Chapel...?

A stand-up comedian held an audience of students and faculty close with a brilliant comedy routine which also happened to include a basic message of salvation. The routine would have been appropriate on a street corner or another secular environment. Instead the comedian spoke at Shorter College, during the weekly worship service in chapel. Making matters worse, the speaker was the President of the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Hebrews 5:11-14
11We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Two problems exist with what occurred in chapel yesterday. The first is that the congregation showed its inability to distinguish between good preaching and entertainment. If the measure of a good sermon is how life-changing it is, then the sermon delivered yesterday is of questionable value at best. If the church is the body of Christ, and the body accepted the preaching as sound and worthwhile, then we can conclude that the body is not ready for “solid food.” I share in the author of Hebrew’s disappointment.

The second problem is that the GBC President has little more to offer the body of Christ than a small drop of milk in the midst of an entertaining half-hour. The example this type of preaching gives is that entertainment is our first goal, and spiritual insight and growth is a secondary goal… at best.

If the body of Christ does not expect life-changing preaching, and we continue to call pastors and elect leadership who will not provide it, we set up a vicious cycle of spiritual depravity and we resign ourselves to the very fate the author of Hebrews is warning against.

The name

One night, as a group of my students and I were standing in a rain-soaked parking lot, we decided that our youth band needed a name... tonight. We starting brainstorming and recalling all of the "wicked" band names already out there and came to the conclusion that most of the ones we liked were actions, participles if you will. "Casting Crowns," "Counting Crows," "As I Lay Dying," and so on. We decided to use the template.

Lightning was still flashing periodically, and one flash proposed the silhouette of our steeple. I immediately asked the kids if they liked that direction and they ran with it. Ideas started out logically and in the realm of possibility, but as is the case with the younger ages, the suggestions quickly diverged into the rediculous. With an attempt to bring them back, I suggested "Climbing Steeples." We stood in silence for a few moments, and then one of my older students asked, "What does it mean?"

I thought immediately of the Casting Crowns lyric "beneath the shadow of our steeples, all the lost and lonely people," and thought about the powerful image and criticism those words conveyed. I explained to the youth that throughout history, the Church has often times made it harder to reach Christ than it should have been. I showed them the irony of lifting the cross high off the ground. Jesus came to reach the people... and we take the symbol of His sacrifice and push it back up to heaven, spending churchgoers' money to do it. I quickly made sure to stress the importance of respecting and honoring Christ's sacrifice, but at the same time i also ensured they understood the meaning of that sacrifice: to bring us into closer, more intimate relationship with Him.

Thus we climb the steeple: grasping at the cross but hindered by the world.

In the words of Jim Halpert: "Lord, beer us strength."

Getting this thing started

Just a test. I hope I end up using this blog more than I did the last couple I tried to start up.