How could I have forgotten to mention this? A couple of months ago I started a new job at my alma mater, Oral Roberts University. A big part of this first couple of months for me has been helping prepare the university Web site for a re-launch; the screen shot you see on the right is the main page of the terrific new version of our site! There are a number of things that are cool about this.
The first thing you'll see if you visit from a computer is that the background is moving video! The next thing you'll notice is that there are huge links to most any major area you might want to visit on the site.
If you visit the site from a mobile device, it still looks great - not like a site designed for a desktop browser that you have to pinch-zoom to view from your phone! The big links are still there, and every page looks great on your tablet or cell phone.
We've created terrific new versions of several parts of the site. Some examples we are particularly proud of:
The "Explore Majors" section (you can get there from the home page link in the top left, or using this direct link: http://www.oru.edu/academics/explore-majors/) - it looks great, and you can filter it down to a specific department, or just search for what you want to see.
The new "Chapel Services" page (at http://www.oru.edu/chapel/) which looks GREAT, is easier to navigate and watch the videos - and when chapel is in progress, will allow you to watch it live!
If you want to take a campus visit right from your computer, we've added a Virtual Tour at http://www.oru.edu/virtual-tour/ which will make you feel like you've actually been here.
Please visit the site and take a look around! ORU is a terrific place (I wouldn't have come back here as an employee if it wasn't), and we wanted the Web site to match.
Full disclosure: I was not asked to write this, or paid to do so. This is my personal blog, and if I wasn't excited about the school and the Web site, I wouldn't have done it. One more time, the Web site is at:
Sometimes I'm tired when I get to church. Sometimes I had a hard time with my kids right before we got there. Sometimes I had a tough day at work before an evening service, or a tough week of work before a Sunday morning service.
Sometimes I don't like the songs the worship leader chose. Sometimes I don't know the words very well, or I don't like the way the song is written, or I don't care for the rewrite.
Sometimes the bass guitar is too loud, or I don't like the voice of the person who is leading a particular song, or the guy standing right behind me is singing really out of key.
Sometimes there are a lot of people and I feel crowded. Sometimes there aren't very many people and I feel self-conscious. Sometimes it was hot outside and I feel a little sweaty - sometimes it's too cold inside and I just want to put on my jacket and put my hands in my pockets.
Sometimes it's hard to worship God.
But sometimes, it's easy to worship God.
Sometimes I feel good when I get to church. Sometimes every song is one of my favorites, the band sounds good, the singers are showing us how it's done, they're playing them in my key, and I couldn't be happier if I was in the front row at a Chris Tomlin concert.
Sometimes it's easy.
But then I start to wonder: am I really worshiping God they way I want to? Really communing with my Savior? Really reaching my heart out to him? It can actually be pretty easy just to enjoy singing for singing's sake, like singing along at a Beatles concert, but never actually open your heart to God.
And sometimes, when it's so hard to worship that you feel like you might have turned into that stone statue up there, although you may not feel good or you may be distracted by any of a zillion little things, you may be doing your level best to stretch your heart out to touch God.
In the one case, you can think you succeeded in worshiping God when you actually haven't. In the other case, you may feel like you've been an utter failure at worshiping God, but God may be saying "Well done!"
My perspective on musical worship services has been the same since I was in college. I attended Oral Roberts University (which is a great school... look into it if you're a high schooler!) and was required to attend chapel services a couple times a week. The music could tend to be repetitive. Sometimes it seemed like the chapel band only knew about five songs, and we sang them again and again, every service, the same arrangement, even the same order. I'm sure it wasn't actually like that, but it certainly seemed like it! It got a little monotonous, and after a while I found myself sort of checking out during the music part.
Then one day when I was sort of standing there watching, maybe even rolling my eyes a little bit, I could sense a small voice inside of me saying something like, "Your worship doesn't depend on what song is playing."
