Tag: Life

The Summer, 2007 REACH! newsletter for WELS youth workers says that the upcoming youth rally will offer “Open Space.” This will be a collection of topical discussions or presentations in “an informal/open format.” Sounds like a good idea. It then lists some questions that will serve as topics, with a bit of explanation for each. Here’s one.

What kind of worship do you prefer?

The results from the 2007 Survey of WELS Teens found 72% of the 421 respondents preferring public/group worship that was described in these two ways: a) creative worship using the hymnal along with a variety of other resources, led often by an organ but also regularly involving other instruments – 51%, and b) contemporary worship, informal, with nothing from the hymnal, with praise choruses and a praise band of various instruments – 21%. Only 12% preferred historic worship using only the orders of service and hymns from the hymnal, led by an organ. 16% were unsure.

If I had to answer this, I don’t know where our congregations’ current worship practice would fall. As I began reading it, I thought that option A described what we’re doing. Really. We’re open to church members who can contribute musically on their own instruments, though we haven’t recently seen enough interest from any musicians (besides myself) to make it happen. It does take a lot of preparatory work to play an instrument in church. Ask any organist. I can vouch that our worship is creative, because an awful lot of work goes into the preparations for all the various parts — many hours each week. Sometimes even the choir sings, which I think is creative, too. We also use a variety of resources besides the hymnal. One look at my own library will confirm this. Chief among our “other resources” is the Bible.

But then there’s the bit about “historic worship,” which also describes what we do. We almost always use the orders and hymns from the hymnal, and that means that every single service is unique in theme and form as we proceed through the year. Many of the differences are a matter of choice: we could do things a certain way, but we opt for another way. Variety and options abound. I don’t see “historic worship” working against creativity in the least, so I’m puzzled.

Maybe I missed the real meaning of option A. Is it really what Lost and Found describes in Opener?

EVERY SUNDAY IS JUST LIKE THE LAST, AS IF THE CHURCH HAS NO HISTORY AND THE PEOPLE HAVE NO PAST. WE JUST SING THE SONGS WE LIKE TO SING AND WE PREACH ABOUT THE NEWS AND WE THINK UP SOME NEW THING JUST TO FILL UP THE PEWS.

That wasn’t my impression the first time I read A. Or, maybe “Creative” really means something more like “entertaining,” “amusing,” “diverting,” or “fun.” Or it could mean “spontaneous,” “unprompted,” or “impulsive.”

An important observation is the difference between Israel around the golden calf (“Is that the sound of battle?”) and Judah celebrating the Passover under King Josiah, about 8-900 years later. On the one hand, Israel impulsively does what seems right to man, and on the other hand, Judah pays close attention to observe exactly what God has provided, because therein lies His blessings. This was quite the Passover celebration. It was a universal sacred meal, recalling the time when God’s people were shielded from death by their communion in the body and blood of a lamb. Do we have any such thing today? We have something even better.

I think a great deal of creativity is appropriate for God’s people. King Josiah and his subjects took the initiative to do things in a way that God’s people had never done before: worship according to God’s Word, without any compromise.
But maybe I don’t really know what is meant by “creative.”

Or, maybe there’s something wrong with the way those three choices were described. So, I’d be glad to hear your thoughts. What kind of worship do you prefer?

This may be a “news post” of some kind, but it’s of a specialized interest. I’d call it a caveat. In other words: Beware!

One of my sisters recently had a problem with Arizona State Credit Union. It was disappointing to hear about, especially considering my own good experience with University of Wisconsin Credit Union.

This is what happened, briefly. They charged her a total of between $200-300 dollars, claiming that she made some accounting mistake. It would be easy to do that, if you miss one deposit and have a whole raft of withdrawals that cut your balance close enough.

Anyway, she wasn’t convinced and checked their math. It was wrong. She went and explained it all, complete with paper documentation. Their explanation? The critical deposit in question, which made all the difference — they had put a “hold” on the deposit, so it wasn’t registered in the proper time frame. This, they said, wasn’t their fault.

Problem was, it was a cash deposit. As she told them, since when does anyone put a hold on a cash deposit? Something is rotten in the county of Maricopa. When asked what the next lame excuse would be, they simply said they didn’t really know what happened. And it still wasn’t their fault.

Now, an unjustified charge of $200-300 dollars would irritate me sorely. It’s what we call theft. Go ahead and look it up in your catechism. You’ll find it under the seventh commandment, unless you’re in a Reformed church. Then it’s probably the eighth. That’s not the sort of practice I look for in my financial institution. Even to contemplate doing this would be wrong — see the Ninth (aka Tenth) Commandment.

Will there be justice? I think we all begin to accept these situations after a while. Most of us are not really in a position to set things right. That’s why Solomon was appreciated: he was a just king. But for anyone in such a position to set things right, to turn a blind eye is to participate in the injustice. The Day is coming when those accounts will be settled forever.

