My family and I, instead, just got back from “Winter Jam” at Little Rock’s Barton Coliseum, an exuberant worship experience with New Song, Steven Curtis Chapman, Sanctus Real, Jeremy Camp, Hawk Nelson and about 8,000 of our closest friends.

I still have a bit of tinnitus going, so you’ll have to speak up in the comments!

But what a wonderful experience for my kids.

I think they need to see that worship can take place in many, many different contexts.

And for those of you who think we just went to a rock concert where the music was no different than any other and only the lyrics were religious and it was all just entertainment, you’d be partly right. Largely wrong, yet partly right.

I would much rather have my kids at a rock concert with Christian music than with a lot of other rot offered as entertainment. In fact, I’d rather be there with them. It was a performance – just as our corporate worship is intended to be a performance, with God as our audience. I got the sense that most of the headliners tonight understood that completely.

Oh, you might protest, but I’ll bet they took up a “love offering,” didn’t they?

Well, I don’t know how they could afford all those folks and that gargantuan sound-and-light setup at only $10 a pop and $5 for kids Laura’s age and under. I’m betting that co-sponsors like the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission and Temple University and ZAP! probably don’t cover the balance of costs for a concert that also features George W. Bush impersonator John Morgan who encourages audiences to impersonate Christ, a fire-breather called “Andre the Hollywood Cowboy,” performer Britt Nicole and evangelist Tony Nolan.

Ah, you might respond, then I’ll bet a lot of people were “saved” tonight, huh?

Well, a lot of people made a commitment to follow Christ. They’ll get more information about how to continue their walk later. They’ll be encouraged to read their Bibles, and “hook up” (their choice of words, not mine) with a church. I hope their walk includes a dip in baptismal waters later on, yes; I wouldn’t want them to miss out on that. I wouldn’t want them to miss out on a lot of other gifts God makes available to enrich our journey with Jesus – and it has to start somewhere, doesn’t it? I’m guessing that a lot of young people who went tonight to hear Hawk Nelson got a lot more than they bargained for and some may have begun an exciting journey in the right direction.

The apostle Paul may have phrased it best: becoming all things to all people so that some might be saved. (I can easily picture him singing rock-worship to win those whose worship language is rock.)

And if you’re one of those people who insists that baptism is the be-all and end-all of a saved life, then you’ve got far too narrow a vision of what “salvation” means. Salvation isn’t a single memorable moment in a baptistry and eternity in Disneyland. Salvation starts now; a life that yearns to be like – and grow closer to – Christ. A life of service, of selflessness, of sacrifice. A life of worship. “Getting saved” doesn’t mean that now you can relax.

It means that it’s time to go to work.

Since I have to do that tomorrow, I’m headed for bed now. With a ringing in my ears.

And my heart.

I read a lot of blogs frequented by brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe I’m perceiving a cumulative effect, but it seems that a lot of what I’m reading recently in the comments of those blogs has an undercurrent – if not an outright expression – of yearning to worship elsewhere.

People are asking whether they should stay where they are, and perhaps feel to miserably stifled and unable to worship with all their hearts … or to go elsewhere; somewhere they can breathe in more freely the Spirit of the Most High God.

Okay, I’m intentionally slanting the question in the direction that most folks asking it have it italicized it.

I gave my less-than-two-mite’s-worth recently on David U’s blog, Light and Salt, where he’s written about perceiving that angst, too.

Some folks are called to go. Some folks are called to stay.

The ones who have to go should do so … so their faith can grow and mature in an environment where they can do God’s work in the way He has called them to.

The ones who have to stay should do so … so they can mentor the ones who don’t have a clear picture of what God’s work should be, and help them grow and mature, and answer God’s call.

There’s no one right answer to the question of “to stay or to go.”

Our loyalty to the Bridegroom must be like Ruth’s: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

Then I was asked to expand upon it later on:

I don’t know if I can explain anything about the way God calls us! But – just as Arthur C. Clarke said that ‘any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from magic’ – I believe that anyone who feels compelled to serve God in a way that she or he is obviously gifted, and has God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within, is indistinguishable from someone who is directly called by God. For me, “called by God” covers a pretty wide range – from Paul being prevented to go where he wanted to go by the Spirit to David being picked out of a queue of brothers to serve as king … and everything in between.

Whoa, that’s a whole blog post in itself.

When you think “called to stay,” think about Timothy in Ephesus. There was every kind of nonsense going on there, and somone needed to be there to help straighten things out. There were false teachers worming a living off of young widows instead of trying to help them get by; there were people making outrageous claims about angels and genealogies and apparently praying against each other … well, you get the picture. It was far worse, in many ways, that what most churches have to deal with today.

