Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies;Somebody calls you; you answer quite slowly – a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head;Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she’s gone.Lucy in the sky with diamonds…According to John Lennon, who penned the song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was inspired b...  Read More

In writing last week’s blog (“Raised Hands”) I seem to have thrown a rock at a hornet’s nest.  So let me step back for one blog and lay out what my “pastor’s eyes” see and what I am working toward with my writing. Our church is a multi-generational church with people from different backgrounds.  Our historical base (when it comes to “worship”) sang traditional hymns, and our people valued reverenc...  Read More

In many evangelical churches people raise (or wave) one or both hands during singing.  Why?The Bible mentions the raising of the hands, but not during singing.  Raising one hand was done, not in worship, but when swearing an oath (e.g Genesis 14.22; Deuteronomy 32.40).  Witnesses sworn in at court still raise their right hand.Both hands were raised when pronouncing a blessing (Leviticus 9.22; Luke...  Read More

In most traditional hymns instrumentation serves as accompaniment – period.  Instruments play to guide the singing.  Contemporary music often has instrumental “fills” – a few bars where there is no singing, only the playing of the instruments or an instrument playing a solo – and I’ve sometimes had traditionalists complain that this is another aspect of “making a show” rather than truly worshippin...  Read More

A criticism I receive from traditionalists about contemporary worship is that the musicians are just “putting on a show”.  When I’ve probed to learn what people perceive as “a show” (or “a performance”) the most common complaint is that musicians move with their instruments to the music.I’m not talking about dancing around wildly, but about drummers and bass players making unusual faces as they pl...  Read More

I was in a quartet that represented our college in churches, youth rallies, and summer camps.  We stood stiff and still, our hands at our sides.  No moving, no swaying.  You never held a microphone in your hand.  Our listeners nodded approval as we sang.  If they enjoyed a song, they’d say “Amen”.  If they enjoyed it immensely, their “Amen’s” were much louder.  No one clapped in church -- ever.  H...  Read More

Knowledge of how the world works leads to technology that makes life more comfortable, and prospects of a more comfortable life here has led to a shift in focus to the here and now.  That shift makes a transcendent God irrelevant and a religion of transcendence useless.  Theologians called it “the death of God”.This shift accelerated exponentially through the 19th and 20th centuries, and evangelic...  Read More

Worship (in both Greek and Hebrew “bowing low” to express humility and submission) was traditionally connected to a recognition of God’s transcendence (His highness above us and distance from us) and was best expressed by the quiet reverence of emotional reserve.But momentous scientific advances over the past five centuries have pushed transcendence out of view.  Focus shifted to this life and rel...  Read More

Worship (bowing low) is related primarily to God’s transcendence (His existence high above us).  But developments in the world have slowly shifted Christian spirituality away from God’s transcendence toward God’s immanence – His coming down and being present among us.As science has unveiled nature’s mysteries – weather cycles, the circulation of blood, the function of sperm and egg, and the role o...  Read More

For though the LORD is high, He regards the lowly,but the haughty He knows from afar.                                                                    -- Psalm 138.6Your Majesty.  Your royal Highness.  We speak of human greatness of status in terms of height or elevation.  The Scriptures portray the LORD the same way – the Most High, high and lifted up, high above all the nations of the earth.  ...  Read More

One of the criticisms I hear about self-restraint is this:  “You’ll go nuts cheering for your favorite team at the game but you can’t cheer for Jesus in church!”Years ago I was given two tickets to a Philadelphia Flyers game.  I invited a friend in ministry who was a Flyers fan.  It is often said that in the middle of a fistfight a hockey game might break out, and that was true in this particular ...  Read More

We live in an age that values expressing oneself without restraint.  We consider this genuineness and honesty.  Inability (or failure) to express oneself, is indicative, we say, of emotional troubles and inhibitions, or ‘hang-ups’ (to use a term from the Sixties).But these are recent developments.  For most of history, self-control – weighed words and restrained emotions/desires – was the cornerst...  Read More