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Some exciting things are happening, and I will tell you all about them soon. I can’t right now just because it’s so early in the process, but very soon I will be able to publicly reveal more information. In the meantime, it’s off to Kaintuck for Thanksgiving with the extended fam, and it sounds like it will be more extended than normal (I’m taking a tent to sleep in).

For now, enjoy a random picture I have selected for your enjoyment:

Sometimes, when you’re hanging with the guys, you do something that’s funny. Often, it comes back later and causes great pain and humiliation. For Nathanael, this is one of those times.

I wrote this article for class. It’s pretty hard to get Advent down in 150-250 words, but I did my best (in exactly 250). I figured I’d share it with you since I haven’t written anything in forever.

As we approach the Christmas season, you will begin to recognize much of the liturgy we use for the season, particularly that associated with Advent. The word “advent” actually comes from the Latin word “adventus,” which means ‘a coming.’ The whole Advent season is remembering the coming of Christ to Earth as a man. The Christmas season itself focuses on Christ’s birth, but it is the beginning of a focus on Christ’s life from now until Good Friday and Easter, when we celebrate Christ’s death and Resurrection. If you’ve spent many years in the church, chances are you know exactly what we do to celebrate Advent. We light candles, read specific Bible passages, and focus our thoughts on the meaning of the Christmas season. But do you know what the colors and candles actually represent?
Generally, the Advent Wreath is at the base of the candles. It’s circular shape reminds us of God’s eternity, that he has no beginning or end. The green of the wreath is a symbol of the new life we are given through Christ. Each of the four outer candles symbolize a specific week before advent. Three are purple, to symbolize Christ’s royalty, and the third candle is traditionally pink, symbolizing our joy at the Advent. The white candle in the center is the Christ candle, and is lit on Christmas Eve or Day. It is located in the center to remind us the central focus of Christmas is the incarnation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

In The Republic, Plato quoted Damon of Athens as saying “Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws.” For thousands of years, music has been at the forefront of culture. While we know very little of what the music was for thousands of years, we do know that it showed up fairly early in the history of humanity, and has played a prominent role in our lives ever since.

The church scene is in a very interesting place right now. The praise chorus movement of the last 30 years or so has almost completely obliterated hymns in some circles, and has caused a general uproar by everyone (I haven’t told you anything you don’t already know). What is interesting to me is where worship in the church is going. Generalities are usually frowned on, especially in the academic realm, but I can’t help but generalize church worship into two separate movements fueled by my generation–the ones who are quickly growing up and taking the place in the church that boomers held for so long. It seems to me that people my age are either headed down some sort of seeker sensitive/emergent road, or they are looking for something that feels much more liturgical and less new age.

I have discovered a new passion this year: I believe that people who call themselves Christians should know what they believe and what it means to be a Christian. Specifically, I feel like the church desperately needs a movement to solid theological understanding, and a replacement of ‘emotional worship’ for ‘purposeful worship.’ Honestly, as much as I despise the thought of coining this phrase, there is no getting around its effectiveness in relaying my point: I believe the church needs to get back to ‘Purpose Driven Worship.’

A thousand years ago, everything had explicit purpose when it was done in the church setting. Cathedral architecture all reflected theological understandings in ways meant to convey that theology to the common worshiper. Floor plans were designed to teach. Stained glass windows all contained Biblical teachings, often stories from the Bible. In a world where the overwhelming majority of people were completely uneducated, the cathedral was a basic way to educate the Christian and remind them of what it meant to be a follower of Christ.

Today it is not a fundamental education that is lacking from our society, but rather a religious one. Most people go about their lives, blindly believing whatever it is they have been told by parents, friends, media, society, and the like. Not only do they have no clue what they believe, they don’t even know why they believe it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we should cram years of theology down a new believer’s throat as soon as they become a Christian. Jesus himself said we should have faith like a child. But faith is not negated by education, rather I believe my faith as increased as my theological understanding has grown. God’s desire is not for us to be content with the basics. James tells us that God will give wisdom generously to all who ask for it, and Paul mentions more than once (okay, Paul mentions it, and whoever wrote Hebrews mentions it) that we should not continue to drink milk, but should move on to solid food. I just can’t stress enough how important it is that Christians continue to develop their spiritual life, not just by praying for it to happen, but by putting forth personal effort to make it happen.