That was a revelation to me, and like an explosion or like a blooming flower, the whole concept began to open up and expand until it filled my whole perception of what worship is all about. Worship is NOT about anything going on in the physical world. Worship is all about what is going on inside your heart. Suddenly I realized that I could worship God, and sing that song I was bored with, and my worship could be pleasing to Him!
So when it's hard to participate in the physical part of worship, or when you kind of don't feel like doing it, do your best. This is God we're talking about here. He created you, He gave you life, and then when you threw it away, at tremendous cost to Himself He bought it back for you again. All worship is, is taking the time to love God. If you don't feel like it but you do it anyway, that's worship. And if you do feel like it but then you're just expressing enthusiasm for music or happiness with your life - well, maybe it's worship or maybe it's not. In those situations when participation is easy, sometimes real authentic worship is not.
But no matter if you feel bad or you feel good, authentic worship is always possible. So do it. Love Jesus back! You do know He's loving you already, even right now as you read this, right? Worship is just reciprocating that love from deep down in your heart. Sure, you should sing, you should raise your hands if you like, you should dance if you are so inclined. But while you're doing that, don't forget to worship God.
After all, it's not so hard, is it?
I hope you've enjoyed this week worth of blog posts about worship! I actually did not start out with much of a plan in mind, but I did know that I had a few things to talk about, so I decided to go the mini-series route and see what happened. As it turned out, some themes did emerge. Here's the rest of the series, in case you missed it:
Disobedient to the Songs - in which I confessed that sometimes I don't do things I am singing about Oddly Sexual - in which I explained that Jesus is not our girlfriend, but we are His (sort of), so using relationship metaphors in worship is not creepy Hand Raising Styles - in which I worried that a comedy bit by Tim Hawkins has the potential to distract people from worship Sloppy & Wet - in which I threw my hat into the ring on a controversial lyric in a popular worship song, and then said it doesn't matter anyway Take a look at all four of those, if you haven't already, and then sound off in the comments section of any or each. And don't forget to add your comments to the discussion about this post! Just find the link that says "COMMENTS" or "POST A COMMENT" and click it to tell me what you think!
This weekend was homecoming at my alma mater, Oral Roberts University. It was something of a triumphant weekend for ORU, too, because not only was it the grand opening of the beautiful new building you see at right, the Armand Hammer Student-Alumni Center, but it was a celebration of the selection of a new president-elect for the school, Dr. Billy Wilson. The outgoing president, Dr. Mark Rutland, was an interim president from the start, and his work during his time at ORU has been nothing short of game-changing.
In 2007, this same school announced that it was $55 million in debt. To say that the doors were in danger of closing forever is absolutely not an exaggeration. A wealthy family from the Oklahoma area stepped in and donated a huge hunk of money to eliminate that debt, but they added a stipulation: the leadership of the school would have to be reorganized, including the selection of a new president. Dr. Rutland was brought in and a new Board of Trustees was created. Amazing strides were made during the next five years under this new leadership, and now ORU is, to all appearances and with no reason to think otherwise, better off than it's been in a long time. I would say without reservation that the school has every indication of being in better shape now than it was 20 years ago when I graduated. The buildings are being kept up, technology is being brought up to date, there has been four straight years of enrollment growth, and student morale seems high. Plus, there is that new $12 million building that was built in one single year with dollars donated by alumni... debt free.
Visitors to the ORU campus over the years have often reported feeling a sense of peace when they walked around the property. As I was walking across campus after leaving a homecoming event Saturday, I noticed that I could feel that peace; after a lot of transition and change, ORU is flourishing, and God is still clearly in focus. And it struck me that there is quite a contrast between what is happening at ORU - unity of vision, economic advancement and progress, a heart turned toward God - and what seems to be happening across much of this nation (see my recent blog post about praying for things to get better!) In the United States right now, we're seeing divisive partisan politics, economic upheaval, and in general, people not seeking God's help. At ORU, we're seeing unity of vision, financial accountability and responsibility, and a new student-initiated emphasis on prayer.
