I finally had to do something with the increasing spam problem for my main address for this domain. I’ve promised a lot of people that I would never retire that address, so I had to do it some other way.

So I signed up with Spamarrest.com. Which means you’ll get a challenge if you send me mail there.

And I put a new address on the site. I know, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to harvest it even with the emailriddler encoding. But for a while I’ll get spam free e-mail - without the challenge thingy, for those who e-mail me from the website.

I’ve been complaining for years about Norway being spiritually dead. Doug especially has heard me sing the blues repeatedly
I’ve been trying to figure out why, and have heard theories for why. Some of them may have some merit. But there’s one theory in particular that I thought up myself that I found particularly interesting.

I’ve noticed how many churches have seemed satisfied with status quo. They seem uninterested in changing their churches, to pressing on, to getting deeper into worship.

A while ago I was at a concert in a pentecostal church. The main pentecostal church in Norway. I considered the concert uneven spiritually, but there’s something the worship leader said then that’s coming back to me now.

He said that this was only the beginning. I don’t remember his exact words, but I got the impression they were talking about developing the youth outreach, and pressing on in music, getting closer to God.

And this weekend I got talked into attending a few services of their fall conference, with the evangelist Johannes Amritzer http://www.missionsos.org/.

I got there a little late on Thursday, and almost immediately I felt like praising the Lord. I don’t know how long they kept it up, but most of the service prior to the sermon was music. And then as they moved into the altercall, they started up with the music again, and kept going - I actually left before they stopped.

The next night it took them a bit longer to get warmed up, but they kept going, and they did get warmed up.

And during the altercall, they kept going until Johannes stopped praying for people. By then most of the audience had left, and many were talking aloud. But they kept going nevertheless, and people were blessed - those who concentrated on the worship.

The last maybe five years, what I’ve seen to be the norm in Norway, has been that worship music is handled by the pastors as though it’s entertainment. I won’t name names here, but I’ve seen so many times that the pastors have gone up on stage when the worship music finally starts to get to the stage where people are closing their eyes and raising their arms. I don’t know why they do it. Maybe they want to look good to the congregation? Anyway, they kill the whole thing. I get so tired of that. It’s an old conflict. I don’t know how many years ago I first heard that conflict voiced by worship leaders, who were frustrated by their pastors.

That’s what I found so interesting at Filadelfia. I don’t know if their regular services are anything like that. Probably not. But they have a (young) tradition of letting the young people have so called Celebration services, where the worship music takes centre stage. And what I witnessed has grown out of that.

I hope it’s contagious..

And the music is, of course, a knockoff of Hillsong. What can I say, I quite like the heavy beat!