My Web 2.0 BETA - Yahoo!

Haven't read or heard any buzz on this today. Give it a try!

LeadershipJournal.net - "I'm Losing My Focus"

This is an excellent article on the need to refocus. I have been trying to do this sometime using David Allen's term "weekly review". I have found this to be an invaluable tool! Burke's recommendations of a half-day away to dream and listen to God monthly as well as annual retreats for planning, personal growth, and refreshing your marriage relationship are great ideas.

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons - Eugene Peterson

I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.

This strikes me as a strange quote from the author of the Message which is a translation of the Bible seeking to be relevant to our day and age. What is Peterson getting at here?

The Word: John Medeski, the North Mississippi Allstars and Robert Randolph

Time to give some props to one of my favorite bands: Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Here's a review for the cd, The Word. My favorite quotes are in bold.

Jelly review: John Medeski, the North Mississippi Allstars and Robert Randolph: The first ever jam session must have occurred in a church. When the Spirit starts to move, nobody watches the clock. Keyboard player John Medeski, on break from his full time gig with Medeski, Martin & Wood, gathered together the North Mississippi Allstars and pedal steel player Robert Randolph for this high-stepping dance through a session of gospel blues.

Randolph is the real revelation here, as his pedal steel work steers a wide path away from the weeping willow-isms his instrument is usually associated with in the country realm for some squealing blues work. The hand-clapping Sunday service stomper 'Without God' is converted into a Southern rock powerhouse. On 'Waiting on My Wings,' Medeski's clip-clopping organ notes lead a funk workout worthy of the almighty Meters.

As nobody in this band steps up to the mike to sing, all ten tunes are completely instrumental. Without gospel's soul-deep lyrics, this recording sacrifices much of its spiritual impact. Unless you're already familiar with the sermon-in-song messages of these mostly traditional selections, you won't likely receive their originally intended blessings.

But if you want to hear what church might sound like if the Sabbath is ever moved from Sunday morning to Saturday night, this is your fantasy disc.

Here's a quote from the back cover on Live at the Wetlands:

On stage, Randolph is an energetic and inspiring presence, able to convert any beer-drenched, smoke-filled room into a temporary sanctuary. He's a time-stopping, trouble-erasing wizard who engages his listeners to march, press on, stomp their feet, clap their hands, scream. --Rolling Stone

I think this ties into the concept of jubilation that Dr. Platypus discusses in this post here. It'd be great to recover this in our churches. Fortunately great artists are doing it in "beer-drenched, smoke-filled rooms" around the country every Friday and Saturday night!

Encouragement in the church

praisebandchapelnamaan.JPG
Originally uploaded by Drpoulette.

This is an extended quote from an email newsletter I receive each week from worshipideas.com. This little newsletter pointed me to the Bose Personal Amplification system that each of my churches purchased for our PA system (and they sound incredible!).

[Joe Wood, this week's guest writer, leads the praise choir at one of upstate South Carolina's mega-churches, Brookwood Community Church. Brookwood has over 4,000 attendees each Sunday and is similar to Willow Creek.]

"We practiced for six hours and the director was still mad at us."

It was Father's Day, and I was eating at a breakfast that our church provided for the men singing in our once-a-year men's choir. I'd just told the guy next to me how great the group sounded, and that's when he said it. "Yeah, I can't believe we did it in one rehearsal. The last church I was in, we did this; and we practiced for six hours and the director was still mad at us." I was stunned, and really didn't know what to say.

You see, I used to be the same kind of director. I was old school. I was a "crack the whip" kind of director ...
hammering on all the flaws. I think I learned it that way.
After all, I studied music at a Christian college where you felt like you were in trouble all the time. We focused on flaws and "scored points" in finding them. But then, years later, I sang in a volunteer community choir directed by a Jerry Step, a local minister of music. Jerry's primary training tool was encouragement. I think his spiritual gift was encouragement. Jerry would gush over everything we did.
He would even gush over things that I didn't think deserved to be gushed over. It didn't take long for me to long to recognize, though, that Jerry's encouragement motivated us to work harder. His encouragement painted an image of what we could sound like. And before long, we sounded about as good as Jerry had been telling us we did. More importantly, it was fun singing in Jerry's choir. When rehearsal was over, we went home feeling good about what we'd accomplished and looking forward to our next rehearsal.

