Moved to New Location @ WorshipTraining.com

I am moving my blog to a new location within the WorshipTraining.com Campus.  That is the blog I will be updating.  Please go to:

http://members.worshiptraining.com/ripples

 

Week 4 Reflections: Water – A Communal Life (Essentials Formation)

For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

This last week was a little overwhelming, not so much from a family emergency but from God really speaking a lot to me in a short period of time.  I would start to connect things but quickly get overwhelmed with the amount of revelation.  I found myself making a comment that I couldn’t quite get my arms around everything and that it would be better to come at it from the other side, to enjoy the immersion in something that was far bigger than myself.

This week, the elemental life part was water .  Water does indeed seek out and run to the lowest part.  Water is about living in Christian community and receiving care and encouragement when we are down and giving care and encouragement to others, at other times.  This idea from class is pretty fundamental to life in the Body of Christ.  This says that Christianity is not something we can do alone.  This says that life is not something we can do alone, at least not very well.

On Palm Sunday, Pastor Thomas Gardner spoke on Mercy.  He gave a vivid, Biblical description of the ancient Mercy Seat.  He said Mercy flows downward, from the King to the lowest and humblest person in the kingdom.  Mercy moves from the living to the dry bones.  Mercy brings life to what was desolate and dead.  Mercy is just like water flowing to the lowest places in people’s lives.

Water has an absolute source.  Mercy has an absolute source.  We may be the ones who God’s mercy comes through but in the end, it is God’s mercy that meets people.  Pastor Thom said Mercy has a name.  Mercy is the name of our God.  The mercy that we’ve been shown enables and compels us to be merciful to other people.

Give and receive….

 

Easter Sunrise (Essentials Formation)

For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

Moved by my Essentials classes and devotional calls, I set my alarm for 6:10am so I could watch the sunrise at 6:40am this morning. My ‘me’ has seen 55 Easter Sundays so far, some I remember more than others. This one felt special and while I can’t quite word it, the specialness of the day or should I say my awareness of it is being so impacted by my Christian worship community both local and online. We have all been on a quest, together, this year and now something beautiful is dawning on us.

The Paschal Mystery figures deeply in this morning for me. As the sun came up, my imagination drank in the accounts of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from all four Gospels. They took me back to a January morning, standing in a Jerusalem garden, by an empty tomb with folks from our worship ministry. At the same time, in was acutely aware of the birds singing all around me, the beauty of my wife’s flowers, the smell of the fresh cut grass. Somehow the moment of sunrise, silent in it’s coming, unstoppable in it’s moment, reminding us of the foundational moment of our faith, transcends all time. In a language all can hear and understand, it tells of a moment long ago, speaks to a present transformed life, and sings of a wonderful future yet to come.

Such a glorious, wonderful, amazing, mysterious Resurrection sunrise it was, is and is to be!

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

 

Week 3 Reflections: An Empowered Life (Essentials Formation)

For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

An Empowered Life:

It is finally Springtime and my thoughts are turning to the outdoors.  Part of my Spring activities is taking my cabin-fevered, sit on the couch and watch it snow body and getting it ready for the fun of the warm outdoor seasons.  When we restart our exercise programs there is the realization that we can’t do the same routine all the time.  We need to vary the type of exercise we do so that we don’t overdo and more importantly, to keep our minds in the game.  We need variety!

As we hit the third week of Essentials Formation, I felt moved to declare certain days more fit for certain spiritual and personal growth activities.

For quite a long time, our family declared Sundays as a family day.  We formed a tradition to spend time together.  Now, it seems, even with our children grown, Sundays is still a time of soaking in family.  For us, the focus is a time of God and family….Earthy….The Grounded Life.

