It’s time to provide a free resource from Sharefaith. Today, we are providing one of our most popular varieties – a worship background. This worship background has a classic, yet contemporary design. It pictures a cross on the right side of the screen. Bright light and yellow backdrop provide a stark contrast to the cross image.

Click here to access, then right-click the image to download.

A worship background is one of the most versatile types of media that you can use. Christian backgrounds can function as slides for lyrics, a pre-service image, a picture for a PowerPoint sermon, or any thing else you want. This particular background is perfect for customizing. The bright background is suitable for darker fonts. We recommend a dark brown to match the color of the cross.

• Read about How to Create and Use Worship Backgrounds.
• Find out 7 ways to use a worship background.
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Jesse Bryan is the creative director at Mars Hill. He has worked with Mark Driscoll and the leadership team at Mars Hill Church for four and half years. When you’re talking about a church with about a dozen campuses, and nearly 8,000 in attendance each week, Jesse has a huge role. As creative director, he oversees a team of four staff members and many volunteers. Together, they produce everything visual at Mars Hill – from videos to signage and everything in between. Jesse is more than just a creative guru making cool stuff for the church; he’s also a gospel-centered guy. Recently, Jesse and I had the opportunity to talk about his work. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

Where do you find the creative inspiration to do what you do?

In everything we do, we start with the [Bible] text. For instance, we did a series called the Peasant Princess, and we just went through the book of the Song of Solomon. If you start anywhere else than the Bible, you’ve gone off base with your creativity.

For the Song of Solomon series, I sat down with Pastor Mark [Driscoll], and he said, “So you’ve got this girl and we know that she has a mom and she has brothers. We never hear about a dad. Her her skin is darker from being out in the sun, so she has to work. She’s an average working class girl. And then the king shows up, and she ends up marrying the king.” At that point, I was like, “Wow. that sounds like a fairy tail.”

Then the creativity starts snowballing, and you end up with what we had for the Peasant Princess. But it always has to start with the text. If it doesn’t, you only have one other place you can pull from – the culture.

Jesse Bryan

A Sermon Series on The Expendables. (Wait a second…)

If you’re pulling everything from culture, you’re going to end up with a pop culture church. That is one of the biggest problems with the church today. Churches go out and steal a bunch of stuff from really good artists in pop culture. But of course, they don’t do it quite as well. They lose authenticity. In some churches, you’ll have an entire sermon series based on The Expendables. And you’re thinking, “You guys are stretching pretty hard.”

Their biggest problem is that their creativity is not coming from the text. Instead, it’s coming from what you think is relevant at the time. This comes from the idea that you don’t believe Jesus is relevant. You believe culture is relevant.

Creativity vs. Clarity

If I get an assignment to brand something or create something, I’m not going online and looking at the most popular YouTube clips or finding out what the most popular movies are. That’s the last thing on my mind. We always start with the text, and then the story comes right out of the text. My top priority is to communicate clearly, because creativity is really about clarity.

I would rather our emphasis be on communicating clearly and not putting on some type of a show. Look how Paul achieved relevance. In Acts, when he came to Mars Hill he began discussing their culture and religion. He looked for a point to connect with them But then he flips it on them, and talks about the true God, and how He is the ultimate Judge. He completely destroys their philosophies. We see him achieving a contact point with these people. But notice what he did after connecting.

Jesse's Pastor, Mark Driscoll (photo from Mars Hill Church)

The biggest problem with emphasizing relevance is that its easy to slip into watering down the gospel. You think, “Well, I need to be relevant.” But today, “relevance” means that you should be accepting of homosexuals or homosexual pastors. In our pursuit of relevance, we start giving up ground.

Making Jesus Relevant

If the church doesn’t believe that Jesus is relevant, we have to make him relevant. And the only way to make Jesus relevant is to grab something that we do think is relevant. So you think, well what is relevant? Ironman! So you think Ironman is relevant. So if I add Ironman to Jesus, maybe then Jesus will be relevant. So he’s called Jesus: The Real Ironman.

In doing that, you’ve just elevated the culture to the same level as God, which I would suggest is always a horrible idea. It’s a totally arrogant position to take, too. What you’re really saying is “Jesus, why don’t you sit there on the bench, I’m a smart guy. I’ll figure out how to make you relevant.” That’s insanity!

