It is a tradition among our people to gather and sing on the evening of someone’s death. Songs are sung in both German and English from old, worn black (German) or green (English) hymnals that have inhabited our pews for decades. With only a piano to accompany the singing, the combined voice of God’s people in this place is the loudest instrument in the room.

These informal, agenda-free gatherings don’t need to be initiated - it is assumed that when one of the saints passes, the living saints gather to sing. Singing, the reading of scripture, and sometimes sharing are the only things that will happen; there is no agenda, no “service plan”, no sermon, and no offering.

As we sing “It Is Well With My Soul” I hear four harmonious parts rising from assembly. We are here to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Mr. Peter Dyck, a man I know by reputation more than anything else. I knew of him when I was a child, but having only recently returned to this body of believers, I have missed a lot of their history.

By all accounts, that is not the common experience of those in attendance. I have heard it said in many ways that Peter Dyck was a pillar in this church - a member, an elder, a lay pastor. I have heard him described in the most respectful of terms: a mentor, a pillar, and a man who was faithful to the gospel - regardless of the cost. As I begin my own journey as a pastor in this body of believers, I hope to earn the honor of having the same things uttered at my own funeral.

Joining in Similar Sorrow

But why the response of singing to all of this? Music is connected to emotions. Music is cathartic - yes, even without drums, bass, guitar, and volume at 11. On a day when it is sometimes difficult to speak, to come up with new words to say, the familiar words of these songs, put deep into our hearts early in our lives, flow out of us, but with a strange, fresh relevance. It is a well-know fact (by me especially, as a songwriter) that more often than not, songs are written during times of great sorrow, sadness, and darkness. And sometimes we don’t understand the words of a song until we can join the author in a similar sorrow.

Singing together is also a foretaste of eternity. One component of our heavenly praise will be singing around the throne. This creates for those of us who are left behind a sense of the greater reality that our passed loved one is now experiencing.

But I observe that in this room, in the sanctuary where I spent the first 10 years of my life that people don’t sing like they used to. It seems to me that people once sang much louder, that they filled room with song - not with pitch perfect performance, but with vigor and enthusiasm and confidence. And now it seems that a lot of people have forgotten how to express themselves in song.

Nonetheless, when someone is torn from the fabric of the church body, singing dresses the wound and prepares it for healing. When all these voices are joined together, the one newly absent voice hardly seems absent. Still, this is the loudest singing I’ve heard since I came back here.

The service ends with the song “My Jesus, I Love Thee” and a congregational prayer - “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

After the service, the family stands at the sanctuary exit where they are embraced and consoled by those in attendance. I remember all of this happening when my grandfather died - he too was a member of this community.

I remember wanting my sorrow to be private, not wanting to share my trauma with anyone else. But eventually I joined in the singing and I remember shedding a lot of tears. I’m sure this was very good for me.

The “EC” is a term used to describe a movement that is already happening – or, in some cases, has already happened. The “EC” is the church that is rising (emerging) from the ashes of inaction. That’s too broad a brush of course, since not all churches can be successfully accused of inaction, but in general terms, the EC is comprised of people – some with doctrinal clarity, some not – who are not content with simply knowing – there must be doing as well.

 ”Emerging” and “Alternative”

An analogy from the music industry might be helpful. In the early 90’s we had an explosion of what we called “alternative” music. This was music that was either on the fringes or completely different than the hit music of the time – which would classified as the “mainstream”. Alternative music was created and then flourished because of great dissatisfaction with the current state of the music industry. What “the industry” was producing was mostly lifeless, weak, and ineffectual music. Eventually “alternative music” became very popular, and because of this fact it ceased to be “alternative” and became “mainstream”.

In the same way the “Emerging Church” is in large part a reaction to the “mainstream” of (mostly) the North American church. The North American church – like the music industry in the late 80’s – has become too weak, lifeless and ineffectual to capture the hearts and minds of the emerging generation of Christians. But these terms need to be transitory and flexible; once something is mainstream, it can no longer be the alternative to the mainstream; once the new generation has emerged, it can no longer reasonably be called “emerging.”

