The Coloring Craze Crazies

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, a NoCoMedia production. That's what I have to say now? Is that what I'm supposed to say? If you would like to go to Germany, Switzerland, Reformation 500, May, I think it's the 10th through the 20th, 2017, you need to email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

Stuff will be up on the website soon enough. Maybe by the time you get this now, we will be in Wittenberg, in Wurzburg, in Zurich, in Geneva, and it will be right after the REF 500, Lawson, MacArthur, James White.

There's some plenary speakers with No Compromise Radio are doing some live radio there as well. But that's next year, and we're going to extend on some days to get in a bus, go to some really nice hotels, and cruise around.

Welcome and open. You need to get yourself to New York or to Boston and fly over there to Germany, and you can go with No Compromise Radio Ministry. How's that? Let's get a whole busload. Come on, let's make it happen.

Worship Lighting and the Regulative Principle

All right. I like to talk about, I don't know, current events in evangelicalism. I am recording now. This is show three for today. And one of the things that I don't like that gets in my craw, where's Don Green when I need him?

I don't like we have to help the Holy Spirit along in a worship service. I don't like anything that has to do with that type of thinking. My father would say stinking thinking. Is the Word powerful? Is the Word enough?

Okay, let's say you're TR, you're truly Reformed. Word and sacraments, are they enough? Well, I might say ordinance. I'm probably in the middle of sacrament and ordinance, just depending on what day it is.

Okay, ordinance, don't kick me out of the seminary yet. If we have the right lighting, will that help? What if there's no lighting? One time the power went off when I was in junior high, Morton Junior High, Omaha, Nebraska.

I was on the basketball team there. It wasn't JV, it was whatever, the junior high team. We just had to shoot free throws the whole time. We weren't allowed to practice full speed scrimmage in the gym because there were no lights.

Somebody would get hurt. But we were allowed to just shoot free throws. We could barely see. And I thought that was pretty smart of the coach. What if you can't see anything? What if you have candles?

What if you're in a cave? What if you're in a catacomb? What if you're on the run? What if you are a recipient of the book of Hebrews, and you are having your homes taken? You don't have any place to meet, and you don't have the cool blue backdrop.

What do you do? The tweet we have for No Compromise Radio is atnocoradio. And mid-May-ish, I put a blue stage worship light tweet out. And I don't know what it is. Well, it has to do with lighting and coloring.

But you're not nothing. You ain't anything. You're a bunch of Hicksville if you don't have a blue backdrop. A cool blue stage, purple haze, blue haze is what you've got to have if you're anything. If you're cool.

Now maybe that has to do with cool blue. Well, I found online, Lighting, Color Theory, and Emotion. ChurchStageDesignIdeas .com. And what they do is they will help you not only probably stream your TV live, not just to give the all-access pass for shift worship.

That's only $149 a year. How do you set the stage up properly? Proper lighting for churches. Now, I will say, you always have to give disclaimers in this PCH. I want to be heard more than I am seen. That's why we don't have big video screens here at the church.

And I want the people to be able to see their Bibles. But I'd rather be heard than have them see me. But I want them to be able to see their own Bibles. Now if they have an electronic Bible with a lighted backdrop, it makes it pretty easy if there's not good lighting.

But there's nothing wrong with good lighting in a church. The question is, why do you have it? If it's what we'd like to be able to read, yeah, I think that's pretty nice. But if it is we've got to create the mood, let me put it this way.

As an organ, mood music is to an altar call, helping facilitate, priming the pump. There are a variety of reasons why we have this mood music. So too lighting, the backdrop and the stage, stage backdrop, is to modern churches.

I'm sure I messed up the grammar in there someplace. Article is written by Stephen Hall. Now if it was written by Terry Hall of the specials for Fun Boy 3, I probably would have liked it a lot more. But he is talking about colors and color combos affecting our emotions that we create in our church services.

That's all I need to know right there. It's Jesus' church. He builds it. He tells us what he likes in worship. How to worship God is something you can't make up, you can't figure out. Ask Uzzah when he picked up the ark.

Ask Nadab, strange fire. Ask Abihu, strange fire. You don't make things up. We have to be told. If we think about worship the way we want, I didn't like the worship. Well, I never asked you to even ask that question, but it is something that probably immature people say and think through until they say, wait a second, I am finite.

I am a creature. I am fallen. And even though redeemed, even though regenerated, there is still sin's presence in my life. See Romans 6 and 7. I probably shouldn't make up things about how a holy God ought to be worshipped.

I ought to just probably do what he says. Thankfully, unlike idols, God actually speaks, and he has told us in his word what he expects. And we don't create anything, we just do. And if the Bible did tell us, make sure you have some cool blue backdrop, then fine.

And, you know, maybe you have a cool blue backdrop because you just think it looks cool. And if that's the case, fine. I'm not against the color blue. That would be dumb. I hate blue. Okay. What do these colors, I mean I was reading this week that green helps lessen some migraine pain.

I believe there's a psychology to this whole thing. You know, you don't paint prisoners' cell walls, you know, red, probably. You know, do bulls see red or is it some other pigment? Pigment, pigment. Stephen Hall writes, Lighting can convey emotion, mood, setting, energy, and many other important elements during a church service.