The contrast was, for me, striking. ORU is a microcosm of what God can and will do for His people when we seek his face (and walk in His wisdom in areas like finances). Just as God has been providing for ORU, a school founded to train students to live their lives for Him, in a tough time... and just as God provided water for His people who were wandering around the desert way back in the time of Moses... God can provide for each of us. I'm not at all saying that seeking God will make your life an instant utopia or that there are never problems for the Christian, but I am saying that we can each have the peace present in our lives that is present on campus at ORU. Streams of water in the desert. Peace in the midst of the storm. I've seen it this weekend. You can see it too.
It was the end of the semester. Finals were ending, and summer vacation was coming up. And I was still short some of the funds I needed, and had no idea what to do.
This happened many years ago when I was a student at Oral Roberts University. I was in a choir that had been planning and preparing for a short tour/missions trip in Europe for the whole year. I had done what I was supposed to do to raise the money to pay my way, but fundraising is not a sport for the faint of heart. I had sent out support letters, and I had prayed, and some money had come in, but it just wasn't quite enough. My parents didn't have resources to make up the difference, and I sure didn't have anything squirreled away to throw into the pot. I had no idea what to do, and essentially I gave up and decided to take a nap. But before I did, I ran into my friend Dave. I won't give Dave's last name here, because he and others who know him may see this and he might be embarrassed to have people know what happened, but Dave was in choir with me when I told him I didn't have the money to go, he was very upset; I think he didn't want to see me miss out on an amazing opportunity. I don't remember the exact conversation, but I remember Dave being very agitated, not at me but at the situation. I went to my room and laid down, resigned to the idea that the mission trip wasn't going to happen for me.
Dave, however, did not take a nap. This was the extreme end of the semester, and Dave knew that guys all over the dorm were packing up their stuff to go home for the summer. He also knew that some of those guys would be finding money they had lost in their rooms months ago. Dave took a can or something and walked around the dorm, looking for doors that were open and guys who were packing up their things, and asked them for donations to help a student go on a missions trip. And you know what? Dave managed to raise all of the money I still needed! When I went to sleep, I wasn't going on missions; when I woke up, I was. I wasn't involved at all. I didn't even actually ask for help! What a friend, to help me out when I had given up on helping myself! That trip was a defining couple of weeks for me. I still think back to that trip sometimes. Missions doesn't only benefit the people you go to see, you know. A missions trip changes the missionary, I think, maybe even more than it changes those who receive his ministry.
So, last night I was reading what is known as the "songs of ascent," which you will find in your Bible from Psalm 120-Psalm 134, and I saw this verse (which I've read many times before):
In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves. (Psalm 127:2 NIV)
It's a great verse to meditate on when you have insomnia, for sure. In fact, it's in my list of sleep scripture verses on ScriptureMenu.com. But the thing that caught my eye this time was an NIV footnote attached to the verse. If you use the alternate reading, the verse says:
In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat— for while they sleep he provides for those he loves.
What an amazing picture of what happened to me that day! I worked and toiled, but it didn't work out for me... but when I came to the end of myself, God provided for me in my sleep. I hope Dave does read this, because I hope he understands how much I appreciated then and appreciate now what he did that day. The money didn't appear by magic; I believe God gave Dave an amazingly good idea, and directed him in what to do, but Dave got up and did the work, and I was and still am extremely grateful for that. I want to publicly thank him for being obedient to the Holy Spirit, and I want to publicly thank God for caring enough about my missions trip to provide for me "while I slept."
Guess what? I realized that something very similar happened in the Bible! Check out this post for details.
* I'd like to add this: don't sit around waiting for God javascript:void(0)to magically fund your missions trip. Follow the instructions of experienced folks. Write your fundraising letters and emails. Work a few hours extra per week at your job. Wash cars; have bake sales. Do what you know. Pray that God will inspire people to give, and that He will inspire you with clever ideas to earn. But when you've come to the end of your rope and you don't know what else to do, trust God to be in your corner. If he's put missions in your heart, He will also put the money in your hands to do what he's inspired you to do.