The mistake we seem to be making is we’re trying to call something “emerging” after it has already emerged, just like we continued to call something “alternative” after it became that which it started out as the alternative to. “Alternative” mistakenly became a genre within the music industry. “Emerging” and “Emergent” are becoming genres of Christianity. This too is a mistake.

Defining a Generation

The emerging generation is comfortable with the book of James: If works do not result from faith, then faith is dead. In James’ words – faith without works is like a body without a spirit.

We see lots of professed belief, but too little faith that results in, and is verified by works.

We see a lot of dead bodies, and we’re running away from them.

____________________

Other writing on the Emerging Church that you might find helpful:

Ed Stetzer on The Emerging Church

McKnight: “McLaren Emerging”

John Piper on “Emerging”, “Emergent”, and “Missional”

I have actually seen this book before, and I did a deep skimming of it and saw it for what it is: a tabloid-style, pick-and-choose hatchet job on people who, while not executing perfectly, are valuable leaders in today’s North American church.

Books like this are basically supermarket tabloid gossip rags without the pictures. To put it more bluntly: this is a strange sort of theological pornography for people who see their calling as hunting heresy by identifying leaders with theological weaknesses (some perceived, some real) and telling others about what they’ve found.

That itself is not an unbiblical pursuit, but taken to the level of out-of-context tabloid journalism it becomes sin.

This is not to say there is no truth in Oakland’s book. I can agree with and affirm many of the things in the book; the problem is that there is page after page after page of short quotes followed by commentary. There are even quotes of reporters who say something about somebody and these are taken as damning evidence against the person who is the target.

Rick Warren in particular (not surprisingly) takes a beating throughout the book. As a side note, in the way that Oakland perceives the EC, grouping Rick Warren in with the EC  is a bit ridiculous, kind of like claiming that John Piper and Joel Osteen are kindred spirits and are going to be sharing a pulpit at some point in the near future.  Rick Warren does big; the EC is mostly about regionalized, contextualized solutions.  Rick Warren works on a global scale; the EC is about incarnational witness. The EC is (mostly) anti-megachurch; Rick Warren IS the megachurch.

But I’m with Ed Stetzer on this; we need both. We need big solutions and big churches and small solutions and small churches. Which is why in one sense the EC can be very broadly defined as every church that is not dying due to lack of activity.

Even Dan Kimball, who apparently committed the sin of asking non-believers what their perception of “church” is is mocked for daring to suggest that the American church might be able to have a more authentic testimony. Gasp. How can he say this?!?! I can’t think of any examples of American Christian leaders who have disgraced the name of Christ in very visible ways. This is the type of behavior, mostly on a smaller scale, that Kimball explores.

I’ll close with a quote from C.S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity (p. 118):

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.

Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?

If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

I think that a book like this is exactly what the Lewis quote above is about.

Part 1 - The”Emerging Church” issue

Part 2 - The “Emerging Church” response

Part 3 - Day summary

Part 4 - A few words about Glen Soderholm

Part 5 - A few words about David MacFarlane

There will be more spin-off posts based on these so stay tuned.

Highlights:
Emergent seems to be a reaction—among younger believers primarily, 20- and 30-somethings—to several things. In my judgment it’s not a very healthy reaction, though I can understand why it might happen. [MK - in addition, Emergent is centered around a specific site/organization]

Emerging might be used by some people—like Mark Driscoll—to describe a proper reaction that is taking place against some of the negative things going on in the church, but a reaction that doesn’t throw away the doctrines.

So be careful, when you’re talking emerging or emergent, to know which group you’re talking about.

The word “missional” is kind of the “in” word today. And a church that is missional tends to be a church where everything is thought about in terms of making an impact on people around the church who are not Christians. You design everything to think that way. And I think that is a good thing.
___________________________________

I’m working on a longer post of my own thoughts about this that I will try to get up later today.

Piper is not the only one defining the terms this way. I could have used various other modern church figures to make my point, but part of my current mission is to tear down people’s perceptions of Piper as cog in the old world who is interchangeable with the current crop of strident hyper-fundamentalists (not to mention any names - oops, I already did in the opening paragraph).