This week, I took a day to be inspired, to catch the wind of the Holy Spirit and what God has created for me to see, hear, smell, touch, read, ponder, so I will be stirred and moved to gather it up and creatively offer it back as worship and in thanks to God.  While we should do this all time, I felt to take one day and make it special as an inspirational day.  I wanted to do my best to remain more attentive than usual to the beauty of God’s Creation and the winds from God that blow across and into my life.  This week, I especially noted the beauty of the night sky.  With my son and our iPhones, we found planets, identified constellations, and said our goodbyes to one of our favorites (Orion with his puppies).  Even now, I ponder the knowing Orion and the dogs will be back in the fall as beautiful and bright as ever.  It makes me think of the majesty and timelessness of the God who created and orders the seasons.  Windy……The Inspired Life.

Along the way, I set aside a special day, Wednesdays, to rest in and pray about the Beautitudes.  Thursday is set in place to pray and meditate on missions.  This week, following a Samaritan’s Purse prayer guide, I prayed for peace and stability in the Sudan, and for the Christians there.

I have not set a day for the empowered life quite yet.  At the same time, I received emails from a missionary couple who are returning to Israel, a daughter of a pastor friend who is studying with YWAM in New Zealand, and I had breakfast with a pastor friend who with his family is picking up and moving to Nashville on the way to Israel.  These are people who are all living an empowered life, obedient and living without fear in the provision and security of the Lord.  There seems to be quite a few ‘empowered life’ champions in my life that are cheering me on.  This next week, I will choose Monday or Tuesday to be specifically be more attentive to the call of the Holy Spirit to me,  to be obedient to the tasks no matter the size, and to become vulnerable and expectant of the Lord already being in that place to bring His power to bear.  Firey…..The Empowered Life.

It seems that I need to create an encouraging, physical reminder of my special weekdays where I focus especially on the Earth, Wind, Fire, and…..  in my life, so my life is formed to a full expression of what God created me for.  Just like a physical exercise plan, it is helpful for us to have a strategy and a holistic formation plan so that our lives have proper foundations, nourishment, inspiration, and passion.  Then we can live the abundant life Jesus intends for us to have.

 

Week 2 Reflections: An Inspired Life (Essentials Formation)

For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

Experiencing inspiration is critical to our well being.  Our lives cry out for inspiration, almost like being thirsty for water.  We were made for catching the wind of inspiration.  When inspiration is withheld from our lives, it stops us from growing and producing and influencing.

A first step in maintaining our inspirational health is to identify our sources of inspiration.  What are the environments and actions that move us and excite us about life, especially Christian life.  For me, activities like hiking, boating, fishing, camping, playing music, and creating make my heart go.  Worship, reading and pondering Scripture, talking with others about God, playing games with my wife, playing with our puppies and digging in dirt are some others.  I love a farm field, a lake in the late afternoon, a mountain trail, a quiet porch swing with a book, the beach.  These are some of the activities and places where I am renewed and refreshed.  From them I get the energy for discipleship and service.

A second step is to strategically place yourself in places or situations where you are regularly renewed by inspiration.  Frequent places and activities that stir up our passion for life and God.  This second step is a place where I need to do better.  It seems I put off inserting inspirational times into my schedule.  There is so much to accomplish so I plug in the inspirational moment when all else is completed for the day.  Then instead of being inspired I simply fall asleep.  I have to reclaim time daily to breathe in the inspired life on a regular schedule.  Like exercise, for the most benefit, small inspirational retreats should be on a daily or semi-daily basis.  One of my friends who was a professor at a local college used to write in his daily schedule, “researching fluid dynamics”.  Hans would go for a swim almost everyday to recharge his inspirational batteries.

Finally, be spontaneously inspired.  Be ready, at a moments notice, to catch the wind of unplanned inspiration.   Yes, schedule those times where you are refreshed but also be aware of what God is providing for you at the moment.  I might schedule a daily songwriting time but when God whispers an idea, I need to, if possible, follow that idea to see where it might lead.  Sometimes spontaneity will put us in situations we are not skilled or prepared enough for our own comfort.  We should still make a wise choice to participate in the opportunity God is putting before us.