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Update on 5/13

The excuse about a hold on the critical deposit amounted to an uninformed guess from the customer service representative. That’s less than impressive by itself, but not necessarily malicious. I’ll take one of my “bad marks” away from ASCU. But they still keep a whole pile of other bad marks, since they have no explanation for their charges, and no willingness to acknowledge that their customer with supporting documentation could be right, after all.

As fun as it may be to portray the good confession from a worldly point of view — and I hope it amused you too — it becomes extremely serious when Jesus asks the question. This is what He was asking Simon Peter upon the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. “Do you love Me more than [you love] these?”

Continue reading “Do you love Me more than these?” →

Ask any of my relatives, and they’ll tell you that my sending of birthday wishes usually begins after the event itself. I was a little busy yesterday, and I didn’t make time to mark the birthday of The Plucked Chicken. It all began on April Fool’s Day, 2006. At the time, I wondered if it would last to the next day, or become another short-lived, bad joke. The jury is still out on the joke thing, but at least we know the chicken survived a whole year. Maybe it even sprouted a feather or two.

As I write, not counting this entry, there have been exactly 100 entries posted. Wow. If that had been a goal, I wouldn’t have made it. Even more interesting for me to see is that we’ve had 77 comments published, and 111 comments filed. That’s right, only 111. I was a little concerned at first about dealing with comment spam, but it seems to have abated. The anti-spam facilities of Serendipity have helped greatly.

Continue reading “Happy Birthday!” →

Like Pastor Abrahamson at The Abrahamsons, I find it interesting to see where the readers are. I’ve been surprised to find how many people actually view The Plucked Chicken, for starters. Lately I’ve also noticed a spike in traffic on Thursdays. What’s happening on Thursdays? I don’t know. But there are about twice as many visits Thursdays as there are Wednesdays.

Here are the approximate places where some of our readers access The Plucked Chicken. If you recognize this as your home town, or at least where your ISP is located, feel free to send me an email and let me know who you are. You can use jmjac at gorge dot net. Just fix the address first. The following visitors were all from yesterday. I can guess who some of you are, but not all. And don’t worry about me publishing your names. Unless you tell me it’s OK with you, I won’t do it. You could give me an alias, though. 🙂

In Minnesota:

• Minneapolis

• Mankato

• Madison Lake

• Bagley

• Kasota

• Lismore

• Trail

• Winger

In Washington:

• Everett

• Snohomish

• Klickitat

In Oregon:

• Hood River

• Portland

• North Plains

• Beaverton

In Arizona:

• Phoenix

• Prescott

And more… But I’ll mention the others another time.

One might wonder why Christians still observe the season of Lent, with its various traditions and rites in this age of casual informality and frequent irreverence. Lutherans have provided an answer to this question in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession article XV, 38-39. This answer also explains why Lutherans have continued using the ancient liturgy. Though such things are not strictly required by God’s Word, notice the strife that innovations of worship and seasonal observances bring to the Church! Likewise, note the great teaching value of such traditions for instructing worshippers in the faith!

(The “opponents” mentioned here are the servants of the Roman pope who were accusing Lutherans in 1530 of forsaking the Christian faith.)

Furthermore, we gladly keep the ancient traditions set up in the church because they are useful and promote tranquility, and we interpret them in the best possible way, by excluding the opinion that they justify. But our enemies falsely charge that we abolish good ordinances and church discipline. We can claim that the public liturgy in the church is more dignified among us than among the opponents. If anyone would look at it in the right way, we keep the ancient canons better than the opponents.

May the readers of this blog all have the opportunity to hear the salutary preaching of our Lord’s cross this season, whether by sermon or by liturgy, to your great blessing!

See my post on the church newsletter blog explaining this, and then place your order. It’s a good price on a timeless classic.

This volume includes a schedule for reading it through in a year. Maybe we should set up an online discussion group for doing this reading together. Sometimes we need a bit of extra motivation to stick to a schedule like that.

I finally finished a little book that’s already been more influential upon me and my work than any other non-theological book, and even many theological books. Upon a first look at the cover and name, it may appear to be of the “self-help” variety, a genre which I have not taken seriously for many years. Many self-help books have religious overtones, and even teach a kind of self worship. I despise that kind of thing as the dangerous drivel it is. But this one is different. I wouldn’t even call it a self-help book.

The title is Getting Things Done. It’s a fairly popular book by a “personal productivity guru” named David Allen. I found it while searching the Internet for better ways to use the functionality of the DateBk6 program on my PDA. (That’s “Palm Pilot” for the acronymically challenged.)

After reading this book and implementing its techniques in at least part of my life, I’m convinced that it should be a textbook for a third semester class at our seminary. That’s the first semester of the second year. Why then? Because any earlier, and the students would not appreciate the difference it makes, and probably wouldn’t take it seriously. Any later, and the students would lose too much of the increased potential for learning at seminary once they start using these techniques.

Continue reading “Should Have Read This in Seminary” →