Childlike

I ran across an article on Integrity Music's website that talks about ministering and living in a child-like way. While I might quibble with a couple of his minor points, I really appreciated the idea and spirit of Rod Butler's article.

Greetings from Disneyland!

Hello from the Magic Kingdom! We had a swell time at Disneyland. While Molly loved just about everything, Ethan thought almost every ride was "scary", but it was a blast taking them all over the place.

Kelly and I are both from Southern California, so we've been to the park many times before. But it was really fun to see it through the kids' eyes this time. Molly especially loved the Matterhorn roller coaster--I believe her exact words were, "That was extremely awesome!"

Another fun thing was a new place where kids could meet the Disney Princesses. Check out these pictures of Molly with Mulan and Sleeping Beauty...

You'll have to ask Kelly about the ridiculously long wait we endured to get in, but I just love the look on Molly's face as she sits there in awe, meeting them face to face (if you look close enough she actually is wearing a T-shirt with Disney Princesses on it). In the second picture it almost looks like she's averting her eyes in the presence of such royalty!

After I loaded these pics onto my computer a thought crossed my mind...I wondered if my face would look kind of like Molly's here when I finally get a one-on-one audience with Jesus. I have no idea how it will work up there, if we'll all be able to talk to Him at any time or if there'll be a "ridiculously long wait" to see Him face to face. But even if it's the latter, I'll jump in line with everybody else and wait a hundred years if I have to. Maybe a long wait would be good to give me some time to think of what to say! (I'm pretty sure the Princesses had to drag out any information from our suddenly shy 6-year-old). Regardless, I look forward to the day when we who love Christ will be taken up to meet Him in the real Magic Kingdom!

Late Night Worship

It's been a few days since I blogged anything because the Janssen family is now on vacation in sunny Southern California visiting Kelly's parents. We took off at about 3:30 p.m. on Monday and drove straight through (975 miles, 17 hours -- whee!).

After about 12:30 a.m. my night-owl family all finally went to sleep and I listened to music as I drove the thrilling I-5 corridor. I had a couple CDs that I had bought recently, one from Third Day and another a worship CD called "Everything Glorious" from the Passion worship band, and I listened to each of them twice. I really enjoyed the first one, and I hope to use a couple of the songs someday for special music at our fellowship. But the second CD was just great for me. It was recorded live with several thousand college students in Texas somewhere, and I was equally moved by the music and the enthusiastic participation by the crowd.

Maybe it's not very exciting for me to blog about myself driving all night. But as a worship pastor I hope everybody occasionally has worship experiences like I had at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I was trying not to sing too loud so my family could sleep, but my heart was sure fully engaged. I was genuinely moved by the songs as they helped me express to God how great and how good I believe He is!

I hope your worship isn't limited to our gatherings on Sunday mornings. God is searching for worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and truth, who will love Him with all their hearts, all their souls, all their minds and all their strength. So make time to connect with Him everyday--I promise that your Sunday worship will be much sweeter if you do!

If you're a part of our New Hope family, I've planned some great songs for Dustin and the band to lead while I'm gone, and I'll sure miss worshiping with you! And stay tuned to the blog here and maybe I'll send you some exciting pictures from Disneyland!

The Real Saint Patrick

I was reading a friend's blog and he recently posted a link to Christian History Magazine which has a feature on Saint Patrick. You may be interested to read about the man of God behind the "holiday"... 131 Christians Everyone Should Know - Patrick

(And to the left I've included an actual picture of a rare "Patrickal Eclipse")

New blog possibilities!

Are you a fan of our blogs? We are experimenting with putting our blogs on an outside host (Google’s Blogger.com) rather than directly on our website.

There are a few advantages to this possible change:

First, it will save us a little bit of memory on our church site because our blog pictures will be stored elsewhere. I know, that’s a pretty boring reason, but keep reading!

