Whirled Views with Dan Burrell

Several weeks ago I reported here that Dr. Lee Roberson, former pastor of the Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, TN and founder of Tennessee Temple University had suffered a fall in his home. Since then, quite a few folks had asked for an update.

I’m sad to tell you that the alumni department of TTU released a verybrief statement from the Roberson family yesterdayrequesting prayer for Dr. Roberson as his kidneys are now failing. No additional information was shared.

Please keep this pastor and leader in your prayers in the coming days.

My friend, Bobby Pittenger, Jr sent me an email with a report from a friend of his who is part of a campus ministry at Virginia Tech, the site of this week’s tragic mass murder. This report gives a unique perspective on the events at VT and the follow-up ministry that is taking place. I thought my blog readers might appreciate his view from the site of the crime.

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Blacksburg, Virginia 4/18/07 11:02pm

Supporters, friends and family,

As I sit to try and write you an update on the past 36 hours, I begin to recognize how mentally and emotionally exhausted I am. It seems like there are both an enormous amount of things to say and reportyet at the same time it feels like silence might very well say it best.

Mondays event is truly as dark and as evil as anything I have known. This is not the way things are supposed to be. Even so, we believe that God can and will take what was meant for evil and turn it for good. We are not thinking that this will happen overnight. Saying that, we appreciate your continued care and concern as we move forward. I dream of the days ahead when men and women from Virginia Tech will point back to 4.16.07 and not only think about death, but also about how that horrible day was the catalyst that pressed them towards a relationship with Jesus Christ.

4.16.07It was a whirlwind. We were in the middle of a staff meeting at our office (at edge of campus) on Monday morning when my VT Campus Director, Doug Rose, began receiving text messages about the shooting in West AJ. We paused the meeting to pray and then all began calling students we are connected to from the West AJ and surrounding dorms to check on their safety. As we were talking to students, we received report of a second shooting. At that point I ended the staff meeting because the sirens and ambulances were blaring constantly down
Main Street and the Emergency Response Intercom was notifying everyone of the presence of a gunman and telling everyone to Remain indoors and stay away from windows.

The ride from the office to my house takes me even closer to where the shootings took place. I was passed by nearly 15 ambulances with sirens and lights blaring. At this point the report was that there were three people shot and my honest thought was that the Ambulances were called on the scene to help look for a gunman on the loose. Little did I know that they would all be very much needed in the moments that followed.I arrived at my house to find the coverage well under way on every major news channel. Throughout the morning, the reports got worse and worse.

One of the most shocking moments for us was when the news channels changed the fatality number from one to 22. We were all sure it was an error.As the news unfolded, including the shooter, the death total ended at 33 with over 15 others wounded.

Our house began to take on the feel of a rescue mission throughout the afternoon with our staff and various students showing up. Julia had plenty of food and drinks for everyone who was up for eating.Perhaps the most memorable thing through the afternoon was the sight of students scanning through Facebook (social internet site) and frantically searching to see that there friends were not among the wounded or killed. Due to the amount of cell phone usage, many circuits were jammed for hours which made the internet the main source of contact for students.

As the day went on, it became clear that none of the students killed were deeply involved with us. We do have a few students that we are working with that did lose a close friend or faculty and many of them lost someone from their same dorm.

At about 5pm I received an email from the Dean of Students whom I work with through an organization known as the VT Campus Ministers Association. He requested help at Squires Student Center because they were opening a room up for students to go if they needed to talk. I went over with another of my staff, Andrew Schwartz. It was not to our surprise that there were not many students seeking out counseling. Most students will tend to start within their network of relationships when seeking help. (That is why we believe so strongly in building relationships at a grassroots level.) Nevertheless, we were happy to show our support for the department of Student Services. Around dinner time, we ordered pizza at the house and everyone agreed to turn off the TV for a little while, which was a great move. We had people over at the house until midnight while other staff spent time on campus with students.The Scene in Blacksburg

I have never experienced anything like this. Every single major news channel currently calls Blacksburg home. CNN, FOX News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBSthey are all here. It is truly a madhouse. There are news trucks, cameras and reporters everywhere. It is hard to go anywhere without getting a microphone put in your face and a reporter asking you questions about Mondays events. President Bush and Governor Kaine were on campus yesterday.I just came from a prayer gathering on the Drill Field (center of campus and yards away from Norris Hall) involving all the various campus ministries. There were literally dozens of camera crews shooting the prayer time. Every time I opened my eyes there was a camera in my face or beneath me at my shoes looking upwards. After our final prayer time (we prayed for four different areas of need) I opened my eyes to see Franklin Graham standing a few feet away. He walked up and asked if he could share a few words to all present.

