Tag: worship

U2 3D


U2 3D

Laurie and I went and saw U2 3D this weekend. Awesome! It was way better than I expected and even more lifelike than I had imagined it expected.

I told Laurie afterwards that I was conflicted during the 80 minute IMAX concert experience. It was real enough that I felt like I was right smack dab in the middle of this concert in Argentina with several thousand fans around me. I wanted to take part in everything – yet I felt like I had to be restrained and remind myself I’m in public – in a theater. Of course if you know me, you know I love U2. It doesn’t take much “realism” for me to want to sing along.

Yet during the entire 80 minutes I sat quietly taking it all in and trying not to disturb my neighbors – or everyone in the theater behind me (especially since we were on the front row). Afterwards I was disappointed it came to an end and I actually felt like I had missed out on something. I couldn’t place my finger on it until I realized it was the interaction I missed.

I’ve been to one U2 concert and it was by far my most favorite concert ever. It felt as much of a worship service as a concert. And after leaving U2 3D it almost felt like I had been at church but only as a fly on the wall. I didn’t get to participate. All these people on the screen were involved and participating yet I sat on the sidelines.

I wonder how often we miss out in church because we don’t want to annoy the people next to us. We don’t want them to think we’re odd for standing up and cheering. We don’t want to be the crazy guy on the front (or back) row who won’t sit down.

What if we’re missing out on interaction with God? What if worship was so much more?

Visual worship

We’re looking for new background videos for encounter. And I’m always interested and on the look out for new ways of doing technology/video in worship… I’ve had this picture in my head for a while but thought it would only be limited to intellibeams and such. I would have loved to have done something cool at Christmas but it didn’t pan out – this may be the answer though to what I’m looking at and looking for.

That’s not paint or wallpaper on the wall of Irving Bible Church – that’s video/graphic projection.
Check out the entire gallery.

I can just imagine some of the things that could be done with a setup like this.

Want more information, check out visualworshiper.com

Colossians 2:6-23

6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
8-10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
16-17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
18-19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
20-23 So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.