Second, we can separate our two blogs--the New Hope Connection blog and the Israel Connection blog--so they’ll be on different pages. So, for example, if you’ve been thinking, “I don’t care about whatever drivel that Brian Janssen fellow is typing, just give me more Israel talk!” then this would be perfect for you. Or, if you’re a skinhead neo-Nazi living in Wibaux, Montana, and you randomly stumbled onto our site and are inexplicably curious about our church life here in McMinnville, now you can skip Dewey’s Zionist rants. Or, maybe you really enjoy both blogs, but you find it somehow jarring to go straight from a moving entry about a suicide bombing in Haifa to a wacky picture of a toddler duct taped to the wall (hey, it could happen). Well, these are some reasons we might consider separating the two. Interesting? Try this one…

Third, you can click on any pictures that are included in a blog entry and (pop!) a larger version of the picture will appear! So, when you’re reading a blog entry and you see a group shot of our church and you think, “I wonder if that’s me right there?” you can click on the picture and see a bigger version of it! Go ahead, try it with the picture on the right! Isn’t that spiffy? But wait, there’s more!

Fourth, and most interesting to us, our current site has no way for readers to comment or respond to a blog entry. Have you ever read a blog and wanted to add your own two cents? We want our website to be a point of connection for the people in our fellowship. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could attach a comment to something you’ve read and then see what others have said? That way it’s more than just Dewey and me communicating to y’all--everyone can participate (unless you’re that guy in Montana--your comments will be blocked, so don’t bother).

So what do you think? Want to give it a try? I’ve already transferred a number of the New Hope Connection entries onto our experimental site, so feel free to visit www.newhopeconnection.blogspot.com and leave a comment to let us know your opinion!

Hosanna!

Last Sunday I taught our fellowship a new song called “Hosanna” by Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown. In my two decades of leading worship and church choirs I’ve run across a lot of Hosanna songs, and they’re often really good! Usually, though, these songs basically quote the crowds’ cheers found in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem a week before His death (see for example Matt. 21:1-11).

Now anyone who has been a regular church-goer has heard/said/sung the term “hosanna” many times. But what on earth does it mean? I’ll bet most of us have no idea!

The text notes in the NIV Bible translation put it well: Hosanna is “a Hebrew expression meaning ‘Save!’ which became an exclamation of praise.” So it originally was an appeal to God to save His people, and then over the centuries it became a general term of praise (like “Hallelujah”, another Hebrew term which literally means “Praise the Lord”).

If you look through your English Bible, you’ll only find “hosanna” in the gospels. But the cheering crowds were quoting one of the ancient psalms. Take a look at Psalm 118:25-26.

O LORD, save us;
O LORD, grant us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.

If you read all 29 verses of Psalm 118, you’ll see that it is a song of triumph, with the people celebrating that God had rescued them from a great enemy. And you can just imagine those Jews in Jesus’ day seeing this miraculous teacher ride into Jerusalem and thinking that He would deliver Israel from the chains of the Roman Empire. They no doubt shouted “Hosanna!” with all of its double meaning, praising their King and asking Him to save them! Of course we know now that Jesus’ intention was not to save 1st century Israel from the Romans but to save us from our spiritual condemnation.

So back to our new worship chorus. As a student and fan of song writing I appreciate that Baloche and Brown wrote a song that is musically exciting with a good, singable melody. But even more, it’s obvious to me that they dug down deep and understood their scriptural theme, and then gave us this song to help us express our own hearts:

Praise is rising, eyes are turning to You
We turn to You
Hope is stirring, hearts are yearning for You
We long for You

Hear the sound of hearts returning to You
We turn to You
In Your kingdom broken lives are made new
You make us new

'Cause when we see You
We find strength to face the day
In Your presence
All our fears are washed away
Washed away

Hosanna, hosanna!
You are the God who saves us
Worthy of all our praises
Hosanna, hosanna!
Come have Your way among us
We welcome You here Lord Jesus

(c) 2006, 2005 Integrity's Hosanna! Music / Thankyou Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)

Now my reason for writing all this isn’t that you’ll think, ‘Wow, Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown sure are good song writers!’ But God has gifted these guys with song writing abilities, and then they were faithful to use it in such a way that we now have a new instrument--a song--to worship together as a community of Christ-followers here in McMinnville. So if you’re with us this Sunday morning, we’ll sing this song again, and I hope this tune will help you and I together say to our Lord:

We long for You.
You give us hope for new life.
When You are near, we don’t have to be afraid.
You have saved us!
We praise You as our King!

Hosanna!