Police are everywhere. A number of buildings are still yellow taped. Memorials, flowers, notes and candles dominate the main areas of campus that would be filled with college students playing football, soccer and talking on a beautiful day like today.The scene is very much surreal. Like a Hollywood movie is being filmed with all the top news personalities in the world. Though we know this is very much real.We are, and will continue to use our homes as places of refuge where students can remove themselves from the madness of the campus. It seems that our best and clearest conversations with students and each other have occurred around our dinner table or while in the front yard playing with our boys.Students are beginning to leave town and go home since all classes have been cancelled until Monday. With the swarming presence of the media, I tend to think that it could be a good thing for the students to get away for a few days. I dont think they realize that the frenzy of reporters will still be waiting for them on Monday morning when things are supposed to be normal again.

To be honest with you, every Christian ministry that I know of on campus is putting together things to invite people to come to. For the most part, the students that come to those events are students who already know they are interested in God.We desire that God might use us in the coming days to reach men and women that are interested in dialoguing about Christ, yet for one reason or another wont go seek out help. How do we do that? We go to them. Through our current network of relationships we believe that we can reach many students in East and West Ambler Johnston dorm. Please pray for this.

John 16:33 has been a rock for me. In Christ we have peace. In the world we will have trouble. Take heart, He has overcome the world.

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Now that construction has begun, you can anticipate more frequent updates of this blog and we urge you to visit the NBC Parking Lot blog frequently.

My friend, Warren Smith, who is an influential journalist in the Carolinas occasionally publishes a guest article in this blog. I’m publishing this one which is actually an except from a book he is writing. I found his perspective on this eye-opening and thought-provoking and I thought some of my readers might as well.

God, Mammon, and the Worship Wars

by Warren Smith

COMMENTARY–If youve been to a church at any time in the past 30 years, you have no doubt been subjected to the worship wars. Contemporary vs. Traditional. Modern vs. Postmodern. The worship wars have been fought in virtually every evangelical church at some time during the past generation. Those on the traditional side say the conflict is ultimately a matter of theology. Those on the contemporary side say it is ultimately a matter of relevance.

Ive got my own opinions about this question, and just for the record let me say that Im a traditionalist when it comes to matters of worship. When I hear people talk about relevance, I want to ask: Relevant to whom? Any attempt at relevance is by definition an exclusionary activity. Attempts to be culturally relevant to a teenager are exclusionary for an elderly widow. The Body of Christ should be about bringing the teenager and the grandmother together, not driving them apart. The purpose of true biblical worship is not to change it to suit us or an arbitrarily defined target market. The purpose of biblical worship is to transform us. It should proclaim the glory of God, and be a means of grace by which we are transformed. Worship is a sacrifice, not an entertainment.

But that is not really the point I want to make here. The real point I want to make that in this arena as in many others of evangelical worship and culture today money is the real driving force, and most evangelicals dont even know it.

To understand this, consider that when a congregation sings Martin Luthers A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, no money changes hands. But when that same congregation sings God of Wonders, written by Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd, both men and their music publishing company, get a small payday. Why is that? Because A Mighty Fortress is in the public domain, but God of Wonders is owned by Hindalong and Burd and both they and their publishers have an economic self interest in seeing that these songs are sung and played in churches around the country.

This phenomenon of Sunday morning worship becoming not a day of praise, but a day of pay, is a recent one. It can be traced to the birth of an organization called Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). CCLI collects fees from churches and then pays the copyright holders keeping a percentage for itself, of course. The size of the copyright fee depends on the size of the church, but a 500-member church would pay about $300 per year. Currently, approximately 140,000 churches are CCLI license holders. That means that $40- to $50-million per year is collected and re-distributed to copyright owners.

