Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Worshipping with Irish Band Bluetree

 
Bluetree is a Northern Irish contemporary Christian band. The band is best known for its song "God of This City", which received international exposure when it was covered by Chris Tomlin on the Passion: God of This City and Hello Love albums. As an independent artist, Bluetree signed distribution agreements with Lucid Entertainment in the USA and Kingsway in the UK & Europe for their album, God of this City.
 
  
Bluetree's MySpace Website
 
 
 
 
 
 
God Of This City by Bluetree in HD with Lyrics
 
 
 
 
Bluetree - Jesus Healer (Kingdom)
 
 
 
 
God's Plan Bluetree HQ With Lyrics
 
 
 
 
BlueTree - Burn me up
 
 
 
 
 
Review
 
 
The debut album of Irish worship band Bluetree hit No. 1 on the Christian Retail and Praise & Worship charts this week and No. 125 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.
“With the album sales and growing success of the radio single, ‘God Of This City,’ I believe a new breakout band is on the horizon,” reported Greg Lucid, CEO of Lucid Artist, the label under which Bluetree released God Of This City in the United States on Tuesday.
 
“As the lyrics to the album’s title song say, ‘Greater things are yet to come…,’” he added after calling this week’s success an “Irish-invasion.”
 
As an independent band from Belfast, Ireland, Bluetree had recorded their debut album at the Windmill Lane Studios, the preferred studio of Irish rock group U2. The record was eventually released in September 2007 and picked up on January 24, 2008, by Fierce! Records for U.K. distribution.
 
What vaulted the band into international popularity was the hit song “God Of This City,” which was covered by worship leader Chris Tomlin on two albums and became the name and theme for the latest project and world tour of the Passion movement led by Louie Giglio.
 
Today, aside from being sung in church services around the globe, “God Of This City” has become an R&R Most Added hit single in the United States as scores of stations nationally begin playing the song.
 
“Since writing [‘God Of This City’], the band’s momentum has been nothing but fast and furious,” remarked Gospel Music Channel.
 
Though the band's name may not be drawn from Scripture, as many worship groups' tend to be, the name reveals what the band "is all about" and what they believe Christians should be doing - standing out.
 
“If you’re in a forest and there’s nothing but green trees — everything being as you’d normally see it — but then you see a blue tree with blue bark, blue leaves, blue branches, well, it would catch your eye,” explains lead singer Aaron Boyd.
 
“And as Christians we’re called to stand out, to be different—like blue trees,” he adds.
 
The band’s music style has been described as a convergence of worship, rock, and technology that crosses Chris Tomlin, Delirious, and the David Crowder Band with “the alternative aura of Oasis,” as ChristianMusicToday.com put it.
 
Since its inception, Bluetree has desired to create an atmosphere of worship where people could encounter the Spirit of God through music – “a climate where the complete expression was greater than a singular attitude of the heart and music a secondary compliment.”
 
In May 2009 the band plans to launch their charity "Stand Out International," which directly rescues kids out of the sex industry.