THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOEL OSTEEN

From denominational conferences to a preacher's homily, I find observing and blogging- commenting on the happenings in Christendom in the light of Scripture profitable, not just for me but for many of my readers. I am fairly comfortable in being vocal about my thoughts concerning issues of faith and practice.

My Bible College professor, now acting president, asked about the possibility for me to teach Worship Programming (which I choose to call, Worship Studies-Theology History and Practice). In preparation for that, I decided to update a syllabus I made some months ago. So, in a serendipity, while researching about worship and contemporary theological issues to update a Worship Studies syllabus, I found these YouTube videos about Joel Osteen, pastor of the 40,000-strong Lakewood Church Houston, reportedly America's largest congregation. The series of videos I viewed honestly alarmed me.

To begin with, let me say, I am not a huge fan of Joel Osteen (which means, I have not read a book he's written or frequently watch his TV program), but I admire the great worship music at Lakewood, and our church sings some of the songs they have produced.

I do believe that he is a Christian brother. I have no problems with his being encouraging- that could be his spiritual gift. I don't mind him being popular and being the most listened to preacher in America. What is concerning for me is this whole new wave of supposed Christian spirituality that is being propagated- get rich and successful, be happy and healthy, be a champion!

PRIORITIES: A REFLECTION ON WORSHIP

There was probably a general sense of emptiness in the hearts of some pastors all over the Philippines last Sunday with the expected drop in worship attendance and giving!

The culprit is none other than the Manny Pacquiao-David Diaz boxing bout which people, even Christians chose to watch at home instead of going church to worship! Manny Pacquiao's fights always take place on a Sunday morning (because Sunday morning in Manila is Saturday night in Las Vegas), and each time there is a scheduled fight, churches worry about an inevitable attendance drop- much like Superbowl Sundays in the US when churches cancel services on Sunday afternoons and nights for the NFL finals!

Anyway, I was never a fan of boxing so I really don't know the feeling of struggling between choosing to watch a boxing match and worshipping in church. Even though boxing first began in Greece, for me it is nothing more than a modern-day counterpart of ancient Roman gladiatorial matches where people fight to the death and people enjoy the site of gore and the stench of blood! However, today, boxers fight and get paid big time! People still enjoy the site of men rearranging their faces with their fists, so it's all the same.

On the way back to Church from a lunch date with Tommy Walker and his team from Christian Assembly, I reflected on the amazing service that was and thought about how many Christians missed a great time of worship at GCF! Our attendance was still in the thousands, our offering still reached a seven-figure mark. But it's not about the numbers, it's about the experience that they missed, the priority misplaced- worship.

Priorities. Whenever the topic arises I couldn't help but think of Abraham.
If ever there was a text that would represent for modern people the primitiveness of religion it is perhaps the one we read from Genesis. A father is asked to do the unthinkable, sacrifice his child, in order to satiate the need of his God. Who is this God of Abraham? Is this the same God we worship?

People think the Bible is a dangerous book to read to children because of stories like that of Abraham's. In truth the Bible can be a dangerous book for adults to read too, and it should be handled with great care. It’s wild, untamed, filled with surprising, often shocking stories that rightly give us pause. And the wildest, most untamed, surprising part of scripture is the God it reveals. This God of Abraham, this God we worship is anything but predictable, domesticated, or boring.

The God Abraham knew was always asking the unthinkable. There was never a time in Abraham’s experience of God when things were calm, simple, easy. As the story goes, from their very first encounter God asks Abraham to do the unthinkable: leave everything behind – his homeland, his family, his work, his security – in order to settle in an unknown land. As the story unfolds, we learn that Abraham and Sarah have been unable to conceive a child. Wanting Abraham to have a child, Sarah offers him her servant Hagar and together she and Abraham have a son named Ishmael. Later, God tells Abraham and Sarah something that to them was unthinkable. They were greatly advanced in age, and had given up hope of having a child of their own, but God declared that in spite of her advanced age Sarah would become pregnant and that they would have a son. It was so unthinkable that Sarah’s response to the good news was unrestrained, incredulous laughter. But soon Isaac was born, and their joy must have been complete.[1]

