我只覺得，今天信徒普遍對講壇信息的要求，既危險，連多麼不合真理也不自知。
危險，因為正正是那些討人喜歡、「頭痛醫頭，腳痛醫腳」的所謂「生活性」講章，造成了今天信徒，個個成了只能給你20分鐘的「聽道植物人」：我們期待講員給我答案，而沒有興趣被信息挑戰去自己從聖經中找答案。
不合真理，是因為坦白一點說，講道的目的是為幫助你認識從聖經中啟示的神的計劃，而不是神在聖經中，說了甚麼去幫助你和你的計劃：是你要怎樣加入神的工作，不是祂要如何配合你。
我們會批評某些傳道、同工講道能力之低，卻漠視自己原來連最基本的聽道目的也攪不清楚。
Labels: Reflection, Worship
I once understood the gospel as God asking me to let him into my narrative, to find room for him in my heart and life. But now I realize that God bids me to find my place in his narrative. In God's story, he, with his own two hands—the incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit—recapitulated and reversed the human situation so I can now live in him. Through him I can live in the expectation of a restored world without the presence of evil. Here and now, because God became incarnate and recapitulated all things, I live in him, in his narrative, and he lives in my life, which is to be a witness to his narrative for the world.
Labels: Healing, Reflection, Worship
Picture a father and son flying a kite together. Take a minute to see those images in your mind. Where are they, how do they relate to each other, what is their body language saying?
Would you use the word successful to describe their time together? Would you use a lot of numbers to describe their time together? Would you talk about the wind coming in at 14.3 knots and that they got 106.2 ft of line played out and that they had it aloft for 31 minutes and 8 seconds? Would you talk about it as successful and use numbers to show why?If a "worship service" is fundamentally time with our heavenly Daddy, why do people, when asked about the particular church they're involved in, answer that things are successful? "Attendance is up. Giving is up." Why would they talk about it as being successful and use numbers?
Are we focused on our time with our Daddy, or are we focused on getting the kite 2 feet higher than the last time? Does it matter if the kite crashes? Does it matter if there's no wind? Does it matter how high the kite gets?
Labels: Reflection, Worship
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!
教會歷盡了苦難，世人譏笑毀謗，
內爭分裂她身體，異端叛道中傷，
聖徒儆醒爭相問，黑夜到底多長？
哭泣將變為歌唱，轉眼即見晨光。
主 禮： 我們擘開這餅，分享基督的身體。
會 眾： 我們雖眾，仍屬一體，因為我們都是分享這餅。
Labels: Healing, Reflection, Worship
每次，當望著手中擘開的餅，我總會提醒自己：我是永遠連於我主耶穌那裡，成為祂的手、腳、眼、耳、口…
擘餅的時候，我常常提醒自己：頭，或會因著表示謙卑而垂下，但我的眼睛，卻永遠需要向上望。因為我只有一位需要效忠的主，沒有其他 —— 我候命於祂、遵命於祂。
拿著手中擘開的餅，我省察。人其中一樣最大的悲哀，莫過於不再看見自己的錯，或是自己會錯。不再向神認罪的信徒，和聲稱不會再犯罪的人一樣是在自欺欺人。手中拿著的餅和杯，常提醒我，每天都需要神的賜予。
耶穌的身體已經為我們被擘開，以至四分五裂的我們可以被連合起來。一個身體。拿著這個被擘開的餅，我省察著自己與別人的關係。
而每當我望見手上拿著的餅和杯時，我總是堅持自己以微微的笑臉，以喜樂（不是罪疚）的心，和歷世歷代跟隨祂腳蹤的眾聖徒，同聲說：「主耶穌啊，我願袮來！」
Labels: Recommend, Reflection, Worship
希望某電視台的主持們，下年要戒掉對著鏡頭聲嘶力竭、連續大叫「好開心」的壞習慣。如果真的開心，你不叫旁人也知道；但勉強裝出來的，就算你怎樣叫，也看不出分別。如此舉動只會令人感到極度煩厭，更不要說帶動到任何氣氛，簡直有反效果。
Labels: Reflection, Worship
28 摩西在耶和華那裡四十晝夜，也不吃飯也不喝水。耶和華將這約的話，就是十條誡，寫在兩塊版上。 29 摩西手裡拿著兩塊法版下西奈山的時候，不知道自己的面皮因耶和華和他說話就發了光。 32 ...他就把耶和華在西奈山與他所說的一切話都吩咐他們。
Labels: Reflection, Worship
People are free to choose. People will vote with their feet. But I’m convinced that at the roots of the church split movement and the church-consumer drive is a deeper ill, and that is our inability and unwillingness to love and forgive– and be reconciled to– all people. It betrays the serious fracture not only in the church, but in all religion, all races, and all people. It exposes the fact that we love ideas more than our fellow human beings.
