April 21, 2001
Franklin Methodist
My brother was supposed to sing today. Then he heard I was speaking and mysteriously got called to Urbana. It’s an honor to be called to speak in a town where your brother is the local banker. He got his banking training early. I can remember him, still in his crib, hollering “No! No! No!”
My Grandpa Bradbury.. active, ornery, fun-loving… Loved to play in his yard because it was like a jungle Stroke… chair… all he could see was a thirty foot patch of yard.. Became obsessed with it. His focus became so narrow than he lost sight of everything else.
Our church: eternal flame…actually a red lightbulb in a gold chain…trouble was, the eternal flame kept going out. This is embarrassing when your eternal flame keeps going out. Committee formed… Sat in church staring at the eternal flame, watching for a flicker… I don’t think they heard a sermon for months. It is so tempting to get comfy in ---the way we worship ---what we sing ---how we hold our service ---how we pray
Sometimes we need to get shocked into reality.
G’ma & G’pa Orr… Holy Roller service
Matt.. baritone
We test our worship against what we’ve done before, instead of what God wants for us… we can only see that thirty-foot patch of yard.
I come back from camp every summer singing.. “The Joy of the Lord, is my strength!”.. And sometimes enter a church where we sing… “Our order of worship is our strength!” or “Our redecorated sanctuary is our strength!”
No..no… It’s the joy of our Lord. I once asked my Grandma how she would die… “Of happiness.” “Huh?” “Well, every day I know the Lord, I get more and more joy. One of these days when I just get so much joy I can’t stand it, Jesus will say, ‘Okay, you’re ready for heaven!’”
Helen…most joyous saint I know… “Jesus loves you and I do too!”
Let me tell you of a few worship experiences that I’ve experienced… that have shocked me back into The Joy of the Lord..
---Little church in southern Illinois…catacomb service
---Dylan…prayer… “Awesome!”
---Camp… deaf boy
---Tammy.. dance
---Lady in Mt. Vernon…. Prayer chair
---Finally…the most holy, profound prayer, I’ve ever heard. “Jesus, us guys here on the back row ain’t too good. Please help us not screw up too bad.” (The Lord’s prayer in miniature.)
Let me give you a beautiful idea to begin celebration …. Diversity….
Be diverse …. Be bold…be daring… be creative in what you expect of God. Expand the size of your God… let Him be the God of dance, the God of music, the God of laughter, and tradition…and let Him be the God of Joy.
Let your God get bigger. Don’t confine Him to the tiny box you’ve created and covered with the tight wrapping-paper of tradition and custom, and your own personal culture.
Look beyond that 30 foot patch of yard that you’ve created and called, “How God should be worshipped.”
---I admire the saints of our courage..of the enormous courage it took for Martin Luther…for John and Charles Wesley and others to simply wipe the boards clean and get back to basics. To look at an institution as old and as powerful as the church and simply say… “Okay, now how much of this do we really need?” “What did Christ proclaim and what did we create?”
---Don’t be afraid to simply pray, “Jesus, us guys here on the back row ain’t too good. Please help us not screw up too bad.”
---Don’t Nobody
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