Worship Weblog
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Judging a Word by its Book Covers
Another online diversion from Amazon--and this one you have to see to believe--is an amaztype function that generates an image of a word composed of book covers whose titles contain that word. So run the function for “worship,” and up pops an image of books on worship that cluster together to spell out the word “worship.” See The Worship Sourcebook on there?
Update: Just saw John’s Worship Seeking Understanding pop up, and one of the Alban books--couldn’t make out which it was
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Statistically Improbable Phrases
I wrote a column recently on Amazon.com’s “statistically improbable phrases,” or SIP’s. These are word pairs that a computer finds to be distinctive of the text of a particular book. (SIP’s are only offered for books that have granted “Search Inside” permission to Amazon).
I couldn’t resist checking the SIP’s for Neal Plantinga and Sue Rozeboom’s Discerning the Spirits. They are:
worship planners, worship planning, congregational song, church growth movement, sung prayer, worship music, worship leaders
Amazon also lists books that share SIP’s. So sung prayer, for example, is also an SIP for these books:
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Shepherd and Word Conference in Albania
Geoff Thomas reports from a recent conference in Albania:
The Powerpoint presentation at the side of the pulpit spelled out the following announcement - which was projected on the wall in large letters throughout the whole Conference, “Konference e Barinjue & Fjala, Maj 2005, Ju Lutem, Fikni Celularin” which means, “The Shepherd and Word Conference, May 2005.” Shepherd is the American MacArthur half, and Word is British Albanian Evangelical Mission half. But what was the keynote verse for the Conference? “Ju Lutem, Fikni Celularin?” It simply said, “Switch Off Your Cell Phones.”
How strong is Christianity in Albania? They say that since freedom to worship and evangelise was granted in 1990 (when there was one single church in the whole country) about 120 evangelical churches have come into existence with about 8,000 professing Christians. There is plenty of corruption in the nation; how the country needs Christians to be its salt and light. There are a few Bible Schools and the MacArthur Grace Baptists put on a presentation during our conference of a new college they are opening next year up to Master’s level, with full time lecturers and with DVD’s of all the lectures given at the Master’s Seminary in California.
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‘Life and Religion Are One’
The current issue of Christian History looks at the preaching of 19th century British preacher George MacDonald. Here’s an excerpt of one of his sermons on Revelation 3:
What does repent mean? To weep that you have done something wrong? No; that is all very well, but that is not repentance. Is repentance to be vexed with yourself that you have fallen away from your own ideal … ? No; that is not repentance. What is repentance? Turning your back upon the evil thing; pressing on to lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold upon you. To repent is to think better of it, to turn away from the evil. No man is ever condemned for the wicked things that he has done; he is condemned because he won’t leave them. …
Christian History’s website features a special issue from its archives on another Victorian preacher, Charles Spurgeon. Lewis Drummond wrote of Spurgeon:
Spurgeon was endowed with a beautiful speaking voice—it had melody, depth, and a resonance that could be heard by many thousands of people. Yet he never seemed to be straining. ... Spurgeon also had an eloquence that gives the impression he labored hours over his similes, metaphors, and dramatic illustrations. Yet he prepared his Sunday morning sermon Saturday night, and his Sunday night sermon on Sunday afternoon. He would walk into the pulpit with a simple, small outline, sometimes written on the back of an envelope, and from that extemporaneously pour forth eloquence almost equal to Shakespeare’s.
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Monday, June 06, 2005
Teens Choosing Church
From Carol Lytch’s recent Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference for Teens (reviewed here)—an excerpt recommended by Ed Seely at a recent CICW staff meeting earlier this year:
How do parents influence their teen’s religious loyalty?
First, teens are influenced in the most lasting way by how their parents connected them (or not) to the church from a young age. ...
Second, parents influence teens in what they believe and how they practice their faith by maintaining a church attendance rule even into the teen years. ...
Third, parents influence teen religious loyalty by choosing carefully the church to which they will link the teen. ...
For parents and teens today, church affiliation and participation have less to do with social background and family loyalty, and more to do with personal needs and individual choice. In the culture of the home, teens learn to make choices and to act on them--and they learn this from their parents.
WOWAW 3
To worship the Lord is—in the world’s eyes—a waste of time. ... By engaging in it, we don’t accomplish anything useful in our society’s terms. Worship ought not to be constructed in a utilitarian way. Its purpose is not to gain numbers nor for our churches to be seen as successful. Rather, the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it. ... Worship is a royal waste of time, but indeed it is royal, for it immerses us in the regal splendor of the King of the cosmos. The churches’ worship provides opportunities for us to enjoy God’s presence in corporate ways that take us out of time and into the eternal purposes of God’s kingdom.
-Marva Dawn, A Royal ‘Waste’ of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World, Introduction
• Listen to a reading of this quote(mp3)
by Kristen Verhulst
Earlier: WOWAW 2