For The Audience of One- Chapter 4

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 4 The Fruit of Worship – Healing

Again the need for honesty before God is important. It allows us to be open to the healing and transforming power of God. If you struggle here, do talk to others you trust including your pastor. If your church has a healing ministry there is no shame rather freedom if you would take issues to that ministry.

1. What surprised me if anything reading these few pages?
2. What are my expectations of worship and what are the fruits of worship?
3. Are there desires in my life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
4. Can I name the things in my brokenheartness?
5. Go back to read John 8:32 and ask God to give you his freedom.
   

Living Simpler

Could you live on 1,500 dollars? not a month but a year! $1,500 for one year for groceries, household items and personal care expenses. This is for real - see it here. The family of four is in the US news and they are a coupon family in the main. I am not sure about really how healthy their diet is given the amount of prepared foods they are using but it's an interesting thing in a recession and an age of consumption. Fox news here reports so far they are on 125 dollars a month.

How much simpler can you live? I try and live pretty simply in many ways. Though my computer etc have taken up money recently and a number of hobbies/projects also. Perhaps these I need to keep a tighter reign on. I know students who are living on 60-70 dollars a week and I pretty well match their level. Though currently my travel pass is costing me money.

I wonder where does that saved money go? The tension is already that global economies are unstable and in recession because people aren't buying consumer items in sufficient volume. Capitalism and the free market depends on consumption. There is something wrong here and yet if we all lived like the Spooner family, then whole economies would collapse. Is there a balance?

This weekend, I was talking with an international student about cost benefit analysis when thinking about civil engineering and environmental impact and risk. Current discussions have indicated that the Szechuan earthquake may have been caused by a large dam and it's lake sitting over a fault line. The benefits of water management over the risks of such an event. Cost benefit is an important thing to have in mind. Saving money is only one aspect, what we do with the money we saved is also something important. How we use that money is also important! Laying up our treasures in the right place is important. However making sure the heart and mind are in the right place first is very important. Perhaps this is where balance starts.

Earth hour

I think my concerns for environmental impact seem to continue to deepen. Checking out a celloguy called Cello Joe, who also is a bicycle-touring cellist and also “the wildest beatboxing cellist in the west,” I came across this seemingly impossible idea, a band on tour on bikes. Electric instruments and a 1,000 watt PA. Also given they use the type of bike I have also been dreaming about the SUV xtracycle or free radical. In fact there's a whole world I didn't know about here.



So what will you do on Saturday March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm for Earth Hour. Don't just switch stuff off - That's good. How about having a party or celebration or service without being attached to the power grid? Prove it to yourself and others that for a moment the world can be different. Let's get something going? sign up here.

For the Audience of One - Chapter 3

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 3 The Language of Worship

I remember meeting Mike Pilavachi in 1991 and remember a very strong impression of a passionate man. The love of God calls for a passionate response, yet sometimes that's the very thing we're scared of - being out of control.

1. What changes did the touch of God's love in worship bring to those at the Soul Survivor festival?
2. What is your experience of of God's love? What changes has it brought?
3. Is there a difference? In worship what I want and how I want it done?
4. In the challenge of offering all, what am I hanging onto most and what are my feeling attached to it?
5. Read Mark 12:29-31 and ask God to help you open your hands and let go.

Setting things

I've been reading about the importance of plants in the home. It seems that Kamal Meattle used just three indoor plant species to dramatically improve air quality in a New Delhi business park. However to achieve this eleven plants per person are required. The plants recommended are the Areca palm, Mother-in-law's Tongue, and Golden Pothos (Epipremnum aureum). They clean the air removing especially organic pollutants.

Recently I have come to see plants are important in many ways. A Long time ago I set aside a space in my my bedroom for meditation and contemplation, it is a desk extension I found in the garbage over 7 years ago almost 7 feet long. Recently I cleared one end and placed a group of my jade plants (Crassula ovata). There are 3 types the normal full size form, a dwarf form and a cultivar called Gollum. The interesting thing is these plants take in CO2 at night rather than giving it out like other plants.

