From one of my favorite (for obvious reasons) episodes of the TV show Cheers:

Sam: “Hey, what happened?”

Woody: “Kelly and I found out we’re from different religions.”

Frasier: “I thought Kelly and you were both Lutheran.”

Woody: “Oh, well, that’s what I thought. It turns out she’s the Lutheran Church of America, I’m Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. But if we had children we’d have half-breeds.”

…

Frasier: “Perhaps Lilith and I could provide some help.”

Woody: “Oh, that’s nice, Dr. Crane. I’ll ask Kelly. If she’s not too busy begging at airports or whatever those people do.”

…

Kelly: “Hi everyone.”

Frasier: “Kelly, I admire you for coming.”

Kelly: “I believe a marriage is worth saving.”

Woody: “That’s not all she believes. Ask her why she thinks the Book of Concord and the Scriptures are on the same level. Go ahead, ask her.”

Kelly: “Because they’re not.”

* Woody makes buzzer sound *

Woody: “Ask her why the sacraments are considered vehicles of grace. Go ahead I dare you!”

Kelly: “They’re symbolic memorials.”

Woody: “Heretic!”

…

Lilith: “Your religious differences are extremely inconsequential. One is reminded of Gulliver’s Travels in which two countries warred over which side of an egg gets cracked, the narrow end or the rounded end.”

Kelly: “Well that’s ridiculous, of course it’s the rounded end.”

Woody: “Oh, Kelly, I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

Do you find the above exchanges funny or puzzling? It’s such an insider joke in many respects that we in my family have always been amazed that the live audience laughed at all. We couldn’t believe they ‘got it’.

Why does this matter? Consider this – why would any outsider be expected to know doctrinal discussions and differences within a denomination or church body which is unfamiliar to him? Of course, he wouldn’t.

I say this because I would like to address the dust-up that occurred recently over at InternetMonk.com and GeneVeith.com, two of our regularly visited blogs and ones which we’ve happily supported over the years. In this particular case, Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk has written a couple entries recently about his experience with Lutheranism. He has been investigating the Lutheran church for some time, so this is not necessarily news. But something happened after his recent posts caused some interesting discussion between him and the non-Lutheran readers of Internet Monk.

Not long after Chaplain Mike posted his posts on Lutheranism, Dr. Veith posted a link to one of them on his blog for his readers’ perusal (many of whom are Lutheran). What happened next was unfortunately something that I’ve seen way too many times.

Some Lutherans were immediately critical of which Lutheran church body Chaplain Mike has been looking into, in this case the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). I believe the readers of Dr. Veith’s blog tend to be members of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) and there are distinct and important differences in doctrine between these church bodies, as you would expect.

A bunch of outsiders to Lutheranism were just exposed to one of the issues with Lutherans – that is that the time and place they choose to hash out or “clarify” differences in doctrinal points of view can be horrible! To the outsider this looks like they’re making mountains out of mole hills. To the outsider it resembles choosing odd hills to die on. And ultimately, it can make Lutheranism repulsive to others who may have otherwise been open to learning more and may have already been curious. Talk about a bad PR campaign!

There is a time and a place for everything. We here at NRP, though Lutherans ourselves, deal primarily with non-Lutherans. I consider it a badge of honor. I think many outsiders to Lutheranism, upon discovering bits and pieces of Lutheran doctrine, become curious about what Lutheranism is all about. Hopefully they know some Lutherans who are properly joyful, content and at peace in their faith and aren’t overly corrective. But what a contrast when they just start to try to find out more about Lutheranism to suddenly start taking heat from Lutherans because they didn’t do something “correctly” or didn’t make the “right” decision. Or maybe the outsider still clings to doctrines and beliefs from their former denomination which conflict with Lutheran doctrines even after having recently converted to Lutheranism.

And after dealing with outsiders for so long, and having watched others around me do so very successfully, I can say with full confidence when I run into such people, “So what?!”. Is that the time to deal with such concerns? Absolutely not!

What these poorly timed attempts to correct “errors” in the curious outsider to Lutheranism or new converts to Lutheranism reveal is a significant shortcoming some folks have when dealing with people. The differences between Lutheran church bodies are not new. But they are new to non-Lutherans and recent converts. This is what must be considered when choosing a proper time and place to address such concerns.

Also consider this – everyone’s faith is a path on which they travel their entire lives. It is never static. We study a living Word. Many generations have mined the depths of the Word of our Heavenly Father and still we experience new epiphanies which former generations had not.

Are there going to be significant and important differences between Lutheran doctrine and those of other denominations? Of course. Tragically, there are many who want to make sure that any newcomer’s position is “correct” or “pure”. No church or church body has ever had this. Ever. Because the church is made up of sinners, we can always count on differences (sometimes significant ones) within one’s own church body.

We here at NRP are members of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS). Does this mean that we can count on a particular church which is a member of the LCMS to properly preach Christ crucified each and every week and not have doctrinal positions which would concern us? Of course not! And thus it will always be.

But too many outsiders to Lutheranism are searching for a church which offers them much less strife and much more comfort than they’ve been getting. Others are simply curious and would like to know more. When these people are driven away from Lutheranism by the purists who wish to beat all perceived error out of them, I get particularly upset. I’ll be honest, I had been wanting to get into that mix and fight it out a little bit. This particular issue is one I find us dealing with in Lutheranism (and especially in the LCMS) relatively frequently and it’s one of those things that should be dealt with behind closed doors. But every once in a while these things boil over and become public.

So at this time, I would like to offer a sincere and deep apology to any non-Lutherans who ran across the post at Dr. Veith’s site or Internet Monk and who were (appropriately and with much just cause!) offended and, at the very least, irritated by what they read by self-professed Lutherans there. This fight isn’t yours and you shouldn’t have to bear its weight. As I said, all churches and church bodies have internal fights… this one is ours.

