I had a plan to offer up a video of our Christmas Eve morning service for this week's post. I set it up to record on Facebook Live and thought it was all working out. But upon closer inspection afterwards, the video got messed up. I suspect that because it was on some sound equipment, it turned into a version of a messed-up-old-school Nintendo game. Oh well. Here are some pics of the action.
But what to do about a post? Skip it altogether? Find something else?
No Music Monday this week. Though if you want to scratch that itch and more, check out this article on U2. I'm a casual but ardent U2 fan and it was a lot of fun going through their catalog.
I did want to share another fun thing I'm indulging in, narrative sermons for our Christmas series. Thanks to my friend and author Amy Green, I have some really good scripts to 'act out' instead of preach this holiday season.
I first learned of narrative sermons in seminary, but I had seen a few from my mentor, Pastor Ralph Porter, when he was at my home church during my college and seminary days.
In our seminary preaching classes, they required us to preach one. The hardest part for me was the 'script'. Writing from the point of view of a character didn't come naturally to me. So last year, when I read through Amy's blog, I knew I had the basic content I needed to actually preach one well.
So, on top of the excellent material I was beginning with, I added a few rhetorical nuggets, found some pretty good costumes in our church storage, and warned our people ahead of time that these Christmas sermons were about to get weird.
Don't be fooled by these pictures, there were plenty of people in attendance. Few of our folks want to sit right up front is all. I will probably add some more later. And next week, I might even have some video and you can judge for yourself how good of an actor I am. For now, you can listen to our audio recording, and imagine me prancing around the front wearing some very interesting garb.
As I was trying to come up with a selection for this week, I couldn't even settle on a topic. Should I go with Christmas music? I did that last year and my friend Amy is doing a real good job on her blog on that anyway. Should I go with the current Top 40 hit that has a lot of backstory but also some depth when you consider its message? Maybe another day. Well, what about something related to my sermon, which was on prayer? There's not a whole lot that comes to mind (at least my mind), at least currently. Sidetrack - I find it very fascinating how some old-school artists often made prayer a topic. Petra, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman...probably not a statement against current artists, just interesting. Anyway, instead of going all-in about those old-school artists of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, I came across the selection below from a classic Christian artist and I knew this was it. To my chagrin, Keith Green hasn't been featured on this blog. Green was a force of nature in the early days as Christian music was becoming an industry. You can read his story here, but he was a prophetic voice who was passionate about waking up the church and calling people to Jesus. He was a talented artist with a litany of great songs despite having a short career. Technically though, this song was written by his wife. And it is a beautiful song of dedication and prayer:
Keith Green was cut from a different cloth than what you'll find these days. A man who had a different perspective and who passionately was calling us all to something better.