Then the unthinkable happened once more – not once, but twice. On two occasions Abraham is commanded by God to rid himself of his sons. After a quarrel between Sarah and Hagar, God tells Abraham that he must send Ishmael and his mother Hagar away, never to dwell with them again. Can you imagine how unthinkable that must have been? Shortly thereafter God says, "Abraham! Take your son Isaac, whom you love, and....offer him as a burnt offering." This is not only unthinkable, but barbaric.[2]

The initial barbarism and primitiveness of the story gives way to something quite important for you and me. It brings us back to that question: What is your idol? For Manila residents, of course, there are some obvious possibilities – the quest for money, the drive to succeed, the determination to find a life’s partner, more money, the need to have just the right address, the right look, more money, the right pedigree – all potentially badges of personal honor rather than gifts from God. But there are more subtle idols, images or needs we cling to at all costs, that are equally in need of examination – that persistent fear of failure or scarcity, notions of unworthiness or shame, the secret assumption of being a fraud or hypocrite, panic at the possibility that we will end up alone. These too can be idols we refuse to part with and which identify us at our core, but which are equally destructive barriers in life and in relationship to God.[3]

Back to our Sunday worship issue. A Christian's individual call to worship God is not an option, neither is the call to the whole church to gather and take part in the work (liturgy) of the Body.

I remember deferring, and ultimately seeking amnesty for not taking ROTC military training for religious reasons back in college- that's my choice and conviction. Even as an exchange student, wherever the exchange program took our team, the first place I looked for is a church where I can join others for worship. I've always believed that Sunday is particularly special for the Lord- not that other days aren't, every days is the Lord's. But the Bible sets apart a particular day to observe and engage in the worship of God with other people.

In a conversation between a Campus Crusade staff and another church volunteer tonight, I heard the Crusade staff say, "People are completely satisfied in the pew, worshipping whenever convenient. That has to break."
The story of Abraham is a story of anguished faith because it reveals that in order to walk into the life God has promised we must rid ourselves of that which does not belong to God, and by association does not truly belong to us. The good news in this story is that on the other side of the unthinkable Abraham experience a better sense of faith and life. In the end, Abraham was more blessed because He understood who God was and chose to please Him.

Is worshipping an option for you? Do you go to church only when it's convenient or is it a part of your life?

___________________________________
1 Viera, Javier, Risking the Unthinkable, June 29, 2008 CCNYC
2 Walter Brueggeman, Genesis, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) p. 185
3 Viera, Javier, Risking the Unthinkable, June 29, 2008 CCNYC

HE KNOWS MY NAME

I just got back from a fun dinner with Joy and Lennie at Sbarro.
But before that, I had fun watching tonight's rehearsal with Tommy Walker and his team for tomorrow's worship concert. It's pretty amazing to finally meet the man who wrote some of my favorite worship songs.

Although tonight was the first time I met him, Tommy Walker is a frequent visitor to the Philippines. In fact, one of his songs found its inspiration from the slums of Manila when a young kid came up to him during a ministry time and asked, "I'm just a kid in the slums, do you think Jesus knows me?" That little experience inspired the birthing of the song He Knows My Name. Presbyterian theologian, Robert McAfee Brown wrote a personal statement of faith one time in which he said that “there are little moments when vast things happen.” That little moment for that kid God showed His vastness.

I believe some of the kids who were rehearsing for a dance number tonight came from the slums and are products of his church's (Christian Assembly Los Angeles) ministry to the poor of Payatas, Metro Manila's largest slum area.

Tommy Walker with some of our Chancel Choir members

Incidentally, this morning, as I began my day, I read Psalm 139-- one of the many Psalms that teach us about the amazing attributes of God- Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence.

Theologian Paul Tillich in a sermon taught that we all know that we cannot separate ourselves at any time from the world to which we belong. There is no ultimate privacy or final isolation. We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us, and that demands response from us. The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to mankind, to the universe, and to the Ground of all being, the aim of our life. Nothing can be hidden ultimately. It is always reflected in the mirror in which nothing can be concealed.1

Does anybody really believe that his most secret thoughts and desires are not manifest in the whole of being, or that the events within the darkness of his subconscious or in the isolation of his consciousness do not produce eternal repercussions? Does anybody really believe that he can escape from the responsibility for what he has done and thought in secret?

