A Few Nights Back

I was just praying a couple of nights back, and this verse caught my attention.

Psalm 65: 4 (NIV) - Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.

This is the question: what ARE the good things of God's holy temple?

I have to admit, I couldn't think of anything offhand. I looked at the rest of the psalm to see if there were any answers or clues. It continues to talk about God's character and power over the elements of nature (Psa 65:5-7). Then it describes how God gives blesses his people with abundant harvests.

If you know me long enough, you'll know that I have no objections to tangible and concrete blessings, such as wealth and health. And in this psalm, wealth is given in its most primal form, not gold, silver or precious stones, but in the form of food. In times of famine, what is the point of having money if there is no food for you to buy?

But I personally don't believe these tangible blessings are the good things the Psalmist refers to in verse 4. Those are depicted as outside of the temple, how God nourishes the land to give a bountiful harvest. What about the blessings within?

Another passage that came to mind as I mused on this,

Ephesians 1:3-9 – Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to son-ship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ…

This passage, I suspect, tells us the blessings within God's holy temple.

1. Being chosen for a destiny – vs 4-5
2. An adoption to son-ship (being an heir of God) – vs 5
3. Redemption and forgiveness – vs 7
4. Revelation of God's purpose – vs 8-9

Notice that forgiveness and being chosen also comes out early in Psalm 65?

Psalm 65:3 (NIV) - When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions.

And in the next verse:

Psalm 65:4 (NIV) – Blessed are those you choose and bring near…

Of course, Paul explains everything a lot more clearly in his letter to the Ephesians.

But there's a problem I realized I have fallen into. When I look at Ephesians 1:3-9, I know the words. But do I get the reality of the words? I don't think so. I think truly grasping these truths require revelation from the Holy Spirit of God.

1 Cor 2:9-10 (NIV) – As it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived" — the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

That is why even in Ephesians 1 Paul prays:

Eph 1:17-19 (NIV) – I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Right now, I find that I need to go back to that same prayer. All the prayer, study and meditation on that passage I have done before does not count for much in the now. It's not about how closely you followed the Lord and sought him in the days, months and years past; it's about how closely you follow him NOW. I used to take the Ephesians prayer and pray it over myself, another sibling-in-Christ and my pastor, and whenever I made that my regular practice my heart and mind was set on things above, not things below (Col 3:1-2). But once I stop I start to drift away.

I guess that is why Paul says "I KEEP asking"!

How about you? Is your heart set on things above? Are you enjoying and delighting in the good things of God's house, his holy temple?

Be blessed!

Add an Ad, Anyone?

If you are interested in making money via the Internet, there are three main ways.

1. You use your blog or website to promote your products and services
   
2. You use your blog or website to promote the products of other people, and when a sale is made through your site you get paid a commission
   
3. You have a blog or site that has very high traffic, and businesses who want to get the attention of those who pay attention to you pay you to feature their ads on your site.

As you can guess, I chose the first option, to promote my worship ministry e-training material. I didn't expect other people to want to advertise their stuff on my site, so I was pleasantly surprised when I was asked if I'd be willing to host an ad for Louie Giglio's products on my site. Being a fan of Louie Giglio's work, I of course agreed!

So my site has only ONE ad. At the other extreme, there's another worship leader's blog that has ads galore. What he did was that he signed up for those ad programs that allow Google or the blog host to allocate ads to your site based on what their systems think is relevant. Problem is, their systems decide based on keywords, and if advertisers of wrong products chose keywords poorly, the wrong kind of ads can appear on your site.

This has resulted in all kinds of products being displayed at his worship ministry site. One ad clicked over to a "Free Develop-Your-Psychic-Powers DVD program", another to "Witchcraft Exposed", which promises to teach you witchcraft secrets and spells that others will not teach you. To be frank, I sometimes head over to his site JUST to see what kind of ads will turn up THIS time!

On one hand it's funny, and on the other, it's sad. Because I know about the quirks of the ad program he signed up for, and having been online for a longer period of time than he was, I once emailed him some time back to tell him the ad program was featuring yoga products on his worship ministry site. I was expecting him to either:

1. Ignore me, since I am a stranger to him and him to me
   
2. Thank me profusely for pointing out something he didn't know and was embarrassing him behind his back. Then deal with it.
   
3. Tell me that he has investigated yoga and thinks it's OK. And if that was his personal conviction, I can respect that.

But can you believe it? He actually emailed me, saying "The ads are beyond my control…" No, they are not! He chose to allow ads on his blog. He could have decided to use a free blog that wouldn't charge him anything for hosting his site, or he could have just trusted in God to provide the less than US$10 each month to host his site.

Nope, he decided he needed the few-cents-per-click income from his site more than the respect of fellow believers and the need to follow his own convictions. * fumes *

Anyway…

In case you are thinking about making money via the Internet, I sincerely believe that the Internet, as a market, has matured. Gone are the days of making mindlessly easy money online. Making money online now takes wisdom, hard work and a willingness to grow way beyond the average person's comfort zone.

I am not very much help in this area, since I am only a worship musician. But I'd like to remind urge you to remember: whatever you do online, especially when it comes to making money, please remember:

1. The God you one day have to answer to;
   
2. Your own convictions, your personal beliefs on what is right and what is wrong; AND
   
3. Your spiritual family, the rest of the Body of Christ.

Don't do things that you'd be ashamed to acknowledge before anyone, such as using automatic article spinners to produce and submit many different versions of an article for the sake of tricking Google's search engines. If I'd be ashamed to admit that to Google, how much worse would it be to admit it before the Judge of all the earth, right?

Thanks for putting up with my rant. I just needed to get this off my chest. Be blessed!