But there are still a lot of churches where there is a misguided sense of what God’s will is – being right about everything instead of doing good toward everyone, for instance – and need to be mentored by folks who are more mature.

It’s a tough calling. It calls for sacrifice. It’s not for those who are new to the faith. It’d be easier to go back to the milk diet, but mature Christians need to be chewing on the meat … and helping others develop the teeth and the taste for it.

I have no less respect for dear brothers and sisters of mine who have left my home church than I do for those who stay, yet are not completely comfortable in its worship environment. I’ve blogged before that there are ways I would like to express praise for God that would be distracting, annoying and off-putting for others I love there. So I don’t. The worship environment is neither old-fashioned nor up-to-the-moment contemporary. It is a blend, and to many who are not satisfied with compromise on both ends of the spectrum, that is frustrating.

As Tim Woodruff and so many others have eloquently expressed, our purpose in worship is not to be satisfied but to praise God and encourage others. We feed the needs of our brothers and sisters in love, speaking in the worship language that resonates best with them. Not all of the time; that’s not possible. Hopefully, not grudgingly; that’s not fruitful. But we feed each other as generously as we can, while we are all fed by God through Christ. Lovingly. Generously. Patiently. One bite at a time.

Worship language is only a fraction of what causes frustration for many; there are matters of scriptural interpretation and teaching and mission emphasis that comprise a complex tapestry in each church. Personally – and I have no scripture upon which to rest this judgment – I think that those who are young in the faith need to worship where they are most comfortable; where they are fed with the spiritual milk they need to reach maturity. They’re not lesser Christians. They’re younger. I think that more mature Christians should seriously consider remaining where they are, to encourage others to think and read and weigh for themselves what God says to them through His Word and His Spirit, which are never going to contradict each other. God built diversity into His church from its very inception. He must want it there.

I think it may be to demonstrate to the world that we can believe the same, yet have different opinions – and still love each other almost as dearly as He loves.

I stay at my church because I love being there. I work there for the same reason. I can differ on matters of opinion with brothers and sisters there, and love them and be loved in return. Some I try to persuade; and some try to persuade me. Others I don’t pester, and they don’t pester me.

It’s not a perfect church, because we’re all messed up, sinning people. But we have a perfect Savior, and that’s more than enough.

So we stay. Most of us stay.

And when sometimes someone goes, we mourn a little bit. We miss them. We wonder if we could have been more for them. We’re always glad to see them back, even if it’s just for a funeral or a wedding or a community event. Because – for the most part – people don’t generally leave there, leaving behind an acid-edged, smoking hole.

But they do leave a hole that no one else can quite fill.

Did the church of Century One offer such an option: more than one Christian assembly to choose from in each city, town or village? Probably not. So is it a good thing today? It can be. Many Christian people find fulfilling church homes by visiting and searching. They find places they can serve in ways that they’re gifted that, perhaps, would not have been possible or permissible at their old church home. My point is, we don’t really have scripture we can look to for an answer to the question “to stay or to go?”

It’s a choice, a very very personal choice.

I think it should be made prayerfully, with fasting, in concert with every member of the immediate family, with a focus on worshiping/glorifying God and serving His children most effectively – according to the gifts He has given and the expectations He has for them.

If you can do that where you are, you should stay.

If you can’t do that where you are, you should go.

Well, it was a documentary worthy of Erik Von Daniken himself.

I have to express my respect for the attempt of the producers of The Lost Tomb of Jesus to exercise my credulity. It must be really hard to have a crystalline-clear, Technicolor mental image of an entire alternate reality and then be forced to attempt -in the course of two hours of cable television time and for lack of adequate visual evidence – to connect the dots.

Especially when the dots aren’t numbered. And you can’t be sure whether some of them are dots, or dust motes, or patina on an ossuary.

But the attempt was as noble as any such attempt can be. Using classic von Daniken-esque logic and research method, the hypotheses presented in the opening minutes were meticulously explored with whatever science could be conveniently applied, and by the middle of the program were expressed as established facts upon which further hypotheses were so explored that they might be treated as concrete facts by the closing moments of the program. Even when some of the hypotheses were labeled speculative and even likely, their promotion continued throughout the documentary.

No attempt was made to address some obvious problems with the mega-theory.

Such as, why friends of the family of Jesus who loved them and respected their beliefs would refer to Him on the marking of an ossuary as the “son of Joseph” without the phrase “as was supposed” added parenthetically afterward.

Or why the family would be buried in Jerusalem in the first place, since they all lived in Nazareth of Galilee.

