Random Thoughts on a Tuesday

It's been a while since a "real" post... I've been processing a lot, this is some of what's rattling around in the noggin. None of these really seemed to fit in a single post, so enjoy...

• Would love to hear more about this guy's story. I remember watching him on the Contender.
• We have been rockin the last couple days putting together a new look to our stage.
• The more I am in it... I am loving our new church and the team here. Great people. Authentic. I am pumped for what's ahead.
  
• I've been chewing on this blog post for a couple weeks. The AG has screwed up quite a bit, but I wonder what kind of ripples will come from this.
• On that note... I'm still out on the AG. Not that they care, but my verdict is still out.
  
• This community looks awesome.
• Hoping to get the new Blackberry Storm in about 3 days.
• You MUST MUST MUST check out these guys. Awesome family with an amazing story and company, they are honoring God and putting out some sweet clothes at the same time.
  
• I am really looking forward to a couple days to chill with my family and enjoy Thanksgiving.
• Speaking of family... I am SUPER proud of my wife and her new business, my daughter is pwning the 1st grade and my son is hilarious asking people, "wanna dance hot dog?"
  
• Having fun kickin the social media tires with this guy.
• I've been running the last couple days, it feels good to be active... training not just working out.
  
• Love that youtube is now in 16:9 aspect ratio
  
• Finished my run to today to this song... there is some interesting truth contained in the lyrics: these are the ears that ring with hate, this is the voice of silence no more, we the people... are we the people? this is the moment that needs to breathe, this is the test of flesh and soul... This is the cloud that swallows trust... This is the black that uncolors us... This is the face that you hide from... This is the mask that comes undone.
  
• It would be so killer to be able to scream -sing- growl like James.
  
  

Who is my neighbor?

Linkin Park |MTV Music

Used this video at our service tonight. We talked about how this video relates to the message in Luke 10 where Jesus is asked "who is my neighbor".  Who my neighbor is has changed.  With social media and internet connectivity we can be a "neighbor" to someone half way across the world.   How can we walk across the street to someone that is numb?  How can Christ followers take a step in the right direction to care for those that are numb?

Engaging youth through social media

There is no doubt that getting a teen's attention is hard enough, but trying to do it in a social media frenzied world is even tougher. There is also no doubt that social media can be utilized to enhance a student ministry's effectiveness.

Some of the tips from this report are:
• Clarity. Many student ministry sites are not clear what it is that they are trying to accomplish. Is there a clearly defined reason for having a presence on the www?
• Many Small Niches. This is huge. In our massive world, we have grown extremely small. The world is merely a mouse click away. We can chat with a missionary, real time, on the other side of the world. How can student ministry sites provide avenues to connect with many small niche elements?

These seem like opposites, but I wonder if they actually play off of each other to enhance the usefulness of the site. Read the rest of the tips here. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Engaging Youth Through Social & Mobile Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing facebook)

Rockin out

I've been home just long enough to update my wife on some of the wins from our U-Rock event tonight. Because our group is called United and we were featuring our new RockBand 2 game our leaders liked the name. To go on record... I had NO idea! We had just about half of the students participate in the RB2 contest and they were very into it.  Students arrived early for the night and started right in on the RB2 and didn't stop... ever! That would be great, but we had about 22 other game systems there. We had a PS3, some Wii systems, 360's, and then the old skool... super NES & N64. All in all it was a great night. 

I am so proud of our team doing so great tonight. Chris totally went above and beyond! He seriously hooked us up tonight.

Some of my favorite moments:

• getting a song dedicated to me.
• seeing some very creative costumes.
• rocking out to some talented students performing RB2 songs.
• Freshman guy with chocolate on his face after consuming LOTS of candy saying ... "dude, it's like a five o'clock shadow... with chocolate".
• seeing new students getting connected with new friends.
• connecting with parents and seeing them love what their kids are doing.
• scaring kids as we were cleaning up.
• the guy that said that there needed to be more groups like ours around.
• a guest of a volunteer that loved it and just may give church another chance.
• our leaders that did SO great.
• coming home exhausted after knowing I gave my all today.

I'm sure there are more... hopefully I can post a picture or two soon...

Fab 5 team killers

This year's Catalyst has stirred up quite a bit of conversation. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it this year. Dave Ramsey's session has been the hands down favorite of the conference.

Here is some of what I have gathered... and some of what I've been chewing on...

