Week 2 – The Nature of God and His Kingdom

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

The subjects of ‘the nature of God’ and the ‘the Kingdom of God’ are absolutely huge.  One could go many directions to explore those subjects – even just within the context of the course material.  Personally, I think this is a good thing as it reflects the wonder and mystery of God.

For this post, I think I’m going to continue on the same theme that I started in our Facebook week 2 discussion question posting but I’m going to personalize it to take this theology and put hands and feet on it.  Brian McLaren in his book “A Generous Orthodoxy” roughly states that theology without practice (using the terms Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy) is both useless and even dangerous.  So here we go.

Of the various facets of the nature of God which Dan discussed in our course material, I am most drawn to the facet of the Trinity.  

I’m partly drawn to the Trinity because of the element of mystery that surrounds the Trinity.  We can use systematics, history, artistic and metaphorical tools to give us more of a picture of the Trinity.  But a love the stance of the Eastern Orthodox church, that despite the helpfulness of those tools, they will always be inadequate to describe something that is bigger than us and beyond our limited understanding.  

As my father has taught me many times with regards to worship, it is this element of mystery that draws us into worship.  People do not worship what they understand.  

If it can be fully understood, it is not worthy of worship.  From a worldview from both the east and west, knowledge is power.  And to have full knowledge of something is to have a power over it.  The mystery of the Trinity reminds us of our limitations (or our arrogance to either claim full understanding or dismiss the concept altogether because we can’t make sense of it) and it also reminds us of the tremendous majesty and ’size’ (for lack of a better term) of God and who He is.

That’s a very Eastern Orthodox view and it expresses something that really is focused on God rather than subtly focused parlty on ourselves and our abililty to understand him and hence in some sort of way control or subdue him.

The other reason that I’m drawn to the Trinity is the communal nature of the Trinity.  I love the language within the Gospel of John of how the Trinity relate to one another.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave it at that, but I will state that part of the nature of God is community.  And this holy community has a modus operandi, which leads us into the topic of the Kingdom of God.  

The Kingdom, I would postulate, is an expression of the nature of the Trinity.  The ways of the Kingdom reflect the expression of the interaction of the Trinity and how we too will eventually interact with the Godhead and one another.

As stated at the beginning of this now lengthly post (sorry guys), all of these theological thoughts have worked themselves into the way I have chosen to worship God through my actions toward others.  This morning, I’ll use yesterday as an example.

I had two significant sets of activities yesterday that reflected these thoughts and values of Trinity and Kingdom.  The first was our church’s annual kids day camp outreach to children (most disadvantaged) in the neighborhood surrounding our church.  The second was helping a homeless recovering addict trying to rebuild his life from a series of foolish decisions.

In both of these circumstances I’m immediately aware of the community nature of the activities.  I’m aware that my expression of serving towards both the disadvantaged kids and the recovering addict is an expression of community that begins to reflect the type of community that I am being called into – the community of the Trinity.  I am both serving my fellow people and I am serving God all at the same time.  (IMHO, Matthew 25 can be better understood from this perspective.)  But even though I serve, I do realize that in some senses and on some levels, I am also being served – though not necessary in the same ways that I serve with activities or material items.  But I am none the less engaged in this circular dance of community with the Trinity and people.

As I engage in these activities, in this ‘dance’ lead by the King, the Kingdom of God is expressed and made manifest.  The rule and reign of God to bring forth justice in the manifestation of the person of Christ through his body intersect with this earth and it’s inhabitants.

There’s much more that could be written, but I’ve already gone way to far.

10-4

Week 1 reflections on media content

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

As I reflect upon the media content for the first week of this course, there’s a thread, a stream of thought that sticks with me that I’d like to explore and expound upon here.

I’m first drawn to the comments made my Dr. Don Williams in his “Why Theology” piece.  Williams makes a key remark about our journey with theology.  Theology is about discovering the truth about God – who He is, His ways, His word, His plans and promises for all of creation.  

Thinking about our theology is important as our theology must be rooted in the truth of God as much as humanly possible.  Our theology is intimately related with our practice, with how we journey out our lives.  If our theology is not rooted in the truth of God, we will ending up either not producing fruit that God is concerned about (ala John 15) and/or we will end up producing fruit for the Kingdom of Darkness.  Sounds harsh, but Williams states that ‘God is truth and everything else is from the evil one.’  He takes this idea further by stating that ‘if we’re not speaking the truth of God, we are trafficking in the Kingdom of Darkness.’

Our journey of theological discovery is a tremendously important one.  Here we have both opportunity and need to discover the realities of God and His Kingdom and be able to walk in them and gain life in God.  We also have the opportunities to break free from the control the evil one has over us and this world (1 John 5:19) and the opportunity to turn to the Kingdom of God and experience his wondrous rule (Mark 1:14).

Next I’m drawn to the comments of Brenton Brown in his piece “Theology in Worship.”  Brown makes a few statements that are critically important.  He says that we have a “pastoral responsibility” to present good, solid theology in our songs, remarking that our songs carry weight with their power to be more easily remembered the than other teaching expressions.  

I very deeply resonate with this sense of ‘pastoral responsibility’ as worship leader / worship pastor as it relates to the content that I lead our church family in worship.    I also resonate with Browns’ other ‘pastoral’ comments how a song just does not need to be theologically sound (though that is necessary), but it also needs to be something that is lived and is a very real part of the expression of our lives.  A song needs to be more than abstract thoughts, but heart held faith that brings about the motion of our lives.

I realize that I’m over my word quota, so I’ll close with the thought that from this place of discovering theology, and realizing our theological pastoral responsibilities towards those we lead, we begin to embark on the journey of the Worship Artisan.  One who takes these ideas and values and crafts them into a form that brings beautiful expression to the things of God and carries the participants in a glorious journey towards Him.

10-4.