I was listening to Brian Zahnd at the Word of Life church podcast from a couple of weeks ago and he was doing a series about showing mercy. Pastor Brian had pointed out any interesting thing, that the Pharisees said to get your act cleaned up and then come to the table to eat.
However, Jesus says come to the table to eat and I will help you get
cleaned up.

I guess I am wondering aloud, how do you reach out to show mercy? If you have read Mary’s Rock Band Post then you know that there has been a little thing about Rock Band and using it as an evangelistic tool. The thing I see is that most kids that walk into our church come from families that don’t know love and aren’t clean in one way or another. So if we can show them that we aren’t that different, that a lot of us like to play Rock Band or on the Wii or any other video games, won’t that let them open up so that maybe they will see that they can sit at the table and we will help them get clean?

One other point that I need to say as well. One of the objections was that there is a screen that shows skulls with wings coming out of them. I thought about it a bit, and this is what I realized…Didn’t God create the skull? wings? How did these things get associated with evil? I think that while God creates, we as humans use them to worship them for other purposes. Well, I remember that God had Ezekiel prophesy over the bones and they came to life. Didn’t the apostle Paul use the altar to the “unknown god” and quote poems from Greek poets while preaching at Mars Hill?

So if we can invite some kids to come into our midst, to show them mercy, compassion, and love, then do you think that maybe we can use Rock Band for a good purpose?