Is It Time For a Change?

 I am not an expert on pop culture or what is the latest trend in music or the arts. But I have a feeling that we are a rock and roll Fellowship trying to reach a hip hop generation. It is natural to use what we know to reach out. But what if what we know went out of style with our parents and we are looked at as irrelevant and out of touch?

When the hippies got saved under pastor Mitchell he proved that even though he was not into their scene he was open to their methods. All he did was apply biblical guidelines to what the young people wanted to do and it worked.

Time has moved on and the sixties is ancient history in a streaming new world. I see video or hear soundtracks and I wonder why I don't recognize any of the music. I have been out of touch since the early 1970's. And we have raised our children to abstain from worldly music. So we have modern religious radio who is playing music that went out of style decades ago.

The Gospel is timeless. It works wherever it is preached. But the use of music to attract young people to hear the Gospel is not working and hasn't worked for a long time. It almost seems that we put too much value on an old tool that once worked but is almost useless today.

Does anyone in our Fellowship have a sense of what will work today? Does anyone have the courage to buck tradition and try something new?

Anniversary Remembered

 If my wife were still alive we would be celebrating our 48th wedding anniversary today. I miss her. I am grateful that this day can come and go and there are no more tears or sadness or melancholy on my part. I have moved on in life. My broken heart has been healed. Thank God!

Pray For Our Song Leaders

 "Then he said to them, therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old." Matthew 13:52

Every pastor knows that there needs to be a balance to his preaching. You cannot preach on the same topic every time. You cannot keep using the same story or the same illustration or the same testimony every time. People who notice you doing that will no longer hear what you have to say.

I want to suggest that in our song service this is a good guideline to follow. There are those who think that the old wine is better and there are those who think the fresh new wine is what we need. Why not give them both something to cling to? Sing the old songs for the old saints and sing enough new songs to keep the church from become stale. Do not expect that everyone will love every song that we sing. They may not know why but they can tell when something is wrong.

"For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food." Job 34"3

Pray for our song leaders. Being able to sing in tune and stay on tempo is only the beginning of his ministry. He has to orchestrate the song service in a way that brings the maximum number of saints into a worship experience that connects them with Christ.

Pray for the sound crew. That they can do what needs to be done in a way that works for the greatest number of people. Make the sound of the song service be pleasing to us and it will be pleasing to God as well.

Learning To Walk Again

 In John chapter 6 we read the story of Jesus walking on the sea to catch up to his disciples. I want to point out something obvious to me that some modern churches have lost sight of. The Bible clearly says that Jesus and then Peter walked on the sea.

"So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid." John 6:19

Jesus did not run to them. He did not dance on the water. He did not swim to them or roll around on the sea. He walked. 

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." 2Cor.5:7

The Christian life is a long walk. Our worship ought to mirror our life. Dancing or exuberant actions do not keep in line with a walk of faith. Worship is an act of faith and gratitude, not an excuse to let it all hang out and give vent to our emotions.

Some churches need to repent and return to the heart of worship. They need to turn on the lights and fire Jezebel the worship leader. You do not have to be fleshly to be relevant. Worship is to turn our thoughts toward Christ, not to express our emotional feelings. True worship in Spirit and in truth is attractive to the lost.

No one can run forever. There may be dancing in Heaven. But we need to learn how to walk no matter how we feel. Walking was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us on Sunday morning.

Water Baptism Service

 We had a great service last night. We do not have a place to baptize in the auditorium. We se up a small stage and a metal trough outside in the parking lot for water baptism. It works fine. We had 14 new converts baptized last night.

I told a friend about this and he said that in his travels he has never seen a baptistry in any of the big churches that he has visited.  Prescott might be one of the only new buildings in our Fellowship to build a baptistry behind the platform.

We do what works in our circumstances. And we do what we have always done once we prove that it works. That is human nature.  No one wants to live on the cutting edge all of the time. Innovation always runs into resistance from the established order. 

I am grateful for the new converts who were baptized last night.

Growing Older In Our Fellowship

 I have written before that you cannot go forward while looking backward. I am not dismissing the value of history to give context to our lives and our church. History and heritage are valuable and important. But history tells us how we got here, it does not tell us what to do next.

A pastor's job is to lead the flock of God forward. To look to the regions beyond and to lead us to our promised land. To do that a leader must know God and he must not be afraid of growing old. 