When I was a freshman at Oral Roberts University in the late 1980s, one of the first things I learned was to hold doors open for the young ladies. There was no etiquette class for freshmen, no university-wide rule, no obvious reason for this at all. There was just a culture of the young men taking care of the young ladies. For anyone who wasn't born yet then who might be reading this, let me emphasize: this was the eighties, not the fifties. Holding a door open for a young lady when you weren't on a date (or maybe even when you were on a date) was certainly not the societal norm. But I think I learned more about servanthood and about respect for the opposite sex from that one tiny repeated act than anything else before, or maybe even since. What's more, the young ladies expected that kind of treatment; some would even refuse to go thorough a door with a young man unless he opened and held it for her. Training girls to understand that they deserve dignity and respect and should expect it from the males in their lives is a main focus of James Dobson's new book, Bringing Up Girls. To some the book may seem unforgivably old-fashioned in its treatment of the fair sex. Others will find something to get offended by, and some may even be astonished at some of the ideas expressed (I know I was!) But I think if you open your mind a little bit, forgive Dr. Dobson for some attitudes that may seem at first blush a little too much like something out of Leave It To Beaver for the twenty-first century, and look at the heart of what he is saying, you'll get some valuable insight before you're done.
This book is, for most intents and purposes, a follow-up to Dr. Dobson's 2001 book, Bringing Up Boys. If you've read that book, you will see a lot of similarities, particularly in the early chapters. Dr. Dobson seems to like to break the ice by including a few "lighthearted" letters from "fans" (in this case, some of them were unintentionally funny letters from child "anti-fans" who did not appreciate Dr. Dobson's stance on corporal punishment in previous books!) and telling a few stories about childhood. He has a grandfatherly sentimentality that is pretty hard to resist. But that sentimental side doesn't stop him from being brutally honest about some things, and that made some of the later chapters a tough read for me.
Like Bringing Up Boys, this book contains a lot of statistics about its subject: in this case, females of all kinds (not just little girls, but also teenagers and even grown women.) The basic theme of the second and third chapters, in fact, is that society is a dangerous place for females. There are extensive discussions about such things as the fragility of a girl's ego, the harmful effect of certain things in media, the aggressive marketing of those things to females, the accessibility of materials on the Internet through both computers and portable devices such as cell phones, the moral anti-absolutism of our 21st-century culture, and cultural changes such as the acceptance of public nudity. There was one section I found particularly difficult to get through - it was about "cutting," a practice in which people (often teenagers) will physically cut their skin with a knife or other implement in an attempt to dull emotional pain with physical pain. I've known that cutting existed for some time, but revisiting it in such detail was chilling. I found myself wading through those chapters as though I was hip-deep in toxic water; the information is awful to be exposed to, but you've got to get through it to get where you're going.
Then sometimes I would come to a spot in the book that seemed like a breath of fresh air. When I got to chapter 16 ("Good News About Girls") it was such a relief after spending the two previous chapters wallowing in the filth of media culture. The odd thing is that the whole point of the book is that the danger of a girl falling into those dire straits is greatly reduced by the presence of loving, involved parenting as she grows up. The kind of negative statistics in the "hip-waders" chapters would seem to be the kind of thing you would use to convince someone to read the book. Once I'm reading it, I've already decided that I want some help and advice; I don't need to be convinced. All that to say, I think maybe the book dwells on the negative a little more than is necessary; some parts are wastelands of discouraging numbers and trends. You can go for chapters and chapters and never actually learn anything practical to use in your parenting. Sometimes I felt like saying, "Okay, Dr. Dobson, you made your point twelve pages ago. Growing up is hard for girls. Can we get on to how I can help my girl now, please?"
