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By worshiping God, the church expects no reward, no special blessings or graces, no benefits. The church worships God simply because the church cannot do otherwise.
最近，幾位網友都提到陳榆在xanga上的這篇文章，所以我也不妨加入。
昨天跟孩子到一家禮儀教會崇拜。證道時，主任牧師提到收到兩封匿名信，投訴講壇之差勁。其中一封更講明若沒有改善，就會蟬過別枝。
Don't come [to worship] unless you're ready to carry the burden of your brothers and sisters.
The Table is not a table for you, but for US.
Baptism and Communion - they should be the deepest places of the church's union but end up being the deepest places of our division.
A theology that cannot be preached is not worth having," I once heard a preacher declare. I can't argue with that. Truth that can't be applied isn't worth bothering about. [...] Here's a corollary to the preaching's quip: a theology that cannot be sung is not worth having either. Authentic Christian faith is not merely believed. Nor is it merely acted upon. It is sung - with utter joy sometimes, in uncontrollable tears sometimes, but it is sung. "Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of God" -that's the way Bono, lead singer of the band U2, puts it.
大多數人以為聽道，就是要明道，但他們所謂的「明」，只是一種聽覺受例子刺激所產生以為「好明」的幻覺。「道」與「明」之間有一道鴻溝，聽「道」的終點，從來不是「明」，而是悔改。從悔改開始，才是海闊天空的「明」。我最怕崇拜後有人跑來對我說：「你講得真好！」其實甚麼是「好」，大概大家都不曉得。若崇拜後人人為自己的罪痛哭流淚，禁食禱告，這才是「好」。
I guess you may have seen the following two video. I especially like the first one. Is that what we're really singing in church?
I once heard a song at IWS written by an alumni that praises the "alternative Trinity": I, Me, and Myself. Too bad I can't get a copy of it.
Are they really just jokes? I really hope that they are just jokes. But they are so tragically real.
Hey, did you hear about the church meeting we had last night about Pastor Jesus?[...] Well, the whole thing is about his sermons. Truth is, we just can’t take it anymore! Haven’t you been frustrated too?[...] Actually, you can hardly call most of his ramblings sermons anyway. All the guy does is tell stories, really! [...] Actually, the real problem is not so much the stories—I think we could handle some of that stuff—it’s that he hardly ever explains what he’s talking about! [...] Don’t you see, he’s isolating everybody in the church with this stuff! Haven’t you noticed what’s going on around here? We’ve already lost several families. We lost a whole load of people after Jesus preached that freaky sermon about “eating his flesh and drinking his blood” or whatever. [...] If this keeps up, there’s going to be nobody left. And the worst thing is, he isn’t at all apologetic about what he’s doing. [...] I’ll tell you right now, this whole attitude of his is just plain wrong. [...]pretty quick here, Jesus is going to be looking for his next church.
"Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess" - this is a verbal and physical confession.
Concerning worship forms:
It is never a choice between forms and no forms, but between good forms and poor forms.
What's the difference between personal worship and individual worship?
Faith is personal, but not private.
The point of Christmas, historically, is not the birth of Jesus, but deity became flesh, and our birth as the body of Christ.
If you think that contemporary charismatic worship is emotional, check out the following description of the worship gathering of the church pastored by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), the author of the classics "Confession"
Augustine’s audience responded to his appeals with gusto--with thunderous applause, shouts, cries. In his day, churchgoing was a raucuous, noisy affair. The assembly would applaud whenever they recognized a favorite Scripture verse. They would even interrupt and shout out the remainder of a verse he had begun to quote. They loved to show off their biblical expertise. Once, Augustine obliquely alluded to a man who, while ‘coming to marry a foreign-born wife,’ met a ‘roaring lion’ and ‘strangled’ it. The crowd immediately shouted, ‘Samson,’ before he could give the name….They also would try to outguess him, and when they saw him winding his way towards a favorite theme, they would begin shouting in anticipation. Other times, when they felt chastised--either by the reading from Scripture or by what Augustine said--they would fill the church with loud sighs or groans or would ‘beat their breasts’ like workmen ‘laying pavement stones.’
We are obssessed in presenting solutions in our sunday services. But it is not always like this in real life. Sometimes there just isn't a solution, and we need to learn to live with it.
"We tend to believe that what we did in worship are symbols of the biblical reality.
No.
The biblical stories are symbols of the present reality we experience."
When the body of the Son prays, it does not separate its Head from itself, and it is the one Savior of his body, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, and prays in us, and is prayer to by us. He prays FOR us as our priest, he prays IN us as our head, he is prayed to BY us as our God. Let us therefore recognize our words in him and his words in us."St. Augustine, 5th century AD
