, I'll happily oblige to call myself something else. I'm told I should say norteamericano ("North American", which in my mind seems like it would be equally offensive) or estadounidense ("UnitedStatesian", if it translated to English).

Anyway, I've been here almost two years, working to build into Evangelical churches all over Mexico. I'm doing alright with the language, and I have lots of friends, but still most of the time I feel like a stranger. Given the circumstances, that doesn't worry me. I'm a cultural outsider, and you can still count on me saying several awkward Spanish phrases in any given conversation. Also, I'm quickly approaching 30 years old, so when I hang out with the youth I'm very conspicuously the old guy.

This text simultaneously comforts and challenges me:

Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives. 1 Peter 4:11-12 (The Message)