Omniscience means that our mystery is manifest. Omnipresence means that our privacy is public. The center of our whole being is involved in the center of all being; and the center of all being rests in the center of our being.2

“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”

When life becomes full; full of job and family and complicated relationships, professional demands and tight schedules, bosses’ expectations, long days with no time for leisurely lunches or even pleasant conversations over coffee, not to mention praying, you just might want to remind yourself about God:

“You know when I sit down and when I rise up,You discern my thoughts from afar.”

Fairly recently, I was on a plane on my way back to Manila enjoying a totally different persepective of the clouds. The cumulous clouds that day were bright and beautiful, but unlike how I normally "look up" at them, I was looking down at the clouds! And this verse came to mind:
“If I ascend to heaven, you are there.If I take the wings of the morningand settle at the farthest limits of the sea,even there your hand shall hold me fast.”

Tonight, when you fall exhausted into bed, you might be intrigued by:

“You search out my path and my lying down.”

And if your life can only be described as hellish: if nothing is working, if it all seems tragically empty and lonely, if relationships are sour and work is boring—and there is no light on the horizon—no promise, no hope—hear these words:

“If I make my bed in Sheol,” which is another word for hell, “You are there.”

And if you find yourself thinking a lot about your own limitations, if the recent death of a loved one, a close call, a dreaded lab report, the worst diagnosis you could imagine, if you find yourself thinking about what someone called “the insult of our mortality,” hear these words which I think should be the very last words any of us is privileged to hear:3

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover meand the light around me become night,even the darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day,for darkness is as light to you.’”

He knows my name...He knows my every thought
He see each tear that falls and hears me when I call.

_____________________________
1 Tillich, Paul, sermon Escape from God, UTS Chapel 1955
2 Ibid
3 Buchanan, John, sermon Inescapable God, Fourth Presbyterian Chicago, January 16, 2000

ENJOY THE RIDE

The sleepy town of San Mateo did not have a Baptist church. There's been a Methodist Church since the early 1900s, and a Baptist Church was started in the 1930s that dissolved during the war, its members joined the Methodists.

When my dad took on the challenge of starting a Baptist church in San Mateo, Rizal, he also took his whole family with him. When my parents started the church in our large garage, a good number of folks came. Some just wanting to know what Baptists are, and others came from neighboring churches- particularly, the Baptists from the Methodist Church, and a family whose church was in Quezon City.

My dad pastored that same church for the next 25 years, and in many ways, planted our family's roots in that sleepy little town.

One of the realities that my family had to face as we grew was the commute! My mom ran a real estate firm in Quezon City, my dad went with her and held office there because our church neither had an office (just a chapel and a Sunday School Room) or staff. We all woke up early- siblings who were in college left earlier than my parents. Parents drove me to school, etc.

Those were the days when cell phones were heavy like weapons and laptops or any device that made it particularly easy to get anything done while you were traveling were status symbols. What it meant in practical terms is that many parents left for work before their children got up in the morning and returned home often after they had gone to bed.

The morning and evening commute were always horrible experiences. As a college student, it meant waiting for a bus, a jeepney or a cab for at least an hour, not to mention the huge crowd that went along-- more like tackling with you on your pursuit of public transportation. Oh, how could I forget instances when I witnessed pickpockets, snatchers, and road accidents.

What it meant on the psyche of all of those commuters I cannot claim to know. But if I were to guess, I would say it drained something from them. But if there's anything I learned from commuting, it is this: enjoy the ride! Yes, I can make a few phone calls and stuff, but that won't stop me from enjoying the ride.

I recently bought a DVD, Into the Wild, where a young man who just graduated from Emory University decided donate his $24,000 savings, trashed his car, burned all his cash and tramped around America. From his home in summery Georgia, he ended up in the bleak Alaska. He wanted to live a simple life as he could, and he did.