Like you said before, “Jesus is the reason that we’re relevant. It gives you freedom when you realize, “I don’t need to make Jesus relevant.” Your focus then is to be as clear as possible, and to help people connect with the Scripture. We know that Scripture is going to work. We just have to trust it. And you know what? It always does work. It always works out.

Follow @JesseBryan on Twitter.

Let’s get some definitions out there:

pulpit |ˈpoŏlˌpit; ˈpəl-; -pət| (noun)
a raised platform or lectern in a church or chapel from which the preacher delivers a sermon.

soapbox |ˈsōpˌbäks| (noun)
a box or crate used as a makeshift stand by a public speaker : [as adj. ] a soapbox orator.
• figurative- a thing that provides an opportunity for someone to air their views publicly

Now, let’s see how the two go together.They don’t. Here’s why.

The Soapbox Temptation

When a pastor stands in a pulpit, he usually has an audience–ranging from a handful of people to several thousand people. It’s quite a privilege and a big responsibility. For the next fifteen, twenty, thirty or fifty minutes, he will tell the people something. What’s he going to tell them? It’s only natural that the pastor is going to talk about things that are important to him. Without a right view of preaching, however, the speaker may reduce his pulpit to a platform for airing personal opinions, pet peeves, theological hobby horses or other things–even good things. The opportunity to preach and to speak to a number of listeners is not an opportunity to vent one’s own opinion. It is an opportunity to soberly fulfill one’s God-given task–to faithfully preach the Word, God’s Word, the Bible (2 Tim 4:1-2).

What is Preaching, Anyway?

At the risk of seeming too simplistic, one of the best antidotes to the temptation to be a soapbox pulpiteer is to recover a right view of preaching. In Mark Dever’s book, What Is a Healthy Church?, he writes, “The most obvious place to begin building a healthy church is to call Christians to listen to God’s Word. God’s Word is the source of all life and health. It’s what feeds, develops, and preserves a church’s understanding of the gospel itself” (63). It’s pretty basic. People need to hear God’s Word, not your words. Dever goes on, “An expositional preacher’s authority begins and ends with Scripture. Even as Old Testament Prophets and New Testament apostles were given not just a commission to go and speak, but to speak a particular message, so Christian preachers today have authority to speak from God so long as they speak his words” (64). The temptation to stand on one’s soapbox should be stymied by a commitment to explain God’s Word, verse-by-verse. The starting point in right preaching is not to ask, “What can I say about this text?” The starting point is to ask, “What does the text say?” Then, tell others about it.

Yes, It’s So Easy to Use the Pulpit as a Soapbox

Right preaching is easy to define. But it’s hard to do. Soapboxing is a whole lot easier. It tends to come more naturally. Here are where some preachers go astray on their personal soapboxes:

• Political issues. Ranting and raving about politics has long been a major soapbox temptation. Hey, if you have a pulpit, why not stump for your favorite candidate? After all, Christians are supposed to be involved in politics, right? Be careful. Are you preaching the word, or politicking? Hear how Tim Keller, an influential pastor in Manhattan, deals with the politics issue. And if you are a Christian who may be enamored of Glen Beck’s patriotism, fine. But keep these important points in mind.
• Sin issues. Homosexuality, abortion, the GLBT agenda, racism, and social injustice are huge problems. They are problems of truly biblical proportions. A faithful preacher will be intentional in the way that he addresses these crucial issues. If you think you are being tactful by avoiding the homosexuality topic, or the issue of abortion, you’re not being tactful. You’re being wrong. God’s Word addresses them! But the knife edge goes both ways. Some preachers find a way to fit an anti-homosexual harangue into every sermon. This goes beyond faithfulness to God’s Word. This goes into soapboxing. And that is a dangerous place to be, because it falls short of faithful, systematic, Bible preaching. Address the issues, especially when they receive the limelight in culture or the news. But be careful that you’re not feeding your people a steady diet of the things you’re fed up with. Be sure that you’re feeding your people with a steady diet of God’s Word.
• Culture issues. There is no question that we live in a wicked and depraved world. The signs of the fall are apparent, even in our own lives. Sin is rampant, and the culture is degraded, seemingly beyond recovery. But is this situation a legitimate justification to rant about the wicked culture every time we step into the pulpit. No. The antidote to a wicked culture is grace. Wicked culture is comprised of wicked people, and since “all have sinned,” then all need to be saved by grace. Preach the gospel. Preach the Word.
• Standards issues. Although some preachers and movements may give lip service to the centrality of the Word, their preaching may sometimes slip into a declaration of standards. Whether its hair length, women’s attire, musical styles, biblical translations, movie-going, alcoholic beverages, or any other issue, these preachers find a way to wedge their personal standards into every sermon, and every time they rise to the pulpit. Is this healthy? The way to answer that question is by asking another question: Is it the Bible? It’s true that pastors should faithfully apply the Word of God to situations, but it does not follow that they should constantly preach their standards whenever they can. Christians should have standards, no doubt. A good Christian may even have high standards, but that’s not why they are a good Christian. A good Christian is a growing Christian–loving God, following God, and seeking forgiveness for sins. Do not allow your adherence to standards to trump your commitment to the purity of biblical preaching and biblical application.