I think my bedroom air quality has improved as sleep patterns have changed but I also find that my daily devotions seem to have a different feel to them. Just having living green plants who I can see changing and growing each week gives me a different sense of the world. Gollum is sometimes called the finger jade because the leaves look like fingers. Seeing this formerly sick plant recovering and reaching upwards and outwards for the sun is a great exaltation to reach also for the Son.

Fighting over nothing

The Cholera Bacillus

The name "Bulawayo" comes from the Ndebele word kwaBulawayo meaning 'At the place of He who Kills-With Affection' or 'place of slaughter'. Wikipedia

It is ironic. Can it get any worse? The country is a disaster and economically broken. Mugabe has stepped back but not necessarily out. Morgan Tsvangirai has been sworn in as prime minister of Zimbabwe. The new administration is a shared government between Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. The new MDC deputy agriculture minister Roy Bennett has been charged with treason reduced to plotting “insurgency, banditry and sabotage”. Any trace of the possibility of peace or hope is evaporating.

The trouble is people want power. The new troubles are the work of the Joint Operations Command (JOC), a five-man body comprising the chiefs of the army, air force, police, prisons and intelligence. They are a group with no accountability and an awful lot of power. They are chaired by Mugabe.

Cholera is worse than expected. Before Christmas 60,000 was considered the worst-case scenario. That number was passed last month. Now, things could exceed 100,000 especially as the World Health Organisation (WHO) note that the rainy season floods could only make things worse. Zimbabwe is broken from a country with the highest number of students in school and an infrastructure with clean water and sewage treatment to a rapid descent into I don't know what. In one sense total anarchy would be better as aid agencies and global groups might be able to give some help. Doesn't fighting over power here become meaningless?

Jesus cried for Jerusalem. Who will cry for Bulawayo, for Zimbabwe?

For the Audience of One - Chapter 2

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 2 Sacrifice in Worship

Honesty does bring some pain. In fact change generally hurts or upsets. When we avoid things that we know bring us closer to God then we really need to pay attention. Pain can make us deaf or blind - do ask for God's comfort and healing. Don't forget to share what you're reading and praying over.

1. What didn't you like in this chapter? And Why?
2. What do you use in worship to justify yourself in behavior, in choosing what you want?
3. How do you feel about the tension between duty and love?
4. Are you willing to seek God and do things God's way?
5. Read 2 Chronicles 7:1-6 and ask God what he desires for you.

Faith and Fear

Monday morning I had an episode. I went to a reading class with my professor and suddenly there was this zigzag bright flashing line in my eyes blocking part my vision. I had to pause our discussion because I couldn't see properly. Over the years I have had floaters inside the eye and you learn to live with those things. Anyhow my professor was concerned and told me to see an opthalmologist and if they came back or I saw a veil of darkness to go to emergency immediately. Anyhow the lights went away and I couldn't detect any vision problems but I had a whole series of meetings etc.

Tuesday morning I had a day long meeting and called my old opthamologist and had real difficulties getting an appointment but telling the receptionist the symptoms and her talking to the doctor got me in Wednesday morning. But I didn't sleep at all well last night. My back was hurting as well because of the underlying tension, worry, and fear of what if my retina detaches or I have to go into emergency etc. Who will look after me if I do have vision problems or impaired sight? Internet research means that that ignorance is bliss is impossible because I now know the worse possible possibilities and outcomes.

Faith and Fear are sometime said to be effectively opposites but it seems to me not exact opposites. Fear and anxiety are similar but not the same but both sap energy and create all manner of effects in my body and psyche. I don't know whether I reach on he scale fear but I have been more anxious than I thought. It has taken 9 hours to calm down. Nine hours since the opthamologist told me that the thick gel inside the eye has shrunk and pulled away around the optic nerve but this is quite common.

