T minus one week

Yesterday was a good service. The pastors were away, so the music leader delivered a short message and a few other folks shared a little testimony about what music does for their worship. Some very cool thoughts. Interestingly, some commented on how important the words were to them, and others said that while good, words are not necessarily needed to get us to a point of worship. I was glad to hear that people don't always think the words are required, since I often can't focus due to other pressing matters, such as hitting the correct guitar chord. Also, the whole idea of extracting lyrics from a song has always been hard for me.

The best thing that happened came from the mouth of wifey. She noticed how real the message and the comments were. Sometimes well-scripted, and well-planned messages come across a little too scripted and planned. Why is that? Professionals have to create and deliver a message every week, and we can't expect them to hit a home run every week, can we? Well, yes we can, and we should.

What do I mean by this? Does every message have to be perfect? Of course not. But the delivery (and the deliverer) of every message must be real. Preach what you understand, and most importantly preach what you believe and what you live. Do that, and you have hit a home run. Again, pastors are not perfect, far from it as we all know. But it does me no good to hear a message that is not even real to the one preaching. It becomes an academic analysis of scripture, and possibly some suggestions for applying this analysis to our lives. But if it is not real, then how can you suggest how to apply it in my life? You don't even know what it means yourself! Those messages might be enough for some people, but for me it falls a little short of what I am hoping to hear in church. Maybe my standards are set too high.

Yesterday I heard real people, talking about real things happening in their hearts, and it was really cool.

Shalom.