“But,” you may plead, “can’t I ever address issues?” Of course. The Bible is full of issues. Listen to John Piper on this issue: “The dominant note of preaching [should] be the freedom of God’s sovereign grace, the unifying theme be the zeal that God has for his own glory, the grand object of preaching be the infinite and inexhaustible being of God, and the pervasive atmosphere of preaching be the holiness of God. Then when preaching takes up the ordinary things of life–family, job, leisure, friendships, or the crises of our day–AIDS, divorce, addictions, depression, abuses, poverty, hunger, and worst of all, unreached peoples of the world, these matters are not only taken up. They are taken all the way up into God” (The Supremacy of God in Preaching, 20).

Atheism declares that there is no god. Christianity teaches that there is a God. Both cannot be true. So which one is correct, the atheist or the Christian? Is there a convincing argument against atheism? This article will 1) first attempt to clarify what we mean when we say “arguments against atheism,” 2) followed by what these arguments are. Finally, 3) the article introduces the source of a Christian’s confidence, 4) as well as the source of an atheist’s confidence.

1. What Does it Mean to “Argue Against Atheism”?
In order to muster “Christian arguments against atheism,” we need to realize that we are not simply trying to argue against something. It is necessary to argue for something. The term “atheism” is a word composed of two parts: “a-” which means “without,” and “theos,” which means “god.” Thus, any argument against atheism (without God) will be an argument for theism (God).

2. Arguments Against Atheism
Since arguments against atheism are necessarily arguments for God, here are some of classical arguments for the existence of God, in summary form.

• The Argument from Causality: Look around for something that does not have a cause (and therefore a beginning). This sequence can work backwards indefinitely. But does it go infinitely, or does it ultimately stop? To say that it goes on infinitely leads to a logical dilemma. Without some initial cause, there can be no caused things, and no explanation for causality itself. The only rational answer is that there is at the beginning of all things an uncaused Cause, capable of causing all things.
• The Argument from Design: Nature manifests a certain irreducible complexity. The design in nature requires a Designer. God is the creator and designer of all things.
• The Ontological Argument: The idea of God exists in the mind, even in the mind of an atheist. The event of my mind understanding this idea must have a sufficient cause. This idea contains infinite perfection, but my mind only contains only finite perfection, as does everything else in the natural world. A mentally imperfect being cannot produce a mentally perfect effect. Therefore, there is a perfect mind transcendent to the universe and my mind from which this idea originates.
• The Moral Argument: Morality exists. Whether are are considering a stone-age Amazonian cannibal or in an intellectual savant at a prestigious Ivy League school, every human being has some sense of morality. Everyone has some level of mental obligation to do good and avoid evil. Why else do we have laws, government, military, prisons, and self-improvement books? The atheistic view is incompatible with real moral obligation. Therefore the theistic view, which is compatible with real moral obligation, must be correct. Morality cannot originate in the mind of man, and therefore must originate in the mind of a greater being, which is God.

Although these arguments bear some intellectual curiosity, they are by themselves insufficient to persuade someone not to be an atheist. Nor are they necessary to do so. In fact, some of the arguments for God (and there are many more) may actually be paralogisms . While arguments for the existence of God may help to demonstrate that belief in God is not irrational, there is more that is necessary to bring real confidence. Furthermore, more than philosophical rationality is necessary to truly dissuade an atheist from his or her no-god beliefs.