Labels: Recommend, Reflection, Worship
Liturgies of healing teach us to see the world with new eyes, to touch and be touched in safe and affirming ways, to entertain new and inspiring images of God, and to place both past and future in God's hands. Our prayer do not invoke a distant, otherwise unconcerned deity, but awaken us to God's healing touch within us and around us in each moment of life.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
Worship is a profound act of trust and imagination. In contrast to the zero-sum, one-dimensional, closed system world views that often characterize our perception of everyday life, the community at worship envisages a world of miracle and surprise in which we expect great things not only of God, but also of ourselves. In this God-permeated world, life is abundant, hope is real, and healing is always on the horizon.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
從頭學崇拜
作為基督徒，我們最基本的信仰責任，便是每星期日返崇拜。
崇拜，幾乎是每一個基督徒每週都會做的事情，卻甚少有人教我們如何返崇拜。你可能會問：返崇拜，是很自然不過的事情罷！那也要人教？
情況就好像談戀愛。當然，不用教，年輕男女也會談起戀愛來。但若果有人教導他們談戀愛的正確心態和技巧，他們便可以少走不少冤枉路吧。
今日，或許我們對崇拜有諸多的不滿足，又或許我們對崇拜無甚感覺，又或許我們自覺對崇拜沒有問題... 無論如何，也是時候來從頭學習如何參加崇拜吧！
Labels: On the light side, Pi, Reflection, Worship
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
In [thanksgiving], the past is renewed, the present is transformed, and the future is made already present. Thanksgiving is the generation of hope by the recollection of past mercies.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
Prayer... is more than a private transaction between the individual and God. Prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit, who joins with our spirit to give voice to the inarticulate groanings of the whole creation, binding us to the suffering and the needy, impelling us to service, pointing us beyond the present pain toward the fulfillment of the hope that has been planted in us. Those who pray have their vision expanded beyond themselves, beyond their own concerns and welfare, toward an ever-larger view of the church and the world, embracing others who pray on earth and in heaven, the needs and concerns of all the world, and the promised future of God.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
In the Eucharist, past, present, and future are transcended, and while still in this world we stand already in the kingdom of God. We are in possession of what we wait for. The church is the community that keeps and is formed by the celebration of the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
The church exists to worship God. That basic fact needs to be asserted clearly and unambiguously again and again, for it is not at all obvious to many members of the church who assert that the church exists to evangelize the world ("the church is mission") or to serve people's needs (the clergy are thought of as members of the "helping profession.") The church, in its grandest view of itself and its most basic view of its purpose, exists to give God what is due, to acknowledge God as God. The one who is the creator and preserver of the whole universe is, as the Te Deum sings, "worthy of all worship." The purpose of the church is to focus and render that worship.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
The Christian church understands itself to be the continuation of Israel, a people called to be separate from those around them. God's people form a community with a different story, vision, and way of life, an outpost of the new creation in the midst of the old... If that is in fact so, then the church ought not expect growth and popularity. Indeed, the church ought to be suspicious of what is popular and attractive... The church's contrary message upsets the way of the world and counters its natural course. But because it is not what is expected, the gospel has the potential of answering the deepest human need.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
Worship is also the summit of faith... The staircase that descends to us from God's dwelling place also ascends from this world to the One who comes down to us through the gate of heaven and who leads us back through it to our true and abiding home. Worshio, therefore, is divine service in a double sense. It is God's service of us, and it is our service of God in response to the divine initiative... It begins with God's service to us and it continues with our response.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
The liturgy of the church provides a framework within which the deepest mysteries of Christianity await discovery.
Labels: Pi, Reflection, Worship