We are Lutherans because we believe it is the clearest and most Christ- and Gospel-centric view of Christianity available as well as the happiest and most comforting. But sometimes some Lutherans’ need to be “right” can overshadow that when dealing with outsiders to Lutheranism. I hope and pray that if you’ve had such experiences with Lutherans that it doesn’t cause you to close the door on Lutheranism entirely. It is definitely worth learning more about even if you never “switched teams”. I mean, all of Protestantism essentially started with Lutheranism. Over time there were simply folks who decided to make some modifications and form another Protestant denomination. If you’re a Protestant of any kind, by learning more about Lutheranism, you’re learning more about your roots.

“Christ says that not alone in the Church is there forgiveness of sins, but that where two or three are gathered together in His name they shall have the right to promise to each other comfort and the forgiveness of sins.” – Martin Luther

Often times, we don’t put enough stock in this great privilege that has been given to us — to pronounce God’s forgiveness to our neighbor; to say, ‘I forgive you in Jesus’ name.’  Also to hear the words, ‘you are forgiven!’ Whether from the lips of the Pastor or friends who pray for you, ‘faith comes by hearing.’ (Romans 10:17)

We have a fantastic audio presentation  that covers this topic: Confession and Absolution by Dr. James Nestingen

If you’ve ever had questions about ancient practice of confession and absolution, this audio is for you.

Also, check out in the ‘freebies’ section:

From Luther’s Small Catechism:

HOW THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY SHOULD TEACH HIS HOUSEHOLD TO ASK A BLESSING AND RETURN THANKS

Asking a Blessing

The children and members of the household shall go to the table reverently, fold their hands, and say:

The eyes of all look to You, [O Lord,] and You give them their food at the proper time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. [Ps. 145:15-16]

Then shall be said the Lord’s Prayer and the following:

Lord God, heavenly Father, bless us and these Your gifts which we receive from Your bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Returning Thanks

Also, after eating, they shall, in like manner, reverently and with folded hands say:

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever. [He] gives food to every creature. He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call. His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor His delight in the legs of a man; the Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love. [Ps. 136:1,25; Ps. 147:9-11]

Then shall be said the Lord’s Prayer and the following:

We thank You, Lord God, heavenly Father, for all Your benefits, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

Taught by Dr. Rod Rosenbladt

Martin Luther really ‘got’ St. Paul and this is premium, 200 proof St. Paul! Luther called the letter to the Galatians, ‘the Magna Carta of Christian Liberty’. I happen to know that Dr. Rosenbladt did a close reading of Luther’s Galatians commentary over the summer and outlined it. These videos are a must see. Whether you are a life long student of scripture or a newbie, this ones for you; we all need to get excited about how good the Good News of Christianity is! The death of Christ saves!

Faith Lutheran Church of Capistrano Beach is doing an amazing job getting great material out there and we just thought it would be a good thing to point you there again. The study is under way and so far there are six sessions posted on the Faith Vimeo site.

Previously published on OldSolar.com:

This post is really a sermon. I’ve added the readings for this Sunday as they would occur in the service. If you want to skip the Scripture passages, which I do not recommend, just scroll down — the sermon has been placed below the passages, where all sermons belong.

The Readings for the The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Psalm: Psalm 119:161-168
Old Testament Reading: Proverbs 25:6-7
The Epistle: Hebrews 13:1-8
The Holy Gospel: Luke 14:1-14 (The lectionary reading was Luke 14:1, 7-14, but I decided to include the missing verses, 2 through 6.)

Sermon

Jesus took the invitation to the dinner party — we aren’t told why. Judging from the several He attends throughout the Gospels, we might say He just likes to party. This crowd doesn’t sound like a group of people where you’d want to let your guard down though. The religious leaders are there (the party itself is in a prominent Pharisee’s home) and they are watching Him closely. He’s noticing them as well.

He decides to launch into a mini lecture on the importance of being a good house guest. Actually, all of the lessons for this Sunday have to do with manners — avoiding self-exaltation, how you act when you’re invited somewhere, how important it is to treat your guests properly. Hospitality is such a neglected spiritual gift in the church and the Lectionary is trying to help us out on this sort of thing during the season of Pentecost. This is just another way to be grateful for all He’s done. We need to take to heart our Lord’s words when He tells the Pharisees to …

Wait a minute! What was I thinking? What we really have here is Jesus with a table set before Him in the midst of His enemies (Psalm 23). Hmm. I don’t believe our Lord would waste a table manners lesson on these power hungry, politicians. He’s here for another purpose.

They come to the dinner knowing that Jesus is an itinerant preacher from Nazareth. The town of Nazareth was “country” (unsophisticated) and didn’t have much of a reputation in Jerusalem, or for that matter, all of Israel — a real cesspool of poverty; very much as it is today. This country preacher, popular with the unwashed, is invited to a party and when He gets there, He’s set up. At least, it would be hard not to think so.

Our New Testament lesson from Hebrews happens to bring out the irony of this situation in Luke’s Gospel: that you have no idea whom you are entertaining when you bring in a stranger. Jesus is a stranger to these people. Like Abraham in his tent long before, when he entertained the three Strangers (Genesis 18), the man running this dinner has unwittingly managed to invite God the Son Almighty.

This dinner is a gathering of the powerful to size up a new threat: a threat to the order they have established. This is an exclusive gathering of deal-makers — “masters of the universe” — and Jesus finds Himself placed with a man who doesn’t belong with these brokers of power. Luke, the doctor, tells us the man suffers from the dropsy — a swelling disease of some sort. Why is he here? With all of the ceremonial laws about being around the sick, let alone eating with them, you would think this man a bit out of place. Jesus asks those present, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” When they don’t answer, Jesus answers for them by grabbing the man, healing him, and sending him away. I think He grabbed this fellow just to make it look more like work — for this was the Sabbath — He didn’t really need to touch him. Jesus probably knew the man was only invited for one purpose, and to show them that He knew, He takes the authority from His host and invites the formally sick man to leave. Not only does this let everyone know the jig is up, it shows the kindness of our Lord in ending this man’s exposure to a dinner anyone in his position would be happy to leave.