 

Week 1 Reflections: The Grounded Life (Essentials Formation)

For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

I believe the descriptions contained in the Elemental Life (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water) will help us take inventory of our life, holistically, and develop a good strategy for the nurture of Kingdom life in our lives.  While we each have natural talents and supernatural gifts, discipline and exercise is required for those gifts to bloom and grow into useful capabilities.  It is important to get our arms around the activities and ‘food’ that can bring nourishment and encouragement to our lives and make them abundantly fruitful to God.

This week, Earth: The Grounded Life (1), helped me to see how important our foundational family relationships and core values are to the process of continued growth.  I grew up in an environment where integrity, honesty and family were strong core values.  I found it interesting to be reminded how important our foundation is to continued growth.  I read an email from a missionary friend today that described their work in the very poor areas of Africa.  Family and its shared core values give us our core identity.  Many young people in Africa have lost both parents to war, disease or famine.  The young people have no identity and so have trouble growing personally or spiritually.  They have no foundation to build upon.  Our faith and our relationship with God is the foundation of a solid family foundation.  People in families, who have strong Christian faith heritage, have a doubly deep foundation on which to build their lives.

Thirty-some years ago, an IBM manager talked to a group of us young IBM CE’s.  He told us to take great efforts to nurture, build and maintain our family relationships.  Time and again, he saw peoples careers come to a halt if they let their marriages and family relationship fail.  As Dan said in The Grounded Life video, our faith and family anchors us into the soil.  Like Dan’s picture of a ship anchor, they stop us from being set adift in the ocean of chaos and confusion.

I am also reminded of Catherine of Siena’s writing that describes Christ as a bridge and that there are stones of true virtue set into place by God, with mortar tempered with the blood of Christ.  Are the stones perfected and shaped by our trials and disciplines?  The Stones of Virtue are in our lives to shield and protect us from the raging rivers of life that would threaten to sweep us away otherwise (2).

Faith and family are the foundational grounding of our lives and we can only have life growth when we are securely and firmly anchored deeply into God and family.   That is where our identity is founded and firmly stands.

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(1) Earth – A Grounded Life, Video, Dan Wilt

(2) Devotional Classics, Edited by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, HarperOne, page 266

 

Challah Recipe

I had a couple requests for the Challah Bread recipe I use. Here is a pdf. The first line is a URL for a great video that shows you how to braid it, too! I use the first recipe but add the honey from the second one. I also added cinnamon on top of the last one, after brushing it with the egg yolk. That turned out pretty good! At the end of the pdf are some other interesting links I found about Israel and Shabbat. Enjoy…

The Bread of Life, has come to us. Merry Christmas!

Challah Recipe

 

Week 5 Final Project (Essentials Red)

For: The Essentials Course Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt

Essentials Red Final Project: My Matthew 5 Prayer Labyrinth video can be viewed on YouTube ( <— please click on the link)

For Essentials Red, our first week’s discussion on sacred spaces brought to mind a beautiful stained glass window, in an old 1827 Lutheran church, in downtown Lancaster, PA, USA. I admired their windows as we set up for leading worship at at Power and Love conference last summer. During the beginning of worship, everything on the platform turn golden as the sun blazed through the stained glass window immediately to the side of us. I looked up to see where the light was coming from and it was so bright you couldn’t look into it. While the sun was still in it, I was able to take a couple pictures of the window, which contains a verdant vine, abundant grape clusters and a gold chalice.

The sacred space idea was coupled with finding and experiencing a prayer labyrinth in Camp Hill, PA. USA. The labyrinth was designed and built by a seminary student as a required project and was noted in our local newspaper. The labyrinth’s design is a copy from a prayer labyrinth in an old French cathedral.

Out of the influence of Essentials Blue and Green, came an idea for developing a prayer liturgy asking God for the character of the Kingdom of God, described in Jesus’ Beatitudes, from Matthew 5.

My Essentials Red project combines the beauty and symbolism of the sacred art from the stained glass windows, with the prayer labyrinth, my prayer liturgy and the Scripture verses from the Beatitudes, to create the virtual prayer labyrinth experience contained in video. To the video, I added my own music composition containing a cedar flute based on the design of flutes used by Native Americans.

