Terry Pruitt's Blog

Listening to a speaker this past Thursday at a worship service, I noticed a strange dichotomy articulated. It was the concept that emotions are unreliable and that the Word of God is reliable. The man took the Scripture as factual but saw emotions as unreliable. I would define emotions as responses to one's value judgments. Those value judgments may be misguided or be an accurate assessment of the facts. Certainly one's emotions may be manipulated by others or ourselves. Emotions may also be influenced by one's health and environmental factors. Interactions with others influence one's emotions also. When the Scripture commands one to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might", it includes the emotions. An emotionless response to the Word of God would mean that one would fail to embrace the value judgments discussed therein. Worship is meant to engage the whole person. That does not mean one should eng...

Worship is simply recognizing how awesome God is. He is wonderful. When we sit in a public worship service, we are taking time to recognize how awesome God is. When the Scripture tells us to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, it means that we recognize just how awesome God is with all our being. I hear from time to time that love is a decision. Well, it might be true that one might see the worth of someone and say, "I'm making a decision to recognize how neat that person really is." Usually though true love actually recognizes the worth of the person for the person for himself and a complex decision cycle simply is not needed. Some people are a struggle to love, because their value is clouded by sin. Regardless, they are valuable. Worship is a special recognition that God is worthy of all our honor, and praise, and loyalty. To worship him is to love him. The Christian church often performs worship services without love being a huge compo...

This summer I visited two churches but I have decided to not review them as I usually do. The reason is that I have some highly negative thoughts about these two churches. I thought about not saying anything but I do want to address the issues. The first church I visited this summer was a world famous mega-church. The music was great. The people warm. The worship environment was creative and cool. The problem I had with the worship though was the sermon. The pastor gave a sermon on 2 Kings 5:1-15a. The Scripture reading stopped at a high point with the words of Naaman saying, "“Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel." The reading stopped at this point, half way through the sentence which was great since it emphasized whole point of the passage. I was excited with the prospect of such a great sermon. Then we got a message on baptism. I realize there are only so many texts on baptism, but why take this passage with such a grand theme and ...

Worship, is it a drama? Is it singing a few songs and a lesson we call a sermon? Is worship about connecting with our emotions or with our intellect? Should the service be full of spontaneity or order? Should it be simple or ornate? What is the place of tradition? As I think through these issues I find myself drawn to diverse parts of traditions and innovations. I love to see the Word of God respected by having an Old Testament lesson, an New Testament lesson and a Psalm. If we read it responsively, that sounds good. But I enjoy innovation of bringing in drama teams and slide projection too. The article in Leadership Journal called Richer Blend written by Bob Kauflin tells a similar urge by the author to combine tradition and innovation. He comes from a charismatic church and so his challenge is to take a spontaneous style of worship and put some structure to it. I am not sure I am in the same place but I have gone to those sorts of churches. I believe my current challenge...

This song speaks the glory of God. I'm listening to Mercy Me sing it on their CD "Almost There" Mercy Me Lyrics