We spend a fair amount of time praying during our worship together. Hopefully, we spend a fair amount of time praying during our times alone and with our families.

We often pray for things that are out of our hands: a decision that others will make; a healing we want to take place; the success of something attempted; a particular thing that is wanted or needed.

But how often do we pray for things that may seem impossible?

How frequently do we pray for God to be glorified?

How many times a week do we pray for His will to be done – through us?

For His good news and good will to flood the world? For hearts to turn back to Him? For the growth of His kingdom?

How often do we pray for what God wants?

… illuminated the well-robed forms of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci backing into each other at the napkin bar. Growling apologies at each other, they nodded in recognition and agreement to share a table. They were not morning people – but they were gentlemanly enough to tip the lute player as they passed.

Finally, after coming to terms with half a mug of java each – Leonardo’s was his own uncredited invention, cappuccino – they began to mumble greetings at each other.

“Lenny.”

“Mike.”

“How’d the monastery fresco come out?” Michelangelo queried.

“What, that ‘Last Supper’ thing? Finished it ages ago. Turned out nicely, I thought. Maybe not my best work, but okay. How about your ceiling gig at the Sistine?”

Michelangelo snorted. “It took forever and wasn’t worth the paint. Now, give me a couple of tons of stone, a hammer and chisel, and I will discover the soul of the subject!”

“Perhaps,” Leonardo shrugged. “But it is more accurately portrayed with the colors God created …”

“Color is overrated! And God created in three dimensions, not two. You of all people …”

Their discussion was interrupted by a quarrel that had turned ugly at a table nearby. Martin Luther leapt to his feet, brandishing a wide butter knife dripping with the melted stuff, shouting: “Hymns, I tell you! They are all that God hears! The Creator needs nothing of your next-century innovation!”

George Frideric Handel rolled his robust form out of his chair to face his breakfast companion: “Oratorios, Marty, are within His aural range!”

The lute-playing ceased.

Whereupon Luther slapped Handel across the cheek with the buttery flat of the knife. The café’s bouncer – the lute-player, who looked remarkably like the Apostle Paul – intervened immediately, telling them both to take it outside.

“What, outside the café?” they chorused.

“No,” replied the bouncer firmly. “Outside the Gates of Heaven entirely.”

They quieted, and grudgingly sank back into their seats. The lute-player began strumming again, and conversations slowly resumed.

“What a couple of horses’ patooties,” Michaelangelo sniffed.

“Agreed,” Leonardo nodded. “As if God could be worshiped by something as mundane and secular as music.”

If you’ve been blessed as I have with music from The ZOE Group, you’ll understand why I’m excited to tell you that their most recent albums are now available as MP3 downloads from the new MP3 Downloads aisle of The ZOE Group Store.

They’re only $1 per song, a competitive price in a world of 99c iTunes and 88c Wal-Mart Music offerings. But you can’t get them there.

On each song’s page, there’s a little control panel you can use to listen to a short (about one minute) sample of the song. That’ll help you figure out whether you want to buy “All the Heavens” from Closer or “All the Heavens” from Ancient Future … or “Holy is the Lord” from Closer or “Holy is the Lord” from Look to the Hills. (Four different songs, there … see, wasn’t it fun listening to the excerpts?)

The most recent three albums are already available: Closer, In Christ Alone and Desperate. I’m adding more as quickly (and carefully) as I can to the site.

And, as nearly as I can tell, The ZOE Group is the only a cappella Christian worship team making their songs available by MP3 download on the Web (though you can find Keith Lancaster & The Acappella Company songs on iTunes. Still, it’s hard to convince an AAC-format iTunes song to play on your MP3 player, isn’t it?)

So, what are you waiting for? Go listen! Go buy some!

The quotes emboxed below are from an article in the January edition of a printed publication which has wide readership among members of the fellowship (the “brotherhood”) in which I worship – though many of them would no more fellowship me than they would Osama Bin Laden. I republish them without permission or attribution. And I intersperse among the selected quotes my own commentary. I do this because there are folks who are blessedly unaware of the rhetoric that I have protested in a previous post or two. I think I owe them an explanation.

Headlines on some of the papers throughout the brotherhood give the shameful details: “Nations largest church of Christ adding instrumental service and serving the Lord’s Supper on Saturday night.” “Leaders say there was little opposition to the announcement.” Brethren, where’s the fight which we entered when we took that “oath of office” to serve the Lord, and became a member of His army?