After this, Jesus, observing them more closely than they could have thought of observing Him, holds in His mind the irony of the moment. He notices how they pick the best seats for themselves at table. Like King Arthur dressed as one of his peasants, He stands before them and tells them a parable, not so much to help them with future political gains (their only real interest), but as a stinging rebuke against those who scramble for position in the presence of the King. He borrows from the proverbial wisdom of Solomon to shame them – it happens to be the Old Testament reading for today. It’s very short — let’s read it again:

Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.

Jesus, apparently imparting the wisdom of this world to these men of the world, is doing no such thing, for they are jockeying for position when someone greater than Solomon, the One who is the very Wisdom of Solomon, stands in their midst. Can you feel the irony? Can you sense imminent danger for these men as they loaf about in front of the One who made them? When He uses the passage, however, He changes it a bit. In His retelling, He is the King of the Old Testament proverb who imparts this wisdom to those who would, by any means, gain glory for themselves — the True King — the Ultimate King. He is also the bridegroom who invites all to his royal wedding feast.

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.”

See the great Lord who always demonstrates with every action what He says. Did He take the highest place at the table? His statements would ring hollow if He had. Was He still standing at this point — the only One who truly deserved to sit — was He standing before them while they lounged about the table listening to Him? Perhaps.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Once again, the irony! This isn’t a summary statement describing the results of practicing good manners or bad. Look at who is saying this! Is it not the Lord of Glory who lays aside the trappings of his kingly office as He heads toward the humiliation of the Cross? Even here, He does not force them to move, to bow down, to worship. He takes the lowest place.

Why does Jesus humble Himself by taking the lowest place? He does it to take the place of those who should be humbled. The humiliation, at this dinner party is only a small foretaste — a foreshadowing; nothing to be compared with the stripping and beating of his body by soldiers, His scourging and exposure on the cross to God’s righteous wrath. The Second Adam crowned with the curse that had resulted from first Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:18, John 19:2). The Second Adam stripped naked and exposed to shame and humiliation while the first Adam’s sin is covered by God (Genesis 3:21). Our nakedness and shame, as sons of Adam, are covered by His royal garment as He is stripped bare before all, and paraded through the streets to a bloody and shameful death on a Cross.

In this great reversal, this seeming paradox, Jesus shows by what method He will be exalted. Humiliation will become victory in Christ! Shame will become honor in Christ!

Jesus, who takes the most miserable of seats on the cross, is lifted up higher than anyone could have imagined and, by being honored in this paradoxical way, draws all men to Himself.

And when you invite people..

Now the guests are set aside for the purpose of going after the host who manipulated the whole situation; the host who had ostensibly invited at least one sick person to the table. Jesus, framing the hypocrisy of this affair, with biting wit, tells the Pharisee that he needs to invite, not as a trap for a traveling teacher, but as a real guest, the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.

Jesus, the very embodiment of the wisdom behind the Law that this great Pharisee claimed to know and live — the Law fulfilled, standing before a man who is only able to make a claim to this distinction outwardly and he doesn’t even bow in recognition. This educated man who cherished the letter of the Law, who meditated on it day and night for his salvation, is in the presence of Salvation Himself, but is blind to his failure of being a truly good host.

Unlike this Pharisee, we have a Host who doesn’t care where we come from or how sick we are — whether we know how to use utensils or even if we know how to behave in someone else’s house. Jesus has not invited us to trap us in our words or deeds like this Pharisee and his cohorts did with Him. We have, indeed, been invited to a wedding feast and the Host, who also happens to be the Bridegroom and a King — a great King — says to you, “Come. I have your place all picked out. I have put your name there. I took the lower place for you. You don’t need to worry about where to sit. It was all decided long ago.”

On the Lectionary

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary

Lec´tion`a`ry

n. 1. (Eccl.) A book, or a list, of lections, for reading in divine service.

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary

Lec´tion

n. 1. (Eccl.) A lesson or selection, especially of Scripture, read in divine service.

The lectionary is a great tool for exposing us to the whole counsel of God, and it’s interconnections. It isn’t perfect. Fallible men created it. It is meant to be used in conjunction with personal devotions and Bible reading. Our lectionary has a one year plan (through the Bible in a year) and a three year plan. I am following the latter and we are presently in the 3rd year, or year C. The lectionary is also designed to protect the congregation from the whims of the pastor when he enters the pulpit. It is not designed to replace the study of whole books, but to fence in, and at the same time, free those who hold the preaching office and those who sit under it. Some kind of lectionary was used even in the Biblical period. Jesus actually reads an appointed lesson in chapter four of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t ignore the appointed reading to make his own “Spirit-led” point. Yet the Spirit still manages to surprise His hearers with an unexpected message.

My own use follows a couple of principles:

1. The choices of passages in the Lutheran lectionary are no more and certainly no less inspired than the choice of the pastor who decides to preach on a particular book.

2. The lectionary was made for man, not man for the lectionary.

According to the first principle, I have decided to use the appointed texts, but according to the second, I have taken the liberty of including all Luke 14:1-14 without omitting the healing. The rest of the passage is a bit disjointed and misleading if it is left out.

The Lectionary works like the structure for a poetic form. When you write a poem using a form like a Roundel or a Sonnet, you are forced to uses a rhyme scheme, structure and meter. The whole process slows you down. It makes you think about words, their music and their meaning. You get forced to use words in new ways — you might even have to look up a few. In the same way, having a passage or passages assigned to you will force you to look at things that you might not like, or might not see as valuable or “preachable”. It sounds like it would stifle creativity. In practice it doesn’t, Take for example the readings for this Sunday. As with many of the readings in the season of Pentecost, they virtually beg for an easy moral reading. And, unfortunately, every time I remember hearing them preached, the pastor has taken the bait. Looking for Jesus, his life and death on your behalf at the center of things seems like a pretty tall order, until you really look at the passages (especially Luke), maybe, if you have the tools at your disposal, even in the original languages. As I was going through the passage in Luke, I really did see it in a new light. At first I was reading Jesus conclusion to his parable in a moral way,

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The meaning I gave it was that if you humble yourself as opposed to glorifying yourself, in that way you emulate Christ, are a good witness, and a good citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, I read this as a parable about Kingdom ethics for those who have been made citizens of that Kingdom.

