Mental Musings

We had a very interesting conversation on the way home from church today. During our pastor's sermon he mentioned that we should "Sing with Our Heart" and "Fill Our Heart with the Spirit." I mentioned that in biblical times they believed that the seat of our emotion was not the heart and that we translated the word that was used to heart because Western culture believed the seat of our emotion is the heart. That started a long conversation on how things would be different if we used the original biblical idea which would have been closer to "gut" or "bowels". These were some of the examples that came to mind: Sing with your bowels unto the Lord Fill my bowels with the Holy Spirit I love you with the love of my bowels I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my bowels Open the eyes of my bowels, Lord Instead of "i [heart] you," it would be "I [large intestine] you" (sorry, I do not have the symbol for a large ...

I noticed that the vast majority of the new choral anthems that have been composed recently are what I would call pastural songs. By that I mean that they are not the big, energetic, fast, exciting songs with the big choral ending. Instead they have a beautiful, lyrical, and melodic flow with deep, rich harmonies that allow the listener the freedom to sit back and soak in the overpowering message that accompanies the song. As I was speaking with my Ministry Assistant today, I commented that perhaps they understand the overwhelming stress of our nation with difficult economic news everyday, depressing prospects about the future of our country's safety and security, and an endless tirade of sub-par politicians telling us what we should care about or, worse, lecturing us about how our country, the greatest and best country ever to exist, is not good enough and needs to become like the failed countries of the world in order to be liked by others. As Christians we can also look around...

Timothy was a young minister who must have dealt with many problems in his ministry. You might wonder what makes me think that, but I think it is only obvious based on the letters that his mentor Paul wrote to him. After all, Paul felt it necessary to encourage Timothy as well as give him some instructions for his own survival. I believe that this is something that every one needs, but perhaps ministers even more so. Most people need that daily dose of the well-dones or way-to-goes, but for the most part the average person is able to get away from their job and spend some time with friends or family who can help them blow of some steam by sharing about their frustrations at work. Ministers typically live far from family and rarely have friends outside of their church. So when something at work is extremely frustrating they have nobody close to them that they can turn to for council and advice. That is why it is important for ministers to find ministry mentors and build relationship...

In an ever increasingly busy world, we often fail to take the time to actually read things in their entirety. I know that I am guilty of this. I often peruse through most things. Something I learned very well when taking a full load of college courses while working 40+ hours per week to pay for college. Perusing materials may work well if the writer was kind enough to use headings, subheadings and the occasional bolded comment. Some things are not perusable: the bible for instance, although in this case I am going to use business email as my example. It seems that more and more often I am receiving emails that have been forwarded to me three or four different times from people who were either included in the original email or received it from someone else. More times than not, my email address is clearly shown as one of those who originally received the email. However, the forwarder is not taking the time to read the original list of email receivers before simply forwarding to everyo...

Today I had to wonderful experience of finding new eyeglasses. This is something I hate because your frames can make you look like a dork or make you look like a superstar. Well, maybe not a superstar, but at least not a dork. I always bring my wife along to help me choose because one of the problems with shopping for glasses is that you must take off your frames to try on others...and without my own glasses on I cannot actually see the new frames. This process reminds me of some basics taught in skills training courses as well as knowledge I just gained from a book I read last week, Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. That may seem like a stretch, but think of it this way... If I chose to go it alone to pick out my glasses, I would never be able to see the frames. If I took along an entire team of people, we would waste a lot of time choosing frames. If I took the wrong person with me, I could be talked into glasses that fit their fashion r...

There are certain events in the Bible which inspire, amaze, astound, intrique and some even confuse. One of the events that seems to do all of these is the betrayal of Christ by Judas, one of His closest friends and companions during the final three years of His life. I believe that the story of the betrayal is culminated in John 18:6, "As soon as he has said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground." (KJV) Here we have Judas, Roman soldiers, Temple guards, and members of the chief priests and Pharisees all banding together to come and arrest Jesus of Nazareth. They left town and traveled to the garden with the knowledge of what they intended to do. They came with armed soldiers to help carry out their plan. They knew that they were approaching a small group of what they considered to be radicals. Therefore, we must assume that they were prepared for some necessary use of force. And the actions by Peter showed that they had reason to expect this. S...

After six hours of listening to new music, I have some advice to give: I won't even finish listening to the first verse if the lyrics are corny, unless it was meant to be a joke; a tired and listless, over-driven, overly repetitive, and/or old-fashioned accompaniment can ruin wonderful lyrics; hokey is never good, not even for the Hokey Pokey; noise for the sake of noise is useless, but creative and interesting instrumental parts can be exciting, even when loud or using distortion; and please take the time to put the music in the same order that they are found on the CD because I cannot thoroughly listen to the music while I am searching for the correct anthem. Just saying.

I would like to know what my fellow worship pastors have to say about worship planning. Let's get the conversation started by sharing your answers to the following questions: How do you discover new music for use in your worship service? (radio, CDs, clubs, etc.) What worship planning tools do you use? (software, books, websites, etc.) What style of worship services do you plan? (contemporary, traditional, blended, etc.) What elements are commonly used in your worship services? (music, drama, communion, baptism, etc.) What have you planned that has really worked well in worship? What have you planned that has really gone bad during worship? What needs to happen to allow you to really worship yourself as you lead worship? Share this with other worship pastors in your circle and together we can get a nice sampling with which to start some great discussions on worship planning.