Here is where the atheist may begin to object. The atheist prefers to argue on the basis of logic, empiricism, or even philosophy as the only fair grounds for discussion. But logic, empiricism, and philosophy are only a tiny slice of reality. When the arguments against atheism get into spiritual issues, he or she may dismiss them as irrelevant. The reality is, these spiritual issues are of utmost importance and relevance. That’s where we’re going next.

3. The Christian’s Confidence
In the end, the Christian is not convinced of his or her theism based on sophisticated arguments or capable apologetic defenses. The Christian is convinced of his or her position based on faith. Consider the story of Billy Graham, a well-known evangelical preacher. He was pestered by philosophical and psychological questions that his friend Charles Templeton and others were raising. Eventually Graham said, “At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it. ‘Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word – by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.’ …Not all my questions were answered, but…I knew a major spiritual battle in my soul had been fought and won.” (from Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, p. 12).

Graham’s experience is the same as many Christians. An atheist cannot share this experience, but when a believer turns to God, God gives them His Spirit, which gives them confidence that God exists, that Jesus is God, and that they are regenerated (Matthew 16:13-17). The Bible says, “by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 3:24). “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). (See also Romans 8:16; Col. 2:2-3; John 20:31.)

Faith is not simply the recourse of an weak-minded religious nut. It is the sum and substance of any religious belief system. Faith is even the basis for the atheist’s non-belief in God. The Bible describes faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Faith is not a pathetic baseless optimism for something that science disproves. Faith is actuality. Faith is substance. Faith is conviction.

The Christian does not need to understand religious epistemology in order to have trustworthy assurance of these things. They are objectively true without his understanding. They are subjectively true based on the internal confirmation of the Holy Spirit. Thus, when the Christian believes in the existence of God and the truth of Scripture, he believes in something just as reliable and even more certain as those things verified by the scientific method.

4. The Atheist’s Confidence
When an atheist rejects belief in God, he rejects any source of confidence beyond his own level of reasoning or understanding. The thinking atheist will forever be questioning the origin of the universe, will be perplexed regarding morality, and will be unsure of his own destiny and purpose in life.

I know a Christian who had a friend who was an atheist. As the two discussed the issue of atheism vs. Christianity, the Christian man showed the atheist a passage in Romans 1. Romans 1 explains that so-called atheists, among others, actually “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” (Rom. 1:18-19). How has God shown Himself to them? “His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew god, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” The Christian told the atheist, “The reason you don’t believe in God is that you don’t want to.” The man replied, “You know, I never thought about it, but you’re right!”

The atheist uses faith, too. He puts his faith in science or self. He presupposes that science or self are trustworthy places for his confidence, and finds corroboration for this presupposition in the evidences that he can comprehend. He believes in his own testimony. The Bible, however, confronts this tenuous belief system; “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater” (1 John 5:9). God’s testimony is found in Jesus–an indisputable historical figure. As C. S. Lewis summarized, Jesus was one of three things. Either he was a 1) subversive liar, 2) or a raving lunatic, or 3) He was actually who He claimed to be–the Son of God. What was he? The passage cited above goes on to say, “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son” (1 John 5:10).

The atheist finds himself in the difficult position of denying all of those things that speak to God’s existence and the validity of the Christian faith. He rejects God. He rejects the creation of the world by God. He rejects the deity of Christ. He rejects God’s Word. He suppresses the inner testimony that he has concerning the reality of God. All that he is left with his a feeble self-confidence. This is the atheist’s confidence.

Conclusion

The Christian’s source of confidence–his faith–is an unshakable faith in God, revealed in His Word, manifested in Jesus Christ, and confirmed by His Spirit. This is not only a more defensible belief system than the atheist’s; it is a far better way to live. In fact, it is the only way to really live. “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:6).

Atheism declares that there is no god. Christianity teaches that there is a God. Both cannot be true. So which one is correct, the atheist or the Christian? How you respond depends upon faith. It depends on the source of your faith. Will you have faith in self? Or in God?

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So you’ve finally decided that it’s time to get your church on the web. Or maybe you already have a website, and are rethinking your whole approach. Whatever your situation, you’ll need to think about something called “web hosting.” A web host is a company that provides the data storage space and the connectivity in order to upload pages and information to the Internet. It is an important first step in getting a website. It is very important to find the right web hosting company. Your website depends on them. Well, seeing as there are thousands of web hosting companies out there, how do you find the right one?

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