In my experience, having watched, engaged in, and written about the movement, this is the way the terms are defined and understood by others who have done the same.

Defined this way, I think we can all comfortably call ourselves emerging. Yes?

***You might find this post about a book being co-authored by Brian McLaren and John MacArthur of some interest as well. :-0

The final day of the convention was a Sunday morning worship service with over 1000 in attendance. David MacFarlane spoke again and used a lot of humor (a lot of it self deprecating) to make serious points about a ripe harvest in the fields.

For those of you not familiar with the biblical language, that means there are a lot of you who are likely to worship Jesus if only you saw more Christians acting like humans who have a relationship with Jesus Christ instead of acting like.

Thus ends my first conference live-blogging exercise. A few more of these and I should be in the Tim Challies league of traffic. ;-)

As I mentioned yesterday, Glen and I both draw inspiration from and are fans of Bob Dylan (have a listen to Glen’s cover of “Everything is Broken” here), Bill Mallonee, Ron Sexsmith, Indigo Girls, Mark Heard, and of course Johnny Cash.

His cover of Julie Miller’s “By Way of Sorrow” – also on the new album – is fantastic, and fits right well alongside Glen’s own solid writing.

Glen lives just up the road from me near Toronto, so I’m looking forward to more opportunities to see him perform and interact with him.

His site is here.

For session two I went to Terry Hiebert’s session “Engaging the Doubters”. Fantastic.  It brought back a lot of memories of when I blogged through The God Delusion and had the opportunity to engage atheists and serious doubters in a conversation about faith and belief and God.

Had a great conversation with David MacFarlane about (among other things) Michael Coren, the emerging church, and Mennonite history. A very engaging, animated man… who wouldn’t quite tell me what he thought of Michael Coren.

Exchanged musical likes and influences with Glen Soderholm.  Glen is the main musical worship leader at the convention. We share a lot of likes/sources/influences in Bob Dylan (have a listen to Glen’s cover of “Everything is Broken” here), Bill Mallonee, Ron Sexsmith, Indigo Girls, Mark Heard, and of course Johnny Cash. We also talked church and theology. Glen is Presbyterian but with wide experience in other denominations.

Speaking of theology and denominations. My favorite thing to say this weekend as I get to know new people and we get around to theological influences: “Last year around this time I was at a Brian McLaren conference one weekend and in Minneapolis at a John Piper conference the next - and I liked them both. Both were missing something and both had something important that the other didn’t.”

That makes for a very good conversation starter and I’m more excited than ever about reading everything, weighing, sifting, and taking all the wonderful good and helping discern the bad in every author and leader.

I love conferences!

I was happy to hear this. I think everyone was a little shocked at the intensity of the attack at the morning session, but by the afternoon there had been time to process it and to respond to it intelligently.

We’ll see what today brings.

Last night I performed some songs at the after service cafe. It went well I suppose, although coffeehouse gigs are tough because people are there to talk, not listen, so they don’t really notice when you start or stop.  Oh well.

Dan Rempel (who is the head elder at the church I’m a pastor at) are leading a workshop this morning called “clear.communication: Staying Relevant in a Changing World”.  Its been a struggle to prepare for - not because we couldn’t get our stuff together but because more and more ideas come up every time we met to discuss.  We’ll be lucky to keep it to an hour today… we’ll also be lucky if half the people know what we’re talking about. We’ll have to dial down the geek talk a bit.

General Council Meeting

Core Values discussion – Jacob Friesen - EMMC Executive Diector

Core values…

Explain who we are

Influence our behavior and thinking

Who are we and why does it matter?

Some want to see the bus first and then decide whether or not to get on.

Or Jacob could decide the colors and then let the chips fall

We read and wrestle together and then form a vision (grassroots, community approach)

If we’re painting buses and what color are the seats, what the most important thing?  Where do we start?

Back to Jesus, back beyond the reformation, back beyond Menno Simons

Core Value 1: Jesus is the center of our faith

- As savior and Lord. We’ve taken the salvation part seriously but no the parts about how to live it out.

