How do I love Thee?

I know this is long, so if you're NOT going to read the whole thing, you'll want to read the last two paragraphs.

I'm not old . . .I'm not as old as the young people that work with me think I am, and I'm probably not even as old as I think I am sometimes. I am old ENOUGH to be concious of some changes that have taken place over the past number of years. I DO find it a little weird that the kids I work with don't know what it's like to grow up without the internet or cell phones. Honestly, that blows my mind. Before long, most kids won't know what it's like not to have the internet on their cell phones . . .

Weird.

Today in our meetings we got talking about worship . . . it's been a recurring theme throughout the day, not IN our meetings AS SUCH, but in personal conversations, etc. I can't believe how far my feelings on all of this worship stuff has come in the past few years. I was saying earlier today that I truly believe we're missing the boat on the whole thing . . . most churches, most congregations, just completely missing out. I hate the term blended worship. I'm hating more and more the concepts of traditional and contemporary services. I think it's the same thing as hating 'buzz words' that once were cutting edge but are now only used by people who want to sound cutting edge but in reality they're far from the edge (e.g. out-of-the-box, generation x, etc).

Here's what I think . . . what we're tying to do is to make our current programs fit into a slighty diffent mode than they've been in for the past number of years . . . but the motivation seems to be somewhat competetive or I-Told-You-So-ish. Example: we want our bands to be recognized as worship leaders . . . but the logistics of leading what is our concept of worshp with a brass band are much more involved than with a guitar. The schemas that we're developing show that worship is led by a guitarist or keyboardist, which isn't necessarily correct, it's just what we've declared subconciously to be correct. We're also trying to make new programs work that don't always gel well with Army practice over the past number of years. That motivation seems very "there little value in the past"ish.

1. This whole situation serves to teach us a couple of things:
   there's a disconnect between what we have and what we recognize to be where we need to be
2. we want to be found in the will of God
3. we don't know how to get to that point; or at the very least we haven't found a common path to getting there
4. division is not healthy; pruning is healthy, fertilization is healthy, division is not.
5. we need to find a common, unfleeting motivation (one of my biggest issues with our current philosophies are how frequently they change . . . rebirth takes time, gestation is a long process only because there is a lot of stuff that needs to happen before a new child is ready to face the world.
   

I have to deal with the last one. Common ground will allow us to unite as the body of christ once again. The common ground is our purpose for life. The common ground is the only reason that were were placed on this planet in the first place. The common ground is worship. But, not worship as we seem to currently understand it; worship as God understands it.

It's not 'til we FULLY understand that worship isn't about what instrument we play, nor is it what we sing, nor whether is it the similarities to what we hear on the radio, NOR IS IT ABOUT US. Worship IS only and CAN BE only about God. When it is not, it ceases to be worship; it becomes something much less. If worship is expressing our feelings of love to our heavenly father, then it cannot be motivated by any selfish desires . . . it's not about Him then, it's about what we get out of it.

I have to think more about all this as what I really want to say is not REALLY coming through well . . . I have one more illustration.

It's funny that saying I love you hasn't changed over the past how ever many millenia that people have been able to communicate. When someone says to me, "I love you." I know EXACTLY what they mean; i don't expect them to come up with a new way of telling me, nor do I try to fit their way of telling me into any kind of constraints.

I recognize that our approach to worship is changing, were caught in the middle of a cross-generational gap that goes far beyond any one person's comprehension. What I find very intriguing is that after almost seven years of being with the woman that is now my wife I still tell her the same thing that I told her 7 years ago: "I love you". After 25 years of LIFE, how I tell my parents that I care about them deeply is to say: "I love you". Three spoken words that express the ultimate is human emotion is still the choice method for expressing the ULTIMATE in human emotion, after thousands of years of existence. New ways of expressing love don't have to be researched or devleoped. My wife understands and, from what she tells me, loves to hear me tell her those words. I don't have to find another way to say it. Anytime that I'm doing anything else, I'm wasting time that I could be expressing my love to her.

Perhaps if our main concern was telling God that we loved Him, we wouldn't get so drastically carried away with the methods we choose to use . . . we can argue all we want amongst ourselves about which is the better way, which is more effective, but the fact of the matter is that God just wants to hear it from us. Just tell Him.