I thought a lot about the symbolism contained in the window and the blaze of light that originally drew my attention to it. For me, there is a symbolic linkage of the gold cup, reminding me of Communion and connectedness to Jesus, with the profuse abundance of fruit (grapes) and the vivid green of the leaves, expressing richness and fullness life in Jesus. From sacred space, time, prayer, Scripture, sacraments, music and art comes spiritual growth, leading to a fruitful, abundant life.

I would use the video as a stand-alone piece to help people reflect on the character of the Kingdom of God, and to help them consider praying for the Kingdom of God to come more in themselves. Please refer to http://mightyrivermusic.wordpress.com for the full Matthew 5 Project liturgy and prayer.

On the technical side, I brought up my original photograph of the church window on my computer, and with the room lights off, shot the video clips of the stained glass window with my iPhone. The prayer labyrinth clips were taken with my Canon PowerShot SD880 IS. I used iMovie to combine the clips and Logic Express 8 to record the music track.

 

Week 4 Reflections (Essentials Red)

For: The Essentials Course Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt

This week was about a language I am more familiar with, the language of music and the arts.  This is a language my heart speaks and that I am more conversant in than any of the others.  At the same time, ER made me more aware that I need to become conversant in the other languages, too.  As one who lovingly crafts worship space and one who lovingly worships God, I need to be multi-lingual and fluent in the languages of time/space, prayer/scripture, baptism/communion/sacraments and music/arts.

Our class material, The Worship History eBook, had a section on new songs.  It shed some light on something I’ve been feeling for a long time.  Dan wrote that God will give us a fresh song with which we can worship Him, exactly at the moment it is needed.  Our new songs are God’s provision for encouragement, strengthening, healing, and more.  New songs give us new revelation and a new song and word of worship that breaks chains and bindings on people.  God gives us the very sound that is needed to do His work, at exactly the right moment, in our worship community.

Probably of most impact this week continues to be Paschal Mystery and how re-experiencing events in Scripture can have power in our lives.  I will be so absolutely aware of God’s presence with us when we purposefully re-experience events in the Bible, especially from Christ’s life on earth.  While I don’t spend much time in deeply liturgical settings, I can purposefully research and maybe even experience some.  It would be good in my personal devotions to use the Christian year as a discipleship tool.  Also, as I lead worship, I can be thinking of how to help other people re-experience deep moments in the life of Christ that will change us forever.  This is a good time of year to start….. Come, Lord, Come…. long awaited and deeply desired Messiah.

 

Week 3 Reflections (Essentials Red)

For: The Essentials Course Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt

This week was a deepening of the meaning of the Paschal Mystery.  I understand it but am still falling into it.  I am also a bit overwhelmed by all the liturgical rites, services and symbolism.  We don’t follow those procedures in our church so they are very foreign to me.  While there seems to be a huge amount of experiential material to be mined, I am not sure if all the liturgy is necessary.  Webber’s detailed walks through very liturgical settings are fascinating and I am learning much about God.  An unchurched person would be totally lost in some of Webber’s services, as I would be.  I think I would rather see some of his ideas revoiced and without so much of the liturgical and clerical trappings.  With my worship history, I guess I prefer something not so liturgical.

From Webber, the most fascinating revelation was about Jesus’ baptism.  Where John speaks of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  I read the Scripture so many times but never thought about what John was saying.  The fact that Jesus didn’t refute it says that he perfectly understood John’s proclamation.  The Lamb of God was akin to the Paschal lamb of the Jewish Passover who would be slaughtered and blood painted on the doorposts of the house so the Angel of Death would pass over their home.  We read John’s words from this side of of Cross.  John said them pre-Cross.  That was astounding to me.

Good week, full of new ideas, liturgy and services I’ve never heard of before, and a deepening understanding of the Paschal Mystery.  At Life Group tonight, I spied a spike hung on the wall with a red ribbon.  It evoked the memory of Good Friday and reminded me of the beautiful gift of my own (and my wife and kid’s) salvation through the Paschal Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  I repent, Lord, and receive your wonderful grace, paid for on the Cross.