Going to Church Out-of-Town

I have been thinking about the subject of out-of-town church attendance (especially on vacation). In fact, I just got back from vacation--today. We have the blessing of attending a church that has four congregations spread out across the city of Chicago. Since we got back early afternoon, we knew we would enjoy the fellowship of saints with our brothers and sisters at the North Side service which is at 5pm. Not everyone has this kind of church structure, however.

Some of my friends with whom I have discussed this don't go at all. "There is no church like our church", they say (which loyalty I applause); they are lazy and want a break from church; or they are uncomfortable about being in a strange setting. Other Christian families will hack their own service (foot washings and all! just kidding). I'm sure there are other reasons. Consider the following questions:

What's the purpose of going to church in the first place?
Let me be frank here. I loathe the phrase "go to church." Churches are organized organisms (covering all bases here=+) made of people who have been regenerated by the blood of Jesus Christ. They "go to church" to hear the Scriptures taught, pray, praise God through song, observe the ordinances, give their resources to the work of the church and to the needy w/in the church (Acts 2:42-47). Unfortunately, this is the "rap" that alot of American Christianity has-- the major share of our "going" is to meet with each other. While the Scriptures enforce the need for mutual celebration of the Gospel in praise and Word (Hebrews 10:25), the church is a going entity TO THE WORLD (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8). Perhaps, we should retrain our parlance to include words like "worship Jesus" or "meet with believers for unified praise to the Savior". 'Nuf said for now.

Is community the only consideration in making the decision?
For some people who don't bother going to church when they are out of their own church, their argument rests often on the fact that their "community" isn't the one at which they are vacationing. Therefore, "why bother with going to church where I am not going to have long-lasting community?"... goes the line of thinking. I am glad for the deep fellowship already cultivated on the home front. Well (for one), the subject of "community" is over-hyped and nearly becoming cliche. It is almost like the concept of missional-- it has a lot of different meanings depending on who you ask. While well-intentioned, this particular line of reasoning is myopic. We easily waltz over the passages of New Testament Scriptures that record the instances when displaced or missionary believers were seeking out the fellowship of locals and vice versa. I would dare say that not only is this rationale myopic but very American. And lest I be called out for nationalizing a particular sin, it is quite Adamic. There. If anything, healthy body life in your own local church should arouse such passion and curiosity for how the Gospel is being fleshed out in other assemblies outside of your "Jerusalem."

When you're with extended family, should you attend with them or should you maintain that your one-off/out-of-town attendance be in concert w/ how selective you are on the home front?
For some people, your theology matters a lot, and that is good. However, I would say that if you are concerned with maximizing time w/ your believing family who you are visiting and building unity, you should show how deeply the Gospel runs in you so as to elevate your extended family over your strongly-held preferences. Of course, you could not go at all if it is a heretical church or you could seek another church and meet up for lunch later. But that won't really aid the "unity factor"; it will only remind everyone of certain "wedges" of preference that exist in your family. Some forthrightness or creativity on the front end will help alleviate tension along w/ much love.
How about going to church out of town to hear a certain favorite preacher?
Definitely. You better believe it, but realize that there is real body of hurting and healthy peeps that show up every week to hear your favorite dude preach. Check them out, too.
Just don't do that at your home church. One of the not-so-fondest memories I had of attending one church for a while in Greenville, SC was seeing how many members (!) didn't show up to church when the "rock star" pastor wasn't behind the sacred desk. When you join a church, you are in a sense wedding yourself to that assembly until death, heresy, excommunication or relocation doth thee part.

Here are a few things to reflect on the next time you leave town:
1) If at all possible, try to get back to your own church for Sunday worship.
2) If you are a father with small children and the normal levels of getting out of the house on a Sunday are stressful, you should seek input from your wife on what it would be like for her to get to church on the alien turf. Ask her every time.
3) If possible, stretch yourself and make the effort to worship with believers that you don't know. Remember: Christ is your first commonality; not your geography or ethnicity. Expose your family to the wonderful "thing" that Jesus is doing all around your country and the world.
4) If you vacation to the same place, find a church and keep coming back to it. Extend your community. I know some people from Detroit who do that regularly when they escape away once or twice a year to their regular spot on Florida.
5) Put your "experience" way down on the list. Don't make experience a high priority. If worship is all about experience, then we should all give up on regular gathered worship. This might be simplistic, but I don't think experience as an end should be a driving motivator to attend or not attend church (whether at home or away).
6) Don't just do away from home what you do at home. In other words, join a church at home; stop church hopping. I suspect that if you church hop at home, this little article won't even cross your radar.

Perhaps, I have overthought on this.

Is Christianity Biased Toward Book Lovers?

Interesting question posted at the Desiring God website.
Answered by John Piper in the video here.

Page CXVI Hymns-- Free Music!