To have Faith is to be blind, otherwise it is knowledge and therefore not faith. These couple of days have been stressful and anxious and a call to faith. My faith has been stretched.

Hope and care

Care is something other than cure. Cure means "change." A doctor, a lawyer, a minister, a social worker-they all want to use their professional skills to bring about changes in people's lives. They get paid for whatever kind of cure they can bring about. But cure, desirable as it may be, can easily become violent, manipulative, and even destructive if it does not grow out of care. Care is being with, crying out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am. Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Over the last few days I've been watching the Live 8 DVDs and was caught by one moment when Bob Geldof explained the origins of Live Aid in the response to famine and crisis in replaying a 20 year old video. It ended pausing on this starving little girl. He said something like 'Don't let people tell you that you can't make a difference! You can." There appeared on stage that child grown up into a young woman.

We all hope to and I want to leave something behind in this world. I don't have a spouse nor a family but I want to make a difference. So often it isn't by doing anything but simply listening. My heart hurts when hear the pain of someone and I know I can do nothing but listen and pray with them. In that moment there is hope - I pray there is hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

For the Audience of One - Chapter 1

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 1 The Highest Priority

It's all about being honest about ourselves. In the first set of questions I hope you were able to be honest to yourself and God. Well some of those questions have come back in chapter one.

1. What surprised you reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are the expectations for worship?
3. When did you last experience joy, do you sometimes have to will yourself to worship?
4. How do you feel about worship as duty? Is worship a tool or toy?
5. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
6. Read Mark 12:29-31 and ask God about what his desire is for you.

For the Audience of One - Intro

Well I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression.

This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One. I know there are up to 40 copies circulating within a couple of churches and I decided to help people really engage with the implications of worship and worship leading. My desire to help people get to the heart of the matter and perhaps experience a true heart change and even an attitude shift. I'm posting a set of questions about every 5 days, in order that there is a chance for real thought.

Some of us are head people and other heart people and the questions attempt to reach both. Work with both sets; the ones you find easy ones and the difficult ones. I am setting this up on my blog so questions will be posted here once a week to match the chapters of Mike's book. This is because my desire is for deeper reflection rather than rushing through the book and feeling you've done it.

I've said for a long time “Sincerity is not enough. Proficiency is required.” This book and study will lay open your reasons and motivations for worship if you are willing to be honest to yourself. Sometimes the audience of One is not God but the audience of Me or the audience of the fellowship/congregation.

Find others to talk about what you've read and be willing to encourage others to think and examine the implications and God's challenge to your lives.

Read the Foreword by Matt Redman and the Preface.

1. What surprised you, if anything, reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are the expectations for worship?
3. Why are you reading this book? What do you hope for?
4. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
5. Go back to Ephesians 5:10 and ask God to show you.

Posting 301

You too can join the individualized personalized universe and create your own handwriting font for free off this internet site (here) Be warned the site has been flooded by requests especially because of Lifehacker.com from which got the info.

This sort of phenomenon fascinates me. I dislike my own handwriting because it tends to be untidy and slow, and this new font installed in my computer offers a legible version. The odd thing is that I have created a very impersonal personal form of communication. Handwritten letters and card and messages are very personal and often treasured. A typed/printed letter is very formal and impersonal. What is a message printed with my personalized unique handwriting font? Some form of chimera (see mythological beast) or pushmepullyou. (See Dr Dolittle for the latter)

In worship I suspect this is no different from playing canned music at various points during the service. It is precise, has its place and is aesthetically quite beautiful to listen to, but I'm not sure who it's for? In spirituality I wonder if it's the difference between a personal encounter with the divine and listening to a sermon or message or a guided meditation.

This is is already my 301st post in this blog. Seemingly blogs are push and pull technologies, push is called a publish/subscribe model where a client can subscribe to various information sources. By contrast most web feeds, such as RSS and atom are technically pulled by the client. I really can't figure out whether I have become merely an expression of push technology here.