Adrian Cole

Cosmic Voyage

Four weeks ago when I started this series from the Gospel of John I used an illustration from an experience I had with my son, Scott, and Bev’s dad, Clarence, at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Clarence grew up in Chicago and we met him and Bev’s brother, Roger, there for a 3 day visit to all the places significant to Clarence’s growing up. We saw schools, apartment buildings, churches and places where Clarence had worked. We also visited several museums including the Adler Planetarium.

After I shared the story about the experience at the Planetarium, Christa Midkiff sent me an email regarding an IMAX film called "Cosmic Voyage" that zooms-out from planet Earth - in powers of ten - to the edge of the known Universe. It gives you a perspective of the vastness of our universe and an appreciation that in the vastness, God is thinking about you.

You can see part of the DVD on YouTube by clicking on this URL Cosmic Voyage

The Launch

Well, I guess I have had writers block or something the last 3 weeks. Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I am back now and I will be posting again.

When I woke up this morning and saw that we were having our own Oklahoma hurricane I just had to laugh. We have been working very hard at pushing our worship up to the next level and then for it to come a monsoon… I couldn’t believe it. The only response I could offer was to laugh.

I thought the services went very well this morning. The energy was high, the stage was full and I felt the Holy Spirit in our worship. In addition to the rain, we still have a few glitches to work out. We are committed to making this work and growing this church for the glory of God. Let me know what you think.

Moving On To Sunday

This Sunday is Devon Noonan's last Sunday with us. She has been here for about 6 years, first as an intern in the Student Ministry program while in college and then on staff part-time after college as director of programming for Student Ministry. The past 12 months she was Director of Student Ministry and now she is moving on to seminary and working at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. She is a wonderful woman of God and I wish her well with God's blessings. She is preaching this Sunday about "Coming Alive in the New Covenant!" Come an worship God and support Devon!

Moving On To Sunday

This week is the Sunday before Independence Day. In Galatians 5:1 Paul says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” What is true freedom? Does Paul’s words have anything to tell us about the freedoms we enjoy everyday? Come this Sunday and we will talk about it. See you Sunday.

Marvin Nelson - Marvelous!

Great job Marvin! I love the image of our shadow being an influence in the lives of others. I also like the challenge to the church about extending its influence into the community. Thank you for the challenge and for helping me with the baptism of our grandson.

What I Learned at the Worship Arts Conference

My blog posting on the 17th was about attending the Worship Arts Conference at Willow Creek in Chicago. http://2007artsconferenceblog.blogspot.com There was a lot of information and inspiration that was shared during the conference, but I picked up a few nuggets that broadened my understanding of what we are dealing with.

1. This is the first time in the history of the church where we are being challenged to minister to 5 generations of people at the same time. Because of increasing mortality, people are living longer. That’s a good thing. In the past the church has only had to minister to about 3 generation at once. Ministering to 5 generations is a tremendous challenge. The desires, values, and interests are so varied between the generations that it is difficult to meet all of those demands.

2. Multigenerational ministry and worship is emerging as a way of spanning the generational differences. A few years ago the Methodist Church tried to encourage the use of multigenerational ministry. It didn’t work then. I think the reason it didn’t work well was because there wasn’t enough diversity between the 3 existing generations. It is working more effectively now.

3. Regardless of what generation you represent, we are all in this together. THE GOAL HAS NOT CHANGED! Christ is calling us all to reach this world with the Good News of Jesus Christ. If you are in the G.I. Generation or Generation C, the goal is the same.

Moving On To Sunday

This is a busy but wonderful week for me... a daughter getting married, the baptism on Sunday of our first grandson, a time with family and friends, a marking point on the journey of life with a great family called New Covenant.

The sermon this Sunday is "Where's Your Shadow" (Acts 5: 16-20) about our "irresistible influence", the opportunity of influence that each of have on each other and in this community and world. I have asked Marvin Nelson to speak this Sunday because of all that we have to do regarding the wedding. Great stuff! Keep your church and your pastoral family in your prayers. Pray that God shows up for you during our time of worship together. See you on Sunday.

The Heart of Worship

This is one of my favorite worship songs. When we sing it, God speaks to my heart. But do you know the story behind the song?

When the music fades

and all is stripped away

And I simply come

Longing just to bring

something that's of worth

That will bless Your heart

I'll bring You more than a song

For a song in itself

Is not what You have required

You search much deeper within

Through the way things appear

You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

And it's all about You

All about You, Jesus

I'm sorry, Lord, for the things I've made it

When it's all about You

All about You, Jesus

King of endless worth,

no one could express

How much You deserve

Though I'm weak and poor,

all I have is Yours

Every single breath

The song dates back to the late 1990s. It was written by Matt Redman, a UK Christian artist and worship leader. It emerged from a period of apathy within Matt Redman's home church, Soul Survivor, in Watford, England. Redman's congregation was struggling to find meaning in its worship and music.

