I said something this morning that I now regret.

It was at a staff meeting. My involvement minister asked us if we had any further thoughts about and/or could support before our elders a proposal made by an interning minister (not present).

I confessed complete ignorance and asked what the proposal was, since I had evidently missed the staff meeting where it was discussed.

My involvement minister explained that it was a proposal to begin an alternative worship time, after our 5:00 Sunday evening worship time – nothing way out of the ordinary, but different. He explained it better than I can relate it, and received a couple of compliments on his summary.

Otherwise, there was silence. The uncomfortable kind. Never one to let an opportunity pass to speak my mind and reveal the full extent of my ignorance, I said, “I am unequivocally ambivalent about it. I don’t want anything that further separates us … having first and second services out of seating necessity isn’t even my preference. On the other hand, I would love to be a part of such a worship. I think my kids would love it, and get a lot out of it. So that’s where I sit.”

From scattered responses that followed, I could tell that no one was particularly happy with that as an answer. Some obviously felt disappointed that there was neither outright support nor outright opposition to it – and the reason for the disappointment between those two options pretty much divided by age.

(In the end, the wise decision was made to table the proposal, since our ministry intern will soon graduate and possibly leave us for full-time employment … and we hope to soon hire a singles minister, possibly with some great worship leadership skills. So it wouldn’t be good to either strand a group that was very happy with their alternative worship time or to saddle a new minister with their expectations.)

Still, I really regret what I said. Not that it wasn’t true, or that I didn’t really mean it, or that I don’t stand by it as the way I feel.

But that I missed the opportunity to say what I should have said.

Worship isn’t about us.

It isn’t about what we like or dislike. It isn’t about what will draw more people into our building, or make us comfortable.

It should be both an individual and a corporate expression of our praise to the Almighty in His Spirit and through His Son.

It should make us uncomfortable with our relationship with Him, yearning for more and stronger and closer.

It should be an opportunity to yield our preferences and serve the preferences of others … and be blessed by their willingness to yield to ours when it happens.

It should be a time of community, of sharing, of communion.

It should be a time when everything we express to God comes from the heart, undiminished by concerns for self.

Its fine points and details should be of absolutely no concern to us, as long as we are doing our best to please God. So whether we meet as one group or two or two dozen LIFE Groups; whether we sing certain kinds of songs; whether we close on time or go a little long; whether we stand, sit, kneel, or roll over – not one of those things should matter to us if they don’t matter to God.

If you’ve read my blog for very long, you know exactly what I believe and therefore what I should have said.

I didn’t say it.

And I am ashamed.

It wasn’t in the media. It didn’t shake the earth. You don’t know about it because you don’t know my 80-year-old mom.

But for me, one of 2005’s best moments was during a visit with her last year when, in a quiet voice, she privately confessed to me in the car,

“I don’t believe that God will keep people out of heaven who worship with musical instruments. I just can’t believe that anymore.” That was all she said.

I couldn’t say anything.

I just drove on and let the tears run down my grinning cheeks.

What helps you prepare for worship?

That’s the first question. Sometimes I write a “HeartWorship” item for my church bulletin and order-of-worship sheet that attempts to encourage preparation for the worship to come and is usually tied to the theme of the Sunday morning message, songs, scriptures and table thoughts. (I reproduce them on this blog, though many of you don’t really get the benefit of the connection to our worship at at my home church!)

Some folks say it helps. I know it helps me, writing them. It helps me reading others’ submissions to the “HeartWorship” series.

Are there things that you do, read, listen to, watch, meditate upon, or otherwise encounter/participate in that heighten your sensitivity/anticipation of the worship hour to come?

And the second question is like unto it … but I’m going to hold it for a later blog entry.

(Don’t be shy about adding later thoughts to the preceding entry’s questions! They’re important!)

If you think my blog was full of questions before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

I feel moved to ask a lot more. And to really, really listen – or read – and respond to the answers you put in the comments section.

It’s not some gimmick to build hits and visits on this blog (I really have no tracking software other than the “unique visitors” counter at the bottom right, which is flawed by what it measures). I’m always glad to have visitors, both lurkers and commenters. It’s not a ploy to convert one to the other.

Truth is, I really want to know what you think.

The first (three-part) question I want to ask is close to home with me. In my work as a communication specialist at my home church, I work with worship planning teams and our ministry staff; I organize/compile the visual presentations during the worship hour. I’m very involved in creating a recommendation for upgrading all of that hardware and software. So before my siblings spend a wagonload of buckage on it, I feel like I really need to know:

Is there a central or most important aspect of our worship time together? If so, what is it? What aspect(s) remain important, but subordinate to it?

