Many times, you can learn as much from what a passage of Scripture doesn't say as from what it does.

For example, yesterday Chris Macedo and I led a teaching & worship experience in which we explored Psalm 147:1 -- Praise the Lord. how good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting it is to praise him -- through the lens of what it doesn't say.

It doesn't tell us to write our praises to God.

It doesn't tell us to think our praises to God.

It doesn't even tell us to draw our praises to God.

All of those are fine endeavors. They're just not what this Scripture tells us to do.

It tells us to sing our praises to God.

So, informed by the wisdom of Mars Hill Bible Church, we explored why the command to sing. It turns out we sing because singing's not the point.

The shared experience is the point.

Submitting to one another's voice and tempo is the point.

Mutual submission through congregational singing is the loudest crescendo any of us will ever make.

But we wouldn't have been as on point had we not considered what Psalm 147 doesn't say.

You can listen to what happened here.

You read that title right.

In worship design, we consider predictability to be sinful. Why?

Because familiarity lessens impact. If you know what element is coming next, then that element has already been robbed of some of its power.

For example, we showed this video at the end of Sunday's sermon as a way of driving home the point from 2 Samuel 9 that "we most resemble God when we invite the outcast into our inner circle":



About half way through the video, a couple of us invited people in the congregation to join us by standing and holding hands. The movement caught on, and in short order everyone in the room was standing & holding hands with their neighbors.

It became a WE moment.

And because no one knew it was coming, it had power.

If predictability is sinful, surprise is an act of grace.

Christianity is full of hard truths.

For example:

• Eternal separation from God does in fact exist.
• When we say 'Jesus is Lord' by definition that means Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna and others are not Lord.
• Jesus' followers are to tithe . . . which still means 10%.
• Sexual intimacy is blessed only in marriage.
• Jesus really will return one day to judge the quick and the dead.

In the eyes of modern culture, most of those assertions are delusional at best and evil at worst. In the eyes of many people in church, those claims are often met with skepticism and suspicion.

Especially the one about tithing.

But the question remains: how can a pastor or church communicate those kinds of difficult truths in ways that 21st people can still hear?

Here are some guidelines we try to follow:

• Name the struggle: "I know this sounds almost crazy, but . . . "
• Acknowledge personal difficulty in accepting certain beliefs: "Sometimes I wonder how it is that a loving God would allow people to spend eternity apart from him . . . "
• Avoid cliches. Christian communicators are the least believable when they resort to tired cliches and insider lingo when teaching on complex issues.
• Embrace transparency. People do not like being talked at. The enjoy being taken on a journey as a fellow passenger. We are free with naming and confessing the ways we have fallen short in living out the very truths we try to explain.

Those are just a few of the principles we try to live by as communicators at Good Shepherd.

I suppose when we get it right, we communicate hard truths in soft ways.