R.C.H. Lenski’s commentary on Luke gave me some insights into the use of words about “looking.” When the other guests watch Jesus, they “look at Him sideways,” (Luke 14:1) or watch him in a scrutinizing, negative way, without looking Him in the eye. When Jesus watches the other guests, he holds them in mind. He sees them as they really are. I also noticed a linguistic parallel Luke uses in describing the way Jesus treats the sick man, grabbing hold of him, and the way he observes the actions of the dinner guests as they vie for the best seat. The semantic range of the term he uses for the latter (ισκυω) also involves the idea of holding onto something. Jesus fastens onto what they are doing. He isn’t simply the passive recipient of a dinner invitation. He is seizing every opportunity to provoke these men into doing what He wants them to do — crucify Him. In contrast to Jesus’ actions in the passage, the host and those invited to the party remain silent and passive after the invitation. When Jesus questions them on a point of the Law (Deuteronomy 5:14), they are powerless to answer him.

My early reading of the passage showed an unfriendly situation. And I also noticed early on Luke’s use of irony — it’s sprinkled all over everything like a heavy seasoning in Luke-Acts. In this case it was the irony of how these men really were in the presence of the King without knowing it. But even with all these insights, I didn’t feel I had quite gotten to the bottom of the passage. But later, when I looked at the end of the parable again, I noticed something. In English the line “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” reads like a general moral principle. Like a proverb out of Poor Richard’s Almanac. Something so generically true, we would expect anyone to see it even if they didn’t believe in Christianity. But this is not folksy wisdom. The one who humbles himself must be seen primarily as Jesus (see Philippians 2:8). We are exalted only when we humble ourselves and find our righteousness in Him. (Luke 18:9-14)

Like the poetic form, the lectionary helps you outside of yourself and your choices so that you can look at passages in a way you might not have previously. Aside from being a challenge (and fun, if you ask me) it can act as a check and balance system helping to insure that the people of God and the pastor are considering the whole counsel of God.

Not only the selections but the interplay of the various pericopes, if you can grasp the logic of it (which I’m not always able to do), will give you a new vantage point from which to view Scripture. The end of Hebrews (the New Testament Reading) has a good chunk of what I view to be moral instruction but, it’s in a “buckle your seat belt” kind of tone toward the end of what I believe to be an early apostolic sermon that definitely doesn’t end on that note. The pericope gets into the vicarious nature of brotherly love and ties that together with hospitality. The warning about being careful to do a good job when you are entertaining strangers made me thing more strongly about the irony in the Luke passage by pointing me to an Old Testament passage where Abraham ends up entertaining God and is given a promise of a son (Genesis 18). The Old Testament lesson was a proverb that doubtless all of the politicos in the room with Jesus were intimately familiar. They were just unaware of who was in the room and (in both a practical and theological sense) who was running the dinner party. It was Jesus modification of the proverb that really brought the Luke passage home to me.

The one that I couldn’t get, Psalm 119, came to me as I was writing the Sermon part of this article. This Psalm is difficult for people because on the surface it appears to say the same thing over and over. It’s very long, with the 22 stanzas stretching the length of the 22 letter Hebrew alphabet. If you look at it more closely, however, you’ll notice that it is not saying exactly the same thing in every section. It’s a very Hebraic meditation on the subject of the Law (Ten Commandments) and the guy who wrote it loves the law but doesn’t believe he is justified by it. The Jewish writers like to look at a subject from all angles and this is one of the ways they do it. Here in the Sin and Shin section (verses 161-168) we have something that Christ would have been justified in reciting as he walked willingly into a trap which posed as a dinner party. He was indeed being persecuted by Princes without cause. Read the selection for yourself; try a meditation on the whole Psalm (Psalm 119). All of this to say that if you will live in the passages and their surrounding context and meditate upon them, they will exercise your perceptual abilities; the passages will draw you in deeper as you look on with others who’ve gone before you.

Lutherans believe the sermon should be the improvisation of the scriptural symphony, not the symphony itself. In other words, they generally aren’t too long. The Lutheran service is replete with scripture, some selections of which we sing almost every Sunday (that way, we memorize it). Many churches have hour long sermons and I’m sure there is material for even more than that in these passages if the American ear would stand for it (which I doubt) but, it’s important to stay focused on the theme of the piece. Jesus and not our own growth in grace should be the centerpiece of Christian prayer, worship and study. At our best, we Lutherans are attempting with some success to match this glorious truth

The Painting

“The Lowest Places at the Feast” by Kazakhstan Artist Nelly Bube.

Previously published on OldSolar.com:

There is a tradition in some churches – singing songs projected on a wall – that just doesn’t seem to fit the sensibilities of the typical, conservative Lutheran layman. The question arises: Are church-going Lutheran people just being stuck in their “churchiness” when they raise problems with the importation of new technology into the church service? I, for one, don’t think so. I believe this is a function of the immune system of the body of Christ and we ignore that at our peril. The church has a natural resistance to change because her identity taps into eternal realities which do not change. But could it be that the church in our day has developed an auto-immune syndrome? Are our desires to keep everything the same killing evangelism which is the life and purpose of the church? This is the question raised by much of the church growth and emerging church gurus as they seek to improve ecclesiastical technique.

It isn’t necessarily bad when the church resists things because they are new. The Christian faith has been around a long time and while just because something is new doesn’t necessarily disqualify its use, more often than not, the “new and improved” has turned out to be a mixed blessing at best. We should not simply adopt a technology uncritically because of successful application in other venues.

When adapting a tool, especially a complicated one like PowerPoint, we must consider what the tool’s first purpose is. Is its stated purpose the same as the purpose for which it is generally used? In adapting it for a new purpose, will there be unintended consequences?

PowerPoint’s first purpose is as tool to aid in the creation “of exciting slide shows with graphics, animations, and multimedia—and make them easier to present.” And that is the way presenters attempt to use it for the most part. People who are attempting to sell an idea or present a new business model or give a pep-talk love it. It keeps them on track, allows them to organize notes and generally takes the audiences focus off of them and puts it on the screen. A series of PowerPoint slides is a way to control the scope of a presentation and also control an audience.