So I started trying out Jerry's method on the groups I directed. And it worked! I was amazed at how people responded to encouragement. Instead of listening for flaws, I started listening for things that the groups were doing right and pointing that out. When I found a flaw I tried to approach it in an encouraging way ... like complementing someone who was doing it right and explaining to the group what that person was doing. It was transformational! I discovered that my groups made much more progress in an encouraging environment than they had under my old school ways. In fact, they started getting better than I'd thought they could be.

That's when I started to become passionate about working with "average" musicians ... and it's one of the reasons that I'm so excited about the emergence of the Praise Choir in so many of our churches. If you put a bunch of regular people who love singing in a group, and give them encouragement, a vision, good coaching, and music that fits their voices, they can sound great. Mix in their love for God, and passion for worshipping Him, and they can be a powerful voice that encourages the church to worship!

I'm so glad that the guy I was talking with at breakfast had the experience that he had with us on Father's Day. I think now that he knows he has a voice that God can use; and he knows a little bit about how wonderful it is to serve God through praise. Maybe we can lure him into our regular Praise Choir...

How'd the guys do? It was amazing! We rehearsed for an hour and a half on Wednesday night, and about thirty minutes on Sunday morning. We didn't worry about parts. We let them sing melody or whatever part they could find. We just wanted them to sing their hearts. We kept the focus on the praise that we were doing ... not on the technical details of the music. The sound was awesome and the impact was powerful.
How could it be anything else? A men's chorus, passionately opening our services singing "Lord, Reign in Me." By the time we got to the closing chorus of "A Few Good Men" (three of our Praise Team guys sang the lead parts), our congregation couldn't stay in their seats! The choir was blessed. The congregation was blessed. I think God was blessed. And the director didn't even have to get mad.

Solar Death Ray

Very entertaining website! Check it out! (Also my first post trying out the new Blogger images feature).

Lessons in vegetarianism in the heart of cattle country

Vaughn at Icthus has a very interesting article on vegetarianism. Being a pastor in the heart of cattle country in a community that depends on agriculture I thought it only appropriate to share my thoughts with him. Here's his post followed by my comments.

Lessons in vegetarianism

Today for lunch, steamed vegetables and tofu over brown rice (with a splash of soy sauce). Yummy. So, this got me thinking more about vegetarianism. Why would I eat meat? Well, the answer is mostly because I am tempted to glutony and vanity. I desire to please my appetite and I rationalize that if I eat more protein I will look trimmer and sexy. But are glutony and vanity Christian virtues?

So, I'm beginning to think of vegetarianism as a compelling Christian practice. My recent thoughts on it are that it is a prophetic witness against consumerism, consumption, and capitalism-run-amok. Arguably the food industry has become less about food and more about money. Check this statistic:

In the US, animals raised for food are fed 70% of the corn, wheat, and other grains we grow. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people - more than the entire human population on Earth.

Its difficult to think about more food going to cattle than to those (esp. in 3rd world countries) who need it most. But the fact is that there is much money to be made by large corporations connected to the beef council. To be a vegetarian sends a compelling message to society that you will not participate in systems of over-consumption and gluttony (have you ever met an obese vegetarian?) in an age when millions of people live in extreme poverty without food.

Arguably there are other reasons to be vegetarian as well, but for now, lets consider the environment and economics.

Here is my comment:

Hey Vaughn-

Thanks for the interesting statistics. We live in the heart of cattle country out here in the sticks and I must say that the situation is more complex than those statistics suggest.

In Colorado alone, the federal government pays over $38 million a year to farmers to not farm their land! This keeps many farmers from bankruptcy. We have plenty of land to farm for both cattle and human consumption. I thik the greater problem is water.

Colorado, as you know, has experienced terrible drought the last several years. Water consumption to produce food for animals is probably one of the main uses of water in our country.

But to be consistent, growing a lawn in Colorado is extremely poor management of water resources as well.

I believe there are responsible ways to raise animals for consumption. But those days are long gone as we have moved away from the farm to the city. Most people in the city do not know where there food comes from. They do not know how or where or by whom it was raised. The last several cows I've eaten, I've known who raised it, what they fed it, and what it's name was! I also know the butcher.

The issue of beef production is huge in the U.S, but there are also dangers lurking in the resources used for our fruit and vegetables. Some of these questions are very difficult to answer morally. For instance, today because of technology, we have incredible hybrids of corn and other vegetables which are more disease and drought tolerant than ever before. Because of this, the yields we see in these hybrids are greater than ever before using fewer natural resources.