And this large and growing number is just one part of the CCLI empire. CCLI also allows churches to pay additional fees to use movie clips as sermon illustrations.

Its probably no coincidence that the CCLIs founding in 1984 corresponds more or less with the beginning of explosive growth in the contemporary Christian music industry, and with the growth of worship music in particular. Now, a kind of unholy trinity exists that has turned the ministry of Christian music into the industry of Christian music. Christian radio promotes the songs, the churches use them in worship, and CCLI collects fees for the copyright holders. The big winners are the Christian record companies, many of them now owned by secular corporations, who sell records into the millions. The big loser is the church itself, which now pays to have itself marketed to every Sunday morning at 11 am.

Contrast this with the old method. Hymn books contain songs that are mostly in the public domain and have little or no licensing fees. They have historically been published by denominational publishers who make them available to congregations more or less at cost. They were not aggressively marketed or promoted because they are typically denominationally specific, reflecting the doctrine and liturgy of a particular church. But that is a key point: the hymnals are informed by and reinforce the theology of the church. Said plainly, hymnals are discipleship tools.

Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers. They are aggressively promoted and now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market.

Indeed, no matter which side you are on in these worship wars, both sides can agree on this simple observation: for the most part, the traditionalists have lost this fight, at least in the evangelical church. Virtually every one of the 100 largest and 100 fastest growing churches on Outreach magazines annual list of the largest and fastest growing churches in America is a church that has one or more so-called contemporary services. Indeed, most of these churches have no traditional services at all.

And that, my friends, is a tragedy another triumph of Mammon in the modern evangelical church.

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Warren Smith is the publisher of The Charlotte World. This article is excerpted from his upcoming book A Lovers Quarrel With The Evangelical Church, due out later this year by Spence Publishing. You can email your reactions to this article at warren.smith@thecharlotteworld.com

Today, I’ve beenvisiting Liberty University. Considering the fact that my first visit to the campus was less than nine months ago, I must way that my perspective has changed a great deal.

I often joke that I grew up on the branch of the fundamentalist “tree” that produced most of the “nuts”. For years, I heard Liberty University mockingly referred to as “Liberalty University.” My only impressions of the school came from a sole visit to their tiny former campus in 1976 when I was fifteen years old and attending the A.C.E. National Competition, the public profile ofJerry Falwell and the scuttlebutt I heard from others. I had multiple students attend over the years and I’d hired folks from LU, but my impressions were consistently second hand.

The last 24 hours have reminded me of how wrong I had been in many of my impressions. Let me give you some of the things I’ve noticed and appreciate…

Our students enjoy college life. Last night, I took my son (who is a freshman at LU) and about two dozen other kids from my former church in West Palm Beach, Northside students and a few of their dates and friends out for Pizza. Free pizza is always a good draw for college students. I was struck by their comraderie and conversations. They joked, laughed, shared and ate. Nathan (my son) told me of a girl he’d met online via Facebook and had been witnessing to for several days. His friends jumped in with suggestions and before long, a major discussion on apologetics was being held. (BTW, Nathan told me this morning that he had led that same girl to Christ via instant messaging last night.) I’ll be honest…my own college experiences did not have that level of friendship and fellowship. The school’s I attended would never have even permitted that kind of social interaction off campus. There was constant pressure to turn others in for rules violation. There was constant nervousness about breaking some rule or violating some policy. In contrast, these kids just enjoyed being together and hanging out and the freedom they enjoyed did not make them more or less spiritual than any other college kids I’ve ever taught or met.

Jerry Falwell IS Mr. Liberty University. He speaks at convocation (Chapel) nearly every week. He still dresses like an old fundamentalist preacher and in today’s chapel — he sure sounded like one too. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him warn the students about the dangers of the Emergent Church movement by speaking for over 40 minutes on the topic. He was gracious, but pointed. He even named names. While he was at it, I heard him cite Jonathan Edwards, Bob Ketchum, John Rice, Bob Jones, Sr and other old-school fundamentalists. Interesting. On one rabbit-trail, he spoke of the dangers of a movement that sees nothing wrong with foul language, use of alcohol and use of tobacco and told of his own rules and policies about the topics. No “liberalness” there, I can assure you. Few people feel “neutral” about Jerry Falwell, but love him or hate him, he’s an amazing leader, fund-raiser and visionary who has a passion for Jesus Christ. He stands for orthodox Christianity without apology and he’s got a 50-plus year of public ministry with no major scandals besmirching his private or public life.

