Q1. Why have you misspelled extreme in XStreamWorship?
Q2. Why do you call your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) a "Cat"?
Q3. What's this I hear about lambs howling at the wolves?
Q4. What's this I hear about the Grand Circle Tour?
Q5. What's this about Coffee Aroma?
Q6. What's this about "No Starch"?
Q7. Isn't this kind of taking things a bit XStream?
Well for one, "X" is how a lot of people
like to spell "Christ", especially around
"X"-mas time. Next, if you recall, Jesus make
references to a river flowing from you with living water,
hence the "Stream". In order for "Worship"
to be real, it must be Christ centred and flow with
life. So really there is nothing extreme about this
(apart from the fact that life is extremely different
from death), just XStreamWorship.
The question and answer format typical of FAQs is not
a new thing. It dates back to the Reformation period
when Martin Luther and John Calvin were on the scene.
They discovered that the common person was ignorant
of the truths of Christianity even though they regularly
attended church. They initiated Catechism as a question
and answer genre of literature to present many of the
basic tenets of Christian belief. This quickly caught
on amongst Lutheran and reformed camps and amongst the
Roman Catholics. All I have done is take Catechism and
shorten it to "Cat".
For years, we have been worried about what the enemy
is up to. We get overly worried about "wolves in
sheep's clothing". Sure the Lord warned us about
this, but He also said, "I send you out into this
world". We have been instructed to be "wise
as serpents, but harmless as doves". So we are
in effect, "sheep in wolves' clothing", so
the enemy had better beware, because the lambs are out,
and when the lambs begin to howl, the wolves will cower
and shiver and whisper a barely audible, "bah"!
So in all this, pray! Get together with other like minded
believers and pray. Don't be afraid to intercede for
others and to press against the enemy. God has given
us the victory, so howl away!
Every now and then, we will mess up in our Christian
lifestyle (either personally or corporately as a church
body) and then we wind up on what I call "The Grand
Circle Tour of the Wilderness".
This is a forgivable things since we all make mistakes.
On the other hand, the really stupid thing is if,
on completion of the tour, we butt in to the front
of
the line at the ticket booth to purchase another ticket!
Man! what a mess we are in then! Augh!
This is actually a reference to how we preach and teach
the word these days. For years, the church has been
able to get away with legalism and formulas to keep
people on track and to keep things simple, but this
doesn't work in today's pluralistic society.
To borrow from science and technology fields, models
used to abstract a part of reality in order to understand
how things work are always based on a simplification
of facts in a specific context. In the church, we have
typically dealt with one or two cultures at a time in
a region. Not so anymore, and now we wonder why things
fall apart and the church seems to be irrelevant to
a lot of people these days.
So I say wake up and smell the coffee! It aint the
old swill we have been serving for years that people
want anymore. Now they want cappuccino and expresso!
The whole philosophy of ministry and how we work out
relationships between church leaders and people in our
communities has changed. We have to be on the ball.
For quite some time now, the church has been "stiff".
Now this may not be a bad thing of itself, however lately
people have mistaken us for dead and nearly hauled us
off to the city morgue thinking were were just another
"stiff" to be processed.
