Last time I began reflecting on our experience visiting nearly a dozen churches in the Grand Rapids area. My intent was to be a gracious guest and not a critical consumer, and just to explore what the family of faith was doing around town and in our neighborhood. In part 1, I reflected on the welcome and the children’s ministry teams—the pillars of hospitality. Today I’ll be looking at the Sunday morning service itself. 3. Music I’m titling this section “music” instead of “worship” because while the music is worship, worship is more than the music. The greeters and childcare workers mentioned last time were worshiping with their acts of…

When we first moved to the Grand Rapids area, we only visited three churches. They were all decent churches, but we were eager to settle in quickly and decided to go with the church that Jenny had been involved in when she was still a high school student. In August, we decided it was time to move on. But this time I didn’t want to jump quickly into the next church. When I was a worship musician in Dallas I had the pleasure of worshiping with a number of churches across the metroplex. After living here for three years, I found myself eager to get out and explore. I wanted…

For most of this week, I have been discussing the question of whether or not God still speaks, with local pastor Jim Samra’s book God Told Me as something of a conversation partner. And you don’t have to be incredibly astute to see that much of what I’ve written has been warnings and cautions. The idea that God would tell you something He didn’t tell anyone else is an incredibly powerful idea. If abused, it could lead to self-delusion or worse—deluding others. When God speaks, nothing else matters. So we had better be very, very sure it’s not anything less than God in the control booth. In this last entry,…

Last time I tried to clarify some central issues in the question of whether God still speaks. I argued that the Bible is sufficient, the canon is closed, and Christ is the pinnacle and consummation of God’s revelation. But I also argued that God is intimately involved in our lives, that since He’s God He can do whatever He wants, and that there is biblical precedent for the idea of using speech as a metaphor when God is working but hasn’t actually given us new words. So with all that in mind, let’s return to the question: does God still speak to us? Well, first of all, I don’t believe…

Last time I raised the question of whether or not God still speaks to us. I explained that I’ve gone from one extreme to the other, first believing that He does, then believing He does not. Now I am reevaluating the issue with the help of Jim Samra’s book God Told Me. I should mention that I don’t intend for this series to be an in-depth look at Samra’s book. It just so happened that I came across the book in a very different context at a time when the issue had resurfaced. Or did it “just so happen”? A central premise of Samra’s book is that God is deeply involved…