Edward Tufte, the noted information design expert and Professor Emeritus at Yale University says in his essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint that “PowerPoint is entirely presenter-oriented, and not content-oriented, not audience-oriented.” The PowerPoint presentation is generally loved by presenters but almost universally hated by the audiences subjected to them. It is easy to build a PowerPoint presentation. Microsoft has all sorts of templates and animations that you can use. The problem is that they’ve made it too easy. Any idiot can build a PowerPoint Presentation and just about every idiot does. When you don’t have a background in design in general, and information design in particular, you may be able to put stuff down on paper or on a slide to great effect. With Microsoft helping you, you’re liable to take something you could have elucidated on your own and turn it into an information abortion.

The key problem with PowerPoint is that as a medium, it embodies (or perhaps disembodies) a message that goes against the grain of the Gospel proclamation. Its associations with use in sales and business are one aspect of this. And how it engages us as a medium is another.

A Medium of Exchange

So then, the stated purpose is that PowerPoint will help you to get through material that you are presenting in a business meeting. It is an accepted and expected form of boardroom communication (emphasis on the “board” part). However, what it generally gets used for is not a rich critical analysis of business models but to sell stuff in a “rah, rah” fashion. This has led to the general conclusion among business people that if the guy up front is using PowerPoint, he is generally trying to sell you a product or a plan in a condescending fashion while obfuscating the true nature of the pitch or the thing he’s pitching. Therefore, for all the time and energy that’s spent on them, they are generally hated, distrusted and ignored.

Ignored by Association or “Pay no attention to the Man behind the projector.”

It doesn’t matter what you are projecting up in the front of the church. It is going to do two things which, while seemingly contradictory, will both occur. You will move the focus of service to the projection, whatever it is (we postmodern people are mesmerized by any type of lighted moving image) and you will move the focus away from the meaning of the text you are projecting (this is at least true for business people who can smell the excreta that permeates the executive boardroom even if they can’t tell you exactly from where it emanates).

T.V. Generation

Speaking of images on a screen – we are inundated with TV screens, projections, and moving images and words of every sort from every invading medium that Madison avenue can throw at us and have been all our lives. We’ve been hard wired for this from the time we were able to crawl over to the RCA and plop ourselves down for our weekly dosage of Bugs Bunny cartoons and breakfast cereal hawkers. We have almost no defense for this anymore, and since we swim in it every day, it may take a concerted effort (a whip made of knotted cords, perhaps?) to root it out of the Church. I think making the church building a sanctuary from marauding advertisers and their usual methods is a good idea. Not only should they be absent, but any reminder of them should be absent as well.

Focus

I am jealous for the Word and for the Sacraments as they are presented in our liturgy. Lutherans, at their best, have focused all of their ecclesiastical architecture on these two things as well, by using a pulpit, an altar, and a font. Solid things. In a church that isn’t afraid of using symbols and art, a projected, temporary image can, and I believe will, quite literally take the focus off of those solid things which represent our faith so well. Even the cross (or crucifix) usually placed somewhere in the sanctuary of every Lutheran church I’ve attended will fade into the background – hopefully not taking the theology it represents with it.

A Minimum of Interchange

Thinning Things Out

PowerPoint is a very thin medium as compared with a book as Tufte points out, “PP slides projected up on the wall are very low resolution compared to paper.” You only see what the presenter or the limitations of the medium allow you to see. How does this work in a liturgical application? It winds up being a kind of forced spoon-feeding. While it does make it easier to recite a liturgical formula – provided that you aren’t nearsighted or blind – it winds up doing damage to context. You can’t look ahead to see what comes next, or look back to see where you’ve been. Unfortunately, we have been set up by our culture to have a permanent condition of short-term memory loss. We hear and see a constant stream of sound bytes and images – one replacing the other in succession, often with no logical connection whatever. (Neil Postman has noted how we can have a sober conversation of the possibility of nuclear annihilation interrupted by the words “And now this from Burger King!” — and we don’t even consider how bizarre this is when it occurs.) It is dangerous for the Church to play in this arena. While the constantly changing images are very titillating and entertaining, our critical thinking gets thrown off-line. Our faith has a strong cognitive component that we wind up ditching if we insert the liturgy into a PowerPoint presentation.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

We often adopt things into the church uncritically because they seem to be working elsewhere. The lock-step design of PowerPoint, the relentless progress of a business presentation, would seem to lend itself to liturgy as we get towed along in the wake of corporate worship. I think this is a very wrong way to view Christian worship. It is not something in which the faithful should just flow like a river. Worship is also a job. It is a calling – a vocation. It has an active component rather than being simply passive (Psalm 95, Romans 12:1-2). It is the believer’s response of faith in, and love for Jesus expressed in a formal way, and doctrine plays a part. The liturgy of the Church should involve every part of us – heart, mind and strength. The Stalinist approach to information in PowerPoint tends to leave the “mind” part out of church worship. It puts people into a passive, “entertainment” mode – even when they’re singing along.

“Lord, Help Us Ever to Retain”

Of course, the ideal situation would be to have the whole of the liturgy memorized. The liturgy contained in the various settings for the divine service could then be viewed as a set of visual training wheels – there to help the newcomer, or us if we should get lost. Why can’t PowerPoint serve in this capacity? Well, it could. But the question arises: Is it a better tool than the Hymnal we have been using? My answer to this is no. In the process of memorization, the element of confidence is vital. You must be able to look away from the thing you are memorizing in order to test yourself. It is by the constant testing of our memory that it gets stronger. You don’t really have the option to look away from a PowerPoint presentation on the front wall of the church – this convenience completely removes the motivation to memorize. It also removes the positive peer pressure of others having memorized what you are attempting to make your own. They are all looking at the slide, so you have no idea whether or not they have thought it worthy of memorization. When I say positive peer pressure, I’m talking about the motivation to internalize the liturgy as a tool available to the individual Christian at all times. It is often difficult to express the value of this to a new believer. To be able to sing the hymns of Christendom in any circumstance is a wonderful thing. I’m not saying that people who have it memorized are better Christians for having done so. Generally, they’ve just been around longer. Memorization is a function of time and exposure as well. They aren’t better, just better for it.

