About Me
- Joe Garrison
- Fishers, IN, United States
Director of Contemporary Worship and Assistant Director of Student Ministries at Castleton United Methodist Church in Indianapols, IN. Husband,Guitarist,and Drummer
Saturday, April 9, 2011
One of those days...
It's been one of those days already. We all have them. Those days where we wake up not feeling like ourself, like we don't want to get out of bed, bummed out for no apparent reason. Today has been one of those days.I woke up way late this morning. I either slept through my alarm or didn't set it right in the first place. I missed a youth fundraiser that I really should have been at. I immediately woke up feeling bummed out and guilty for missing the fundraiser breakfast. I had breakfast and watched some TV for a bit. The whole time I'm watching TV I, for some reason, kept talking myself into feeling worse.
I turned off the TV and decided to open up the Bible. Tonight Matt is preaching on 1 Corinthians 1:17-30 at Renovate, our contemporary worship service. I thought I'd get ahead and just read the beginning of 1 Corinthians. An hour later I had finished all 16 chapters of the book.
In Ephesians 6:17, Paul says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. In those times when we're feeling attacked internally, when satan is telling us we aren't good enough, bringing on excessive guilt, making us second guess and doubt ourselves, God gives us His Word as a sword to fight back.
Earlier, I kind of just felt like staying home all day. My wife is flying back from Texas today, it's raining buckets outside, it's a great day to just stay inside. Instead, after spending some time in Scripture and prayer I actually can't wait to get to church and lead worship tonight. I am looking forward to what God plans to do through our little worship service tonight!
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, and equipped for every good work. ~2 Timothy 3:16
Scripture to me is alive, it meets each of us exactly where we are and corrects us, trains us and focusses us on what is truly important. Whether we're having the best day ever, the worst day, or something in between.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Contemporary Christian Music - Too Positive?
I have been thinking a lot lately about Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Of course I think about it a lot since I lead two adult worship teams as well as a student worship team. Lately, my thought process has shifted from just leading the teams to really focussing on the content of the music and lyrics itself. I have to say, the more I focus on the content of the lyrics in many of these songs, the more I become bored.CCM tends to stick very closely to the positive side of the Christian life and who God is (love, glory, worship, power etc) and seemingly rarely focusses on the down side of life in general (sin, temptation, struggles, persecution etc.). When it does focus on these things it tends to be that Jesus overcame them. I'm not really sure why this seems to be the case. Maybe it is because most CCM is worship music so it is focussed on the God of love, glory, worship, power and so on.
I think worship music that occasionally focusses on the broken nature of humanity and the struggles we all face would be maybe even more powerful at times than constantly talking about how "my God is mighty to save". Even though He is...
Along with CCM (and lots of secular rock) I also listen to Christian rap artists like Lecrae, Tedashii, and Trip Lee among others (many of them on Reach Records). I've noticed that these rappers deal very effectively with human nature and the things that keep us from following whole heartedly after the God of love.
How could it impact our worship services if we were a little more honest, in our worship through music, about who we are and the very real reasons why we need a God that is loving, powerful, and mighty? Do you think there is merit to our worship music better contrasting the ways we constantly fall short with the ways God never does?
Am I totally missing the boat here? Maybe I'm just not well versed in Christian music and I'm missing a bunch of good stuff that fits what I'm talking about. I'll admit, I listen mostly to secular music even though I am a contemporary worship director.
What do you think?
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Our First Spring as Homeowners
My wife Courtney and I are coming up on the first anniversary of moving into our first house up in Fishers, IN. We moved in last May. We have officially owned the home for over one year now.
This will be our first full spring as homeowners. I am looking forward to all of the fun that comes with owning a home in the spring time. The grass (and by grass I mostly mean weeds) is starting to turn green, trees are starting to bud, and a couple surprise flowers have popped up out back.
I am ready to get outside and do some work in the yard. I spent last weekend seeding and fertilizing the lawn in an effort to push the grass to weed ratio more toward the grass side. I'll likely have to paint our trim outside this year and potentially do some work on our chimney to help keep it from smoking in the house so much in the fall/winter months.