Hybrids can help us feed more people while using less natural resources. Yet the debate around frankenfood is heating up! Are these genetically modified foods safe for the long-term? What are the long-term effects of GMO's?

I think one of the main considerations in food consumption from a Christian viewpoint is to support local, sustainable, ecologically responsible farming practices. That is easy to do out in the sticks but very hard to do in the city! Here we live close to the land and the producers. We know them and how they operate. In the city you have to trust the supermarket or a co-op and their word regarding whether the food product is organic, non-GMO, natural, or what have you.

From this standpoint, should a vegetarian eat a banana or a kiwi or a coconut? These are not local produce (in Colorado) and vast amounts of natural resources are used to provide them for us here.

One last thing that demonstrates the reliance on others we have in our food production: I find it funny that the vegetarian starter kit lists Fritos as an ingredient in one of the recipes. I have heard anecdotal stories that cause me to avoid Fritos like the plaque! (Namely that Frito-lay regularly purchases corn that is unfit for cattle consumption!)

I agree that a Christian's relationship to food and the practices that produce food are very important, but I don't think being a vegetarian is the only moral answer for a thinking Christian.

Grace and peace,
Steve

Everything is Church especially during the summer months!

From Jason Clark's blog here are his thought on an issue I was processing this morning:

I was having a conversation with Fredrik, when I was in Sweden, about the growing popularity, of making 'private god spaces', of being post church, and making church something about not being church.

In this expression, we see a reaction to the idea that the church has so often seen sundays as the only valid space for God to be. In this paradigm, sundays are church, and the kingdom, only the sunday service is church.

So now we regale the congregation, and sundays, and see church as when I play golf, go shopping, play football. In this paradigm everything is church, and I don't need church anymore, I'm post church.

But in the old model where nothing is church, surely it's so restrictive that we have to say no! and find God elsewhere? And in the second model, where everything is church, then ultimately nothing is church, a kind of pantheistic ecclessiology.

A church that does not naturally lead to people connecting to God, in the places they work, and play, and live, isn't church at all. Conversely when church becomes just the place where I chose to connect with people who do just what I want, like football, I have stopped being church, just as completely.

In the reaction to church being so disconnected from the world, we think we are being radical by moving church outside of church, but we can end up not being church at all.

So where do I see church? What about the football guy, who finds God in his football sundays, and the water-skiing woman, who finds her time with God there. When they get together and ask, how are we going to talk about our faith, how are we going to celebrate christianity together - I hate football and you can't water ski - how are we going to connect together outside of our own exclusive narrow spheres of interest...then they get to start being church.

If sundays was all about me, jesus as my girlfriend worship, my blessing, my needs, lets not be fooled and think that church on my terms, on my interests, with fewer people is anything better, or different, it's just the modern church on steroids, hyper modern church.

Here are my thoughts I posted in a comment on his site. (I planned to blog about this today and his post was a great springboard for me!)

Thanks Jason for these much needed thoughts! I have been thinking about this today as my churchs' attendance is horrible in the summer. When I run into members in town they tell me of how busy there are and the many trips they have been on, the many personal projects there are pursuing. One woman today expressed surprise when I recognized her because it had been so long since she had been to church.

Her comment portrayed the bigger issue for me. Church attendance isn't the issue. Gather together in community, with others, with people who are different from us is the issue. How can we love our neighbor as our self (remember how Jesus defined neighbor) if we aren't around long enough to connect?

CreativePastors Blog: Leadership Uncensored- Break it Up!

Very important reminder! Especially concerning the weekly sabbath for pastors.

Grokker

Grokker
Originally uploaded by hawkenstein.

Here's a fun site that gives you visual search results!

Private Warriors

Private Warriors
Originally uploaded by hawkenstein.

Also watch this fascinating Frontline report on PBS. If you get a chance, watch it!

The Education of Shelby Knox

The Education of Shelby Knox
Originally uploaded by hawkenstein.

I caught this documentary last night. It is excellent and raises many interesting issues. If you get a chance, check it out!

Emegergent Church: Filled with creative, energetic potential

Here's a quote from a great article by Alan Roxburgh on the emerging church.

At their best, these younger leaders want to challenge the North American church to a conversation about faith and mission in the midst of what they deem a postmodern transition. They want to engage in conversation about the philosophical, theological, methodological, and cultural challenges we face in our fast-changing world. At their worst, they become a new form of seeker-driven churches which use art, music, the digital revolution and the aesthetic pastiche of the moment to create new experiences.