Well, maybe some OPC and Reformed Baptist churches ought to start implementing some of this for the energy. Of course, I'm just kidding. Color can be one of the most impacting attributes of lighting. Warm colors, red, amber, yellow, can convey intimacy, warmth, energy, while cool colors, blue, green, purple, can convey darkness, growth, majesty.

What was the darkness part? I want to convey darkness and majesty. Worship his darkness, majesty. Even further than that, a saturated color can convey depth and intensity, while a pastel can convey old school, out of date, oh sorry, gentleness and calmness.

Our use of color in worship can cultivate a climate where people connect deeper with God. That's where you lose me. Colors are important. God made colors. I like colors. I like coffee colors. By the way, I reject all flavored coffees.

I don't want any flavor. I don't want any added stuff for flavoring. We don't go for that. Since I'm allergic to hazelnuts, especially that flavor, if I'm someplace they have no coffee except French vanilla or something, and I say French vanilla, I do it.

But I don't want to. I don't want to do it. Same thing, today I needed NyQuil. So I'm at the church building, and I have my back cool, gentle color, blue, behind me. But I still feel bad. So I get the DayQuil out.

Now, green NyQuil is for night. And orange, what kind of color is that? Is that a warm color? Intimacy, warmth, energy, and sick during the day, but you've got to take something anyway. And I took the two DayQuil out of the little prepacked pouches there, hermetically sealed.

And I don't have a very good opening for swallowing things. And so one of those got stuck in my throat. I mean, it was a tablet, gel cap. And it got stuck. I thought, how long is this going to take? So here we go again.

So the other one, I can't obviously swallow those. So I put it in water, got it a little softer. Now, this is the gel cap itself. And it started to turn the water orange, which was cool. But it didn't all seep out.

So I just put the now really flabby, chewy, gelatinous, orange DayQuil, plain label. I started chewing it. Man, it was bad. That was really bad. Now, what does this have to do with anything? When we say our use of color in capsules, in worship, can cultivate a climate where people connect deeper with God, this is as man-centered as it gets.

This is tripe. This is rubbish. This is garbage. This is trash. And if you're on a worship committee, and you say, well, how can we create a vibe? How can we create some emotions? How can we, quote, cultivate a climate where people connect deeper with God, and you don't use the Bible, and you use color?

You're a fool. That's foolish. That's a fool's errand. This is not the way it's supposed to be. We sing. We pray. We read Scripture. We baptize. We have the Lord's Supper. We preach. We give. There's a variety of things we are told to do, i .e., regulative principle things.

We don't have to say, well, red talks about passion, blood, anger, war, intense, love. Amber is intimate, warm. Yellow is excitement, energy, action. Green is life, growth, money. So you have a green backdrop when there's a sermon on giving.

Ah, see? Ignorance is not bliss. I did not know that. I wish they would have told me these things. Royal, love, fun, playful. That's purple. Magenta, cool, calm, serene, cough, cold. Cough, cold, flu symptoms.

Bees are blue. I should have taken the blue one. Black is stained, dark, sin. Purity, clean. That would be the color what? White. A stage that is lit all red can look very oppressive. But if you add some magenta to the red, you'll get a playful and energetic look.

Or add purple to red and get a more intense feel. If I were on Broadway and I wanted to use colors, fine. If I'm trying to do this to cultivate a worship experience, then I stiff arm it. I cringe. I reject.

I say, hello. I say you get a Kooks and Barney's Award. That's what you get. Kooks and Barney's Award for the color people. What's your ministry at church? Well, I do lighting and sound. Bravo. I need help lighting and sound.

It's hard to see me, which isn't that big a deal. But if it's hard to hear me when I'm preaching, that's a big deal. Assuming I'm preaching Christ crucified and I'm preaching from the text. But if it's to cultivate a worshipful experience with emotions and moods.

Remember mood rings? I think we need some NoCo mood rings. I'd like to sell a variety of things on the NoCo website. I just probably need some helpers out there. And we can create some cool gifts that are actually real, but they're satire.

I think that's what we need. We need Henno mugs and shirts. We need Kooks and Barney's shirts and mugs and key chains. And what else do we need? I don't know, mood rings. I'd like a NoCo mood ring. Problem is, not really in the mood to do NoCo as much.

But I got to do them anyway. A side note, you can buy some portable room dividers from the site too. It's kind of nice. You get to divide up the color. Limiting colors. Try limiting your colors within looks.

Why? It can give you a superb starting point. Many people fall into the trap of using lots of colors at the same time when lighting an element during a service. Occasionally, multiple colors can be impactful when used well and deliberately.

A mix of red, magenta, amber, and yellow could be used to try and communicate intensity, playfulness, energy, and warmth during a loud call to worship song. I can just imagine R. Scott Clark. All right, now, this is where we want these colors, and when it's call to worship, confession of sin, we switch the colors.

Black. When there's a... What do the Reformed people call it when you pronounce people's sins forgiven? When there's a pronouncement? I don't know what it's called. You make the colors white, yellow, luminescent.