- How can we help our churches “rediscover” Jesus so that his life and teaching continually shapes how we live?

Core Value 2: Community is the center of our life

- If anyone could have been individualistic in ministry, it would have been Jesus, but he tolerated the bungling of the disciples

 - Living like Christ in community, not only as individuals

 - Scripture needs to be interpreted in community

Core Value 3: Reconciliation is the center of our work

Reconciliation:

To God

To myself (MK - Calvin: without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self)

To my neighbor

With God’s creation

Most important is for everyone to be reconciled to God

The greatest social need in the world is not AIDS or hunger; it is a relationship with God through Jesus

EMMC - An international family of Christ-centered, neighbor-focused churches

Passionately following Jesus

Intentionally living out the Christ life in community

Actively engaged in the ministry of reconciliation

After this it was opened for feedback

The first response was:

“We hate the ‘emerging church’. We want nothing to do with those people.”

The second response was:

“You used the word ‘reconciliation’. Rick Warren also uses that word. We can’t use that word.”

Ok, those aren’t exact quotes… but you get the point.

“The ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat that the burglar throws to distract the watchdog of the mind.”

“Now” is where we are at, but how was our understanding of God shaped (for good and bad) in each technological era? Now, what principles can we learn from those to guide us through the current era and next era?

For example, today the internet enables anonymity while the printing press did the opposite and allowed people to escape anonymity by publishing and proliferating their written output. This lead to new “authorities” on religion, philosophy. etc. based on celebrity/popularity.

In Numbers 24 the Moabite king Balak was so scared of the people of Israel that he summoned Balaam, a man with an international reputation named  for blessing and cursing, to defeat Israel by cursing them. Three times Balak asks Balaam to curse Israel for him, and three times Balaam seeks God and does the opposite.

10 And Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together. And Balak said to Balaam,

“I called you to curse my enemies, and behold, you have blessed them these three times. 11 Therefore now flee to your own place. I said, ‘I will certainly honor you,’ but the Lord has held you back from honor.”

12 And Balaam said to Balak, “Did I not tell your messengers whom you sent to me, 13 ‘If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go beyond the word of the Lord, to do either good or bad of my own will. What the Lord speaks, that will I speak’? 14 And now, behold, I am going to my people. Come, I will let you know what this people will do to your people in the latter days.”

A couple of things here:

1. Balak says, “The Lord has held you back from honor.” All Balaam needed to do was speak a few words and he would have been rich.

2.  After refusing to do his bidding, Balak tells Balaam to flee. Balaam’s response? “I will let you know what this people will do to your people in the latter days.”

That’s pretty good for a guy who not long before was beating a talking donkey.

Here are the highlights:

- We have, within a matter of 50 years, completely changed the entire concept of what a worship service is. We’ve adopted an approach that demands ridiculous levels of musical, technical and financial commitment and resources.

- We have tied ourselves to the Christian music industry and its endless appetite for change and profit. We have accepted that all of our worship leaders are going to be very, very young people. Traditional worship  is on the verge of becoming a museum piece.

- Diversity, generational compatibility, even simplicity are all being blown up. Worship is now a major audience event, led by skilled entertainers, aimed at a demographic and judged by the audience reaction.

- Worship has now become a musical term. Praise and worship means music. Let’s worship means the band will play.

- Even singing is getting lost in this. As the volume and the performance level goes up, who knows who is singing?

- We have a lot of happy people right now. They have no idea what Biblical worship is outside of the context of their favorite songs played by a kickin’ band. They have little idea of worship in vocation, in family, in ordinary work or in silence. They credit their favorite songs as major spiritual events.

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There are a number of things I want to comment on here, and I make these comments as a musician and Pastor of Worship who is training people to be part of, as Spencer calls it, “a kickin’ band”. But I am also one who believes that music is only a small part of worship which, although powerful, cannot be allowed to become what is seen as the only form of worship. I explored that idea a while ago in a post call “What Is Worship?”