I leave the word “aspect” completely open to your definition. Please feel free to comment anonymously if you prefer.

Years ago, my new apartment had a really nifty feature: a trash compactor. A device, according to the comedian Gallagher, designed to condense twenty pounds of trash into twenty pounds of trash.

Nifty, until I tried to use it. I bought plastic garbage bags to fit inside it .. which split and leaked. I went out and bought the expensive reinforced paper bags recommended by the manufacturer, and put the leaky plastic bags inside them, and mashed them again.

I was overconsuming in the worst way. With all due respect to another comedian – George Carlin – I suddenly realized I had bought something to stuff with the stuff that I had stuffed with the stuff I didn’t want in the first place.

I never used the trash masher again.

Of spiritual wealth, there can never be enough – but we seem to desire it less. It accumulates through giving to others of our material wealth; to God, of our worship.

I’ve only been asleep about an hour tonight, but I have already been given a powerful and exhiliarating Christmas gift.

It was a dream, and unlike any dream I’ve had before.

I dreamed I was at morning worship in my home church, but the circumstances were very unusual. For one thing, the power was off and it was a little chilly inside the building (it often is in real life!) and there were no lights or sound or amplifiers or speakers or PowerPoints running. (I think this part of my dream is something I’ve actually wished would happen.)

But I don’t think I would have specifically wished for what happened next in the dream. A dear friend of mine – a gifted worship leader, especially in song but also in speaking – stood up and began animatedly addressing the east wall of the worship center. As if blind to the rest of us, he began adjuring it to echo the praise of God brought forth by all creation and listen to the words that would be shared – and if hearts of stone did not melt as a result, he said, “I might as well be talking to a brick wall.” Then he sat down.

What was even more extraordinary about it was that my friend did not stutter. Usually he does when he speaks, even when his thoughts are truly inspired; only when he sings does the stutter completely disappear. Then, as often happens in dreams, I somehow deduced that he must have been singing.

My preaching minister was speaking next in the course of the dream, and it seemed as if he was singing as well. In real life, he does not like to be heard singing. I’m not even sure if he sings well; I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him. Yet in this dream, he was pouring out his heart to the rest of us in a kind of song, and it was having its effect. Hearts of stone were melting, and tears flowing. Seven young people – unwilling to wait the time it took to change clothes or take turns or even let him finish his message – went to the baptistry and immersed themselves as a group, arms about each others’ shoulders … and the response from the church was thunderous; there was applause and there were cheers and shouts of “Hallelujah!” that would have been deafening at ALLTEL Arena but seemed quite comfortable and comforting and warming in this dream.

Then, spontaneously, everyone began singing “Holy Ground,” and before we had reached the part of of the song that says so, I knew solidly and incontrovertibly that the Spirit of the Lord was in this place – and the thrill of this faithless, confident knowledge was absolutely electrifying.

I awakened all of a sudden at that point, my heart still racing.

It’s slowed back to normal now. Reality has returned.

I’ll get up and go to church in about eight hours. We will sing carols and hymns and speak and listen to a message about the birth of our Savior.

I don’t know what else will happen there.

I don’t know what to expect.

I suspect I will be anticipating something more than I usually experience, though; and I will be aware of a Presence I too often miss.

And if I don’t fall back to sleep right away now, it may well be due to the fact that I’m praying for God’s Spirit to fall on us all this Christmas Day.

He is a tiny newborn in a trough of animal food in a drafty barn. He would be shivering and His very life in danger, were He not wrapped in strips of cloth. He has done nothing yet; said nothing yet; can do nothing yet. His survival depends completely on His mother and her husband. Within days or weeks, armies will be searching for Him to murder Him because of the time He was born and the star He was born beneath. And His little family will run for their lives.

They are nothing if not virtuous. But beyond that, they are nothing as the world counts somethings. Their royal heritage no longer counts for anything in the current regime. They live in a nowhere country. They have nothing but Him, a precious baby, and a mount for His mother to ride.

But for a moment or two, there is a timeless intrusion of eternity into this smelly stable – an indescribable glory that a few simple shepherds have abandoned their flocks to the night to witness; that seers have traveled hundreds of miles to see; that angels in the very heavens are distantly singing about.

For all have come to worship, and they have brought with them – through history or anticipation – a hopeful host of mankind who can see their salvation in His tiny face.