One thing about time is that it never stops moving forward. We change with time. Some things we do better with time. Some things we find our abilities diminishing with time. Growing old together is a good thing as long as you do not expect your spouse to remain as they are forever.

Pop culture in every generation is a fantasy world of the young and the beautiful and has zero connection to the real world. A visual world of pop entertainment paints a false picture of what to look like and how to solve problems.

My prayer is not just that a new crop of young leaders will rise up to lead us forward. It is that our existing leaders will be wise enough to lead us to the Promised Land. That just like the aged apostles of the first century, they will never stop preaching to us the whole counsel of God in Christ. Amen.

Life must be lived to the end. Pastor Mitchell and his wife did that. Will we?

Relevant Or Reverent?

 Since worship is so important I am feeling stirred to write about it again. I read that worship wars are basically between two groups of people. There are whose who view worship as relevant and there are those who think that worship ought to be reverent. The relevant crowd wants music that is hip or cool or modern. They want music that a visitor will understand and appreciate. The reverent group wants worship to be Christ-centered and God focused and life changing.

Are we there to worship Christ, or to worship music? Is worship about how I feel or is it about who Christ is and what he can do? Are we trying to sell music or are we trying to make disciples? Do people come to church to attend a concert or to be transformed by the Word and the Spirit?

One more thought. Some think that we need to make worship relevant to make sinners and visitors want to come in. I think that worship is something that the church does and is focused on what pleases God and to honor the one who saved us by His grace. For me worship is is not evangelism, it is worship. Sinners will find true worship attractive and appealing and they will not be turned off just because it is not like what is in the clubs around town.

The style of music is a personal preference and it can change. We need to be careful not to elevate preference to the level of principal or law.

Interesting Facts

 It was a great service Wednesday night. We had our communion service. That was different. Pastor Rubi preached on the love between brethren which was great. He in his sermon mentioned some interesting facts that I had never heard before.

Did you know that only 25% of church members attend the same church for 25 years or more? There are people in the Prescott church who have been there for over 50 years. One of my friends said he has been there for 47 years. I am grateful for my old friends in Prescott.

Do you know why people leave a church? Not backsliders who go back into sin. But good people who leave. The number one reason is a change of pastors. That is interesting to me. But the second reason is a change in the music or the song service. That did not surprise me. I have written a lot on worship and how important it is. And to find that it is the number two reason why people leave a church shows why I was right to address this issue. Worship Wars continue to be a hot button issue.

It is a rare factor when people leave over doctrine. If a pastor or teacher is preaching lies they will be asked to leave. And it did surprise me how few people leave a church over conflict or strife.

Finally, I am here to stay. Till death do us part is a marriage vow that I have adopted to my relationship to this local church and to my pastors here. For better or for worse I am going to stay here and support this ministry. I will sing their songs their way as much as I can. I will support in prayer and with my tithes. And I will defend with whatever I can do to support the vision and the heritage of our Fellowship. Amen.

Cycles Of Life And Revival

 Our lives follow a broad, general, and predictable cycle. Birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death. In spite of what some say this cycle is inevitable. We have no control over our birth and we have little control over our death. All we can do is grow and mature and decline under our own power. That is what living is all about.

Other things have life cycles also. Products do. Corporations do. Churches do. Nations do. The birth and growth part of the cycle are the exciting part. Everyone wants to be a part of something new and big and growing. Their future stretches out as far as they can see. But as we or they grow, by nature they will mature. No one stays a child forever. Things that support growth are replaced by what is needed to sustain influence and effectiveness. Even the Lord said  that night is coming when no one can work. 

History is the story of what used to happen. It is the story of people or families or churches or movements and how they used to be but probably aren't any more. People here are fascinated by my stories of the early years in Prescott. But those years happened long ago and even the Prescott church is past those early years.

People who study revival think that they know what triggers revival. What they think that they  know is what was happening when revival began at some point in the distant past. What makes our Fellowship what it is are the issues addressed and the rules established and the pattern put in place by those who went before us. People used to think that pastor Mitchell would live forever, or at least until the Rapture. But he didn't. And our current leaders are working to adapt old rules to a new world. Time will tell if they were successful. What got you here might not get you there.

Find an old church with a rich history and you can discover what God used to to. 

I am at a place in life for which there is little guidance in or out of church. No one knows how to decline in the faith and in the Fellowship. Denying or ignoring the course of life does not make you exempt from it. Birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death still apply. Only the pre-tribulation rapture will interrupt this. And that is out of our control.

