My career as a bully was short-lived and thankfully so. I was probably 13 when I decided to try pushing around a kid a year or two younger but half my size. I figured he’d […]
Tag: Worship
A Sabbath perspective
“Frank is mowing his lawn! He’s breaking the Sabbath!” My son was just five years old at the time and scandalized by our neighbor’s flagrant disregard for observing the Sabbath command. His dismay mirrors most […]
Psalm 108
(A David psalm for singing.) My heart won’t quit, God, Won’t get distracted. I’m here to sing. Yes, to make music, To give you my utmost. Wake up, piano! Wake up, guitar! I will wake […]
Psalm 100
A rendering of Psalm 100, a favorite call to worship which reminds us that thanksgiving — the gift of thanks — is an everyday activity.
Psalm 98
A rendering of Psalm 98, which is a call for all creation to join in a vast exclamation of praise to Yahweh who has remained faithful to his covenant love-bond with his people.
Psalm 92
A rendering of Psalm 92, the Sabbath psalm, which looks forward to the setting right of all that’s upside down in the world when the ultimate Sabbath comes.
Psalm 71
A rendering of Psalm 71, which looks for God’s help in current trouble and envisions the party after rescue comes.
Psalm 66
A rendering of Psalm 66, where personal struggle and rescue are seen in the light of what God has done in history, rescuing his people after they have struggled.
Psalm 84
(Worship leader: A Korah family psalm to be playing on that guitar from Gath.) The sweetest place on earth Is your house, Yahweh of heaven’s armies. My soul longs, Famished, Ravenous For the place where […]
Psalm 48
A rendering of Psalm 48, an ode to Jerusalem and God’s protection of his city and his people.
Psalm 42
Like a dog At an empty water dish, Parched, That’s me, So terribly thirsty For God. My soul is dehydrated, Chapped and cracked, Empty of God — The bubbling, Refreshing, Life-giving God. Where can I go […]
Psalm 29
A rendering of Psalm 29, a David psalm viewing an electrical storm roll from north to south and seeing in it the power of God, which he uses not for destruction, but for peace.
Psalm 33
Sing your hearts out to Yahweh, You good and just people! Worship and integrity Are inseparable twins. Praise Yahweh with your guitar. Make exquisite music for him On your piano. Yahweh’s faithful character Can be […]
Psalm 14
A rendering of Psalm 14, rejecting the atheism of the world and the times when our own hearts slip into the atheism of living as if God doesn’t exist.
Psalm 150
A rendering of Psalm 150, an exuberant call to praise God with all we have, using our most passionate music.
A user’s guide to having a soul
I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul,” for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is […]
Living and praying as Image of God
Where does human value come from? What makes us so special? We assume the world belongs to us and is here for us to do with as we will. And so we eat whatever we […]
The heart of Thanksgiving
I love eating and Thanksgiving is easily the best eating day of the year as far as I’m concerned. And with its leftovers that stretch over the following week, my joy is good food is […]
What the storm reveals
The winds howled and rattled the single-paned windows. Branches tumbled from the fir trees in our backyard as we sat safely in our house, grateful for sturdy modern architecture. And my three-year-old son, with wide […]
Psalm 150 — uncontainable praise!
A can of soda was a rarity in the super healthy home I grew up in. But occasionally, my friends and I would get ahold of some pop cans. And after we’d each guzzled one, […]
Worship that reorders our imaginations
There’s a lot more to worship than singing some songs and hearing a sermon, with prayers and an offering interspersed between them. There are also a number of purposes for worship, but I want to […]
Worship is a dance
Worship is a dance. And so too is theology. From our perspective, both of them have Jesus in the middle. But the reality, if we could step back a bit further, is surprising. I like […]
Prayerless worship & worship that leads to praying
As I’ve spent time with different churches, I’ve become aware of how prayerless evangelical worship has become. By stripping away liturgical elements, many of our gatherings have ended up without much depth in prayer at […]
Prepare to share (or, one practice for an uncontainable faith)
When I was growing up, the churches I was a part of had two services each Sunday morning that weren’t identical like most multi-service churches now. The first service was shorter, about half an hour, […]
Political angst & Psalm 58
Politicians have always been corrupt. Not all of them are, of course. But always, God’s people have struggled under the weight of evil leaders. Always, the presence of the powerful who use their power inappropriately […]
Preach like a tsunami
The power of water can be as serene and unnoticed as a lake or as wild and violent as the waterfall that pours out of that lake. It’s all right there. Power on tap. As […]
18 things every pastor and worship leader needs to consider
1. Worship without silence leaves no room for awe. 2. The words “cool” and “pastor” don’t go together. For those who are trying: Stop it. (This applies to worship leaders, too.) 3. Prayer doesn’t need […]
Credit cards, usury & the new slavery
There was a time when usury was a punishable offense. Now, it is business as usual. And it has created a whole new form of slavery called massive credit card debt. Usury is the over-charging […]
When God dumps out your toy box … it must be time to play!