Dave Ramsey:

The 5 things that bring about confusion or disunity:
1. Poor Communication
2. Gossip
3. Unresolved disagreements
4. Lack of shared purpose
5. Sanctioned incompetence

Thoughts on going #2... Gossip

Your negative comments should go to a supervisor and your positive comments should go to a co-worker or someone that works for you. Don't talk about your problems with people who can't fix them. That's gossip! I have seen and experienced the destructive force of gossip. Gossip is so easy to do and to be a part of; it is a battle to not jump in and destroy. It takes so little strength to gossip. There is no risk of authentic relationships involved in gossip. I certainly haven't perfected this one, but I am determined that I will not play a part in gossip. My personal character and integrity is worth more than a few fleeting moments of lame conversation.

I have been in a work environments where a lot of these things have been present: incompetence, gossip, disagreements, and lack of shared purpose. Yes, they are destructive and drive a serious wedge. As a leader these 5 things must be fought fervently and fought daily. I don't know how to say it any differently... stop everything and evaluate the fabulous 5 team killers. Don't take another step until you are sure that you fighting the 5. They can creep up.

Five Hundred

A quick post as I get ready to jump into an all team celebration. This past weekend our 3 campuses joined together and did a huge baptism service. It was an unreal day. The energy in the place was off the charts. At my campus we had 34 people signed up to be baptized, which alone is awesome, but during the service the invitation was given for anyone that wanted to join in and be baptized to just jump in line. When it was all over we baptized 99 people on Sunday.

Yesterday as the numbers came in the total for all three campuses came to 500 baptisms. The stories of life change are so amazing. I love the fact that we are getting ready to celebrate what God has done and look ahead to what God is going to do out of this.

Unscripted!

There seems to be a ministry trend where we put a lot of effort into programming out a service down to the last drop. Programming is great and good planning is important but it's not everything. The programming doesn't own the service. With all of the programming we can miss the unscripted moments. The unscripted moments seem to end up leaving people most changed. God often uses our unscripted moments... those moments where I often cringe and think "ouch... that's gonna leave a mark".

Have you had an unscripted moment lately that made you cringe and think ouch? Those are actually great moments. They are moments to be fully aware of because some of the best things can happen in the unscripted moments.

I have been thinking about this past week of ministry. My unscripted moment of the week was using slingbox at our student service to interact between our campuses during a Q & A. We had a six second delay. If you know programming, six seconds is an eternity. At every delay, yes there were more than one, I would cringe because the transitions were so off. In reality the students loved the unscripted feel and totally engaged in the questions. I am blown away with the awesome questions from our students.

It's super easy, as a leader to get wrapped up in the moments that are unscripted and make us cringe and loose sight of the big win. Overall the night was a big win. The questions spurred on great discussion and led the students to grow relationally and spiritually.

My prayer is that I can be aware of the unscripted moments and celebrate those rather than cringe.

Truth

One of my new favorite shirts is from the Jedidiah Hope Series. I picked it up a couple of months ago. I am a huge Jedidiah fan. I still remember my first Jedidiah Risk shirt almost 6 years ago. My new shirt features a phrase about truth that sealed the deal that this shirt would be coming home with me that day. It reads...

Truth Fears Nothing

The phrase has stuck with me. Does truth really fear nothing? Do people believe that? Do we live that? What about the church and truth? Sadly, it's just the opposite, people fear truth?

Why is truth feared? truth hurts... truth is messy... truth is hard to do in love.

Even still I am afraid that we fear the truth all too much. What's worse this fear seems to be prevalent especially in the church. We talk a good game; we are all about truth, but in the words of Jack... "you can't handle the truth". We'd rather fake a good game then have to deal with the harsh reality that we don't have it together. No wonder that authentic relationships are hard to find and so desired. Young leaders crave someone that is authentic and willing to, in truth, fear nothing.

There are a couple areas that this "truth-avoidance" sticks out the most.
• Church leadership... when the truth gets too personal it's rejected.
• Sacred cows... when the truth affects my ministry then I don't want it.
• Perceived truths... perception is everything. In many churches perception and appearance seem to be more important than heart condition.

Craig posted about the power of truth. It got me thinking about truth... how warmly do we welcome truth in our lives and in our ministries? It's been my experience that it's not too warm, maybe more like a cold shoulder. I value people that can speak the truth in love and receive it in love also. Just one of the many reasons I love the authenticity of the place we are in right now!

