Worship like children hear it

Here are a few things I've heard children sing:

"Henry's bible! Henry's bible!" (Send revival! Send revival!)

"Faith, I can move a mountain, I have got a big surprise" (Faith I can move a mountain, I can do all things through Christ)

"You are a bubble king" (You are above all kings)

Any of your own to add?

Afterthought: do we make songs too complicated for kids or is it a case of the words just not fitting particularly well with the music?

When Benedict met Darlene

I was channel hopping through the religious channels yesterday and in truth, it all seemed a bit dull. A bit predictable. Until I got to EWTN - the catholic channel.

I could never have predicted what I was going to see and hear. There was Benedict preparing to celebrate mass in the Czech republic with "This is my desire, to honour you..."(in Czech) belting out in the background.

What's happening? Is the catholic church becoming more open to the Spirit? Is it an attempt to hold on to their young people? Or is it all a Roman ruse to lure away weak evangelicals?

I don't know, but it certainly wasn't what I expected!

Here is water...

Last night I baptised a new believer for the last time as pastor of Elim Church Crawley. It is always an enormous privilege to baptise new believers and last night was no exception.

One thing that made it a little different though, was what happened at the end. Instead of just singing a song after the last baptism, we left it open for anyone who wanted to be baptised. And Laura responded. I thought she might really want to be baptised, but she was feeling a little apprehensive.

Once the appeal was made she came to the front and read her testimony from a little piece of paper she had in her pocket. One of our elders immediately volunteered to help me, and we performed our unexpected baptism.

As the Ethiopian said "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptised?" (Acts 8.36)

Volunteers

I was discussing volunteering with a relatively new Christian. I loved his take on it.

"It's not such much the church asking me to do something as God asking me through the church." Now there's a thought. What about that for an ecclesiology?

A church like heaven

I spent some time with a friend the other day who is a little older than me.

He told me of his experiences in the early days of what was known as the renewal movement.

His church was opposed to the gifts of the Spirit and those who wanted to know more were forced to meet in secret and discuss such things.

Eventually people began to leave their evangelical churches and form new charismatic churches. He was involved in one locally, almost from its inception.

What was it like? "Like being in heaven". That's what he felt.

I guess sometimes we take our Pentecostal / Charismatic heritage just a little bit for granted.

Monday Fun

The things that used to make us laugh...

Thursday Thoughts

"The goal is not a solution to a problem but a sign of hope". This is the way Jean Vanier's L'Arche communities have been described. Is this the essence of true ministry? That we are not here so much to fix a problem as to be bringers of signs of the coming kingdom - and the coming King?


What do you think? Would love to know your thoughts.