In 1994, 1,490 children died from abuse and/or neglect in the United States among 3,503,000 cases investigated by child protection agencies.

At one time not too many years back, the church of Christ was known as a “fighter.” Members were known as “people of the Book” — “walking Bibles.” The church was growing faster then than at any other time in recent history, but, we have changed and the “fight” is not in us now. We wonder what has happened and where is that fight. It does not take too long to find the answers. The Book has been replaced with words which were not so harsh and the desire to please ourselves and be entertained and to be at peace with the world, being thought of as a “group which fits in with the world” has nearly done away with that fighting spirit which Jesus Christ and the apostles wanted the Christian to have.

In the county where I live, 797 child abuse cases were filed last year.

How does that fit with the scriptures and its teaching? Let that “inspired word” from God speak to mine and your hearts. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15). “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. … And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:34,36,37). “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:5,8). “Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things)” (Phil. 3:17-19).

In the church where I attend, three foster families have looked after four children of a race different from their own in the past six months, bringing them into their homes and families as their own. Two more families are gearing up to meet that challenge.

Those words from Almighty God have been perverted, twisted, smoothed down, forgotten willingly and otherwise neglected to the loss of our fighting spirit which each Christian should have. We have “loved this world and its pleasures more than God.” We have not humbled ourselves as servants of Christ — but to our own bellies. We have traded God’s word for “smooth sayings” and loved to have it so. We have become “friends” with this world and an enemy to God. We sit idly by and let the “chaste virgin” become a spotted and blemished “social club” which fits in with this sin-sick world. We refuse to fight the good fight of faith. We will pay the price except we repent.

Each of us is called upon to do what we can to heal this world and to preach good news to the poor. That is the doctrine of Jesus. It was His mission in Luke 4, Luke 6, Luke 9, Luke 10 … you get the picture. He shouldered that ministry because God so loved the world. We should too. We should love each other. We should be forgiving toward each other. We should not be spoiling for a fight over what we may see as doctrine, but what Jesus calls the precepts of men.

People are poor and hungry and sick and dying all over the world.

And lost.

If our legacy to our survivors is only that we fought for pure doctrine concocted by our own inarguable logic and infallible research at the cost of pursuing the doctrine of Christ – to seek and to save that which is lost – men shall not rise up and call our generation blessed.

The real fight will be lost, and we will be lost in it.

We were riding home from school, my two kids and me, when 14-year-old Matthew suddenly deviated from talking about Ferraris and Lamborghinis and asked,

“Dad, what would you do if you had five billion dollars?”

Before I could even stop and think, I heard the words come out of my mouth:

“I’d feed a lot of hungry people. I’d make sure that a lot of poor people got medical care. Africa would look a whole lot different.”

“Really?” Matthew said. “I mean … five billion dollars. Wouldn’t you keep some of it for yourself?”

“I have everything I need. I don’t have so much money that I think I can do everything for myself and not need God. And I figure, if you have that kind of money and don’t do some good with it in the world, what’s the point in having it?”

He seemed to consider it.

“You wouldn’t even get that sky-blue 2000 Thunderbird?” (He knows I lust after the metal when it comes to that kind of car. Or a pre-1997 British racing-green Miata. Or a really expertly-assembled classic hand-made Lotus Seven.)

“Okay, I might get the T-bird.”

Matt seemed relieved. Dad was human after all.

I wasn’t relieved.

Why would I have to keep any of it for myself?

Isn’t that what Ananias and Sapphira did? (Then lied about it?)

I don’t know why that answer came out, to the five-billion-dollar question. Maybe because I’ve been thinking more and more about kenosis while fasting from soft drinks during Lent. I haven’t been doing very much about kenosis in my life, other than drinking water, and as a result, I’ve been feeling … empty, rather than full. Parasitical, rather than generous. Greedy, instead of blessed.

The whole idea of five billion dollars is just so huge that all I could think about was having to deal with financial advisers and people begging for money and taxes and nuisance. When the amount is unrealistic, you can be generous.

But what about when the amount is five hundred bucks? I could scrape that together and do a lot of good with it for someone who wouldn’t make that much in a year. That might dig a well in a third-world village that doesn’t have one. What about fifty? It might buy medicine for someone who doesn’t have it. Or five? Several cups of cold water – and maybe even some food.

Yet I can burn through fifty pretty fast, hardly thinking about it where it’s going, what it’s buying and whether it’s glorifying God … or me.

Why is that?

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.