I like the truth. The bible actually says that it will set you free. Do we really believe it?

Your church is...

How would people in your community finish this phrase?

Is the message you think you are sending the same message your audience is hearing? Our intended message isn't always what is heard. Many times our best attempt at being culturally relevant sends "our" message with an outcome that falls short of what we had hoped. I am a student of how people view the "Church" and the local church; even more specifically, my church. Pop Goes the Church has a chapter in it titled Molly Your Church Sucks. How many times has this phrase been used? Probably too often...

I love the collision that happens when God's timeless truth is communicated through culture. It is a life's goal of mine to do the best I can to arrange these collisions and celebrate what God does as real people encounter God in a real way.

There are plenty of ways to get your community buzzing about your church. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that we all desire that the buzz is positive, but there are times it doesn't go too well. So far the buzz on this one isn't so positive. Negative buzz is so hard to recover from. I'd really be interested in understanding the intention behind this church sign.

"We meant that as a loving warning to teens. … The Scriptures tell us that you should not do what the song tells you to do. The Scriptures are not ambiguous on this issue." - a church in Ohio

There is an intended message and then there is the message that is being heard.















How can we influence a positive buzz? Can't we do better?
Thanks to places like this that help make a positive buzz.

Service Opener

This is a video that is shown on our weekend services. John Rolf our creative guru made it. I liked it, so I thought I'd share it here. Enjoy...



Service Opener #3 from John Rolf on Vimeo.

Jesus and Dinosaurs

Straight from the beginners bible coloring book... seriously?
























Thanks to Ethur for the hint.

Crazy day

Today started at 2:15am. I didn't intend it that way... I was supposed to get up early... just not that early (that's crazy). I got all ready and made it downstairs thinking my coffee would be brewing, but it wasn't. Something wasn't right... oh yeah... it was 2:45am!

After a LONG day finally ended, I sat down to chill for a bit before a rockin' spaghetti dinner that my wife made. As I was chillin (checking blogs) I ran across a loswhit post about a free scoop from Ben & Jerry's. Sure enough it was Ben & Jerry's 30th birthday and they were celebrating by giving out a free single scoop cone. It was a nice treat to take the kids and get ice cream.

My favorite quote of the night... from a Ben & Jerry's employee, she turned to a co-worker and exclaimed "It's so hectic in here... what's the deal?"

Hectic ice cream store and all, the kid's and I had a great time. As we drove home the free ice cream made me think about who all uses the "free incentives". Churches seem to us it a lot. The Ben & Jerry's "free cone day" made me a believer in incentives, especially when they are done right. Churches are guilty of overusing the incentive as an attractor. It was kinda the first time that I was on the receiving end of a "free incentive". This experience validated the free incentive event. It's amazing the benefit of a single scoop of ice cream. It was a good reminder that simple, little, seemingly ordinary things can add large amounts of value, especially when done with strategic intentions.

McManus @ Awaken

There are a lot of great churches out there that are reaching people like Mary and Martha and Peter in the Scriptures, but there aren’t enough which reach out to Dionysius and Damaris (Acts 17).

It’s better to be alienated by the Christian world if that is what it takes to reach the alienated.

Thanks to Eric for keeping us updated on Awaken.

Risk

A while back I had a shirt that had RISK boldly printed across the front of the shirt. I like taking risks. Steven and Seth post some thoughts about risk and how it has an effect in our lives. They compare: boldly take risks when we have nothing to loose vs. how we aren't as bold with our risk taking when we have more to loose. When we have more to loose...

"There is now a strong temptation to mistake risk aversion for maturity.
Sometimes, under the guise of getting wiser, growing deeper, or waiting on God, we let our audacity atrophy and set the stuff that made us special on the shelf.

That must really insult God. After we’ve already seen Him part seas, kill giants, and multiply fish and loaves, we should be more inclined to push our chips to the center of the table, not less!

Otherwise, we’ll eventually find ourselves building altars in honor of where God was."

Elements of Success

Seth posts some tips for being successful as a small business. These are also great tips for life and for churches. I would guess that churches would highly benefit in accomplishing the mission by implementing these tips...

1) the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn't work,
2) the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
3) enough belief in other people that you don't try to do everything yourself.

Staggering

This is a portion of the post that Perry put up today... one of their pastors, Clayton, who has a post about "shooting the wounded" that tells about an encounter with a pastor...