Our Place in World History

 "And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile."  Daniel 2:42

I think that I have found America and the modern western nations in Bible prophecy. It is too much to go into here, but it has to do with the vision of the nations which is revealed in Daniel chapter 2. The revised Roman empire is a union of dissimilar states all joined together seen in the feet and the toes. It is the end of Earthly kingdoms since the only thing left is for all of these kingdoms to be destroyed.

"And in the days of these kings the God of Heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever."  Daniel 2:44

America is not mentioned in the Bible. But I believe that we are a part of the feet and toes of mixed iron and clay. Partly strong and partly weak. And destined to be destroyed at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the rock cut out without hands who destroys the kingdoms of men and set up his eternal kingdom. 

One other idea is the mixed iron and clay could also mean that in the end times some nations will be strong and some nations will be fragile and any union between those nations will not be strong or permanent.

It is a shock to our nationalistic pride to realize that from an eternal perspective we are not that prominent or important. And that tiny Israel looms large in God's perspective and will be the seat of His eternal reign.

In the Bible the world is simply divided up as Jew, Gentile, and the Church. Our job is not nation building but earth filling and church building. 

"So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them; be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth." Genesis 9:1

Grow Up

 "...that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." 1Tim. 3:15

Being child-like in our faith is not the same as being childish in our conduct, especially in church. The aged apostle saw a need to address this in his letter to Timothy. Evidently he had been told about people who were misbehaving in church.

Some Pentecostals don't know how to behave in church. They think that emotional outbursts are spiritual and that being emotional is being moved by the Holy Spirit. And those saints are mistaken in their fleshly outbursts.

"Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophecy, and do not forbid to speak in tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order." 1 Cor. 14:39-40

For a worship service not to become chaos there must be order and decorum in our worship. We have a song leader to lead worship, not our feelings. If you are the only one doing what you are doing you are out of order and you need to stop. When someone is preaching you are out of order when you constantly burst out in support of what our pastor is saying. stop it and listen. If pastor asks for an Amen give it to him. Or keep your outbursts under control and to yourself. I say amen in my heart 10 times before I say it out loud.

It is childish to misbehave in church. It is childish to get so excited when no one else is excited. It is childish to draw attention to yourself by the ruckus that you make during worship. It's time for a few of our brethren to grow up and behave like adults instead of psychotic undisciplined children.

Someone has to be the grownup in the room. I guess that would be me.

The Missing Ingredient.

 A couple in our church, who are celebrating 40 years of marriage, renewed their vows tonight in church. It made me ponder some thoughts that marriage taught me.

First, it's time to stop dating and get married. Courtship and dating are overrated. Find a single , eligible person of the opposite sex and marry them. It's only hard if you make it hard.

Second, the secret to staying married for 50 years is to stay married one day at a time. There will be days that seem to drag by. But the years will fly by and you will be looking at 50 years before you know it.

Marriage is what is missing in your life. 

A Melting Pot Church

 The Lord spoke a word to me this morning. It is the term Melting Pot. He made it clear to me that the Door church in San Antonio is in a real sense a melting pot church.

The idea of a melting pot as it applies to people is summed up in this definition.

"The melting pot theory has been used to describe societies that are formed by an assortment of immigrant cultures that eventually produce new hybrid social and cultural forms. The melting pot theory holds that, like metals melted together at great heat, the melting together of several cultures will produce a new compound, one that has great strength and other combined advantages."

Our church is made up of many different kinds of people. Some were saved here, others were saved somewhere else. Some are native to this area, others came from somewhere else. We have Spanish speakers and those who cannot speak Spanish. We have blacks, whites, Hispanics, and who knows what else. But we all are joined together by a bond of the Holy Spirit and by our common faith in Jesus Christ. And by committing to this church we become different people than we were before coming here.

One thing about a melting pot is that it takes heat to make something new out of different ingredients. And it takes skill, both from the pastor and from the saints. As I have lived here I have noticed how God is forming something new out of dissimilar ingredients that have been melted together. The result is a church that is bigger and stronger than any of us would be on our own.

Some churches are small and stagnant simply because they are too narrow minded and too narrowly focused on only one group of people. They only want a certain race or a certain language or certain political ideas or who live in a certain part of town. Growth and influence comes with a willingness to embrace people who are different than you.