And of course, the "how can I help" information is there, too. In fact, I would encourage any mother of a girl to at least take a look at chapters 5 and 7, and any father of a girl should at least take a look at chapters 8, 9, and 10. Chapter 8, in particular, is a must-see for dads: it is a series of heart-rending first-person stories, told by young women in college, of the huge effect their fathers have had on their lives. The basic message of the book is that girls need to be endowed with a sense that they are valuable, not commodities, and the girl's parents are in the primary position to do that for her as she is growing up. If we parents can help our daughters understand that they are valuable persons, they will be less likely to do things like using their sexuality to get what they want or trying to hold on to the affection of a boyfriend who is finished with the relationship. The idea is not to exert control over females, but to free them to control themselves as adult women. To empower them to not feel like they have to resort to drastic measures in order to get what they want. To free them to want what they really want, instead of what society all around them screams that they should want.
There are a number of opinions Dr. Dobson expresses in the book that strike me as controversial. He is against mothers of young children working outside of the home unless there is a dire need, for example. He is against same-sex couples raising children. He is against co-ed sports, particularly with teenagers (he believes that having members of the opposite sex on the team changes the dynamics of how the team works together and reduces the value of the whole thing for everybody). He believes in sexual abstinence before marriage for both genders. He says that casual sex with multiple partners physically rewires the brain and makes the eventual relationship with a lifelong partner less satisfying in the end. He seems to believe that body piercing is psychologically related to cutting (really? What about one earring per ear? Is that cutting? What about two? or three? Why is a belly-button different from an earlobe?) I could see many people being turned off by some of those assertions - although presumably, the kind of person who is going to strongly disagree with those kinds of things is probably not going to be reading books by James Dobson anyway. I personally have very little trouble with most of them, and I see at least a grain of truth in each. But if any of those statements bothers you more than a little tiny bit, you might seriously consider whether you want to get into this book.
I found his discussion of what he calls the "princess movement" particularly interesting. This is the same thing that I've referred to for years now as the "pink aisle"... you know, the toy aisle that is almost blindingly pink because it's where all of the "girl toys" are. These days, a lot of the "pink aisle" toys have Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, Pocahontas, and other "princesses" from the Disney repertoire on them, and little girls eat them up. He characterizes the movement as a (mostly) positive thing, giving girls an outlet for their natural "girliness" and showing them that it's OK to not be the same as the boys. However, he does criticize culture's obsession with "beauty" in a lengthy section that, oddly, turns a very sympathetic eye on celebrities Anna Nicole Smith and Farrah Fawcett, both of whom suffered during their lifetimes because they were physically desirable (he quotes Farrah as saying, "How would you like to be photographed every day of your life?") The general sense is that a girl needs to be taught that she is a princess, yes, but not only because of physical beauty; she is a princess because she is a child of God.
Chapter 11 discusses the Father Daughter Purity Ball movement. This is a kind of formal party, sort of like a prom, to which dads take their daughters. Dads and daughters dress up in formal clothes, they dance, and the daughter pledges to her dad that she will keep her virginity until marriage, and the dad pledges back that he will help her protect her virginity. That probably oversimplifies things a bit, but that's the main gist of it. I had heard of this before, and it has always seemed a bit odd to me, maybe a little bit creepy... and this chapter did not change my mind. The whole thing extends the (perfectly okay) princess fantasy unnaturally from childhood nearly into young adulthood, and uses it to convince a girl to sign a contract that specifies what they will do sexually. But the way I see it, no document is going to change someone's mind in the heat of passion. And honestly, I'm not really sure that it's the father's job to "protect" his daughter's virginity; I think it's the father's job to teach the girl what she needs to know so that she will guard her own virginity. I'm going to teach my daughter what I believe the Word of God says about sexuality, but I'm not going to stand out on my porch with a shotgun waiting for her to come home from a date (I probably will wait up, though!) If she makes the wrong choice and has sex with a boy, what good will a written, signed contract do anyway? It will only make her feel guilty, and she'll hide the whole thing from me. That's not productive. It seems to me that taking your daughter to one of these things amounts to doing something outlandish to make up for years of not properly training her like you should have been doing all along. I'm sure in many or most cases it's not like that, and if one day my daughter asks me to take her to one of these, certainly I'll do it, but it seems over the top to me. Dr. Dobson's take on them is very positive, but personally, the whole idea strikes me as weird.