“I figured out who the power players were in the church, and a deacon told me to make sure I did not make any of them mad because they had the 2 things that mattered most; family and money. So I made every decision based on them. This brought short-term success, but I was burning out. I had no passion left.”

“I did not realize how much I had neglected my kids until one became a drug addict and the other one slipped into deep physical sin. I did not even know my own children, and it was my fault. Then one day I came home from a deacon’s meeting, and my wife had taken all of her stuff and left a note on the table that said she was tired of it. She hated me for ignoring my family and she blamed me for everything, for putting the church before them.”

You can imagine the lump in my throat as I stood there and listened to this grown man choke back tears over the family he lost. He was broken; a ghost of the leader, pastor, and shepherd I had met 10 years earlier. Then the saddest words to ever leave his lips landed on my ears.

“So what did my church do when all of this happened? The people I had served and pastored called a business meeting and they fired me. They said they could not have a divorced pastor with rebellious kids leading their congregation. They gave me 2 months salary and wished me luck.”

No grace. No counseling. No support. Maybe they felt he was unable to lead them any further. Fine. But not even a reception with cupcakes and coffee to say thanks for 13 years? This is way too common. I see it more than most anyone else because my calling carries me so many places, and when I hear these stories, I cry out to God to protect pastors, and the churches they serve, from shooting our own wounded. Of course not every church is like this and not every pastor suffers such a fate, but this man did. God help him, his wife, and his kids. And God help the Body of Christ to offer mercy and compassion to our own wounded who lay on the side of the road, in a ditch, waiting on anyone, even a Samaritan, to come to our aid.

There is a lot of conversations going on about "burn-out". I am trying to process the difference between being "burned" and "burn-out"... thoughts?

Originality

An excellent post by Eric Bryant. He shares about a new series at Mosaic.

Too often we believe the lie: “It’s not my fault.” We may not be able to change what happens to us, but we can choose how we will respond. 2 Peter 1:3-7, reminds us that we have been given everything we need from God for life and godliness and even still we are to “make every effort” to become the people God created us to be... don’t have to succumb to a “victim mentality,” but I can live an original life.

It seems that conformity is more widely accepted than originality. Sometimes an origional life causes friction due to the fact that it is different than what others are being conformed into. I don't think we enjoy or were meant for "assembly-line humanity". Something within us fights against the pressures of legalism; sadly not everyone withstands the pressure to conform.

Somehow we've equated conformity with holiness. Spirituality is more identified with tradition and ritual than it is with a future and a hope. Too often discipleship equals standardization.

-McManus, Soul Cravings

Live an original life that God intended for you to live!

Church Service

One Sunday morning, the pastor noticed little Alex standing in the foyer of the church staring up at a large plaque. It was covered with names with small American flags mounted on either side of it. The seven year old had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the pastor walked up, stood beside the little boy, and said quietly, “Good morning Alex”. “Good morning Pastor,” he replied, still focused on the plaque. “Pastor, what is this?” he asked. The pastor said, “Well, son, it’s a memorial to all the young men and women who died in the service.”

Soberly, they just stood together, staring at the large plaque. Finally, little Alex’s voice, barely audible and trembling with fear, asked, “Which service, the 9:00 or the 10:45?

What kind of world do you want?

Five for Fighting has a great song that asks the "what kind of world do you want"? This is a thought provoking question. Whether or not you agree we all contribute to the world around us. I feel like there are people that take a victim or reactionary stance and believe that things are happening only to them, that it's not necessarily how they've contributed. We all have our role to play...

So, what kind of world do you want?
What are you going to do to make it happen?
What are you going to do to add benefit and not be reduced to one of the many critical onlookers?
What role will you play?

One of the last lines of the song is "History starts now". History is being made right now as you are stirred to make this world a better place.

Whether it is literally the world or the area that you influence, you can make a difference. This makes me think of two verses in the bible...

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Matthew 5:13-16

What kind of world DO you want?
Make History!

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Kingdom-minded

How kingdom-minded am I? How kingdom-minded are you? Craig posted some challenging thoughts on the issue... (a couple of biggies...)

• If everyone did ministry the way I do, we would never reach the whole world.
• If you’re going to be guilty, be guilty of speaking well of the body of Christ—rather than being guilty of being divisive.

There are some very challenging points... check 'em out...