Looking for Hope in all the right places

Maybe it’s just me, but since I’ve been involved in our new fellowship, the word “hope” seems to stick out to me more than it used to.

Lately I’ve been reading in the book of Romans, and I came upon some “hope”s in chapter five. Let me give you a little backstory.

The first four chapters of Romans kinda go like this:
1. Paul introduces his theme (“the righteous shall live by faith”), and then describes how we all have earned God’s wrath because we don’t acknowledge our Creator.
2. More talk about God’s justified wrath, and that none of us can escape it by being a good person (following “the law”).
3. No really…none of us can be good enough on our own--we can only be made clean through faith.
4. And here’s a good example: Abraham was considered righteous because of his faith--he “believed God.”

So, by the time you get to chapter five, you’ve really gotten the point that you can’t be good enough to get to heaven and be right with God (no matter what you hear from TV or from the rest of the world’s religions). We are totally dependent on an outside Source for our goodness. And I think that’s why when I read Romans 5:1-2 in its context I feel this mixture of relief/gratitude/humility/praise. I’m reminded of my hope!

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

And sure enough, at the conclusion of verse two: And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. How’s that for a “hope” sighting? When I read that short sentence, I thought, “Yeah, that is hope! One day I will actually get to share in God’s glory!” I also thought to myself, “I need to blog this to my fellow New Hopers about this rejoice-worthy proclamation” (not in those words, but I really did think that)! That’s why when I kept reading, it sort of gave me some mental whip-lash:

...we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings…

Hmmm. I don’t really want to rejoice in my sufferings. (I mean, is that even possible? How can you really be suffering if you're rejoicing?). Frankly, I want to go back to the part about rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God! But that’s the thing about God’s Word--it’s all good and all true. So even though my enthusiasm felt a little deflated I went on:

Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, [ta dah!] hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

And that’s what God had for me in His Word that day. I have hope no matter what. Whether it’s in the spiritual highs of God’s glory or in the midst of suffering in this broken world, I’ve got hope that doesn’t disappoint. I have hope that all things will eventually turn out right. I have hope that God will never leave or forsake me. I have hope that God is using the crummy things in my life to make me a man of perseverance and character. I have hope because God has not been stingy with His love for me--in fact He has poured out His love into my heart.

So be hope filled! And if you’ve “persevered” in reading to the end of this long blog entry, why don’t you read one more time from this awesome scripture:

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Hallelujah.

New Hope Kids

I just uploaded a new photo gallery of some pictures of kids that I took over a couple Sundays in February. You can find the gallery by clicking on the "Photos" button on the top menu at our church website, newhopeconnection.com.

We love our kids here at New Hope Christian Fellowship!

A Fabulous February

Last week I had a chance to look through a bunch of pictures I took in the month of February.

What a month we had at New Hope Christian Fellowship! All four Sundays were just plain great. We are so blessed to have such a gifted teacher in Dewey Bertolini. The opening message about Hope (destined to be a classic for our Fellowship)...the encouragement about how God brings life out of death...a powerful description of the significance of "breaking bread" in communion together...last Sunday's message about "sanctifying" our passions for God's special purposes...All of these sermons have challenged and inspired us as a community, and I appreciate Dewey and the time and care he invests each week.

Worshiping with you all has been a great joy to me. I really feel that we are all worshiping together and that our Sunday morning audience has not been you folks sitting out in the chairs, but God Himself as we've all presented our "performance" to Him. You've been so engaged in the singing and other elements of our corporate worship, and I've just loved it!

Our wonderful Wewannabeawanatu crew has finished up their season (Sunday was the last week), and as I brought my kids each Sunday afternoon I was regularly struck by the creativity and enthusiasm that Ashley and her team brought to each meeting. My kids thought it was great! And when Kelly and I got a sneak peek at the plans Ashley has in store for our new monthly activities for kids, we both said to each other "Um, can we come, too?" (Stay tuned for more information!)

This month we've had a Dedication Service, a Super Bowl party, a fellowship potluck, a Question & Answer time with Dewey and the other shepherds, a baby dedication, a High School movie night...not to mention our regular men’s and youth Bible Studies. God is doing a great work at New Hope Christian Fellowship.

I’m looking forward to March!

Hope for the humble

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;

O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.

Psalm 130:1-5 (NIV)