One of the major benefits of a highly liturgical service is the meaning that everything has. Because everything is planned out ahead of time, the words to be spoken written with deep care, the rituals performed with highest consideration, you get a service that has purpose. It tends to emphasize the corporate aspects of worship, and also helps to de-emphasize the individual who is leading the service. Together, all of these things will hopefully draw the attention to the words being spoken and the actions being performed, rather than on feelings and emotions.

So… what does this all have to do with Damon of Athens? A lot. I recently read a study on the most popular worship choruses of the past fifteen years and their theological content, focusing specifically on trinitarian worship. Of the 72 songs, two of them mention all three persons of the Trinity by name, and a third does indirectly. Does anyone see a problem with this? Plato and Damon believed that songs were the most impactful part of culture on their society, and the same holds true today. Like it or not, believe it or not, what we’re singing is shaping and forming our beliefs, and according to the 72 most popular praise choruses of recent, apparently we don’t believe very much in a triune God.

My point is not to bash praise choruses, although I think it is deserved. My point is to try and show just how much of a need there is for solid theological teaching to all Christians, regardless of how old they are, what denomination they attend, or where they live. We serve the almighty, infinite God of all things. Don’t you think it’s worth the effort to get to know who he is?

I’m not sure how many of you are still reading since I haven’t written much in a while, but for those of you who are you’ll be happy to know I have four post-it notes of topics to write on, and they’ll be receiving attention starting tonight. These ideas spawned from lunch with a very dear friend of mine, Dr. John Maher. I had music theory with him way back in my Freshman and Sophomore years, and always was a big fan of his. Somewhere along the way last year, we started getting to know each other on a more personal level over the course of several lunches, and now we try to meet for lunch a few times a semester to enjoy each other’s company and usually to have some very engaging discussion. I can’t express to you enough how much our lunches together mean to me, and how thankful I am for them and the relationship we’ve built over the past couple of years.

Today at Subway, we had some really great conversation about the things that were on our minds, mostly about religion and the church, and it spawned a lot of thinking for us. My four post-it notes have 12 different topics we touched on today that I would like to write on. Some of them are really in-depth topics that would require a lot of research and hard work, many are things I need to think on a lot more, and a couple are simply opinion issues that I have strong opinions about.

I can’t promise you which topic I’m leaning towards writing about tonight, but something is coming. And it will be deep. And it will be worth reading (I hope).

Tonight after dinner I went to help Aaron Gouge finish up part of a roofing job he’s doing. He realized that it was supposed to rain tonight, and he wanted to get at least one half of the roof done and tarped so the rain didn’t damage the house he was working on. For about the first hour and 15, everything went fine. We worked under the light of our headlamps; I fed him shingles, he nailed them down, and we listened to oldies (which apparently means 60s and 70s now) and talked. Just as he was getting to the last few shingles, we saw our first flash of lightning, and began our very much audible prayers for the rain to hold off long enough for us to finish. The storm continued to roll in, lightning flashing every now and then, and we finished the shingles and moved right to putting down the tarps. As we began laying them down, it started to rain, and we ran out of tarps with about 18′ of roof left to cover still. Crap.

So we quickly picked up and headed to the townhouse, where I knew there was an extra tarp in the closet that was long enough. During the short drive, the storm quickly turned from a rainstorm to a fairly violent thunderstorm, and by the time we had the tarp back at the site, it was pelting huge fatty raindrops and lightning was flashing about every three seconds or so. Aaron and I have always wanted to climb up onto a roof in the middle of a severe thunderstorm, and that’s exactly what we did. We climbed up, layed down the last tarp, and went about dropping bundles of shingles to secure it to the roof. All I remember was a lot of lightning, a lot of running on a wet roof (not really intelligent), and a lot of very loud prayers for mercy as we quickly dropped the last bundles and ran back across to our perfectly conductive aluminum ladder and scurried down to the safety of Aaron’s car. We were drenched from head to foot, full of adrenaline, and somewhat amused at what we had just done.

So, we learned a few things tonight. The first one is an easy one. Don’t do roofing projects during severe thunderstorms. Simple enough, right? Secondly, if you must do a roofing project during a thunderstorm, make sure you have enough tarp to cover the entire roof. And thirdly, always make sure someone is holding on to the tarp during a thunderstorm. If no one holds on to it, chances are it will blow away.

If you need more lessons about the perils of rooftopping during thunderstorms, let me know and I will be more than happy to sit and chat with you about it sometime.