Henry Thoreau, whom we know as a poet and essayist, a deep and practical thinker, lived in the mid-1800s, from 1817 to 1862. When we think of those days, we see them as simpler—not as complex and rushed and hurried as ours today. No cars, very little machinery. There were no telephones, no electronics. We think it must have been a calmer and easier time. Yet people in that era were uptight. They were overworked. They felt rushed, they felt troubled. It seems to be part of the human condition. Out of his own century Henry Thoreau spoke to this:
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
As you know, he withdrew from town life and went to live on Walden Pond to learn how to live simply and naturally. In those quieter sur­roundings he became attuned to nature, and much of what he taught and wrote about later he learned from the natural world at Walden Pond.
We need to learn to live in the moment—to be present to the present. To live in each day as each day happens. To be aware of the now, but with a sure hope for the future.
This is a very hard thing to do.
If I were to count the number of years that I have lost because I was anticipating something in the future, I am sure I would get depressed. And as I have talked to many people over the years, everyone has the same problem. Such a hurry, such a hurry, going so fast. Always in the future, always thinking about what is going to be, always dreaming, dreaming, thinking ahead, not living in the present.
There are two words we need to avoid if we are going to live in the present. One word is someday. Someday I’m going to do this. Someday I’m going to do that. And for me it was, “Someday I’m going to spend more time with my family, more time with loved ones.” And you know what’s happened? Some of them moved away, and some of them have died. Someday—I short-changed life.
The other word is when. When, when, when. But what happens with the whens? We spend time out there, and we miss what is going on in the very moment.
Ever wonder how many people right now, at this very moment, are present to the moment?

In this Christian Life, it is better to sit back in our chairs and enjoy the trip, take in the view passing the windows because we know where we're going. There is no need for hurry. The only moment we really have is the present moment. All we have is the moment. No more somedays; no more whens. One step at a time. And thank God for the moment!

(jlas.dking.acaliandro)

HEADACHE AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA)

NOT HUNG-OVER
This morning, I woke with a splitting headache-- let me say ahead that it wasn't a hang-over! The strongest drink I had last night after Bible study was pineapple juice at McDonald's!

Immediately after praying, I checked wikipedia and given the symptoms, I have reason to believe that it was migraine- one-sided, pulsating headache! Since it was early, I opted to wait it out by going back to bed. After an hour, the pain was still there. I slept some more. Around 12NN, I contacted a ministry assistant to inform the office that I was having a horrible headache that rendered me incapable of even walking to the nearest drugstore to get pain pills, and I had to take oatmeal with fresh milk and bananas for lunch. It was that bad.

At around 3, I managed to write and compose a worship planner for our midweek service, and emailed it right away. I went back to bed and slept the pain away, occasionally waking and whispering a prayer. When I finally woke up around 6, the pain has substantially subsided and I was able to walk to the nearest mall for dinner and get medicines.

I feel so much better now. Thank God. Too bad though I missed the midweek service.

THE LATEST AT THE PRESBYTERIAN GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

Although I am not surprised, I feel that the PC(USA) is going towards the direction many of the conservatives speak of being on the road to perdition.
Many evangelical-orthodox churches and ministers are hoping for a change in the heart and soul of the PC(USA) that is why a large majority of such churches and ministers stay within the denomination to make a difference. But so far, there has not been any change other than what is expected- the PC(USA) is becoming less and less evangelical-orthodox-Reformed-Biblical in its understanding and character.

By a vote of 41-11 Tuesday evening, the Assembly Committee on Church Orders and Ministry recommended to the 218th General Assembly that it send an amendment to the presbyteries to delete G-6.0106b — which requires “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness” for church officers — from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Book of Order.

This simply means that what the Bible calls sinful in the form of adultery, fornication and sexual perversion are no longer sinful within the ranks of the PC(USA).

A number of committee members, knowing the inevitable vote was coming, didn’t return to the committee’s meeting room after the dinner break. The Rev. Emily McColl, who was on the losing side of the vote, asked committee members to call those who didn’t return for the evening, saying she was “so saddened by their absence that my heart can hardly stand it.”
Committee member David Reimer predicted the fallout would be heavy. “I have a fear that the ramifications will be severe,” he said. “Churches won’t wait for the ratification votes [by the presbyteries] but will leave immediately, though I hope they won’t.”

McColl agreed with Reimer, saying “many churches will no longer consider us Reformed in their understanding of biblical interpretation and theology.”