You will definitely want to check out an emerging phenomenon in current contemporary hymnody: anonymous, hymn-loving indie rockers. This group or rather project is known as Page CXVI hymns. They have already released one project and are on the cusp of their sophomore record. I haven't gotten the full picture yet as to why they don't release their identities. They actually do if you invite them to your church to play. And they have the requisite Twitter, Facebook and My Space presences. Nevertheless, I appreciate the intentional anonymity of the project's drivers b/c there are way too many "rock stars" in the Christian contemporary music world (pun intended).

This music isn't just skull candy. This is the old stuff w/ some counter-intuitive sounds, yet the new tunes aren't distracting. The substance of the text remains powerful, and most if not all their arrangements can be sung by the English-speaking church. These brothers and sisters are amongst the ranks of those restoring hymnody back to the church. I pray their tribe increases.

Get the whole first album for free just this week only! Then go ahead and download their newest recording which includes among the selections How Great Thou Art, Jesus, I am Resting, Resting and The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Why the name? From their website:

The name comes from a reference to page 116 in our copy of The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It is a poignant passage where Aslan begins to sing Narnia into creation out of a black void.

It starts, “In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction is was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.”

Speak Up!

A clever marketing campaign is going on near my house via a billboard (I'm a student of urban marketing). It is a Greater Than Aids drive. There are race and ideological factors that drive this campaign, but that isn't the purpose of my posting.
The campaign aptly uses the greater than symbol to send a plethora of messages related to AIDS/HIV. This particular board tersely says: Speaking up is greater than silence (in a golden font; I assume after the Chinese proverb that eloquence is silver and silence is gold). The point is two-fold, I believe: speak up if you have HIV/AIDS and speak up against the epidemic.
My American society calls for people to be bold and unashamed about their illness. I totally expect that.
Why, then, do I shut up about Christ, the Savior of the world; the Savior from sin; the Judge of all the earth?

It's time, my friends, that we speak up with the message that truly transforms. Open up your mouth. Speak up!

1 John 4:4- Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

The Problem with Evangelical Sola Scriptura

I live in an ecclesial world that rightly touts the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone!). I have grown up in this tradition (after my early years in a tradition that held to Scriptura et Magisterium). A lot of ink and spiritual sweat has been spilled over clarifying the fact that for the believer in Jesus Christ, the Scriptures alone as breathed out by God are the final authority for faith and practice (I sometimes refer to that as Scriptura Ultima). As I understand it, this doctrine doesn't snub the fact that truth can be presented via common grace in other earthly texts. And insomuch as they accord with the Sacred Writ, they are true statements. The Scriptures are the final arbiter of all other writings.

Not too many card-carrying evangelical Christians have a hard time disagreeing w/ the above understated formulation. Nevertheless, in the day-to-day life of the Church, I sense perhaps an all too often tendency to take Scriptura Ultima in a literal chronological sense. That is, we read and are heavily influenced by the voices, authorities, and texts of our culture (NY Times, Bono, Oprah, the Academy...you name it) first. Then (!), we run the noise through our evango-high def sola scriptura. No doubt, this isn't as mechanical as I'm making it to sound. I am asking: is our reality that we literally sometimes listen to the Word of God last (or finally, ultimately)?

I guess I am proposing a practical and daily return (yea, application) to the Scriptures not just as our final court of appeal but as our first consideration.
The problem with evangelical sola scriptura in the life of the church is that it often makes the Bible the last consideration (almost like throwing a bone at God). Maybe I'm proposing that embedded in this great historic doctrine is Scriptura Principium. The definition would then be that Scripture is our first and final authority in faith and practice. This allows for common grace and culture "conversations" in between, but it properly keeps the front and back doors of the Gospel well-protected.
Thoughts?

100 Cupboards Trilogy

Both my son and I are enjoying and heavily entrenched in the first of the 100 Cupboards trilogy by author N.D. Wilson. N.D. (Nate) is said that his goal is to "bring fantasy to America". To be honest, having just previously finished two back-to-back classics (The Last Battle and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), this first has been harder to close each night. That is not at all to deprecate C.S. Lewis. That's just saying how good N.D. Wilson already is as an emerging author.

Check out the trailer below.

Trailer for "The 100 Cupboards" Trilogy - by N.D. Wilson from Yitz Brilliant on Vimeo.

Malcom Gladwell on Work

I am really enjoying reading The New Yorker author, Malcom Gladwell in his recent book Outliers: The Story of Success. I would like to review this book, but I'm still processing it as Gladwell masterfully weaves stories with deductions on success. I would call this book a psycho/socio-dissection of success.

Those three things--autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward--are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice b/t being an architect for $75K a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100k a year, which would you take? I'm guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship b/t effort and reward in doing creative work, and that's worth more to most of us than money.
Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful.... Bill Gates had that same [ecstatic] feeling when he first sat down at the keyboard at Lakeside. And the Beatles didn't recoil in horror when they were told they had to play eight hours a night, seven days a week. Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.