Categories
church worship

Should I Raise My Hands In Church (And Other Questions)

Should I raise my hands when I pray (or sing) in the local church? Which music should we use in our local church worship? Should my kids be allowed to dance during a good praise song at the assembly? Shall I be allowed to say “amen” after any song I feel particularly touched by during worship service? Can we change the complete structure of the meeting of the local church? Should we say the Nicene Creed at the gathering of the local church?

In all of these questions we’re really just asking, “What am I allowed to do?” I’ve said it in another post but before answering the questions you have to actually figure out why we come together at all. After you identify that purpose for gathering you then figure out your freedoms within that gathering. In other words, first you ask “why do we assemble?” then you ask, “What should I be doing when we’re assembled?”

Why we assemble is the main question to answer but I think Scripture would have us ask several probing questions that help tie down both the purpose of the church while examining any of our actions.

Categories
religion worship

Idolatry and the Wrong Shoes

Shoes. Comfy. Warm. Slip easily on (and off). The right color and look, matching your outfit perfectly and accentuating your look. You have to love a great pair of shoes.

That is, right up until you put on someone else’s shoes.

Categories
apologetics worship

Series: On Icons

This is the series home for the usage of Icons series.

Categories
worship

Approaching Worship and Respect

In my response to the Christological Argument and the use of icons I made a statement that Phil James, a guest blogger in the past here at the Archive, took issue with. In my post, I suggested that based on the current activities of many people with icons that the terms worship and veneration are used with a distinction that amounts to no difference; the poster responded by asking a loaded question that illuminates the mind of "our materialistic age” versus the mind of "our ancient faith” (a serious charge, no doubt): "Can stuff be worthy of respect or is it simply nothing but atoms (quoting me), chance and time.” Elsewhere, Phil also made a comment about Evangelicals knowing the difference between the loving their wives and loving God and yet not being able to see the difference between venerating icons and worshipping God.

Categories
apologetics christ rey's a point sin worship

Jesus the Logician Backup

Nervous because it looks like the page is getting hacked and in the hopes of making sure I keep these excellent links, I am backing up Joe Carter’s Jesus the Logician project here at the Bible Archive. Mind you this is not the repository for said articles.  If you have new submissions you can send them to Joe Carter.  It was sparked by Dallas Willard’s article here (with a pdf here). The abstract from said article is as follows with the backup of Joe Carter’s collection from the blogosphere after the jump:

ABSTRACT: In understanding how discipleship to Jesus Christ works, a major issue is how he automatically presents himself to our minds. It is characteristic of most 20th century Christians that he does not automatically come to mind as one of great intellectual power: as Lord of universities and research institutes, of the creative disciplines and scholarship. The Gospel accounts of how he actually worked, however, challenge this intellectually marginal image of him and help us to see him at home in the best of academic and scholarly settings of today, where many of us are called to be his apprentices.