You can always tell what toys my kids are into, because they’re all over the house. I do a lot of cleaning up of the toys behind my kids. But they just keep dumping them out again. […]
Living as dual citizens
Almost a decade ago, we removed the American flag from the sanctuary of the church I was pastoring. I don’t remember why. It was probably a part of decorating for Advent. But it got put in such a safe place that […]
A simple spiritual health survey
What does spiritual health and maturity look like? How do I gauge where I’m at and where I need to grow? When I think of discipleship — a life of following Jesus — I see […]
Getting real — four pegs to hang your life on
Our lives are a complex mass of thoughts, emotions, relationships, and activities. And there is no time of the year that is free from experiencing personal traffic jams. With four kids in four different schools and all their […]
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer & the birth of Jesus
Each December, we engage with the same stories over and over again. On one hand, we’ve got the birth narrative of Jesus. On the other hand, we’ve got a collection of well-loved holiday movies Year […]
Unemployed at Christmas
Unemployed at Christmas Joseph the carpenter Did not build his baby’s bed/// Shepherds left their field And their flock No longer shepherding But chasing the angels’ call instead/// Magi followed a star Not their career […]
The wisdom of worship
The Psalms is a wonderfully diverse compilation of Israel’s praise. It gathers glorious creation hymns and salvation thanksgivings together with a heaping pile of laments. And scattered throughout this sprawling mixtape are bits of what is […]
Everything that has breath — the goal of worship
What does worship look like? What does it sound like? Where does it get done? Who gets included? And what is the purpose of it all anyway? As the Psalms conclude, they do so with […]
Erotic spirituality — the good, the bad, and the ugly of combining faith and sexuality
What is the relationship between sexuality and spirituality? In many ways, sexuality has become its own spirituality. And in the process, it has coopted church music and biblical language to articulate it. Ray Charles has […]
Death by packaging
We’ve got a packaging problem. A recent article in the venerable Atlantic suggests that those plastic coffee pods that make Keurig brewing machines so convenient and popular are adding tons of the non-recyclable, non-biodegradable plastic K-cups […]
Psalm 113 — The greatness of God is made greater in his humble generosity
Reading Psalm 113 surprised me. There seemed to be an abrupt shift from its beginning — where it talks about the magnificence of God — and its end. Here’s the psalm in its entirety: 1 […]
When "skipping church" isn't skipping church (and when it is)
I love the meme that accompanies this post because it points to several mistakes about what it means to be the church while intending neither. 1. The first mistake is equating being in a building with church. […]
Is my God really just my dog?
I love my dog. Ebony comes when I call her. She goes to her bed when I tell her to. She’s always excited to see me. She does tricks when I offer her a treat […]
Re-membering — the relationship between community, worship & covenant
One of our sanest writers is Wendell Berry. His contribution as a Christian essayist to the environmental movement has been unique and profound. His poetry, especially his Sabbaths collection, is evocative and wise. But it’s his […]
How to read the Bible, part 1 — Read — God speaks. We listen.
There are four steps to the process of Bible reading referred to as “sacred reading” or lectio divina. The first of these is lectio, which simply refers to reading. As followers of Jesus, we know that we’re […]
What the preacher should do when the sermon sucks — three tips for before heading to the pulpit
What does a pastor do when it’s Sunday and life has intruded so much during the week that there hasn’t been a chance to write a sermon? Or the sermon that has been written sucks […]
How to end the worship wars for good — part 2
We’ve already noted the need to move from a focus on experience in worship to an encounter with God. Experiences are great, but when we make them the goal and/or measure of worship, we become […]
How to end the worship wars for good — part 1
I’ve written elsewhere about the need to move the focus of worship from experience to encounter. If we gather to meet Our Triune God as a community, rather than to have a transcendent experience as […]
The purpose of worship — from experience to encounter
In a 2005 interview with Christianity Today, Eugene Peterson said, “Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel […]
Worship that misses … on purpose
If every song and scripture connects with you in worship, it might be time to try another church. If what is included in worship is only as wide as your current experience, there’s a real […]
Do we "owe" worship to God?
I came across an ancient Persian poem by a poet named Hafiz, written in the 1300s. It made me think of worship. Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, “you […]
A picture of our torn up praise
Awhile back, I came across a song by the band Phosphorescent called “A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise” and it has intrigued me ever since — not the song, just the title. Doesn’t our […]