I had a similar reaction to the charm bracelet story in Chapter 17. Essentially, the story is about parents encouraging their daughter to stay away from any affectionate contact with boys until she is sure of the one she is going to marry. This includes kissing, saying "I love you," and even holding hands with a boy in addition to getting engaged and getting married. Their encouragement is in the form of a charm bracelet, the (rather expensive) charms of which must be given away to the first boy with which she has that sort of contact. The girl in the story, as it turns out, was wise enough to use that gentle pressure put on her by loving parents to keep her out of trouble, and after she was married, she still had the whole charm bracelet. But I have to wonder: is this bribery? Is this replacing a strong moral upbringing with a materialistic love for jewelry? It seems extreme to me, especially penalizing their daughter for even holding a boy's hand. (For that matter, what if she is in a class at school and everybody is holding hands as part of a lesson? What if they are holding hands in Sunday School for a prayer time? In my family, we hold hands to pray over our meals. Would those situations count if she happened to be next to a boy?) It's not my style to manipulate someone by giving them a gift with strings attached. Then again, maybe that's why I'm not a psychologist. Maybe that's the language that a little girl speaks most fluently, and I just don't know it yet.
All in all, though, I enjoyed the book very much. I didn't enjoy the "toxic statistic" parts, but I enjoyed the rest of it, even the parts with which I had a difference of opinion, because I enjoy seeing someone else's perspective. I enjoyed hearing about Dr. Dobson's daughter Danae, in part because her love of dogs reminded me of my little girl. In fact, it wasn't just my daughter that I saw reflected in the pages... I sometimes saw my wife there, too! I came away from the book understanding that for girls and women, relationships are the number one key to everything. If I can maintain a healthy relationship with my girl, she has a way-better-than-average chance at leading a very successful, happy life. If daughters of loving fathers look for a mate who is like their dad, I want to make it next to impossible for my daughter to find a man who will measure up, not because I want her to be alone (I don't) but because I want her to be with someone who loves her, and who loves God, at least as much as I do.
Are Dr. Dobson's perspectives old-fashioned? Sometimes, maybe... or maybe they're not old-fashioned, but a jarring reminder of a higher standard that should be held toward and by women. Girls and women are valuable and precious, and should be treated as such. If we all treated our daughters like princesses (not the spoiled kind, but the kind who know that royalty also comes with responsibility), and they all acted like princesses... wouldn't the world be a great place to be? When my princess grows up, I hope she still has the same attitude she had the other day when she wanted her mama to take her somewhere. "We can't go right now, sweetie," my wife told her. "Daddy has the car." My little girl replied simply, "Okay. I fly!"
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Tyndale Publishing.
A few weeks ago I took Cathy and Mikey to see Newsboys at Mabee Center. As we were on the way into the parking lot, we saw something on the huge LED marquee out front: a picture of none other than legendary Christian songwriter and performer Andraé Crouch! I was stoked... we love his music (who doesn't?) but then we saw that it was a fundraising event with tickets costing anywhere up to $75 or more... it was going to be a night featuring a number of sports figures, and we quickly ruled it out based on lack of funds and generally lack of interest in sports. They handed us a postcard about the event on the way out... it featured pictures of Olympics superstars Carl Lewis and Madeline Manning along with the picture of Andraé and a guy I'd never heard of named Alfred Lee. I dropped it on the dining room table and basically forgot about it.
Fast-forward to about a week ago. My wife got a call from a cousin of hers who had some extra tickets to the event, which my wife didn't even remember until I showed her the postcard. Cathy always seems to become more enthusiastic about things when someone else is interested, and especially someone she is as close to as this cousin, so suddenly we were going!