The vision of Liberty University is also noteworthy. The place is a bee-hive of activity. There are thousands and thousands of students swarming all over the Liberty Mountain(s). Building projects are going on all over the place. New programs are being announced constantly. Kids arefanning out around the world every break taking the gospel on the road. There’s a passion for ministry that is palpable on campus and off.

Speaking of perspective, I’m glad LU still has chapel regularly — 3 days a week in fact (a lot of schools have gone to 1 day a week.) Today, it was interesting to note that the thousands of students (I’m guessing 8,000-9,000) in the Vines Center were led in worship by a contemporary band that engaged students in a medley of meaty and historic hymns in a very solemn, yet more contemporary arrangement that was powerful and hardly shallow (as many like to describe praise and worship music). I saw as many students paying attention in chapel per capita as any college I’ve spoken at or attended. Not everyone was listening closely — but I’ve never been a place where folks do. They don’t wear suits and ties (and I was glad that I didn’t have to either). But their worship was earnest and the message was challenging and important.

I’m not trying to promote LU. (In the interest of full disclosure, I teach distance classes for the Seminary.) It’s not for everyone and like every school I’ve ever visited, it has weaknesses. But a lot of what I’ve heard from my fundamentalist brethren over the years about LU has simply been wrong, mean, gossipy or all three. It looks like next year we could have as many as three dozen of our kids at LU and I’m happy for them. We’ve got students at other good schools as well and I’m happy for them also. But the next time you hear someone trash a Christian college, I’d highly recommend that you pay it a visit before you swallow what is said.

Many of you have been keeping up with the story of Andrew Kinard (brother-in-law of Northsider Charles Gouch) who was severely injured in Iraq when he stepped on an IED. Andrew is a devout Christ Follower and his testimony throughout his ordeal has been an inspiration to thousands. This week, he was featured in a FOX News piece telling the story of how groups are helping with the rehabilitation of badly injured vets. You can view the story HERE.

Easter is such a wonderful holy day that it’s worth celebrating for two week-ends in a row which is what we have been doing at Northside Baptist Church. Last week, our music ministry presented a stirring reminder of the Resurrection on Palm Sunday in a program called “The Sacrifice.” After the service, nearly fifty guests and prospective new members joined us for a delicious buffet luncheon in our Fine Arts Center where they were hosted by several of our pastors, church members and staff.

This Sunday, we are delighted to have the Rick Webb Trio as our special music and worship leaders. This wonderful group has lead worship at rallies held by David Jeremiah, Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, Chuck Swindoll and others. They are well-known from their appearances on the Gaither Home-Coming videos. I will be preaching a sermon entitled, “Step Out of the Grave Clothes”. Though we are in the midst of spring break week in Charlotte, I hope you’ll make a double effort to come and bring someone with you.

Easter is the best holiday of the year for those of us who know the power of a Risen Savior!

I’ve added a new site to my “Recommended Blogs” today. It’s called “Our Sovereign Joy“. I think you’ll find this wide-ranging blog stimulating, humorous, challenging and convicting. It’s written by the Helms Family led by Rev. Johnny Helms who is a member of Northside Baptist Church. I just discovered it today and am now asking myself, “What took me so long to find this great site?!?”

So guess who won my ESPN March Madness Tournament Challenge this year? Yep….Yours Truly. Making the victory particularly sweet was the fact that I edged out my good Florida friend, Kurt Hardley for the number one spot. (Kurt, I believe that means you owe me a couple of tickets to the Indy 500 this year….isn’t that what we agreed on?)

All those wishing to honor the winner with a prize, make your checks payable to the Northside Baptist Parking Lot Fund.

Thanks to the 30 participants and we’ll catch you next year. Or should I say, you can catch ME next year!