Tag: Church

TBT^4: Go to Church

The Portly Politico1 Comment

At present, it feels like the United States is experiencing a major Christian religious revival just below the surface.  It seems like being a professing Christian has become—dare I say it?—cool.  The desire for genuine connection with Christ and a body of likeminded believers ripples throughout the nation, potentially bucking the long, depressing trend of declining faith.

While Boomers seemed to embrace the excuse to stay home from The Age of The Virus—they left churches and never returned—at least some young people are realizing the benefits of church attendance.  It feels like something is changing, that the Holy Spirit Is Moving in mighty ways.

Let’s hope that feeling is correct!  Regardless, in good times and bad (especially bad), we should be going to church, engaging in the our Christian walk with fellow believers.  The Easter season is the perfect time to get back into the habit.

With that, here is 25 April 2024’s “TBT^2: Go to Church“:

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Open Mic Adventures CXV: “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”

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The Sunday before the Inauguration I cheekily proposed to my pastor and our deacon that we should sing “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” for our morning congregational hymn in honor of Trump’s then-upcoming Inauguration.  I had practiced the piece a bit Saturday evening, but with a pretty gnarly bout of sinus drainage, I found the high notes hard to hit.

Instead of singing the piece—a very old missionary tune by composer Lowell Mason, with words by Reginald Heber—either on my own or in church, I played it a few times as a bit of instrumental prelude music.

The melody for the piece is interesting, with a few suspensions and some unusual timing, like the long half-note pickup at the beginning and midway through the piece.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Don’t Panic—God Is with Us!

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Introduction

What do we do when it feels like God Is nowhere to be found?  That question comes up again and again in the Gospels and, indeed, throughout Scripture.  Of course, we know that God Is Always with us; at least, we know that intellectually.  But there are times when we feel that He Has Abandoned us, even when we know that He Keeps His Promises.

Let us turn to tonight’s passage, the unusual story of the Boy Jesus at the Temple during the Feast of Passover:

Luke 2:41-52 (ESV):  The Boy Jesus in the Temple

41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents [alternatively, “they”] saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” [alternatively, “about my Father’s business”] 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature [alternatively, “years”] and in favor with God and man.

Context

I have always found this passage to be particularly confounding.  It comes at the end of the long, famous, second chapter of Luke, the chapter we all know so well, and which we read aloud every Christmas.  The chapter consists of several scenes from Jesus’ early Life:  His miraculous Birth (v. 1-20); His Circumcision and Naming (v. 21); His Dedication at the Temple and the incredible story of Simeon (v. 22-35); Anna’s praises to God, and her instant recognition of Jesus as the Messiah (v. 36-38).  Then Mary, Joseph, and Jesus return to Nazareth until this passage.

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TBT^2: Go to Church

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Church can be a beautiful thing.  Indeed, it should be—it’s the Body of Christ!  But many Christians are quitting church for various reasons.  The Age of The Virus gave everyone a taste of how the heathens live; unfortunately, too many Christians enjoyed it and dropped out of church almost entirely.

Perhaps the worst thing churches—and schools, and governments, and hospitals, and businesses, etc., etc., etc.—did during The Age of The Virus was to shutter their doors.  Churches should have been the last places to close down; during a pandemic, people needed access to their churches more than ever before, but the churches followed the world.  They’re suffering as a result now.

Granted, church attendance was on the decline In the Before Times, in The Long, Long Ago, before The Age of The Virus brought its authoritarian terrors.  The Plandemic was just the excuse to stop attending—“for safety!”—and it seems that many folks were not eager to return.  That’s a shame.  A church community provides so much, and while we can and should study Scripture on our own, we are part of a body.  An ear that hears but has no brain to process it or arms to react to the hearing is pretty useless.

So—go to church!

With that, here is 27 April 2023’s “TBT: Go to Church“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Baccalaureate Service 2023

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The following is the written version of the speech/sermon I’ll be giving at my school’s baccalaureate service tomorrow, Sunday, 20 May 2023.  It pulls from the Scripture readings that students will make prior to my little sermonette, which are Proverbs 3:1-6, James 1:2-5, Psalm 20:1-5, Jeremiah 29:11, and Psalm 113.  I also include Matthew 11:28-30 and Psalm 20:6 (and probably allude to several other verses that I do not reference directly).

Good evening families, faculty, staff, and graduates of the Class of 2023. You have worked hard to be sitting here today, and in six days you will get to sit again for another ceremony, during which your mother will probably cry and you will hear a dozen or so senior videos with the Trace Adkin’s song “You’re Gonna Miss This” (and probably Bill Joel’s “Vienna”).

But to get where you are today took a great deal of effort and struggle. Sometimes it was your parents doing the struggling, or your teachers, but ultimately, you had to get the work done. Your reward for your efforts is to build upon the foundation you have laid, and while I encourage you all to get some much-deserved rest, your work is only beginning.

While you have learned a plethora of facts, and learned how to perform elaborate titrations in Chemistry, and learned how to dissect a work of literature or a piece of poetry, you have also learned how to live. In learning all of these other skills and facts and figures, you have, in the process, learned what matters in life. And here is the big hint: it isn’t how to perform elaborate titrations in a chemistry lab.

Our purpose in this life is to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors. Psalm 113 is a model for us: “From the rising of the sun to its going down; The Lord’s name is to be praised.”

“From the rising of the sun to its going down.” That’s a lot! Not exactly an easy task, is it? We are to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors? Well, yes. Fortunately, we have God to Help us.

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TBT: Go to Church

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Easter has come and gone, so ’tis the season the stop attending church until Christmas.  At least, that’s the attitude of some folks.  Here at TPP, we endorse frequent church attendance.

Last year I lamented the way our attitude about church attendance demonstrates our skewed priorities.  We’ll bend over backwards (for some people, perhaps literally) to appease our increasingly unreasonable bosses, but come Sunday morning, we’ll lounge about in bed rather than fellowship with other Christians.

To be clear, I don’t think church attendance is a necessary precursor to salvation.  At the same time, a Christian should want to spend that time learning about God’s Word and worshipping Him with other believers.

I certainly don’t feel like it every Sunday.  Because of my extremely busy work schedule, I sometimes catch myself begrudging the long drive to church on Sunday mornings, and the way that it cuts into the day.  But I almost always am glad I went.

Funny how even the tiniest sacrifices and the slightest hardships, once endured, help us improve.  Attending church once a week is not a major imposition.  Now churches just need to make sure they’re teaching the Truth, not watered-down inspirational speeches that I could find on a mommy blog.

With that, here is 13 April 2022’s “Go to Church“:

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Open Mic Adventures XXIV: “Softly and Tenderly”

The Portly Politico16 Comments

I’m back in the hymnbook for this edition of Open Mic Adventures, which at this point is pretty much “anything I play anywhere, in any context, that I happen to record.”  But that makes for an unwieldy title.

Inaccurate labels aside, I played “Softly and Tenderly” for my church’s Sunday morning service on Sunday, 12 March 2023.  It was the invitational (the “altar call” piece, for the rest of you Pentecostals out there), but this recording was made before service.  You can hear some chit-chat in the background, but not as much as the recording in “Open Mic Adventures XXII: ‘Blessed Assurance’.”

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