Thanks,

Ron

Incredibly enough it is now a firing offense for telling the truth on live TV. That is if you happen to be a reporter working for a liberal TV station, and the person you tell the truth about is the president of the United States himself, Barack Obama. Wow.

I had an experience recently that highlighted one particular use of technology in the church, and how it can create problems if not used properly. Let me lay out the circumstances for you, and we’ll talk about what occurred, how we handled it, and what we learned from it.

We are a small church, in a relatively small space. Due to that we do not use live musicians, but rather use “canned” music. Most of what we use are songs that we download through iTunes. We sing along with Chris Tomlin, Israel Houghton, and Ricardo Sanchez frequently. They are always on time, always in key, and they never give me any attitude problems as they lead us via iTunes. One other thing we do to facilitate praise and worship is to display our lyrics on a large 55 inch plasma TV screen on the wall at the front of the church. We use Power Point to put the lyrics in and then scroll through them as the songs advance.I believe this allows people to focus on entering into worship rather than handling a song book and having to flip pages.

I have a lady who prays over the songs that we sing and selects them each week. She also puts together the Power Points with the lyrics in the them. She is a diligent woman who wants to please God with all of her heart, and she wants to do a good job for her pastor. So she spends time praying over these song choices, and over the Power Points that she puts together for them. This past Sunday she brought the songs in and brought the Power Point in. I placed the songs in the playlist from iTunes, and then opened Power Point to view the lyrics she had prepared. Her husband was sitting right beside when I did so, and immediately we both noticed the same thing about the slide show. The background was one that was divided into two sections. To the left of the slide was a large gray band, and to the right was the remainder, and it was purplish in color. The words were in the purplish section, while the smaller gray section was blank. We both looked at one another and our first thought was “why do you have a large gray band on the side of the slide”? Not having a long time before service began, I selected all of the slides and changed them to a one color background, saved it, and put it up to show for praise and worship. I knew I would have to revisit that issue again.

My wait was not long. The lady who prepared the slides called my wife the next day, and informed her that she was offended at my actions and wanted to know what to do. My wife told her she needed to sit down and talk to me about it. She told her that she would call and make an appointment, but days past and she had not, so I called and left her a voice mail letting her know I was expecting to sit down and talk with her either before or after the next service we had. The next Wednesday evening she and I met after service and had a talk about what happened. After repenting for the offending  behavior and accepting her apologies for being angry at me, we began to talk about why I made the changes. Here are my reasons for doing so, and my thoughts on using Power Point or any other display software for displaying lyrics.

Backgrounds behind lyrics should be plain/simple. If not they become the focal point instead of the lyrics. The purpose of displaying lyrics in the first place is to facilitate the ability to enter into worship. In theory if you do not have a song book in your hands you can focus on the object of your worship, God, rather than on the implements of your worship. In talking with the young lady about the Power Point I changed, I told her that the first thing I noticed about her Power Point was the large gray side bar. I immediately wondering why it was there and what it was for. She said, “that’s exactly what my husband said”.

I realized that my biggest failure with her was my lack of communicating exactly what I wanted to accomplish with the Power Point. Her thinking (perhaps due to the female viewpoint, perhaps not) was that she could select different col0rs to highlight the majesty and glory of God. She could use different things to lift Him up, and this would be part of her praise to Him. Her desire was admirable, even spiritual I suppose. I suspect she got completely caught up in the spiritual aspect of her task and totally ignored the more mundane, natural aspect of it. People, and I think men especially, want to know why things are the way they are. If one slide has a little swirl up in one corner and the next one doesn’t, I want to know why. Therein is the problem. Now my mind becomes centered on what the person was thinking about when they created the Power Point and not on God, which was why we wanted the lyrics to be displayed in the first place. I have the same problem with misspelled, misused words. If one slide contains one, I search through the remainder of them during the song looking for another. As long as there is none there my mind doesn’t work that way, but the minute I spot one, it’s all over. I found just such an instance yesterday while looking over a Power Point she had sent me via email for my approval. There was a line in a song that mentioned “the weak”. I am sure she simply downloaded these lyrics from an online website and copied/pasted them into Power Point, but this one was wrong. Instead of using the correct word weak, it used the same sounding but inappropriate word “week”.       Phew…

So churches have to be careful about how we implement technology, and what its impact will be. I think the introduction of technology to your services should be done slowly and thoughtfully. Attention should be paid to the way people respond to the technology, and adjustments should be done in small increments so as to minimize the amount of attention given to them. Technology can be a great tool, or it can be a great disappointment. Which it turns out to be is really up to us. Careful research into its use before implementation, and a search of the heart as to why you want to use are in order before any actual purchase/implementation takes place.

One of the interesting things that I personally took away from studying some of these parables is the idea that we sow “seed” everywhere we go, and that is by design of God. The manner in which we do that sowing varies, depending on whether it is unintentional sowing or intentional sowing. I guess I should explain those terms before going much further. Here is a quote from Mark 4 in the Contemporary English Version.

^{Mark 4:26}He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. ²⁸All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. ²⁹As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Notice that he said a man scatters seed on the ground. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern or direction to this kind of sowing, it just sort of happens. I know that it does because he goes on to to say that no matter what the man does, sleeping or awake, the seed sprouts and grows all by itself. He doesn’t know how it is doing it, it just is. I call this “unintentional” sowing. If you belong to a church where you are being given the Word of God (which is identified as “the seed” in an earlier verse) then you are basically sitting on sacks of seed during church. (This is my version of a parable) Some of that seed gets stuck in the cuff of your pants leg, some of it may even find its way into your pants pocket, your purse, or some other place where small things could gather without notice. As you go about your daily life, these seeds drop off and fall to the ground, where they spring up without your intervention or without you even knowing how. To me this is the seed that we sow just by the fact that we are believers. The seed (the Word of God) should be in us, and should be sown just by our interaction with people on a daily basis. You are not intentionally attempting to lead someone to salvation every time you talk to them, but you are sowing some kind of seed at every interaction with them. That is unintentional sowing.