The word for today is Melting Pot. This is something that has built this church and this is something that will continue to build this church.

Song Service Revelation

 I rarely listen to modern religious radio. I usually don't care for the style of music or teaching that they broadcast. And i am not a fan of entertainment posing as worship. But recently I listened to a so called Christian radio station and I heard the songs that we sing in church here. And then I began to understand something. I understood where our church gets some of it's worship music. I also understood why we sing songs the way that we do. We are singing songs that coming from Christian radio!

I never asked about where our songs came from before. We had hymnals. We had tradition in Foursquare. And occasionally someone would teach us something new. And that is true in this church as well. We sing songs that have been sung here for a long time. The only time a song is wrong is when you change it to suit your ability or when you think you remember how it goes but you do what you think works. This only happens when the song leader is not musically inclined.

Religious radio is not a blessing to me. But if it helps me learn our songs then I will listen more.

Bible Study Thoughts

 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said unto you." John 14:26

We talked about this verse in our home Bible study last night. We talked about the Holy Spirit. Here are some of my thoughts.

First, why is the Holy Spirit called the Holy Ghost in some translations? Maybe we don't understand what the word ghost meant a long time ago?

Second, In this one verse we see the trinity. the Son, referring to the Father, and talking about the Spirit. 

Finally, every denomination and many religions have a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Do they have the reality of the Spirit in their lives and in their churches?

The Bible never gets stale or irrelevant.

Pastor Greg in San Antonio

 It was a blessing to have pastor Greg with us yesterday. He did a great job ministering to us in the morning. Then, in the evening, we had a full house as the area churches joined us for a great night with many saved and many healed. Tonight pastor Greg will wind up his visit to San Antonio with a time of ministering to men.

I told pastor Greg while in Prescott that it was funny that He did not preach at all while I was there but I had to come home to hear him preach in Texas.

They tell me that pastor Mitchell used to come every spring to spend time in San Antonio. I am grateful that pastor Greg followed the pattern and spent time with us this year. 

Just As I Am

The Conclusion Of The Matter

 Now that I am here and now that I am a part of this church I realize that it is I who must change. I am not trying to change this church. That is pastor's job.  I live here, so it is my responsibility to change to adapt to how things are done here. 

It is easy to visit a new place. but once you live there and once you decide to call that new place home, the differences begin to emerge. Different culture, different liturgy, different style of conducting everything. The differences almost made me give up and move on. But my trip to Arizona made me realize where home is and that means making the best of what had been a bad situation for me.

I am grateful to be here. I am grateful for my pastors. I am grateful for new friends. I am grateful for new food to eat! And, God willing, I intend to live out the rest of my years right here. 

As I learn to deal with you as you are, please treat me the same, and learn to deal with me as I am.

The Importance Of True Worship

 My recent trip to Arizona took me to church in Tempe and in Prescott. It was interesting to note the difference between church services in Texas and church services in Arizona. In Texas we are about emotion and excitement. In Arizona it is about the Holy spirit and heart-felt worship. We hype the song and repeat the song over and over and when it is time for the church to vocally worship it is weak and quiet and short lived. In Arizona the church worship is louder and longer and deeper than ours is.

Emotionally stirred is not the same as Spirit filled. Rattle is not revival. The real test of worship is what happens when the music stops and the people open their mouths in praise to God. Real praise is vocal, not hand clapping.  Real praise is spiritual, not emotional. No one has to stir up or hype the Prescott church to get them to worship. They know how, and when, and they do it unaided.

Pastor Mitchell used to preach on worship often. He saw the threat coming from the religious world and he saw the need to clarify what worship is and to protect us from what it is not. It seemed strange to me when pastor Mitchell would preach on worship. But now that I am here I can see better why he felt that worship was important and why he felt the need to defend true worship from error.

Not everything is spelled out clearly in the Bible. I have my experience to guide me and I have seen what happens in real revival. Worship based on discredited church groups and their false doctrine songs is a recipe for deception. Singing a lie may make it pleasing to the ear, but it is still a lie. Basing our worship on religious radio and singing songs written and preformed by unsaved people is not the way to worship a risen savior.

PS: no one where I recently was stands during the worship service until the song leader has them stand towards the end. It is not spiritual to stand for the entire song service. I have been brought to my feet by good music and by great ministry. Give me a reason to stand and I will. Or else I will stand because y'all do.

Let God be true, and every man be a liar. Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!