I’ve been bootlegged!  The outrage!

Someone posted “Jesus Only” on youtube.  Here it is:

As music videos go, I’ve seen better. I’ve also seen much worse so I won’t complain.  Of course now that I’ve linked it I guess that makes me an accomplice in this crime.  Please don’t tell the RIAA.

“Remember Me”, the final track on my CD “Jesus Only” has received a Covenant Award nomination for Jazz/Blues Song of the Year. The Covenant Awards are awarded by the Canadian Gospel Music Association. The song is up against some heavy competition, including offerings from Steve Bell and Mike Janzen, but as they say, it’s an honour just to be nominated!

For more info see:  http://www.gmacanada.ca/

You can preview the nominated track at last.fm.

A month has now passed since I resigned from my position as a pastor.   I have an offer to go back to the world of hi-tech which I have accepted.  I’ll soon again be a software developer- cubicle dweller.  I’m really looking forward to a job where I can walk out at 5:00 p.m. and not think about it again until the next morning!  I’ve had some time to reflect and here are my quick-hit thoughts on what I’ve learned through the last few months:

• It has been a real joy to step off the ministry treadmill.  Sunday happens every seven days whether you’re ready or not.  It hasn’t taken me long to get used to leisurely weekends.  Saturday’s used to be spent pre-occupied with the next Sunday’s service and Sunday was “game day”.  And there is no off-season.  Anyway, it’s been nice to re-acquaint myself with how the rest of the world lives.  I’ve also had an amazing summer with the family.  My boys will only be boys for a few more years.  I’m so thankful to have this precious time with them!

• What I’ll do differently if I return to ministry:  I would not let frantic activity become a substitute for true spirituality.  Now that I’ve experienced life off of the treadmill I won’t go back to the pace I was keeping.  I’d put much more of my time and effort into developing other leaders and share the work much more than I did the first time around

• I’ve reflected a lot on my own identity.  Much of it was tied up in my vocation.  In some ways it’s easier to do ministry when you have the title to go with it… of course the title has its pitfalls as well.   Now I’m really puzzling through the concept of the priesthood of all believers.   I’ve been on both sides of vocational ministry and back again.  I can’t tell which I prefer yet.

• I’ve rediscovered my love of music.  Over the last couple years I’ve hardly done any playing for the sheer joy of it.  Any practicing I did was to get ready for the next service or the next performance.  I’ve been playing for fun again – no pressure.  Just for my own enjoyment and as an offering of worship.  I feel like a kid again!

• God is good.  When I resigned I had nothing to go to.  It was a huge step of faith for Pearl and me.  Yet we felt completely at peace with the decision.  Still there were some anxious weeks.  I sent some resumes around to other churches in other cities and there were some possibilities, but it would mean uprooting from Ottawa (20 years here), selling the house and starting from scratch in a new city.  After what we’ve been through leading up my resignation we really didn’t want to add further stress on top of it all.  And then this opportunity in hi-tech (in this terrible economy!) came along.  I believe that we’ll end up back in full time ministry at some point, but this job means we don’t have to leave Ottawa this summer and can take our time looking for the right place for us to serve.

Thanks to all of you who’ve been praying and supporting us in so many ways.  We really feel loved as you’ve let God’s love for us flow through you.  Your countless expressions of love have ministered deeply to both Pearl and to me.  Thank you!

When we gather as a church our purpose is to worship God.  So is it right to celebrate mother’s day and father’s day at church?  I mean, those holidays are certainly not Christian, biblical holidays.  You could even argue that mother’s day has its origin in pagan springtime fertility celebrations.  So why are we celebrating a pagan holiday? (Full disclosure – we celebrated mother’s day at my church).  I brought up this question during our devotional time at a recent worship team rehearsal.  These are some of the issues that we came up with:

• Is it biblical?  Well, we certainly aren’t commanded to and they didn’t celebrate mother’s day during bible times, but at the same time we aren’t prohibited from thanking God for our mothers or encouraging mothers.  So we have to grapple with whether we take Luther’s view – anything not prohibited by scripture is permissible.  Or Calvin’s view that only what scripture expressly commands or demonstrates is permissible, also known as the “Regulative Principle of Worship”.  Most of us come down on Luther’s side with this one.  I’m guessing that reformed Presbyterians (who follow Calvin’s view and don’t use musical instruments in their worship services) don’t make a big deal about mother’s day.
• Inclusion and Exclusion – if we decide that it is OK to have a service that is still centered on Christ but of particular encouragement to mothers how do we handle all those who aren’t mothers?  Is it OK to exclude some people from some parts of a service?  Where do we draw the line?
• Expectations and Perspectives – If we totally ignored mother’s day at our church there would be some upset people!  They are expecting us to acknowledge and celebrate mothers.  But there are also people for whom mother’s day is very difficult.  If you have a strained relationship with your mother or she was abusive, or she recently passed away you might find the day very difficult.  As worship leaders we need to be aware of these perspectives and account for them as best we can.  For instance, a video with pictures of mom’s with their newborn babies will have totally different effects on a new mom as opposed to a woman who unable to have children yet longs to be a mom.

