Have you thanked Rodd and Jasmine Lowell lately?  They volunteer so much time with our worship ministry that I often jokingly refer to them as “unpaid staff.”  They are here for about two hours once a week in the evening to lead our worship team practice.  They are here about fifty Sundays a year to lead worship for two services.  They are often here early on Sunday morning before many of the rest of us are even awake, preparing to lead our church family in worship.

All of that volunteer time doesn’t include the behind-the-scenes work that Rodd and Jas do in picking out songs and planning all of our worship services.  And it doesn’t include time spent listening to new music to introduce to us; reading articles and books on worship; attending training sessions and seminars, and more.

Sometimes I believe that many people think that leading worship just means that you pick a couple of cools songs or choose a music style that suits the most people in our gathering on Sunday morning.  But it’s so much more than that.

Worship ministry is about engaging people in a sacred moment of community; a moment where the entire sum of our beings joins together to worship God; a moment where all of our voices and our minds and our ears and our hearts and our bodies are joined together and pointing in the same direction – toward the Lord God Almighty.

Rodd and Jas understand this and are committed to leading our church gatherings on Sunday into the presence and the glory of God.  They do a tremendous job of it, and we are so fortunate to have them in our church family.  Please take the time this month to express your thanks to them!

Thank you, Jenison family, for the privilege of serving with you.  My family and I are so blessed to be able to work with you.  We love you!

And “we” is the operative term. Awesome events like this don’t happen without “Ultimate Volunteers.” Some of them are behind the scenes. You never knew it, but Aaron North, Mitch and Grant Howard, and Reagan and Miles Hoezee were at the church hours before the event, moving hundreds of chairs out of the way to make room for giant air-filled fun. Some of those guys stayed late to help set things up again also, some 6 hours later.

And then we had more than 20 volunteers on hand during the event keeping kids safe, cheering them on, welcoming the unchurched and other first-time guests, and spending time relating to them. WOW! Thanks for all your time and energy devoted to building the Kingdom of God. I appreciate you! (Pictures to come soon….)

Our Christian Education team at Jenison Christian Church recognizes that your summer is a busy time.  We’ve responded by intentionally lowering the amount of church programming throughout the summer weeks – and at the same time, trying to raise the level of quality for what we do offer.   Beginning last summer, one way in which we’ve tried to do that is the creation of SummerSalt.

SummerSalt is designed to be an introduction to Jenison Christian Church through a fun activity for your whole family.  It is specifically intended to give you an opportunity to invite your friends, neighbors, and co-workers to a church activity that is “safe”. There won’t be any high pressure sales pitch given to the guests that you bring – just a high quality, fun, safe activity for everyone.  We WILL take a few minutes to explain who we are, and what some of the opportunities at Jenison are for your guests and their families.

We’ll let your guests know that we provide quality children’s programming in Sunday morning PromiseLand, fifty-two weeks a year.  It’s like having Vacation Bible School every Sunday!  We’ll let them know about our Wednesday night children’s activities and our youth group opportunities.  We’ll let them know about our small groups options.  We’ll let them know that we love them and we care about them, and that our purpose to help them to “become passionate followers of Jesus Christ.”

That is, after all, the vision of Jenison Christian Church!  It is a joy to be on this journey with you.  Thanks for coming along!

It takes more than seventy volunteers to make this happen.  At the risk of slighting anyone, allow me to especially mention two women who devote so much time to the Children’s Ministry that they should be paid a full-time salary!  Amy Barber puts countless hours into organizing our Wednesday night DiscipleLand.  She comes early, stays late, supervises, subs, and spends countless hours in recruitment and preparation for a program that seeks to go in-depth into the Scriptures.   Lee North puts in many, many hours of behind-the-scenes time in producing the highest quality in children’s programming with PromiseLand on Sunday morning.  Lee leads a team of more than thirty adults and teenagers that impact children with the message, values, and promises of Jesus Christ fifty-two weeks a year.  Thank you ladies for your selfless service!

Discipleship in the church doesn’t just “happen.”  It must be intentional and purposeful.  Our Children’s Ministry team is committed to assisting your family in producing disciples of Jesus.  We meet monthly, constantly questioning and tweaking our approach in order to get the very best possible results.  Thank you so much to the following folks for sharing a late night meeting with me every month – Amy Barber, Mary Beach, Tim Hoezee, Rhonda Hoyle, Pat Howard, Jerry Maue, and Lee North.

http://www.musicademy.com/2010/05/worship-trainwreck-from-martin-smith/

• It’s a pursuit, a journey, an adventure.  It’s not the mountaintop experience; it’s the hike on the way to the summit.
• It never takes place in a vacuum, socially or spiritually, but rather in the interaction between fellow travelers who have the same intended destination.
• It is the purpose for which Jesus gathered twelve men around him at the beginning of his three-year ministry – so that by spending time with Him, they would take on His attributes, His character qualities, His patterns of thinking, and His relationship with God.