...And we were SO GLAD we did. The baby stayed with her Meme, but Mikey came along with us. Here's the whole story: since Madeline's Olympic career ended years ago, she has continued to support the teams every year as a volunteer chaplain. However, because there are no certifying organizations for sports chaplains, she goes on her own dime, pays for her own accommodations and meals, etc. while other support staff is allowed much easier access. Training for chaplains is nonexistent, so sometimes they are ill-equipped to deal with things that are peculiar to sports figures' spiritual needs. Madeline has started an organization called United States Council for Sports Chaplaincy (USCSC) (no Web site that I could find) which will be dedicated to training, certification, and then continuing education of sports chaplains. So this was a fundraising event for that, and we did give some money on the way out because we believe in Madeline and what she is doing. But it was FAR from a dull fundraiser. This party was HAPPENING!
It turns out Alfred Lee is an incredible concert pianist, but last night he was doing something very unexpected... he had a keyboard set up in such a way that he could play what sounded like a fully-orchestrated piece, all by himself. Live. No sequencers, no backing tracks. He did it while people were on the way in, and then he did it again at the end as the olympic stars... but I'll get to that in a minute. Suffice it to say that he was amazing.
So were the other entertainers! There were singers, including Madeline herself, Sara Jordan Powell, and Ernestine Dillard (you may have heard Ms. Dillard sing "God Bless America" at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial service years ago; there was the amazing Souls A' Fire Gospel choir/band from ORU; there were dance groups, a drum corps (think marching band without the horns), and of course, the incomparable Andraé Crouch. And that wasn't all! After the intermission, greats from Olympic games in years gone by started coming down to the stage, one at a time, and they kept coming and coming and coming! There must have been almost two dozen of them up there. And these weren't the Olympic losers, either... Carl Lewis is of course legendary, and others included people like Wyomia Tyus, the first Olympic athlete to win a gold in 100m dash at two consecutive Olympic games, and Dick Fosbury, who was the first high-jumper to discover that going over the bar backwards led to better results than going over it forwards, revolutionizing the sport. There were a ton of athletes from the U.S. 1968 Summer Olympics team, and Madeline gave each of them (and the athletes from other years as well) a chance to briefly share something from their heart. It was inspiring, and awe-inspiring.
At the end Andraé came back out, and he and Madeline started singing "My Tribute (To God be the Glory)" with a CD track. Everybody from the whole show was on stage. Then I heard the CD skip once, then again. At first it seemed like it wasn't going to be a problem, but then, horrors... it went totally haywire! What were they going to do? Then I saw someone in the shadows on the edge of the stage make a throat-cutting motion, and the track faded out... and the Souls A' Fire band came in, sounding 100% better than the track, to my ears! The Souls A' Fire choir knew the background vocals, too, and the finale was incredible! My wife looked over at me during the finale and said, "Why are you smiling like that?"
It was friggin' ANDRE CROUCH! Singing MY FRIGGIN' TRIBUTE!! I was in heaven! :)
I'm so excited about what USCSC will accomplish. If you read this and think you might want to help out with a donation, here is some contact information I found on Mabee Center's Web site:
This was our first Sunday morning visiting away from our old church. We actually visited World Outreach Church last Wednesday and planned to go back today, but Cathy's cousin Dee-Wee emailed us to tell us that her son Michael would be performing at the end of the service at their church, Evangelistic Temple, so we visited there instead! (It was on our list anyway, so we would have visited within the next few weeks.) The youth from the church had gone to a national competition with some drama, music, photography, and other kinds of expressions of their faith in the arts, and Michael had been part of two competitions: a drama skit and a comedy rap song. The drama team was scheduled to perform; the "rap group" kind of snuck in at the very end. :)
Dee-Wee (that's a nickname I accidentally invented for her several years ago... long story. Her real name is Melody, but most everyone calls her Dee-DEE, not Dee-WEE) met us at the door when we got there. We got the baby checked in at the nursery, and the ladies there were very friendly and cordial. Hannah seemed a little bit nervous, but she was OK once she spotted the toys! Once she was settled in, Dee-Wee took us for the two-dollar tour of all the places around the church where the youth meet, the kids meet, the little coffee area, that sort of thing. It was kind of fun to get to see the facility! By then it was almost time for the service to start, so we went back to the main sanctuary.