As a side note, familiarization with the hymnal is a good thing too. Would you ever know “Lord, Help Us Ever to Retain” was a hymn (LW #477, TLH #288) without it? A PowerPoint presentation of this nature doesn’t have a table of contents – mainly because it doesn’t need one. To put it in a funny way, it is an immediate medium. You are where you are and that’s that. If PowerPoint is used in a church service, I believe books will eventually be removed from the pews and much that isn’t in the service will be missed because the liturgy doesn’t have the whole hymnal as its context. The church-goer will never have to look up the Catechism or the Service for Baptism. Many will miss out on much that the Hymnal has to offer because PowerPoint is an easier and broader road.

Mutability

Along with losing the impetus to familiarity with the hymnal, you lose its stability. A projection of the text of the liturgy works against the real gift of liturgy – having the thing memorized. Even with stylistic changes every twenty years, the hymnal acts as an anchor for the church, helping to hold it in place on a sea of constant change. Its core has remained the same for centuries. Worship is involved with eternal realities and a hymnal that can be handed down from parent to child does a far better job of embodying the unchanging nature of our doctrine and worship than a bodiless PowerPoint presentation that can be changed at a moment’s notice, probably without anyone being the wiser.

At the risk of being labeled a Luddite, I’m going to say the Prayer Book and Hymnal (along with an old fashioned hymn board) is a far better medium for conveying the content of our faith and practice in worship. I know it can be more difficult at first, but so is Lutheran doctrine.

Sources

Lutheran Worship

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward R. Tufte

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

This was something I wrote for OldSolar.com a few years ago as part of a series:

Under about 65 feet of water, I had an epiphany. We were anchored off the back side of Catalina Island toward its western tip at a place called Lands End and I had been struggling with the subject Rick Ritchie and I had been discussing for this series. Since diving is an incredible, otherworldly experience, much like studying Scripture, it occurred to me that this might be a great metaphor for Biblical Theology. Sounds like a stretch, eh? Let’s find out.

Sharing the Mysteries of the Deep

Usually, everyone figures it’s the pastor’s job to dive into the text of Scripture. He goes down into the deep (or, maybe not so deep), usually as a solo diver, to find something to bring up to his parishioners who wait on the shore — food, pictures and whatnot. These things won’t stand without some sort of explanation, so he gives a little spiel on each item trying to tie the various pieces in to something that is relevant. Because the people on the shore are not truly connected to the experience of diving (all they see are the waves hitting the shore and the swirls of kelp in the distance), they eventually lose interest in his long slideshow. The pastor, thinking that what he has found is important and wishing to make what he’s brought up from sea of Scripture applicable, decides to tell some stories to make things more palatable, forgetting, of course, that this particular sea is full of stories with gripping detail, stories that might even be inviting and adventurous enough to draw his whole congregation down with him under the waves to meet the Lord of the Sea and of Story.

The kelp forests of Catalina are breathtaking from underneath (quite literally if you are in current or cold water). The beauty of swimming twenty feet off the ocean floor, surrounded by huge stocks of unearthly vegetation which go up to form cathedral-like arches and canopies overhead is not something you can truly convey with a camera. It’s an underwater version of Tolkien’s Mirkwood Forest. Fish of every size and shape from the little garibaldi (who know they are a protected species, by the way) to the huge sea bass swim into and out of your path. Sunlight bends its way in here and there; strong islands of light at the surface that drift down like rain into the blue of the deep. Everything is silent except for the bubbles which go up in curtains and plumes from you and the divers with you. You are inside a mystery — a part of it.

When you’re reading the Bible, not just as literature (though it is that too, make no mistake), but as a book written by God through the agency of men, you are inside a mystery. You see the very real connections that are missed by those who only see it as a collection of ancient genres. The Bible is like the ocean in this way. You cannot do a decent job studying a part of it without considering the whole. Biblical Theology can be as complex as Marine Biology. Whether you are studying the Gospel of John or groupers, the Books of Moses or morey eels, the Psalms or great white sharks, context and background are going to be vital. Both the ocean and the Bible are organic — an ecosystem. Everything in them works together. You can learn this easily enough by running a saltwater tank or interpreting a difficult biblical passage. In either case, if you abstract the parts from the whole, you may come up with a few practical applications, but at the expense of missing the big picture, which could kill all of the fish or put you and others in danger of heresy with regard to the Scriptures. Keep this in mind: whole kingdoms have been constructed on misunderstood Bible passages.

Heavenly Splashdown

Another way to misunderstand Scripture is to miss the primacy of the eternal. This is something that must be considered whether we are looking at nature or God’s Word. Everything works together organically in the sea and in the Scriptures, because they were both formed by the one who chooses to progressively reveal the eternal through the churnings of the surf of time. This is Gerhardus Vos’s crucial contribution to the field of Biblical Theology that few practitioners understand and yet, it is a very simple thing. That is, which came first? The sea, or the one who made the sea? The answer is obvious. Usually we think of Eschatology as the study of last things or the end of the age as pictured in the book of Revelation. The word “eschatology” covers far more ground (or water, if you’ll have it) than this basic usage. It means the final and complete; the last and the perfected. And here’s the really important point: it is not necessarily to be understood in a chronological sense. It is the Omega point to which all things lead, culminating in the last man, Jesus and therefore, the point to which all things will ultimately go. The Alpha point, or the Protological, are prefigurements of that final and complete reality (pretty fitting for the one who is called the Alpha and Omega). Throughout Scripture, the eschatological supercedes and ultimately supplants the protological and can be seen moving down into and through it. Boy, that was a mouthful — sorry. What I’m attempting to say is that Heaven comes down to Earth like an invading army and bursts through the imagery of the Old and New Testament at every point along the line of the History of Redemption. God’s ultimate purpose for the sea is the underpinning of the sea itself. When we study how the sea is described in Scripture, we understand how its ultimate purpose in salvation breaks through into the present moment of the text and becomes the primary reading.