If I only had the two-color rule in seminary... I've been to four seminaries, and I teach at Southern, Masters, EBTC, and Europe. I teach at three, and I've never told my students about color gradients, fading, amber.

I never thought I'd have to say amber. I never thought I'd have to say overwhelming the stage with too many colors during a sermon on repentance, or your best life now, purpose-driven blue backlights, somber, heavy.

Now, would you use what kind of color if you were singing the song, Our Sacred Head Now Wounded? Would that be lively? Peppy? Now, there are some responses to this website that helps equip churches. Put the Pelagian back into...

Helping put Pelagianism back into worship. If somebody got up and preached the Bible in the dark, or with purple haze lights, with fiery red stuff, and it was verse by verse, going through the text, telling me about the Savior who came to rescue sinners like me, the drama of redemption, how it was planned, how Jesus, the one who was crucified before the foundations of the world, that is planned and decreed by God, this lamb, they were talking to me about how sinful I was, yet there still was hope of forgiveness, hope of a resurrection, hope of eternal life, hope that I could stand before God, and I wouldn't be condemned, hope that he would say, well done, good and faithful servant.

And by the way, we are hopeful for that, because Jesus did already hear those words, as it were, well done, good and faithful servant. We heard God say that, not with color, not with even the sound, but with him raising the Son from the dead.

Communion, Intinction, and the Race-Color Misreading

Now, there are some comments. Fast food restaurants, do you know, used red orange Jell-O for years to get people to eat more quickly? Oh, that's good. How can we speed this up? Now, for some of the Presbyterian churches, the PCA churches that are doing intinction, and I have heard that sometimes people want to do the intinction, that is, the bread, cracker, matzah, dipped in wine, juice, ahead of time.

Not wine juice, but wine, comma, juice. Wine or juice. It does save time, because if you have 100 people, well, that's a megachurch for PCA, but if you have, okay, 500, 1 ,000, then it takes, you know, 10 minutes to hand out an element, then 10 minutes to hand out the other element.

Well, we've got to cut back time. Well, I have something we could do instead. For the Presbyterian PCA people that are battling intinction now, at the highest Presbytery levels, why don't we just add some orange and some yellow, and the people will eat faster.

Okay. Lori said this. Going to need you to stop referring to black as evil or dark as sin. What do you think that makes a whole race of people feel like? Oh, yes, but white is pure? Really? Now, thankfully, just before I read that, we changed the fluorescent lighting here to a color.

I think the magenta, magenta, and the amber. Amber, magenta. Thankfully, that was there. Jonathan said, this makes me sad that you thought of skin color when reading this list. Truly, black skin doesn't make someone less pure than if they had white skin, nor vice versa.

Just like if someone had purple skin, I wouldn't think they were royal. I'd call medical help for them. That's true. I know we say black for black-skinned people, but they don't really have black skin now, do they?

I think they have darker skin. It's a brown hue. I think when you say people have white skin, I don't think Caucasian is quite white, do you? This is irrelevant, and this is showing you where our mind goes now when there's any white or black talk.

Obviously, there's one race, the human race. Obviously, Adam fell as our federal covenant head, and we got credit for his sin. Obviously, there's a mediator, and he is not just a Jew in his mediatorial work.

He is a man. He is the God-man, and he reconciles Jew and Gentile. And if you're white, my guess is you're a Gentile. If you're black, my guess is you're a Gentile. And so you need to get over the whole race thing about white and black.

And if you say black, we somehow think if you're a black person, you're evil because we call you black, and black is always evil. That is childish. That is as childish as thinking amber and other colors make people more worshipful.

The Scriptures, true or false, are sufficient. True. And they tell us everything we need to know about worshiping God. He didn't leave something out. Why would God do that? I'd like to be worshiped a certain way, and let's just kind of see what happens.

Is there any other comments here? My skin is not white and yours is not black. Let's stop being silly about all this. Yes, it is silly, and let's get back to even something more silly, and that is color helping not with just emotion, getting people to eat faster, setting the mood, setting the emotional table properly.

But does this facilitate worship? If lighting helps you see the Bible and helps you see the aisle so you don't trip on people and get hurt, I'm all for lighting. But lighting has nothing to do with worship.

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. It has nothing to do. I mean, really, what are we going to do? If you want to hire somebody to say, can you help me light up my sanctuary better so people can see and people don't have to squint and people don't need to do X, Y, and Z, I think it's fine.

But once you say facilitate worship, cultivate a climate where people connect deeper with God, if that's not because they can see their Bibles better, you get the Kooks and Barneys. We need some shirts, Kooks and Barneys and other things.

Come on, submit them to me. Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Don't forget, we're going to go, Lord willing. 2017 in May. Save your money. It's going to be a first-class trip. Nice hotels. I think Mike Jenner and I are going to be the leaders there.

Talk about Calvin and Luther and Zwingli at the sites. And you can register through me at NoCompromiseRadio .com. And what else is going on? New book, Evangelical White Lies, talking about living the gospel, friendship evangelism, tithing, eco stuff, God is green, and a variety of white lies like that.

I mean, can I even say white lies? White lies are better than black lies, and then somebody's going to think it's about skin color? I mean, come on.