Or why a 16th Century, complete version of the apocryphal Acts of Phillip (a non-canonical work) would be a preferable reference to the earlier-but-incomplete 4th Century versions – other than the fact that it is the one which conveniently refers to Mary Magdalene by the name on one of the ossuaries: Mariamne. Generally, older works are viewed as more authoritative. And apocryphal works are generally not viewed as authoritative at all.

Or what might be the possible motivations for someone – either now, when poking at Christendom is politically correct; or then, when outright persecution was the rage – to stage a fraudulent tomb setting, including all these names on ossuaries and what they could be construed to imply.

But you have to admire the documentary’s suspense-filled, ongoing backstory of the rediscovery of the lost tomb – from the disappointing exploration of the wrong tomb via extra-long laparoscope to the culmination: the exploration of the right tomb cut short by a minor Israeli bureaucrat in a scene reminiscent of the U2 video Where the Streets Have No Name.

Part of the reason that we have documentaries like this – and I hope you’ll forgive my soapbox moment here – is that modern education contains no required courses in logic or analytical thinking, apart from mathematical applications. The transfer skills to non-mathematical subjects are not easy to acquire because we are opinionated creatures about matters where we do not immediately perceive absolute truth. Math is an absolute science. If you add two and two, you will always get four. (Generally speaking. Don’t introduce chaos theory or some other exception just to be argumentative here, please.)

In the rest of the world, adding two political theories to two religious philosophies will yield thousands of results.

We have not been trained to think analytically about non-mathematical matters.

We do not know a syllogism from a sorites, deductive logic from inductive logic, an assumption from a fact, truth from fiction. We don’t know science from pseudo-science. We cannot identify which logical fallacy is at play when we do recognize them. We often do not know logical fallacies when we see them, and we do not know about them in order to be able see them.

So we have half-baked mockumentaries passing for documentaries that should leave the thinking mind hooting and rolling on the floor. The Tomb of Jesus is just the latest in a long line of such so-called efforts that had their heydey when von Daniken was releasing The Chariots of the Gods? – and at least had the molecule of integrity to add a question mark to the end of the title.

Now I stand down from the soapbox. The floor is open.

Does your church emphasize being right about everything
above
doing good toward everyone?

Does your church seek the old paths
as a priority over
going into all the world?

Does your church rebuke, reprove and reproach
more often than it
bears, believes and hopes?

Does your church wear the name of Christ
without
bearing His Spirit within?

Does your church prefer to worship by authorized pattern
over
worshiping the Author of diversity and creativity?

Does your church defend the doctrine
at the expense of
doctoring the defenseless?

Does your church look down on unholiness
to the exclusion of
lifting holy hands?

Does your church really fit into God’s kingdom?
Do you really fit in at your church?

… John F. Kennedy had been a minister of the gospel, might he have said: “Ask not what your Savior can do for you; ask what you can do for your Savior”?

I’m out for the weekend, so talk amongst yourselves.

If you can do so without getting verklempt in the attempt.

If you read this blog much, you know I don’t watch much television; HGTV is pretty much my last addiction there, and I peruse it less and less these days.

So you’ll understand part of why I applaud Dan Edelen’s suggestion (prompted by the demise of his TV) in Fumbling the Torch over at his blog Cerulean Sanctum.

Once you read Dan, you’ll understand the full reason I applaud both the idea and his blog – and why it’s one of my daily stops on my blogging circuit.

It’s amazing, though, how many times my thoughts turned to a craving for sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water.

But it’s also pretty amazing that, after only two Lenten fasts under my more comfortably-fastened belt, how easy it is to turn those thoughts to prayer, to thankfulness for how blessed I am to have sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water available at every turn. Some folks in the world are dying for a drink of plain pure water. Literally.

So I’m looking into ways that the money I deny the beverage-vending machines can be funneled to an outreach that’s trying to provide that drink of plain pure water to the folks who need it most.

You can’t just pick one on the Internet. You can never be sure, that way, into whose pockets your spare change will end up. If you have contact with one that you have found beyond reproach, I’d be glad to hear from you!

Now I have to back up and correct a possible misperception.

I didn’t begin fasting at Lent in 2005.

Angi and I have fasted and prayed together and separately a number of times before that. The first time was when we began in earnest our adoption process, and the answer to our prayers was Matthew, now 14. Another time was when we filed again, and the answer was Laura, now 10.

Another time was when my father died suddenly at home but was revived too late by paramedics. While his coma persisted several weeks, even when he breathed on his own after being removed from the life-support equipment, I fasted and prayed for his full recovery. The answer was his final demise.

And I understood how King David felt when he said of his perished infant son, “He will not come to me, but I will go to him.”

If prayer for some folks is the end of a rope, fasting is the end of another rope that can help tie your life back together. They’re almost always tied together in scripture – with two notable exceptions: the story of Esther, and the account of Jesus’ fast in the desert before being tempted by Satan.