There are other times, as in the parable of the sower, when you set out to intentionally sow seed. I believe these are the times when you have a planned event, like a church service, a men’s retreat, Sunday School, or any other occasion when anyone who attends that event knows they are going to hear a gospel message. Also included in that “intentional” sowing paradigm would be evangelistic events you planned, like door to door visitation, handing out tracts at the mall, or other kinds of events where your “intent” is to share the Word of God with someone.

I tell you those things so that you will understand what I really wrote this particular entry about, and that is advancing the Kingdom of God on the earth. In one of our devotions this week at work the leader brought up the idea of colonies, and what their purpose was. According to this person (who has lived in a British Colony and an American Colony in foreign lands) the purpose of the colony is to “extend the influence of the King and his Kingdom” wherever you are. Think about that statement for a minute. What does it mean “to extend the influence of” a king or his kingdom? How would you accomplish that task? One of the ways that it is accomplished in the British Empire was by replicating the customs and actions of the Empire in the foreign land. If you lived in Japan or India during colonial days there would be places that you could go to that would have the look, taste, and feel of Britain to them while you were there. You would hear the language of the homeland spoken there. You would be able to obtain food prepared according to the customs of the homeland. You could get a cup of tea! My friend said that while living in one of the British Colonies he almost forgot the words to the United States National Anthem but could still quote you to this day the words to God Save the Queen.

So how does that apply to Christian believers? How do we “extend the influence” of our King and of His Kingdom? I am open to your thoughts on the subject, and invite you to be critical of some of the ways that others have attempted to do that and it turned out poorly. I plan to write a blog post daily for the next week or so regarding this topic. Hopefully I will also have some good interaction from others. Let me give you something to get you started. Our devotional leader suggested that there were three ways/things to consider regarding this matter.

1. Our relationship to the King.

2. Our relationship to other members of the colony.

3. Our relationship to the native country in which our colony was established.

Now, let’s warm those pens up and exercise those fingers. What say ye regarding this idea?

This article from the Telegraph in the UK has some interesting thoughts from a non American perspective. What do you think about this article? Here are some of the key statements I found intriquing.

“Obama’s big problem,” a senior Democrat told me, “is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN.” The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media.

This supposedly from a senior Democrat. Could watching Fox News truly be a problem, or is the problem of the current administration the fact that people have decided to be educated on what is really going on in Washington and they are looking to sources outside of Washington to get their information? Sources like Fox News, talk radio, etc., who do quite often have a different viewpoint than someone who might fall in the category of “liberal” or “progressive”. What other questions does an article like this raise?

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This is the actual quote from my copy of the Qur’an for Sura 9:11. I belong to an email discussion group which is primarily members of a large Pentecostal denomination based in the US. You would recognize the denomination if I named it. Many of the primary speakers on this EDG are pastors of this denomination, and are also the moderators for it. I have been a part of this EDG for several years now, and I have to say that I have found this group to be one of the best EDG’s I have ever monitored or been a part of. There are times of disagreement, which is to be expected when you have a group whose purpose is to discuss biblical issues. We don’t all have the same opinion.
But I digress. After reading Congressman Mark Siljanders book “A Deadly Misunderstanding” recently I posted some of my thoughts on this particular EDG. I got an expected knee jerk response from some, and others were very interested in the ideas presented in the book. One thing I found interesting was a quote one lady in the group posted from an email she received. This is the quote.

“Koran ( 9:11 ) – For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle.. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; And there was peace.
This is from recent spam. A friend thought this proved God was with the US during 9/11. I think it is the most she has ever read of the Koran.”

I began this post with the actual quote from the Qur’an, and as you can see the email she received was in no way close to the actual statement made in the Qur’an. This is a huge part of the problem. People hear statements made by people who they believe should know what they are talking about without actually verifying the truth of what they are being told. Many of the people I know would not have a Qur’an in their home, they consider it a book full of heresy and would not taint their home by having one in their house. But this refusal to read for themselves creates problems. They then simply accept whatever someone sends them as a quote with no verification. If we honestly want to have an open dialogue concerning Muslims or others who we would like to introduce to Jesus then we must first get rid of they hype, the hyperbole, and the downright misinformation that is being sent out concerning them and reach out to them with the love of Christ. One believer with whom I had a discussion concerning some of these issues kept sending me quotes that he supposed were from the Qu’ran, but when I asked what copy/version he was reading from I found that he was merely downloading quotes he had found on the Internet. I started to say that I recognize that not everyone is called to this type of ministry, but I had to stop myself because the fact of the matter is that if you are a follower of Jesus/Isa, then you are called to show Him to others, regardless of their cultural/denominational/educational/financial/… standing. And you are called to show Him to them, not your chosen brand of religion. It is a sad statement of fact that much too often believers are their own worst enemies.

As a result of my insistence on accuracy when quoting from the Qu’ran the gentleman whom I had the discussion with on the EDG unsubscribed and removed himself from fellowship with the group. Have we come to the place where us being “right” is more important than the truth?

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