How To Plan Evangelistic Concerts

Many, many years ago, the pastor of a Singapore mega-church was invited to be the featured speaker at an evangelistic concert organized by a small church. Just before the start of the evangelistic concert the local pastor said, "Let's pray for a mighty harvest!"

The mega-church pastor asked him "How many non-Christians are there in the audience?"

"I looked, and I think there are at least two…"

"The rest of the audience are already members of your church?"

"Yes…"

"Then why go through all this work and effort to run the concert? You can just invite those two non-Christians to have dinner with me and I can just talk with them over the meal, right?"

[loud silence follows]

That pastor shared with us that story in the debrief after a series of evangelistic concerts that were initiated, organized and executed by the youth ministry of his church. What impressed him was the fact that besides putting effort to have a good show (or why call it a concert?) we put in tons of effort to bring in the non-Christians to hear the message.

Those efforts paid off. We had, on average, 50-60 salvations per show. Not bad considering that at least 90% of it was run by students who had to juggle studying for exams with practising for the concert!

All this came to mind recently when a student of mine approached me to help for her church evangelistic concert. She asked me about how to find musicians, and I offered to help find them. But I needed to know what type of concert it was going to be, so I could find the appropriate musicians. And that was when she admitted that she didn't know and haven't yet planned what type of concert it was going to be.

Here's my advice to her (and anyone else planning evangelistic concerts)

If you want to do something big worth doing, you need the specific plan. When Moses was given the assignment to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, God gave him specific plans, blueprints and details. You need that kind of plan first before you even ask God about how to get the resources you need.

So if you say you want to do a concert ...

1) Who is it for? English-speaking? Chinese or dialect-speaking? Or others? What demographic do they belong to? Youth, working adults, male, female, families with kids... who?

You need to be focused on this, because in this day and age people have a lot of demands on their time. They won't turn up for something just because posters were put up or things like that. If you know WHO you are targeting, you can then formulate a plan to invite them for the concert.

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but if you live in a city like Singapore, the days of organizing an evangelistic rally with a famous speaker and having hordes of non-Christians, young, old and in-between, lining up to attend it, are long gone. People have separated themselves into their demographics (working adults, families with kids, elderly with health challenges, grandparents actively involved with their grandchildren, entrepreneurs, and so on). There is no more one-size-fits-all approach to reaching and connecting with them!

To know more about how social dynamics have changed in many parts of the world, head over to http://jvworship.blogspot.com/2010/10/introduction-to-marketing.html, I give a brief overview there.

2) What do they want?
This is the plan for inviting them to the concert- you have to show them that they should sacrifice 1-2 hours of their time to be at your concert. If you don't know what they want, you cannot persuade them.

Moreover, when you give them the reasons, you have to speak to them in THEIR language. As Paul said, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I may save some." (1 Cor 9:22). Many Christians are lazy when communicating with non-Christians; they make no effort to hear them before they start speaking down to them. It's like saying "Jesus is the answer!" but not stopping to ask them first what is their question.

Very shoddy. Any businessman who takes this kind of attitude towards getting customers for his business DESERVES to have his business fail… Are we less serious about an evangelistic concert than a businessman is over growing his business?

3) How can you give it to them?
If they want entertainment, you have to be more entertaining than what people get from TV, because otherwise they can stay at home and watch TV. If they want interaction, you need to offer them interaction that is better than joining their colleagues at the pub or the karaoke lounge. If they want information, you have to make sure the information you present them really adds value to their lives. What do they want?

The Problem is...
Many people plan evangelistic concerts based on what they feel other people OUGHT to want, rather than what they really do want. It's a very self-centred way of doing things, and it puts off the non-Christians. Evangelism is about connecting with people and then connecting them with God. And if you want to do an evangelistic concert, you'd better have evangelists on your team. And listen to what they say.

Many of the serious worship leaders and musicians I know have a prophetic inclination. They find spending extended periods of time praying and praising God something very natural, but are less developed in their people skills. That is why few of them can teach or evangelize. I suspect many Christian singers and musicians who have an evangelistic gifting end up in the secular world and connect well with non-Christians. But if they are left alone and without genuine fellowship and discipleship from fellow believers, they easily end up compromising their testimony, like salt that has lost its taste.

You may think that the hours you spend in prayer and worship makes you more spiritual than them. And maybe, just maybe, you are. But if you have no evangelistic gifting, you NEED their wisdom, advice and help to make an evangelistic concert work. God made us such that we need each other in the Body of Christ in order to come to the fullness of the measure of Christ (Eph 4:15-16).

In the end…

… After you have looked at all these questions and waited upon God, you may find that an evangelistic concert may not be the best thing to do after all. You may plan some other outreach event instead, and it may not even involve music. We musicians tend to look for ways to drag music into every church activity we are involved in. But that may not be necessary or wise all the time.

Don't do what I have seen too many pastors and leaders do – get started doing something and THEN ask God to guide them. That's wrong. The better way is to wait upon God for his instructions FIRST and then move from there. It can be difficult, because the flesh usually swings between rationalized laziness and frantic activity to try and please God. And as I am fond of saying, the fruit (results) don't lie!

So if you are planning for an evangelistic concert, I hope you will find my thoughts and opinions helpful. Be blessed!

Working With Your Pastor and Being the New Guy

A couple of quick points:

First, I came across a couple of very useful posts recently. They are about:

1) Working Together With Your Pastor - Useful advice for worship leaders on how to partner with your senior pastor.

2) Being the New Guy - if you are taking over a worship ministry established by someone else, what should you keep in mind?

Secondly, I'll be announcing a special gift for those who are on my Hidden-Truths mailing list. So if you are interested in growing in your understanding of spontaneous worship and playing for prayer time, make sure you keep an eye on your email inbox!

That's all for now. I'll be in touch...