Training our souls to embrace Him more

I ran across a new worship definition that I really liked.


"Worship is the habit of ritual and social action with which we experientially and thankfully acknowledge God's supremacy and simultaneously train our souls to embrace Him more deeply."
~Eric Herron

Have fun "unpacking" that...

• not just a ritual/liturgy on Sunday mornings - but the "liturgy" (social and ministerial action) throughout the week
• experiential - 5 senses, not just a happy heart song or thought
• thankful for God's supremacy!
• and yet recognizing my need of my soul to embrace Him even more...

I just like it!

For more "good stuff" on worship - go to Eric Herron's website
www.worshipartist.net


www.paulagamble.com

An African Exhorts an American Church

Pastor Charles from Rwanda preached at my church on Sunday. (Click here to listen to a sermon if you're interested. Once you enter the site, go to resources to download a sermon.)

First, he was shocked - he was given over an hour to preach. He said, "This is not typical for an American church - I usually only get 25 minutes."

Diversion - this is one of the things I love about my church. We are still in the luxurious phase of not having to bow down to worship the clock or our growling stomachs! After a spirit-filled 2 1/2 hour service, half the congregation still hangs out to talk for yet another 1/2 hour or so.

But back to Pastor Charles. He said the church needs 2 good legs to stand on. The Americans - they know the word. They stand on the word. They dissect and divide and preach and talk about the word. "But," he gently said, "You are missing the leg of prayer."

He talked about how the African church is expanding mightily on the wings of prayer - how God is saving souls and is doing miracles, "Because when you literally don't have anything (like daily bread), prayer is everything."

"You don't pray, because you are full. You have everything you need and more."

Exhorting an arrogant Western church takes the greatest of courage and grace. Pastor Charles did that - speaking with grace and truth - and then leading our whole church to their knees in the last 15 minutes - to repent and ask God to give us the word AND prayer so that His kingdom would expand.

It was truly beautiful - I wish we'd have our foreign brothers and sisters come more often to exhort us - we need our Biblical (vs. American) Christianity unmired.

Singleness

Check out this awesome article at Christianitytoday.com


www.paulagamble.com

The Primary Venue for Evangelism

I am reading (slowly, and reflectively because I cannot read it otherwise it is THAT profound) Eugene Peterson's book, "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Place." Wow...

Peterson makes the statement that meals were perhaps the primary venue for evangelism in Jesus' life (after all, Jesus was associated as a friend of gluttons and drunkards - and is commonly found around the dinner "table")
Peterson comments, "By marginalizing meals of hospitality in our daily lives have we inadvertently diminished the work of evangelism?" (p. 215)

Peterson continues, "We take the meal with as much gospel seriousness as we take our Scriptures: we take the kitchen to be as essential in the work of salvation as is the sanctuary. Meals are front-line strategies countering the inexorable deconstruction of hospitality that is running amuck in our Western world today" (p. 220).

So - what if everyone in our church body committed to having one meal a month with neighbors, co-workers, the elderly or homeless?

In the book of Acts we see that when the early church did this, many saw and were astonished and were added to the church.

Naturally, it would be something so simple...