Eucharistic Emulation

I went to a church service this weekend, and like all good Church of Christ services, the contribution was preceded by a short speech that outlined why we should put our money in the plate.
There is a phrase that is common to the pre-contribution speech; You've all heard it, maybe you've said it, maybe I have, but this week, I just couldn't stand it.

"It's God's money anyway, so why shouldn't we give? We are just giving that which isn't ours in the first place."

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I mean come on, that's ridiculous! Okay, so technically it is good theology. Yes, everything belongs to God, so we really are just giving what doesn't really belong to us anyway. But tell this to a father with 4 kids and is struggling to make ends meet, tell him that it is God's money so he should just give it up, but be prepared for a fist fight.

I often wondered why we had a fascination with the phrase "seperate and apart". I mean, I understand that collection was not a part of the Eucharist, so we use those words to save our butts, but why didn't we just put the collection at a completely different part of the church service? I was often told the rote answer: "It's convenient to do it all at once." But that argument doesn't hold water for me, perhaps there is something more.

After thinking about it for the past 20 years or so, I finally have an answer that I find to be satisfactory; According to Church of Christ tradition, the Lord's Supper is a time to remember the life-saving actions of Jesus on Gethsemane. But it is not simply a mental assent to the fact that those actions took place, but something much deeper.

The Lord's Supper is a time to step into the world of Jesus, to experience again the sacrifice of the cross. We do not step into this world to simply remember with our heads, but to remember with our hearts. This type of remembrance is not simply to know what happened, to encourage us to emulate that spirit of Christ which was self-sacrificial. Emulation is the point of the Lord's Supper, not simply knowing.

So then, if the Lord's Supper is meant to draw a response out of us, in response to, and emulation of the sacrifice of Christ, maybe, the collection has been placed in the correct place after all.

"We are just giving to God what is already his", how trite and small that makes the offering, how devoid of theological and personal significance! The offering is not, should not, and can not be an easy thing, it is precisely the opposite, it is a sacrifice!

In the past we have, in attempts to make it easier for people to give, reduced the sacrifice required of us to "It's God's anyway, right? So we might as well give it to him, cause it's not ours."

Following the Lord's Supper with the collection is a beautiful, appropriate, theological progression. We move the Church from remembering what Christ did, to experience and emulate the concept of sacrifice. The collection is not a time for us give to God what is already his, it is a time to practice and begin entering into a Christ-shaped life: a life of sacrifice.

Church

Last Sunday night at Elmwood was an interesting one for me; It was a unique, experience that I had never had within the walls of a church before. We had Choir practice.
Okay okay, so a lot of Churches of Choir practice, but usually those are churches that actually have a choir. No this took place during our normal meeting time and was a time to learn new songs.
I struggle with this, on one hand I think "We are giving up a time set apart for edification and growth so that we can learn how to support our voices by using our diaphragm". Also along those same thoughts were: "Is this inviting for a visitor, what would a visitor think if they walked in right now?" Most people don't know how to read music, or really care to, yet there is little help for them, because we don't have a piano to play out their notes so that they can follow along. Is a Sunday Night really the right time to learn a new song?
On the other hand, I really do appreciate singing new music and I think that it is good for the church to learn new texts etc. Especially when they are interesting tunes... I like interesting tunes.
So here I am at an impasse, on one hand, I think its kind of a waste of time to be learning new songs instead of, i don't know, having a class or something. On the other hand, if I think new songs are good and important, when do we learn those songs? Should we try to learn them on Sunday Morning? Wouldn't that make the church service, instead of class time, difficult?
Ideally I would like to find another way around this issue, perhaps a praise team (sitting, sitting, don't freak out on me!) would be helpful. People that are trained to sing and sing well could help guide the rest of the congregation through microphones. Or perhaps setting up a meeting on... a TUESday would be the right way to go about it, but we have small numbers on any day that isn't Sunday Morning as it is, I find it unlikely that many would participate if we had a "non-church" day as our meeting time.
Well, I'm pretty sure I don't like it, but on the other hand, perhaps it is the best option for this church at this time to learn new songs... but I still think a praise team would work better

On the reduction of Baptism

I was reading Patrick Mead's blog today an I came across a blog title that interested me "How small can we make baptism"
Since it was an old post, I dont expect to get much conversation on my comment, so I will put a link to the post here and my comments follow:

I appreciate what you have to say, however, I’m not sure your argument is particularly strong. Your first argument is one of semantics isn’t it? You are saying that immersion was immersion, that it was a cultural practice of the time makes no difference? We have defined a word with its definition, which is helpful, but does not seem to necessitate it on a theological level.

Your second point seems to fail in that the letter to Romans is not a church leader’s handbook on how things should be run. It seems to me that Paul was referencing a common experience between Christians to create an analogy to the Christ event, not mandating submersion as requirement.
Your third point stresses the importance of community, and you have drawn a nice image of entering into community. As community is your point, is immersion the only way in which community can be displayed? In many high churches, where they baptize infants (though infant baptism is not the topic of discussion) through submersion or sprinkling, it is as much of a commitment of the parents to raise their children in the faith as it is a commitment of the congregation to walk alongside that child in his or her faith as well. What a strong show of community, one that is not simply imagery, but a vocal acknowledgment of the responsibility of the community to the individual.
What, may I ask, do you do with the Didache, and its teachings concerning baptism?

I am not trying to be contentious, just trying to encourage discussion as I try to flesh out my thoughts on baptism.