The absence of a mention of prayer in Esther is kinda understandable; God isn’t even mentioned. But He’s there, all the same. The story could not have turned out the way it did had He not be an active character as every moment of the drama unfolded. So if Esther and her handmaidens were not praying in accord with their fasting, why did they bother? Were they just dieting under these extreme circumstances? Helping Esther shed a few unglamorous pounds so that she’d have a better chance that her husband the king would hold out his scepter to her; admit her in to plead the case for her people?

If not fasting and prayer, then why fasting at all?

I believe the same may be true of the other instance. The synoptic gospel writers chose, for their own mute reasons, only to mention that Jesus went out to the desert alone, and fasted. Why? For His health? Some folks may claim that total fasting can improve your health, but I can’t imagine that forty days of it would be that helpful.

I believe He prayed. I believe that He knew that the Spirit was leading Him out into the desert to be tempted by the devil, and that His ministry could not begin in earnest until the two of them had faced off. I believe He knew that the best preparation was to talk directly to His Father, reminded each moment of His dependence on providence to sustain Him in every way; reminded by each pang of hunger and each moment of light-headedness and each stumbling attempt to overcome hideous physical weakness.

I believe Jesus went from a husky, strong, hammer-wielding carpenter to a gaunt, frail, dirty, nearly-powerless, suffering servant for a good reason. He demonstrated His willingness to become His Father’s Son; to serve as high priest of His people. I don’t think the writer of Hebrews is referring exclusively to the Passion when he says of Jesus:

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” – Hebrews 5:7-10

It says “days,” you see; “days” plural. Not just that last day. “Days.”

I think it’s quite possible that Jesus had a pretty good idea of the endgame even at this point in the desert; even before the game was afoot. He knew He needed to be prepared for what was to come – for more than the temptations Satan would prod him with at the end of the forty-day fast. There would be temptations to use His might to benefit Himself, rather than His God and His people, every day and every mile and every town and every moment.

Temptations to call down fire on the ungodly. Temptations to pay no Roman tax. Temptations to comfort a woman of ill-repute kneeling at His feet, and to do so in a more sexually satisfying way. Temptations to give it up when His cousin was murdered. Temptations to cut and run when people wanted to chuck Him off of a cliff. Temptations to heal everyone and leave no doubt. Temptations to summon ten legions of angels.

Even temptations during those forty days of fasting – unprompted by spoken devilish words – to break that fast and just get started with His ministry.

So, to me, it is inconceivable that Jesus’ fasting was not accompanied by prayer.

If there were types of demons that could only be cast out by fasting and prayer, I believe He was using whatever it took to make certain there were none that would defeat Him.

There are times when prayer alone just isn’t enough. So, obviously, fasting by itself can’t be enough.

They’re a package deal, fasting and prayer.

You can be sure that I won’t be fasting this Lenten season just for the sake of fasting this Lenten season. This fast will be balanced by prayer, much prayer, and for a lot of concerns, a lot of hopes, a lot of beloved brothers and sisters.

And for a lot plain, pure water.

I’m not a Greek scholar, and I don’t play one on TV.

However, I understand that kenosis, in New Testament Greek terms, is a word which describes paring-down, shedding excess, maybe even doing more with less. I suppose it can include fasting, if you want to read it that way, and so I choose to read it that way. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, and survived it.

At any rate, I’m going into a season of kenosis beginning this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. I have a good example for it: a Savior who fasted in the desert 40 days while being tempted by the Accuser. (Hard to accuse Someone who’s perfect; best just to play to His needs and wants.)

So I’m going to try to need and want less for the 40 days following Wednesday as I have for the previous couple of years. But this year will be a little different. My first year, I weaned myself off of my beloved Mountain Dew for an entire Lenten season. Last year I parted with soft drinks laced with caffeine. This Lent, I’m going to try to temporarily break my addiction to soft drinks entirely.

It’ll just be good ol’ Ozarka or Mountain Valley Water, or the chilled, filtered stuff from my refrigerator’s front door.

And in the spirit of fasting preferred by Isaiah (ch. 58), I’ll be tossing the unspent beverage coinage into a receptacle to benefit a far greater need than my craving for sugary beverages.

It won’t stop there. I’m hoping to fast from indolence as well. I intend to find some active, physical ways to actually do some of God’s work instead of just writing and talking about it. I have some things in mind, but haven’t prayed about them fully yet – so they’re not ready for sharing yet.

But I would welcome your prayers and support in my fast – and would be glad to challenge anyone who feels intrigued by it to join me and millions of other Christian folks in this season of kenosis.