1. Spencer claims that singing is getting lost in all this. I agree. I have noticed this in my own church, having grown up there and now returning to it as a pastor, the singing is not as vigorous as it once was. It seems to me that people once sang much louder, that they filled room with song - not with pitch perfect delivery, but with enthusiasm and confidence. Too many people have forgotten how to express themselves in song. People no longer sing because the room is too loud for them to hear themselves or anyone else around them.

2. Some of this is certainly my generation’s fault. In some cases we’ve pushed too hard for modern songs and styles at the expense of the old. We want what the world has: a loud band to perform for us while we consume the experience of their performance. In a lot of cases the older generation, wanting to keep us around, has acquiesced. We, like over ambitious high school athletes, have taken the ball, run past the goal line, and kept right on running right out of the stadium. (Need a visual on that statement? Watch 4:10 to 5:04 of this video) We now have not only modern instrumentation but all the look and feel of a modern rock concert. Like a rock concert, the privileged few create the experience and the rest of us consume.

3. I’m not unhappy at all with having what some oldtimers call “Rock and Roll” in our church. It has a time and place when it is effective - but that time and place is not always and everywhere.

4. I am committed to addressing these issues and as I figure out how to do that I’ll try to keep you posted on this blog.

To do this, we partially put aside our preferences so that others can worship in a way that suits them. As a service to our fellow believers in Christ, we look out at them as we’re playing and we see when a song is hitting them and driving them to worship and when it is not.

Some people genuinely worship to Randy Travis and some worship to much louder music.  Now, I don’t think many people would be served by us playing Randy Travis style every week, but there are also a lot of people who are not served by us playing with the volume at 10 and 5 electric guitars on stage. Somewhere in between those two is where we want to be.

Its a matter of serving the people in the room. If its all youth - give-’er, full out, they’ll love it!  If its our Sunday morning crowd, which is a mixture of youth, seniors, young families, etc, then we look out and we adjust however we need to in order to serve them.

Servanthood can seem like a leash if you see it that way, but again, let’s look at Jesus example. Jesus gave up being in the presence of God in order to come to the earth, suffer, and die for us - as a servant. He did this so that people who didn’t know God could know God and have eternal life and so that people who already knew God could know him fully and enjoy him more.

As worship leaders, we are called to the same thing: we want people to meet Jesus, and we want people who already know Jesus to know him more. If we think of music as the vehicle for this, then ultimately we SHOULD be willing to play a style of music we hate every week if people are genuinely meeting Jesus and getting to know him better.

Related Post :

What is Worship?

No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come-as-You-Are Culture in the Church - John Burke

Facing the Coming Storm - Eric S. Wyatt

Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods - Mark Driscoll

Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God - Bob Kauflin

upsidedn2 - Tim Bailey

What’s on your list?

- Anyone saying anything accessible to anyone. No filter, no editor, not time of reflection.

- People who attempt to transmit the authority of printed text to online print are doomed to waste their time chasing heresies. As a result, they increase the audience of the perceived “heretic”.  Page views and inbound links determine authority. Now, more than ever, unless it is someone who already has authority/audience, the best way to avoid increasing authority is to let the author’s post die in obscurity.

- Physical print is imbued with more authority because it takes time to process, time to deliver, and has usually been combed over by the eyes of an editor.

- With the removal of the costs of time, print, paper, and editor, there is little left to restrict anyone from writing and publishing online anything that comes to mind.  However, where restrictions are eliminated, a torrent of self-expression follows. In the case of music this has been a boon to artists and has increased the number of quality offerings available. For print, it has also increased the quantity but it has diluted the quality of work in print (online or offline).

Last Thursday night I spoke to the youth at my church and one thing I drove home a few times was that there is no “on duty” and “off duty” modes of operation in the Christian life. Technology and entertainment are not a back door into a magical land where choices don’t matter, carry no consequence, and fall outside of God’s caring eye. I think many adults function this way as well.

Mark 12: 29-31 was the backbone of the two most important discernment tools I gave the youth. Loving God, Loving Others.  Our choices must take into account 1) a love for God and 2) a love for others.  Each action we take, each thing we examine and test, each movie we watch, each song we listen to, must be judged on the foundation of these two commandments.  Can what I’m doing in any way be loving towards God and beneficial towards others?

