To only think of Jesus as a long-haired, gentle man in a robe and wearing sandals has devastating effects on the church.  This perception has permeated the attitudes of many who perceive Jesus as a weak character but a good teacher.

The world seems blind to the Bible’s description of the resurrected Jesus, full of power and authority.  This description is highly offensive to the world.  But to worship Jesus as the artists have portrayed him instead of as the Son of Man in all his glory, is nothing short of idolatry.

• Adrian Warnock, Raised With Christ (Crossway, page 68).

Read the book on-line here.

In too many churches, I think, worship is just the prelude to the sermon…the implication being that we’ll get past all the preliminaries and we’ll get to the meat of the service, which is the sermon.

What I want people to understand is this:  That opening stuff?  That’s just as important.  In fact, it’s communicating the Gospel just as the sermon does.

When we rightly understand that, we’ll have priorities that are Biblical as well as our own personal preferences to guide us in terms of what Biblical worship should be.

• Bryan Chappell, President of Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis.

The promo video for his book, Christ-Centered Worship (Baker) is below.

View on YouTube here.

HT: ReformWorship.com

If there are so many Christians today, why don’t we see a greater impact on culture?

Mike Erre offers this explanation:

One of the foremost characteristics of modern American culture is reductionism.

We love to reduce big things to little things, complicated things to simple things, worldviews to bumper stickers, theological diversity to uniformity.

This comes to us as a gift from the Enlightenment worldview  that sought to control the world through breaking wholes into their component parts in order to understand them better…

This isn’t all bad, of course, but I wonder what violence this whole enterprise does to make sense of the Scriptures as a whole in the diversity of its entire witness.

We have reduced salvation into four steps that allow me entrance into heaven when I die.  But in so doing, we have bypassed the Gospel that Jesus preached – the Gospel of the kingdom of God.  This gospel deals with much more than ‘here and now’ rather than the ‘then and there.’  In this case, our reduction has helped to create the disparity between belief and behavior that we see everywhere.

If the gospel is only concerned with forgiveness and the life to come, the real discipleship to Jesus becomes optional.

- Mike Erre, Death By Church, pp. 25-26

Download the entire book here.

We love the church because Christ loved the church. She is his bride–a harlot at times, but his bride nonetheless, being washed clean by the word of God (Eph. 5:25-26).

If you are into Jesus, don’t rail on his bride. Jesus died for the church, so don’t be bothered by a little dying to self for the church’s sake.

If you keep in mind that everyone there is a sinner (including yourself) and that Jesus Christ is the point and not you, your dreams, or your kids, your church experience might not be as lame as you fear.

- Kevin DeYoung and Ted Gluck, excerpt from Why We Love the Church:  In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religions.

Check out www.welovethechurch.com.

Have you noticed the inordinate number of new books released the past few years (since 2007) that focus on worship and serving the poor?

To wit (from Christianbook.com):

• The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearnes (Thomas Nelson, 2009)
• Servolution:  Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving by Dino Rizzo (Zondervan, 2009)
• The New Monasticism by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Brazos Press, 2008)
• The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton, John Ortberg (IVP, 2007)
• When Necessary Use Words by Mike Pilavatchi (Gospel Light, 2007)
• Plunge2Poverty:  An Intensive Poverty Simulation Experience (New Hope, 2007)

Are there others you can add to this list?