At E.T. they have an early "traditional" service and a later "contemporary" service; we were there for the contemporary service. In the lobby we found Dee-Wee's husband (Lee-Wee), and we ran into Krista, the sister of my roommate from my ORU days. So we felt very much surrounded by friends. The associate pastor, who was to be speaking that morning, even spotted us and came over to say hello! We felt very welcome, and very at home! (Cathy and I had both been to E.T. before, although it has been years and years for both of us, so it wasn't a totally alien environment, either.)
The service was wonderful. It looked like maybe they were having some sound issues at the beginning of the music time; I saw a guy scrambling around checking some cables or direct boxes or something. But the worship was well-done and certainly heartfelt. Not quite as slick of a production as what we've been used to at the much larger churches we've attended, but I've absolutely heard MUCH worse, and I had no trouble joining in (the sound problems got fixed fairly quickly, as well). The sanctuary was maybe half-full by the end of the music portion; at the very beginning it was really sparse. I suspect that was partly because people were chatting out in the lobby area, which is really just part of the same large room with a partition in the way; you're almost in the service even when you're in that lobby. The musicians did a great job; as a music-oriented person I actually enjoyed watching a lady who was playing congas and some other percussion in the background. I thought it was cool that she had a tambourine mounted on a stand on the ground and she was playing it with a kick pedal. :)
Cathy and I LOVED the message. He started off talking about the "cash for clunkers" program that has just ended (bring in your old dilapidated car to trade in for a new one with a government refund for the "clunker"), but then he turned it around to "grace for clunkers"! The idea was that God has taken our messed up lives and given us something infinitely valuable in exchange. It was really inspiring; I was impressed at how evangelistic it was in nature, but still very relevant and useful to the already-converted. I thought he did an excellent job.
When the message was over and announcements and the offering were done, we were treated to the youth drama performance, which had won third place at the national competition. Here's the video of the performance at nationals:
Dee-Wee's son is Satan and the beginning, and Jesus at the end. Now THAT'S a conversion story!
The first service didn't get to see the next part. Michael is one-third of a tongue-in-cheek rap act called "Creepers 4 Christ," and somehow they got the associate pastor to let them on stage. :) This is their performance which won FIRST place in the national competition!
After that, all that the associate pastor could say was something to the effect of, "If Pastor ever hears about this, I'll know it was YOU guys that told him!" It was really funny!
The pros of E.T.: we have family and friends there already. They appear to have very active programs for children and teenagers. They have some outreach programs that appear to be fairly active as well. The message was excellent, and the people were super friendly to us. This is no fly-by-night church; they've been there a long time and there's no reason to suspect that they won't be there for years to come. There were several visitors this morning besides us (which probably means people are inviting their friends), and they baptized several kids and adults this morning, one woman who had received Jesus right in the church just weeks ago.
The cons of E.T. (for us): mainly that it has a little bit of a throwback-to-the-70s feel to it. The building isn't brand-spanking-new, and it feels lived-in. That is by no means a reason to write this church off, and we haven't scratched it off our list by any means! But it's a little more shall we say "retro" than we're used to.
Final impression: I think we could be very happy having E.T. as our home church. There are some bells that rang for us at World Outreach that didn't ring here (I'll blog World Outreach after we get to a Sunday service there), but I would highly recommend E.T. to anyone who asked me about it. It's a wonderful place, and we look forward to visiting again there from time to time.
How could I have forgotten to mention this? A couple of months ago I started a new job at my alma mater, Oral Roberts University. A big part of this first couple of months for me has been helping prepare the university Web site for a re-launch; the screen shot you see on the right is the main page of the terrific new version of our site! There are a number of things that are cool about this.
Posts