Hopefully there will be a deck and nice gas grill in our future, not sure when those will happen though. It is fun having new homeowner experiences as the seasons change.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Bible: Did it really happen?
Through some recent conversations I have realized something that I have known all along, but have come to a deeper and weightier realization...people just do not take Scripture seriously.
Ok, so that is a pretty obvious statement. Many of us, although we would confess to be Christian, do not take Scripture as the absolute God breathed truth. Instead of Scripture informing our world view we so often let our world view inform Scripture.
Think about the stories of the parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, Jonah and the Whale, Jesus raising the dead, Jesus feeding 5000 with a couple fish and a loaf of bread, Jesus casting out demons etc. Do you believe that these things actually happened? What impact does it have on our faith if we do, or do not believe these things?
I think there are a few different ways of looking at these events.
1. These things did not happen and could not have happened.
- This is the most dangerous view point. First of all it implies that God lied somehow in the Bible. Of course it is possible that these stories were just added to the Bible for teaching purposes (like a parable) and for God to make a point. However, if we believe that these things could not have happened we dangerously put God in a box as a "small God" incapable of miraculous things. We limit God's power in our minds and therefore limit what he is capable of doing in our own lives.
2. These things did not happen but could have happened.
- This is a little better than view point #1. This viewpoint holds the belief that God is of course powerful enough to do anything, yet He chose to use illustrations of events that didn't happen for teaching purposes within the Bible. This allows in our minds the power that God truly has but comes short of saying that the Bible is historical and accurate.
3. These things did happen just as the Bible says they did.
- This viewpoint holds that God is powerful enough to perform any miracle told throughout Scripture and holds the Bible as an historical document that can be trusted as absolute truth.
What view do you hold? I personally fall into viewpoint number three... that these amazing things in Scripture truly did occur. That the Red Sea was parted, three dudes were untouched while standing in a fire, Jesus fed 5000 people with almost nothing and that a guy got swallowed by a giant fish.
Here is why I believe that...
So often we want to hold ourselves as the all knowing creatures of the world. We know what can, and cannot, happen. We understand all things. We are smart enough and scientific enough to tell God that certain Biblical "stories" aren't true or are not fair. We give ourselves too much credit.
Who are we to say that something in Scripture cannot be true? As Christians we believe that Scripture is the Word of God. If Scripture is truly the Word of God can it really be our place to decide what is true and not true in Scripture or decide what events really happened or not? I don't think so. History and science often fail us, God does not and never has.
As Christians it is our job to read Scripture and apply it to our lives. We should be the ones to conform to Scriptural teaching, not Scripture conforming to our world view. Too many times we want to see Scripture through the filter of our own world view instead of letting Scripture, and therefore God, tell us what our world view should be.
How would your life change if you took Scripture at its word, if you stopped viewing it through a filter and took it as absolute truth?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Your Will Be Done...
A lot of us have been in a church worship service and recited the Lord's prayer in unison with the congregation. I grew up my entire life reciting this prayer in church, most of the time in a monotone, uninterested manner. I always made fun of it because we all sounded like a bunch of mindless zombies as we recited, "Our Father, who art in heaven...".
I taught on this prayer a few weeks ago at our high school Bible study. One section that has been particularly convicting for me, and I think (maybe hope) for the students, has been the "your will be done" line. Here is the entire prayer (ESV)...
As I was studying this prayer the line "your will be done" struck me particularly hard. As I thought about Jesus' example of prayer for my life I realized how often I bark orders at God and completely ignore His will.Our father, in heavenHallowed be your nameYour kingdom comeyour will be doneOn earth as it is in heavenGive us this day our daily breadand forgive us our debtsas we also have forgiven our debtorsAnd lead us not into temptationbut deliver us from evil.
As I prayed for things in my life whether for myself, or others I often told God what I wanted to happen and ignored his specific will for events and circumstances in my life and others.
One thought that particularly struck me was that God's will for my life, or yours, may not include us having a long life. Sometimes our death, or another's death, is God's will and is something he will use or the advancement of His kingdom.