Nobody said being a worship leader was easy…  and by the way, I love my mom.

Here are three video segments from “The Gathering” at Scotiabank Place here in Ottawa, Oct. 25, 2008.

I’ll be hitting the old stomping grounds this week. I’ll be in Windsor visiting my family. If you’re in the area I’d love to see you at Cameron’s on Wednesday night, or at my concert on Friday night at Southwood Community Church’s Slavic Campus. I’ll also be leading worship this weekend at Heritage Park Alliance Church. It’ll be a busy week but I’m looking forward to great times of ministry and making new friends and meeting some old ones.

A few years ago I read about Francis Beckwith, the former president of the Evangelical Theological Society converting (or rather, returning) to Catholicism.  It rocked the evangelical world, that such an eminent theologian could leave protestantism to return to Rome.  Well, Francis has written a book entitled “Return To Rome” which chronicles his journey out of the Catholic church and then back into it.  Here are my quick hit thoughts on Beckwith’s book:

Here is Beckwith’s take on the “folk mass” – one of the American Catholic church’s implementations of the Vatican II reforms:

Looking back, I believe that the Catholic Church’s weakness was presenting the renewal movements like the charismatic movement as something new and not part of the Church’s theological traditions.  For someone like me, interested in both the spiritual and intellectual grounding of the Christian faith, I didn’t need the “folk Mass” with cute nuns and hip priests playing “Kumbaya” with guitars, tambourines and harmonicas.  And it was usually not done very well, if my experiences and those of many of my friends and scores of my contemporaries with whom I have spoken and corresponded are correct.  Combine that with a watered-down and intellectually vapid presentation of the Gospel, and is it any wonder that many of us made the mad dash to where we saw Christ lifted up in Evangelical Protestantism?  Instead of playing to its strengths – historical continuity with the early church, theological sophistication, a high view of scripture, a true counter-cultural understanding of the human person and social justice, and profound and life changing spiritual practices and traditions – the American Church offered to the young people of my day a lousy pop music, a gutted Mass, theological shallowness, and “social justice” pabulum that was a proxy for far left politics.”

Ouch!  But if you change the phrase in the last sentence to “far right politics” then you get a good description of a lot of contemporary protestant churches.

• A very good discussion of the doctrine of justification and the reformed position versus the Catholic position.  It was puzzling out this doctrine that was the tipping point for Beckwith to return to Catholicism.
• Beckwith makes a strong case that converting to Catholicism is compatible with his evangelicalism.
• Beckwith’s views the issues strictly on a theological basis and doesn’t really deal with praxis issues.

That’s all for now!

I find economics fascinating.  Probably because I know very little about it.  I took one economics course in university and remember something about supply and demand.  I also remember phrases such as “inelastic demand”, “negative supply shock”, “guns and butter”, “velocity of money” among others.  Don’t ask me to say anything sensible about them, but I’ve been thinking about economics with our current fiscal meltdown.  So as I was reading in Genesis I came across what may be the first instance of monetary policy in history.

Gen 23:16 “Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.”

The weight of a shekel was variable.  They had a floating currency!  I doubt there was some central banker that set the weight… but I would guess that it would go up and down based on certain economic conditions.  Don’t ask me what those conditions would be.  Also… don’t ask me what the spiritual significance of this is either.

I’m back to work after a few weeks away.  It is really energizing to step back into worship leading after a break.  Sabbath is so important to the rhythm of our lives.  It’s essential for ministry and for life that we keep the rhythm of work and rest.  Last night at my rehearsal with the band I was just so energized to be “back in the saddle” again.  Even when you’re doing what you love it can become a grind without any sabbath breaks.

Another interesting thing happened at rehearsal that got me thinking along these lines.  We hooked up the metronome to our in-ear monitors as we worked through a song with a couple of different grooves.  It was pretty depressing to see how tough it was for us to keep time!  That stubborn metronome just won’t speed up with the rest of us!  Most of us tend to rush.. in music and in life.  But we have a rhythm that God has given us in Genesis one of work for six days and and then rest.  If we don’t keep good time… a train wreck is just around the corner.

So get out there and get some sabbath rest.