Very little “breaks through” in much of modern preaching. There is no invasion of God. Even the ultimate invasion — the Incarnation itself — takes a back seat. At this point I am forced to decry the horizontal, flat (read “moral”) reading of the text that we are up against when we deal with what passes for preaching in far too many pulpits. The supernatural, vertical reading, where God comes down to dwell in our midst and invites us to share in His life through the shedding of His blood has been waved aside in favor of practical advice to help us cope. Why must we have a flaccid moral reading when the text is inviting us to look for Jesus in its words and find our life there in Him. The preacher who dives into the sea of scripture for various items and then tries to make a practical application with them — even if it is a gospel application — is doing a very different thing than inviting the listener into the world of Scripture.

John Stott, the author of the popular preaching treatise “Between Two Worlds” is right. The preacher does stand between two worlds. But, with respect, I believe Mr. Stott is wrong in thinking that the preacher’s primary duty is to bridge the gap between the ancient and the modern world. The view that the pastor is the go-between in this way tends to look at Scripture as a collection of material that needs to be processed by a professional before it can be consumed by the hearer or reader. The question arises, does the Bible simply provide theological seaweed for the processing plant in the pastor’s head, or is it in and of itself sufficient to speak and tell the story?

The sad thing is that in their cells, many pastors get the story part: “The play is the thing”, to quote the Bard. Therefore, having been trained in the fine tradition of making some sort of three point application from the material they find in their pericope, they know will totally bore their audience — like a high school detention monitor delivering a half hour lecture to a group of delinquents. (At its worst, good Lutheranism does this kind of presentation, but then maintains orthodoxy by pasting in some Gospel at the end, making you wonder if it’s really to be found in the text at all.) So they decide to give the people a little of what they know they want — story! Unfortunately, instead of going to the words given by the Lord of story, they turn to their own little digressions: Mary Poppinses with their spoons full of narrative sugar. A recent bad application I heard mocked was one from the wedding at Cana: “Make sure you invite Jesus to your wedding!”

The vertical aspect of Scripture is missed completely. Contrary to what Mr. Stott believed, the worlds the pastor stands between are the already and the not yet; this age and the age to come. These are the biblical categories. The preacher is supposed to show you Heaven, to put you in it as a present reality even when you are toward the back of the church warming a pew. This doesn’t mean an out-of-body experience. It means the preacher brings you into the scriptural world where you can sink through the crashing waves with Saint Peter as Jesus looks at both of you and reaches out His hand to save you in your weakness from the formidable sea (Matthew 14:22-33).

Heaven doesn’t stay put any more than the sea does. The not yet is always invading the already.

Some of you may question the wisdom of using the sea as a metaphor for Scripture when the common understanding of the sea in Scripture seems to be as the source of every evil. To that I say, “May it never be!” You don’t have to believe me — let us investigate the sea together. By the way, in the off chance you didn’t pick this up, this section will also serve as an example (albeit a humble one) of the Biblical Theological task.

The Lord of the Sea

The Bible has a different spin on the sea than the ancient near-eastern cultures that surround it. Most have some sort of battle of the gods going on. Here, the sea is given the proportions of a mythical monster. In Mesopotamia it is Tiamat the dragon of chaos and destruction which Marduk, the god of order, renders impotent and uses to set up the cosmos. In the Mythology of Ugarit it is Yam, the sea god, against Baal in a battle for Heaven.

In the Bible, the sea is a creature upon which God pronounces benediction. God divides the waters of the abyss (Tehom) as Marduk did for Tiamat’s body (Genesis 1:6). There is no struggle as in the myths of the region. God gave the waters limits and He invites it with the rest of creation to sing His praises (Psalm 69:34)

The sea is also used as a symbol for the demonic powers. The door to Sheol (Hell, the grave) (Jonah 2:1-10) is at its bottom. Reduced to its creaturely status in the anti-mythology of Scripture, it represents the enemies that God must overcome to win the battle and effect His plan of salvation. Often, the imagery of the surrounding cultures is used creatively to describe this battle (Job 7:12). In history, God kills and cuts the Red Sea in half and has the children of Israel walk between the pieces to witness His victory (Exodus 14-15). Isaiah takes up this sea dragon imagery (Isaiah 51:9-10). In Daniel and the Apocalypse of John we are given a vision of satanic forces rising out the sea. But the Creator knows how to handle them (Psalm 65:7, Psalm 89:9-10). The Lord of the story is the Lord of the sea.

Can you imagine being raised in a culture where you memorized the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible written by Moses) and the Psalms? Knowing God’s relationship to the Sea; that the sea had been used by God time and time again in the history of redemption as a lesson to the children of Israel and to outsiders. The most powerful thing most men had seen, a power that was fickle and sometimes brought great evil, the place where evil dwelt was controlled by the one who created it. Since Jesus is the Lord of the Sea, He is able to calm it with a word. When the apostles witness the exorcism of the sea by Jesus, they ask a rhetorical question, “Who is this that even the wind and sea obey Him?” Mark, who records the story, is asking you, the reader/hearer. The answer is unavoidable if you have the background material like the apostles did. They knew well who Jesus’ action acclaimed Him to be. If that wasn’t enough, He walked on the sea, and cast demons into it to the great dismay of the pig herders.

Finally, the thought that every seafarer hates: In Revelation, there is no more sea. The enemies of Christ so often symbolized by the sea, have been put down and are vanquished forever. In this sense the sea of chaos goes away with them into a deeper deep.

What happened to that sea the Word called good at the dawn of creation? Yes, the satanic abyss is gone. Jesus exorcised the sea and now, at the end of the age, the sea will be fully exorcised.

Yet, there is another sea in the end, a sea of crystal which, like the bronze sea in the temple, stretches out before the throne of God, a symbol of peace instead of chaos in a renewed world.

Since we live in an in between age that is both “already” and “not yet”, it comes as no surprise that the sea we experience now is both chaotic and peaceful, frightful and beautiful, replete with gliding monsters and rainbow pagodas of alien beauty. If we follow what the Bible tells us about the sea, we find Jesus waiting for us at the bottom. A “Pearl” of such great value that a man might dare to give up all he has to possess it. By the cross, our Lord becomes the ultimate Jonah of whom the Jonah of the Old Testament was only a type (Matthew 12:40). He goes though the gates of Sheol at the bottom of the sea and by His Resurrection, renders them impotent. He saves us from the power of the sea and of death, and in the end, He even saves the sea from itself.