"There was a dynamic missing, so the pastor did a pretty brave thing," he recalls. "He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a season (I believe it was three months), and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we'd lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away."

Reminding his church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, asked, "When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?"

Wow! Three months with no band, or music, or piano, or organ, or guitar. What would that be like for you? Maybe this is the acid test about our motivation for worship? are we consumers, or followers of Jesus? Are we buying a product or are we laying our lives before God as an offering?

Last Sunday in the sermon I made the point that if we come to the place in our lives that we worship the gift instead of the Giver, we have made the gift an Idol! The gift becomes our god.

Worship: The Continuing Frontier, Part 3

Why should we be concerned about this? Because I believe that the bible teaches us that the church exists for two fundamental reasons: 1) to reach people for Jesus Christ (Matt 28:18-20, Mk 16:15-16, Lk 24:45-49, Act 1:8, etc.), and 2) so that we can be Jesus to each other (see Matt 22:37, and reference to the "one another" passages e.g. John 13:34 and to being the body of Christ e.g 1Cor 12, etc.).

When we hear the biblical call to reach others and when we understand that today worship is the primary way of reaching people this understanding helps guide our direction. We all have preferences regarding style of worship. The question I have always tried to ask and answer is: Does what we do in worship reach people for Christ? Are we building up the body of Christ? and Are we growing?

If we are not reaching people and building up the body, and growing, what do we do? I think we have to try something different. I have always believed that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Things change, programs that once worked stop working, worship that once connected has grown old. This is no ones fault. Things change. The world is changing. The cultural values change every 5 year. What do we do?

Act 15 is a great model and a great lesson for moving through tough issues. In Acts 15 the church is face with some heavy questions... Should the new believers, who are not Jews, be required to not only believe in Jesus but also practice Jewish customs? The people who were trying to answer the questions and move the church forward were Jews. They had grown up practicing Jewish customs. They had ownership and they had opinions and preferences. This was a huge question.

The church gathered the leaders, they extended hospitality to one another, they gave witness to what God was going in their mist, they discussed the question, they let the Holy Spirit lead them and they came to an understanding. Was the agreement accepted by everyone? Probably not. We don’t know, but we see the result of the decision. We are here today because of what they decided that day.

Someone in one of the comments mentioned something about “the direction we are going”. There has been NO decision about any change in direction. We all need to continue to put Jesus first in our heart and desires, pray, keep discussing the questions and the options and let God lead us forward. These are incredible days for NC. We have a lot of capacity (space), we have NO debt, we have a great staff, we have wonderful volunteers who do ministry, we have a great opportunity, and with God’s leading our best days are ahead of us. Let us seek His will together! Amen.

Worship: The Continuing Frontier, Part 2

Church researchers have identified that one reason for the shift in the culture and the overall decline in attendance in Sunday School and Worship is because of the growing focus in our population toward consumerism. Consumerism has grown to be about individualism and comfort i.e. "I want it may way" and "if I don't like it, I will go somewhere that feels right to me." (I won't launch off in a discussion about consumerism unless you want to hear more.)

Some churches have addressed the diverse wants of our population by targeting a specific group or generation within the population and offering one style of worship. Examples of this approach would be Ginghamsburg Methodist Church in Tipp City, OH or Life Church here in Edmond. A lot of the churches that offer one style are new church starts where the founding pastor is still the leader. Churches that have had multiple pastors, a long history and come from a traditional background have found addressing the worship issue challenging. The way we at NC have addressed the issue is by providing two styles of worship.

I hope that you understand that even though we have two styles of worship each style is "relative". By that I mean if you talk about "traditional" worship you could be talking about high church, very formal worship or a get down "gospel" choir. The same is true with contemporary. I find that what defines the true meaning of these terms is how each generation understands and views them. If I ask a college student what contemporary worship is I get one answer. If I ask a "baby boomer" the question, I get another answer. One way of asking it is by asking people what kind of music they listen to the most? I thought about starting this blog on worship using the old star trek line of the "final frontier" but I thought that not everyone who reads this would understand that. Or, It would be like me referring to Napoleon Dynamite in some way, which is very generational and others wouldn't get it.

This discussion raises questions. Our contemporary worship service has a very diverse group. I try to listen to all ages and generations in our NC community. We have offered a pretty consistent style of worship in the contemporary service over the past two years. I hear some segments of our community say that they like it. I hear other segments say that they feel it is stale and needs to be changed. Has the one style "contemporary" approach run its course? Can we still do "contemporary" with a "one-style-fits-all" approach? Do we need to continue our approach of offering more diversity by having more worship services with different styles?

How should our church do worship today? And, what is the purpose of the Church? Let me tell you, I think and pray about this stuff all the time. Why?