From a more technical, less content perspective, remaining oblivious or willfully ignorant of the of the costs and liabilities of new technology is another result of unrestrained capitalism. In order to sell something you draw attention to the good and try to keep the bad out of sight.

Profit (and war) is now the main driver of technological innovation - that was not the case when Gutenberg made it possible to print Bibles. 

Long story short, this was during the age when CD sales were boss as far as determining what was at the top of the music culture mindset. I saw that in the future recording artists would no longer be able to rely on CD sales as the main source of revenue and that recorded music would have little to no value other than as a promotional item to get people out to see the live show.

Principals:
1. Don’t try to strictly control and regulate what can be digitized BECAUSE what can be digitized can be copied and shared.  Use that as a given in your strategy and marketing

2. Capitalize on what cannot be digitized. In this case, the live experience of a concert

At the end of my analysis my recommendation was: invest in concert promotion and live experience companies. I saw it start to happen and when I kicked myself is when Madonna signed a contract - not with a “record company” at the center, but with a live event company at the center. Music sales are no longer the main source of revenue for bands that thrive. I should have taken my own advice.

Alright, that kind of turned into a long (and self-congratulatory) example but it illustrates my point: thoughtful reflection can lead us to accurate and trustworthy insights - to see what The Next Story might be.

(BTW - Bob Lesetz is a very clear - although sometimes belligerent - thinker on these issues and from my reading of him is McLuhan-esque in his ability to see what’s ahead in the music industry.)

McLuhan also said that “Humans are the sex organs of the machine world”. Meaning? Technologies do not self-replicate - a computer does not cozy up to a cell phone and produce a little iPhone (or similar pocket-sized computer).  The actions/desires of human being determine the course on new technology.

To the non-believer with purely capitalist motives, this means creating/inventing technology that will excite the consumerist passions of the masses. Profit trumps morals, so if you can turn a buck by piping porn into a cell phone then, hey, why not? If you can get people paying to simultaneously watch a movie, talk on their cell phones, IM their friends and Tweet about it - GO FOR IT! What do I care about the psychic effect of so much triviality and distraction?

To the believer it means understanding the principles of media and acting accordingly - not with the motive of profit (at least not without consideration of other factors) but with the motive of bringing glory to God

“The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classified as ‘pseudo’ by those who have acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they happen to be.”

Best example I can think of: newpaper people railing against blogs.

A couple of years ago I won a prize at a writing conference for writing the following story in about 10 minutes:

It didn’t jive: foxes and God? What had one to do with the other? Yet here was this brewer, regaling me with stories of how both God and foxes made numerous cameos in his life.

“What does God say in these cameos?” I asked - assuming the cameo foxes were not talking cameo foxes.

“Well, it usually happens during a nap, so it’s kind of a dream, but too real to be a dream,” he said.

“I’m sitting on the ice - I’m dry but I’m frozen, and I always need to pee, but I don’t think that’s part of the message from God. That just happens because I have a large glass of water before my nap.”

“Ok, so you’re sitting on the ice…” I say, trying to pull him back from his tangent.

“Right, right, I’m on the ice…” he continues, “Everything around me whitens and out of a large hive come large bees…”

At this point I wonder if all this actually happens unaided or is the result of some brandy-spiked chocolate fondue.

“So the bees print messages in the snow, they dab themselves on the pure white blanket and print words. I sit there watching until six bees - its always six - grab my ears and turn my head.”

This is getting weirder by the moment, and I wonder if he’d notice if I snuck out and left him there alone with his story. No such luck. He grits his teeth and looks me straight in the eye and says:

“Here’s the best part…”

Ok, here’s how the story was written. We were given a photo of a finished Scrabble game board and we had to use as many of the words on the board as possible to create a story on the spot.

Below is a picture of a finished Scrabble game board. It’s not the same one I used but it will work for the same type of contest. Try it out - use as many of the words on the board as possible, then email the story to me (michael.krahn@gmail.com) or leave it in the comment box below.