The Flow of P P

Last night in our Gathering we began (or Re-visited) discussing Worship. Its unfortunate that the beauty of this biblical word-has been perverted by the Western (American primarily) church. Worship has been reduced to synthetic experience of self-adulation in many cases. We sing songs like "Its all about you Jesus......'I'll bring you more than a song'...cuz its all about you"- and yet we are bring to Jesus not just any song, but an overused song that attempts to highten our emotions so we feel good about the song we bring Jesus (or at least the god that we've nicknamed Jesus). You may ask how I know this...b/c I am among the guiltiest in doing such. And I'm in a hell of frustration.

N.T. Wright in Simply Christian gives this telling illustration: A good king makes water available to everyone. The state pumps in clean, drinkable, refreshing water into the homes of the citizens. And out of concern for health, dental hygene- some helpful chemicals are put into the water stream. Its good. Over years, this is all the citizens know. Then one day, some of the citizens are on a mountain, and a spring of water shoots up. Its so cool, refreshing, clear, unpluuted by chemicals (whether good or bad). Its so wild! So natural! Like this is how God intended for us to drink water. Its quite the experience.

What has been called "WORSHIP" for so long in the Western Modern Church, is like the plumbing system of chemically enhanced water. It was created as a good thing. But, somehow Worship was reduced to something it wasn't created to be. No more than could those of the Reformation "nail" church, doctrine, praxology, for all time-can the church of today "nail" worship (meaning the public gathering where creative and missional expressions of Praise are overflowing....eg Psalm 45, 96, 1 Peter 2:9, Mark 16:15 just a few to mull over!). Maybe the PP (or CE- Creative Expressions---Justin came up w/ this last night!) should be wild (not chaotic...1 Cor 14), untamed.

In the end, what we threw out last night was simply this: Worship is all of life in the Kingdom Community. So whatever we call- PP, CE, YM- it should flow from and back to Community. And if we immediately spring to talk about private, personal ways of worship, or personal preferences, then it appears we may have already missed the point, and the ship (as in fellow-ship...dorky I know!). Perhaps it would be wise of us to "take on this mind which was/is in Jesus the Christ/King, have the same love (wow-one love, one passion) and being in full accord and of one mind....Let each of us look not only (or primarily) to our own interests, but also to the interests of others. Yes! Have THIS mind among yourselves, which is yours in JESUS THE KING!...."

We have certainly not dialogued this out enough, but perhaps the immediate course is to UNITE w/ the SAME LOVE! Namely, for Jesus, His Kingdom, and our Local Community. Perhaps finding joy in each other and by blessing each other.

I love that some immediately start thinking of ideas to benefit the community. Last night, ADD Justin was spewing one idea after another to me. I love that. I know he won't be the one to bring these ideas about. But, what an encouragement. One idea was to have those of us who aren't the ones to play instruments and lead in singing- to pick some of the songs, some times. GREAT IDEA. That's Communal Thinking.

What other ideas do we have? How do we learn to Creatively Express our Story through music, testimony, visual art, drama, dance, poetry, and Hugging!

What will it take for us to start writing some of our own music/lyrics? (This is meant to dialogue, not give a one word/sentence answer e.g. "Commitment" etc).

Imagine w/ me, if you will: What if we let go of our egos for the sake of The Community, The River? What if we didn't make fun of honest attempts to creatively express our story. And what if we all committed ourselves to throw ourselves completely into not only our Creative Expression of our story in the Gathering,but in all of life-together.
I think we'd be emerging into the type of Community we dream of being.......An Afflux of Authentic life!

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