Senior high students watch and discuss The Truth Project on Sunday nights so that they will be encouraged and empowered to think and act like Jesus Christ.  They volunteer for the Haiti Food Pack and the West Michigan Food Bank so that they can become like Jesus in service.  On Wednesday nights, junior high students read and talk through Crazy Love, by Francis Chan, so that they can become more obedient to the commands of Jesus, and thereby grow in faith and love and in looking like Him.  And we intentionally structure specific ministry times so that our students can be exposed to Godly adults and role models who will demonstrate the actions and thoughts and words of Christ in everyday situations.

Often, we think of progressing in the Christian faith as a series of bullet points to be memorized and recited at will.  But discipleship is about growing and changing so much more than the mind.  It’s about changing the body and the spirit and the soul and, yes, the mind too.  It’s about changing the inner core – the secret heart, the very being of an individual – into something that is more like Jesus than it was the day before.  What an incredible adventure we are on as we seek to help people become passionate followers of Jesus Christ!  Thank you for serving with us!

In the video series we watched last night (the Truth Project), Dr. Del Tackett made several statements about labor and working that made me raise my eyebrows.  He might be right (he’s obviously a lot more intelligent than I), but on the other hand maybe he’s wrong.  At the very least, I didn’t like what he did hermeneutically with a couple of scripture passages…

He purports that God has ordained the following economic system:  a three part system including God, Stewards, and Stuff, in which God owns all the “stuff”, God designates stewards to be accountable for the “stuff, and the stewards steward the “stuff.   He then purports a lesser/lower version of the same system (a three part system including owners, workers, and stuff - Owners own the stuff, owners designate employees to be accountable for the stuff, and the employees steward the stuff, while owners are responsible for the well-being of their employees)

Something strikes me as wrong, even though when I look at the diagrams he drew, it seems hard to argue with it.

Perhaps more than anything, it felt like Dr. Tackett was suggesting that God has ordained a system of capitalism, even though the word “capitalism” never appeared as far as I remember in the 60 minute presentation.

I don’t have any problems with capitalism.  I’m not a socialist, I’m not a communist, I’m not a liberal politically-speaking;  I’m fiscally and socially conservative, and I have been and remain a capitalist.

But I’m not sure that God is as concerned about a country’s economic system as some on the Christian right want Him to be, Dr. Tackett’s arguments notwithstanding.

Granted, there are plenty of hints in the Scripture that point toward working hard, investing well, and doing long-term financial planning.  But there are plenty of hints in the Scripture that point toward sharing, giving generously without expectation of repayment or reward, and living communally.

I am loathe to endorse the idea that God prefers capitalism over socialism or communism.

In fact, I could probably make the argument that more people become followers of Christ living in a communistic system than in a capitalistic system, as miserable as a communistic system is.  Actually, they probably become followers of Christ in large part BECAUSE they live in the misery of a communistic system.  And isn’t becoming a follower of Christ more important in the long-term than what economic system people live in?

Scripturally, I didn’t like what he did with:

1.  Ephesians 6:5-8 - he took Paul’s commands to masters and slaves and applied them to the owner/worker relationship.  I’d have to study the passage, but it certainly feels like a stretch.  On the face of it, I’d rather default to a position that Eph. 6:5-8 is a passage that is no longer culturally relevant.

2.  Leviticus 23:22 (leaving the gleanings in the field for the poor) - he asserted that a) the poor need work, not a handout, and b) it is the duty of owners/employers to provide work opportunities for them.  Essentially, he argued that those who own businesses are obligated to provide opportunities for those who are unemployed and/or poor.

Ok, again, this might be right.  I don’t know.  But this is where the capitalistic side of me rears up and says that Americans live in a system in which virtually anyone who desires to succeed and to provide for themselves and their family can do so (excluding the physically disabled and the mentally disturbed).  I have extremely mixed feelings on the (b) idea above.

Anyway….

Here’s a recent article about Glenn Beck’s recent comments on economic and social systems.  I’m not a Glenn Beck fan, but I’m not his biggest detractor either.  Mostly I just thought it was interesting that his brou-ha-ha came up at the same time that we watched this edition of the Truth Project…  Check out the article here.

What’s your view on labor?

We had way more fun at McDonald’s on the way home.  Between 5 of us, we ate 170 chicken McNuggets.  I had just under 30.  That’s not something that I want to brag about though………..