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Saint Patrick, The Trinity, and the Greatest Video

3/17/2015

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
I am very concerned for the state of the Church these days. Especially in the realms of the Trinity and preaching the Bible.

Videos like this one produced by The Lutheran Satire give me both hope, and a good laugh.

So, I present to you, my favorite video on the Internet!

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8 Reasons We Use Pew Bibles Instead Of Projection

3/11/2015

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We use pew Bibles at the church I serve.
Well, we don't have pews. We have cushioned chairs. So technically we have "chair-back Bibles," but the idea is the same.

It might seem antiquated or out of date to have pew Bibles. After all, we have access to a projection system, slide show software and advanced copying systems. We could project whatever text is being preached from. We could also print the text and insert it into the bulletin. But we don't.

Our church has made a conscious decision to not do any of these things. (We will occasionally project a secondary text, but not the primary one). There are direct and indirect results of this decision.

Below are some of the bullet point reasons we use pew Bibles:

Projecting the text takes the Bible away from the congregation. We want people to hold their own Bible (even if it is on their phone). We want them to bring their Bibles. We want them to be able to find their way around it, so they can find their way back to that place.
Pew Bibles give the congregation immediate access to the context. None of the pastors and presenters can play "fast and loose" with the biblical text when the Bible is in the hands of the congregation. At a glance they can see the immediate context.
The congregation knows where the text is located. Years later it is much more likely a member will be able to find his or her way back to a needed text if he or she had been there before. (Even with the digital versions). If we just projected the text and/or printed it in the bulletin, they might remember seeing it on the screen, but they'll have a much harder time finding it again.
People will become more familiar with their Bibles. We want people to know how to navigate their Bibles. We want people to be able to find passages. We want them to be able to find texts and verses in their time of need. Even with digital searches, there is something lost when a person doesn't know where a text is located. (Old Testament? New Testament? Epistle? Gospel?) The context is key.
It is easier to give Bibles away. I don't have exact numbers, but when we decided to move toward pew Bibles three years ago, we had to invest quite a bit of money. Over the last few years we've easily given away $1000 worth of Bibles. Additionally, every week there's a script I follow: "Please open your Bibles to 1 Samuel 4:1. If you don't have a Bible, feel free to use one of the red chair-back Bibles. They're cued up for the most part. And if you don't own a Bible and you'd like a Bible, please take that Bible home with you, put your name in it and read it. It's our gift to you. We want you to get into the Word of God and the Word of God to get into you." This communicates the importance of the Bible to the whole congregation. Young and old. Every single week.
If parents bring their Bibles, kids bring their Bibles. When we project the text it communicates that attenders don't need to bring their Bibles. As a result, the kids don't bring it. I spent eleven years in youth ministry. I always wanted teens to bring their Bibles. I communicated it every week. In the churches where pew Bibles abounded, most of the youth brought them. In the churches that projected the text, most of the teens did not.
Reading straight from the text tells the congregation where authority comes from. It isn't from the pastor. The authority of the church comes from God Himself.
It tells the congregation where the pastor's sermon receives its authority from. Again, it is not from the pastor. When the pastor preaches from the actual Bible and people read along in an actual Bible, it implicitly communicates his message is not a clever device from Himself, but delivered under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These are some of our reasons.
What other direct and indirect benefits are there to having pew Bibles?

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Following Up The Vision-Casting Post

3/1/2015

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Last week when I posted "Why I Am Not A Vision-Casting Pastor" I assumed it would cause some amount of controversy. I've had some wonderful public and private dialog with both supporters and critics of the post. From those conversations I wanted to offer some follow-up comments.

I cannot say definitively that the Elevation Church coloring book was actually distributed to kids. The available evidence seems to support that the children's ministry designed the book without Pastor Furtick's initial knowledge. Some time later, the book was redesigned and this particular content was redesigned and removed. But even if the page is spurious, it still correctly portrays how "vision" is cast in many churches. And for me, it was seeing vision-casting portrayed in this way that shook me awake from my theological stupor.
We need to define our terms. A number of friends pointed out that many pastors are referring to strategy when they're talking about vision. Unfortunately I think this is how the dangerous sort of vision-casting comes about. Many of us (myself included) think leaders are taking strategy, when they're really talking about the driving force of the church. Some leaders do mean "strategy" (i.e. how we go about accomplishing The Great Commission) when they talk about vision. But the way many contemporary evangelical leaders talk about vision and write about it in their leadership books, vision is the driving force of the church. It is why she exists. It is what wakes her up in the morning, and puts her to bed at night. And I still maintain that the driving force of the church (call it vision, call it purpose, call it mission or whatever) is The Great Commission.
How did the Church get here? I don't have any hard data on this, but from my educated observations I think it's been the fairly recent push for pastors to read business leadership books. While I think there is some knowledge pastors can gain from business, we must never forget that the Church is not a business. It is the community of God. The Body of Christ. The Bride of Christ. In the business world, a strong vision is needed. The business needs to define its purpose and identity. This is not something that translates over to the church, though. Because I still maintain The Great Commission gives us our direction, our vision, and our mission. (And our identity comes from Christ). Making disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ must be the reason every church exists.

Our Lord and Master gave us our mission. No matter how good the vision is, it is pathetic in comparison to The Great Commission.

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Nathan James Norman

Saint Patrick, The Trinity, and the Greatest Video

8 Reasons We Use Pew Bibles Instead Of Projection

Following Up The Vision-Casting Post

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