At their best they courageously and joyfully enter the worlds of Goths and tattoo parlors to form Christian life in, with, beside and for people who would never be welcome in most congregations. At their worst they become the purveyors of more experiential, artsy, aesthetic forms of religious goods and services.

TheBolgBlog: D. A. Carson: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church

Some good thoughts on Carson's book by Ryan Bolger a professor at Fuller.

Monday Morning Insight Weblog: Using Mind Maps to Enhance Preaching

I've been using mind maps in my preaching and teaching for about half a year or so. I use software called Mindmanager and love it! It has revolutionized my preaching, teaching, and organization. To learn more about the use of mind maps read the Mindjet blog.

buzztracker

This website maps the news.

liveplasma

Check this out. Very cool!

Liveplasma is a new way to broaden your cultural horizons according to your taste in music and movies.

Look for your favorite bands, movies or directors to obtain a map that details other potential interests.

ExChristianDotNet - encouraging ex-Christians Ex Christian Ex-Christian Xtian ExTian ExChristian

Here's a sobering and sad site.

Monday Morning Insight Weblog: Bill Gates on Church Attendance

Here's a quote by Bill Gates on religion in Time magazine:

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Bill is absolutely right. Religion is not very efficient. It never has been and never will be. Efficiency is not the goal of religion. Efficiency is not the goal of a Sunday morning worship service (at least it shouldn't be!). To focus on efficiency or relevancy or any other thing besides God is to move away from the heart of worship.

I know that our society has gotten further and further from this concept but when Yahweh originally created Sabbath (which most Christians observe on Sunday, in theory) the goal was to move us from a mindset of production (efficiency) to rest (inefficiency).

Sadly, Gates and so many others don't see why religion is worth their time. What is worth Bill's time? What is worth our time? Is worshipping God worth our time despite how irrelevant and mundane it may be?

My two churches are far from being relevant to most in our town. We are far from being professional let alone great in our worship. We struggle to sing hymns with any real musicality. Our services are not powerful experiences were people leave knowing they have experienced God's presence. Yet we come together. We worship. At least we try. And I hope that is worth our time.

What's your theological worldview? Now that's surprising!

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 79% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Neo orthodox 71% Roman Catholic 64% Charismatic/Pentecostal 57% Modern Liberal 54% Reformed Evangelical 50% Classical Liberal 43% Fundamentalist 14% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Thanks to Darrell for the link.

No Wonder Emergent is Threatening to Evangelicalism!

Critical of the emergent church discussion? Maybe this will point out why.

Theoblogy: Official Response to Critics of Emergent

If you are critical of the emergent church discussion, please take the time to read this official response.

Jerry Rice

JERRY RICE
Originally uploaded by hawkenstein.

The G.O.A.T. is now playing for the Broncos. I think this is a great move as the veteran will bring a lot of knowledge and experience to share with the young receivers of the Broncos.

He'll also help them out in the red zone where the Broncos struggled last year.

Doubt: A History

Doubt: A History
Originally uploaded by hawkenstein.

This sounds like a fascinating program and book. There's also a quiz by the author. Here are some interesting quotes from the Speaking of Faith newsletter.

We examine the contribution of skeptics, cynics, and others who have followed the human impulse to challenge given wisdom, and to doubt. Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht has published a sweeping, lyrical history of the world's great doubters, and she shows that the act of questioning, as much as the act of believing, has changed the world.

The joy of creating this program lies, in part, in having my own imagination about "faith" expanded. This week, Jennifer Michael Hecht provides a luminous account of how our common imagination about doubt, and its symbiotic relationship with faith, begs for investigation.

Hecht's subject matter, the history of doubt, is daunting. She defines doubt generously, broadly addressing the human impulse to question what is given in order to invest one's days with meaning. She counts Socrates and Jesus, Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, among history's great doubters. She loves the ideas her work examines, and recounts their origins and the individuals who championed them as though she is recalling the adventures of friends:

You have to be a little bold and a little brave in most periods of time to be a doubter. And I liked them. I also was surprised by them because the dominant history basically suggests that doubt is very modern and that we have few doubters in the ancient world, but I kept seeing it everywhere. And so I just wanted to tell that story, to sketch it out. I found it was much more cohesive and self-knowing than I had ever dreamed.

How many Christians would acknowledge that there is a symbiotic relationship between faith and doubt?

TallSkinnyKiwi: The Emergent Heresy Test

Go take the emergent heresy test! Also check out the results.