Living an integrated life

whoisthechurchtoday — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:04:54 +0000

I’m at a United Methodist Church conference youth planning retreat this weekend. We’ve been having discussions about what the upcoming junior and senior high retreats will look like, and in these discussions come the question of theme. What do junior high and high schoolers need or want to hear? How do we make these retreats relevant?

One idea that’s been surfacing in conversations even before tonight: living an integrated life. What does that even mean? How do we integrate our faith/church selves with our Monday-Saturday selves?

Worship, bad theology and the call

whoisthechurchtoday — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:55:29 +0000

In an attempt to explore my call in the Church today, I wanted to invite others to a conversation about what it is we are called to do. worship. music. relationships. relevance. social justice. what’s it all about and how do we get to where we need to be?

I’ll start today with the idea of music and worship. I recently started subscribing to Relevant Magazine. It’s objective is simple: God. Life. Progressive Culture. The piece I read this morning was all about the goods and bads of (praise and) worship. What really spoke to me was the bit about it being ok to say no to bad music. We have our favorites that we’ve been singing in church since the 1980s, and we have the newer stuff put out by Hillsong United, Passion and the likes. Sometimes we sing them because we are looking for a way to get the congregation to respond (so we use tried and true songs), but I think we leave something out of we also don’t take opportunities to challenge and help the group grow by stepping outside of what’s expected in a worship service.

How do you find balance?

Who is the Church Today?

Living an integrated life

Worship, bad theology and the call