Often when someone gets deathly sick we pray for a miracle or their healing (which in itself is completely appropriate, God works miracles!), what we don't pray is "God, please work a miracle and heal this person...but if Your will is their death for the benefit of Your kingdom...not my will but Your own."
Praying "Your will be done" can be terrifying at times. It takes all the control out of our hands (as if we had any in the first place).
How often do you pray "Your will be done"? What thoughts and fears keep you from praying that prayer?
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Why do Christians Insist on Using the Word "Radical"?
For a while now I have had an aversion to the word "radical" when used about the Christian faith. Yet, it seems to be the 'buzz word' for Christians these days when we talk about living out a faith that resembles Jesus and the Apostles.
A couple days ago a friend gave me a copy of the book "Radical" by David Platt. With having Friday off work and the next Ice Age obviously approaching outside, I went ahead and started reading the book. I'm currently a little over half way through it. I like it. Platt has a lot of good thoughts on what it means to honestly live out the faith that Christ calls us to live. The problem with this book is that he uses the word "radical" about a bazillion times.
I often sit and wonder what a non-Christian in our world thinks when they hear the words "Radical Christianity". If we turn on the news and listen for a while we hear the word radical used quite a bit...NEVER in a good way.
- Radical Left
- Radical Right
- Radical Islam (aka terrorists)
Each time "radical" is used to describe a group of people it's used to show how crazy these people are compared to the rest of the world. The radical left are often associated with communists, the radical right are often racist gun toting lunatics, and radical Islam is used to talk about terrorists that flew planes into American buildings killing thousands of innocent people.
So why is it that Christians feel so cool when we use the word "radical" to describe Christianity? Beats me!
Really all we are talking about is Biblical Christianity. A faith that lines up with what Jesus taught and the Scriptures teach us. Like I said, I like this book. I just wish Christians would quit trying to live "radical" Christianity and just try and live out a Biblical Christianity.
What do you think? Am I off base for thinking that this word is over used and/or poorly used?
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Does it Help the Gospel? Are People Worshiping Jesus?
The short list of you that read my blog know that I 'dabble' in student ministry, contemporary worship, and young adult ministry. Inevitably within these three areas of ministry I will get requests to try new things and branch out into new directions. Sometimes I'm the one pushing to do new things.I am constantly asking myself what makes something worth trying or continuing. I recently read through the book of Galatians. In Galatians Paul questions the relation between faith rooted in Christ and faith rooted in culture or tradition. Specifically he talks about circumcision. The Jewish Christians were expected to be circumcised as a cultural sign that they were indeed a practicing Jew and Christian. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles (non Jews), did not believe that circumcision was necessary and that it had little value if the person's heart was not rooted in Christ.
Often in a church setting we are faced with decisions on whether to start a new ministry, continue existing ministries, or adapt the culture of our local church in order to continue to be relevant to the times and our community.
So what should be our criteria for determining what ministries should continue, be started, or be adapted. Often we want to look at things like money, numbers, new attendees vs old members and on and on.
After I finished reading Galatians I decided to listen through a sermon series from Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle Washington, on the book of Galatians. In the third sermon of the series Driscoll covers chapter two of Galatians and gets into the argument of culture, tradition, and what makes a ministry worth having. He suggests two things that I think fit what Paul is saying in Galatians.
1. Does it help the Gospel?
How does it advance the Gospel by getting the message to new people and deepening the Gospel in the hearts of those that already believe?
2. Are People Worshiping Jesus?
Does this ministry succeed in helping people to worship Jesus in a real way?
The more I think about it, and pray about it, the more I feel that if these two things are being done, God will take care of the rest. Of course, churches still have to pay staff, mortgages, utility bills etc. So money and numbers are unavoidable things to consider. Unfortunately, church is also a business that has to have a certain amount of money to keep the doors open.
Maybe if we focus on Christ and the advancement of the Gospel even more than we already are, God will take care of the rest. Maybe I'm too idealistic and don't have enough church ministry experience to decide what is worth continuing/starting/adapting.
What do you think? What criteria do you and your church use to decide what ministries, worship services or styles, are worth starting/continuing etc?
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