With my shallow background in journalism, I’ve learned that sometimes there just isn’t any news that’s fit to print. You print your journal anyway when there are advertisers and subscribers and contracts to be honored, but it’s a little less than honest.

So I confess. I have no amazing insights about Christmas. I haven’t solved the conundrum of the meaning of “virgin birth.” I haven’t uncovered a little-known, never recognized Messianic prophecy buried deep in the Psalms or Esther or heaven-forbid-the-Song-of-Solomon. I have no political or religious position on the President’s use of “Happy Holidays” in his greeting card this year. I have no answers for what to tell small children when they ask if Santa’s real.

My mom is here. She’s 80. She drove all the way from Bloomington, Indiana to us in Little Rock, Arkansas today. Five hundred and fifty miles. At speeds approaching her age. Given her declining reflexes, that’s something of a miracle. And I am a little bit in awe.

My son turns 13 tomorrow. He originally invited all of the boys in his seventh-grade class to an all-night camp-in birthday party at our church’s Family Life Center that would have been last night, and the few of them that responded said they had an early basketball game this morning and couldn’t come to an all-night party. So we changed the span from 6:00 to 10:00 last night. Sixteen boys showed up – one bringing a friend who was not a classmate. They played dodge ball, basketball, flashlight tag, capture the flag, billiards, and video games. They ate six pizzas, yet only half a birthday cake. They were well-behaved and it only took about 10 minutes to clean and close the facility after them. It was a minor miracle. And I am more than a little bit in awe.

In a quiet moment, after reading many blogs tonight and reflecting on the weekend and anticipating the Advent, it has just struck me again for the silent-thundering thousandth time that the actual Son of God left heaven to become a baby in a nothing family in a nowhere country to live a no-reward life to serve and save a no-account world of people. It is a miracle beyond grasp – not that He was born of a virgin (God created heavens and the earth and someone has a problem with the idea that He could create and place a single spermatozoan at the heart of a human egg?) – but that He came at all.

It’s not an original thought. Thousands of writers over two thousand years have phrased it more beautifully, more succinctly, more reverently, more powerfully, more inspiringly than I can. It’s become too mundane to be amazing any more.

And perhaps that is as astonishing as the fact itself that He came.

It is said that the New Testament records Jesus speaking more on the subject of wealth and want than any other.

In one of those instances – responding directly to someone who had asked Him to arbitrate between brothers about an inheritance – He told a story about a rich man who planned to build bigger and better and store up his wealth and retire, but God called him a fool … required his life of him that night … and asked him who would get all his accumulated things. Then Jesus said: “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:21)

In Matthew 6, His meaning is clear: If you’re too much invested in clothes or cars or cash, you need to be aware that there are things like moths and rust and thieves. It’s a topsy-turvy concept: treasures gained by giving away; wealth accumulated by divestiture; richness toward God through poverty of spirit.

And when it’s demonstrated by a widow giving the tiny amount she has, the God whom she worships praises her generosity.

We saw The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Friday night with about 300 of our closest friends from our church and Levy and River City and Sylvan Hills churches. It was extraordinary. When Aslan was dragged to the table, you could have heard a pin drop … or my 9-year-old daughter sobbing quietly at the end of our row.

She wasn’t alone … just a little louder than the rest of us.

Someone commenting on Mike Cope’s blog about the movie said that it “worked” for her in a way that The Passion of the Christ did not.

I agree, and I humbly offer one man’s opinion why.

In the Narnia chronicle, we got to know Aslan … who he was; what he was like; what he stood for; how deeply he loved. Even without the book’s famous line “Of course he isn’t safe … but he’s good” before we met him, we came to understand its truth. We had a context in which Aslan’s selfless sacrifice made sense: a deep magic to prove; a timeless law to be upheld; a clear delineation between what makes good good and evil evil.

Like the Lord of the Rings epic, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe told a complete story of conquering evil by conquering self.

And we had a sense for the everlasting good that followed as a result of Aslan’s life being returned to him.

By concentrating almost completely on the final hours of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ (with tiny flashbacks to the last meal with His friends and a table-building moment with His mother) denied us a real opportunity to get to know the main character. There was no real context. We may have felt sorry for Him that He was so abused; or we may have admired His superhuman endurance and self-control but we were largely left to guess why.

We had only glimpses of who He was; what He was like; what He stood for – and most important, how deeply He loved.

We saw only that He was despised and rejected of men.

The Passion of the Christ was a trilogy story with no prequel and no sequel.

Just one man’s opinion.