Suggested Reading

Biblical Theology by Geerhardus Vos

Dictionary of Biblical Theology by Xavier Leon-Dufour

Kerux The Journal of Northwest Theological Seminary

We carry a wonderful introduction to this kind of approach: Bible In an Hour, by Wade Butler

I was out looking at the sky over Lake Elsinore today — a painting.

If there were no Creator, I would expect a uniform, monochromatic waste, not all the beautiful difference in the sun shining through the clouds onto the town and lake below.

The sun shining down in bolts and rays through fishers in the roiling gray canopy makes me emotional even now. ‘The Heavens declare the glory of God…’ (Ps. 19:1) It is beautiful.

And what evolutionary development of the mind causes us to sometimes cry when we perceive beauty? Why even call it beautiful?

For me, it takes far less faith to believe that I was designed by an Artist who wants me to enjoy His art than it does to believe I am a self-aware bag of chemicals and reactions coming together by chance, pushing a grid of meaning onto chaos for the purpose of continuing to exist.

Which model persuades you?

It all made me think of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

I was a lit major, so these things happen from time to time.

Our congregation will be celebrating All Saint’s Day this coming Sunday, though technically it falls on November 1st.  Here is one from the archives that tells how we commemorate the saints in the Lutheran tradition.

Teach us to number our days aright that we may acquire a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

Every year on All Saints day Lutheran churches, and churches from other traditions, engage in the bittersweet liturgy of the commemoration of the faithful departed.  Basically, the pastor reads from the church records the name of every member of the church who has died all the way back to the start of the congregation.  After each name is spoken, or several names are spoken, a bell tolls.  There is no background music and the parishioners are completely silent. This can take quite awhile in congregations with a long history. By the end, there is not a dry eye in the house.

This year, because we have moved, we have joined a different congregation, one that was a bit older than our previous church.  The Pastor read the names of husbands and wives together, and sometimes even their children. There were a lot.  We followed the reading with a resounding hymn, For All the Saints, and finished up with Crown Him With Many Crowns.

It was powerful. It was also some food for deep thought and reflection. I look forward to it every year, when we stare death straight in the eye, and yet rejoice in Christ’s work for us, and contemplate being with Christ in the Church Triumphant.

I know that someday my name and my wife’s will be read on the Feast of All Saints and that my sons and daughter will be in the congregation hearing it.

I pray that we will have run the race well and die a good death in the Lord Jesus, and  have done a good job raising our children in the faith.

Grant it Lord Jesus.

I love it when a nouveau-orthodoxy like the emerging church finds itself on the brink of obsolescence. See ‘Emerging’ Church is a Gen X not a Gen Y Phenomenon’.

We’ve all seen ‘American Idol’. The last time I watched, I was laughing at how many times the term ‘relevant’ was applied to singers and everything in the world seemed to hinge on this particular singer or the other being ‘relevant’, almost regardless of their ability. The big joke to me was that when taken in the context of history and the interesting times in which we live, none of it was really relevant: not the singer, not the show, not the judges opinions.*

So, I ask the question: Does the church need to be ‘relevant’ to compete for audience share just like a singer in a talent show? Do we even want to be caught talking like that?

As an example of what I mean, I was driving down to a friend’s house yesterday and passed a church just off the freeway. The three big banners on the front read: ‘Contemporary’, ‘Casual’, and ‘Relevant’ in bold capitals. In the blur of passing, I misread the last as ‘Irrelevant’. I did a double take and discovered my error. But even then, reading it the right way, I remain dubious; when someone has to tell me that they are relevant I’m guessing, ‘probably not’.

Is relevance, as our culture defines it, something we want to aim for? It’s a rapidly moving target, moving even more rapidly as advertising insinuates itself into every spare moment, cranking up the speed on the wheel of fashion.

The answer is a simple one: NO!

We can concentrate on the target market or markets (as if the body of Christ were any definable demographic) and attempt to be relevant or we can focus our efforts on the message of our faith and the Object of that message. We can try to be relevant or we can tell the truth to anyone who has ears to hear. Telling the truth means talking about the Person who is the Truth, focusing on His Word and partaking of His Promises… the latter being something which you really can’t do on Facebook.

If we talk about Him and proclaim His message of salvation, if we study His Word and gather around His table like generations before, then we are ‘relevant’ in the truest sense of the word. If we join together and sing and learn Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19), so we can sing them well in church together, maybe in harmony, or driving across the plains of Texas, or on our death bed with our Pastor and family there, singing and chanting new songs and old songs that have the mark of excellence in both form and content, isn’t that what we should be aiming for? If we practice distinctly Trinitarian worship rich with the Person and work of our Savior so that we love the Lord with all our heart, soul and mind (Deut. 6:5),** then, and only then is fashion and convention put in its proper place.

In the liturgy, we are connected to Christ and to each other and to thousands of years of generations of God’s people. The liturgy flies in the face of fashion. The focus is off of us and our solo-performances, off of our hair-styles, our general outlook, our gadgets, our politics, our manner of speaking, our preferred form of interaction with others, our cleverness, our tattoos and piercings (or lack thereof), our preferences and tastes and all of the costumes and masks we wear with the rest of our demographic.

For Lutherans, uniquely, coming to church is not about us at all, but about God coming down to serve us, His unworthy servants, with Gifts and Words of comfort; relevant, stable things in a mutable and often painful world. Our unfashionable, some might even say ‘irrelevant’ form of worship reflects this.

The point is that when the Church becomes something about itself (generational studies, target marketing, etc.) rather than about Jesus, it is irrelevant whether it recognizes it or not.

*I apologize in advance to all the American Idol fans out there. The truth can be painful.

**Our conscious mind — for in non-christian worship, the direction of the music is almost always toward mantra, encouraging unconsciousness; pagan worship moves away from the mind. Christian music encourages the mind to worship.