Let's Say Thanks

Well, another Thanksgiving is upon us. We think of all the usual things we're thankful for:  family, friends, this great country, etc. But I want to direct you to two different posts. One is by Anthony Coppedge and the other is by Greg Atkinson, two of my new-found blog friends.

Greg's is about thanking those who volunteer for our ministries, and he offers suggestions of things we can do to honor and appreciate them.  You can find his post here:

Anthony's post is about thanking our troops. I can't think of a nobler cause. You can find his post here:

I probably won't be back for a while, so enjoy your Thanksgiving.

OK, So I'll Lighten Up!

All right, enough heavy stuff for awhile...

The current series we're in at Crossroads Church (www.mycrossroads.org) is called "Muchas Gracias." It's our Thanksgiving series. The media department of the church is named Crossroads Creative (www.crossroads-creative.com) which produces videos resources for churches.

One of our product lines is called On Ramps, which are sermon openers. For this series' On Ramp, I had the privilege of using my own daughter in the piece. I hope I'm not being just a doting father, but I thought she did a really good job (although she tried to direct from her position a couple of times!).

Anyway, check out the video on the mycrossroads.org site. Once you're on the site, go to the WEST page and click the play button. Drop me a line, and let me know what you think!

On another note, it was good to be reunited with an old friend yesterday, Mark Keefer, who I worked with at Church on the Move and Oneighty in Tulsa, OK. Mark's a great drummer and audio engineer. I worked with him in the Oneighty band and his home studio (when I say "worked with," not only do I mean that I played on his projects, but I actually helped frame up the walls - good times). Anyway, he's a bigshot Hollywood guy now, with four Emmys to his credit, plus he mixed "Hoodwinked!"  Awesome.

So the past couple of days have been great. Hope yours have been too.

By now you've certainly noticed (unless you live under a rock) that Christianity isn't looking so good lately. The ORU scandal, the Grassley investigation, Randy and Paula White, the Conan-obsessed priest. These are just a few of the instances where Christians are giving the world an excuse to not serve God.

I think that at the heart of all of these scandals is a real (or perceived) lack of genuineness. And that's what I'd like to open a discussion on today. There are some in this world that have the perception that Christians are gay-bashing Limbaugh listeners in the hip pocket of the GOP, and I can't say I blame them.

Which brings me my point.  We often hear the phrase "We've got to love them into the Kingdom." I see the thinking behind that statement, but I feel that the statement is, at it's core, completely in err. It should read more like this: "We've got to love them." That's it. No result needed - or expected.

Too often, we give love just so we can give the religious platitude. We want them to come to know Christ (an admirable goal, and one we hope to achieve in every one we know), but sometimes we show concern for people FOR THE EXPRESS purpose of sharing our faith, and that comes off as insincere, with ulterior motives. We have got to love people, no matter what. We've got to decide that we will love the lost, even if they choose to stay lost, and never put their faith in Christ.

Jesus didn't love people until they made a decision to accept Him or not. As He was being beaten, He loved. Spat upon. He loved. Mocked. He loved. Nailed to the cross. He loved. Denied thrice. He loved. Most of these men died without knowing the saving grace of God. Jesus still loved them.

That, my friends, is true love. That, my friends, will love them into the Kingdom.

The Relevant Answer to Relevance

OK, so I've kept you waiting long enough...

Picture this:  there's Joe Sinner, just going about his day, thinking everything is going fine. All of a sudden he gets a phone call from his teenage son's school. He's in trouble...again.  This time, they've found a bag of pot in his locker.

He's totally beaten down, ready to throw in the towel, and along comes his Chrimetrotisexualian friend (BTW, his name is Trevor, or Simeon, or something like that). Joe lets him know of his child's situation, and all Trevor/Simeon can come up with is how cool the video was this past week at church. He gives Joe some sort of irrelevant platitude. But wait...his presentation is pretty slick, and he compares Joe's situation to the time he found that the leather on his Fossil watchband was all stinky from his sweat (he calls it "glistening"), and he had such a terrible time of it, until he had to (gasp) wear the Armitron his sister bought for him last Christmas.

Of course, I'm being way over-the-top facetious, but do you get the picture?  What does Joe Sinner need?  He needs someone to help him get his son off drugs. He needs practical steps he can take to ensure his son's safety, his recovery and ultimately, his salvation. 

Trevor/Simeon's Aeropostale shirt, his Seven for All Mankind jeans, and his Vans (or Steve Maddens) don't add up to the proverbial hill of beans. Joe doesn't care about his faux-hawk or the leather choker necklace around Trevor/Simeon's beautifully tanned nape.  But the Christ-follower who helps Joe Sinner's son get off the ganja will be deemed relevant, even if said Christ-follower is wearing Wal-Mart jeans with a Yosemite Sam wallet tucked in the back pocket.

It's all about love, and being there for people, being "instant in-season and out," being REAL. If you happen to adopt the Trevor/Simeon style, that's OK, but PLEASE have some substance in your walk with Christ to at least put all that stuff away in order to meet the needs of those around you.

Tomorrow, I'll discuss the the fallacies of the phrase "Love them into the Kingdom."  I hope you return.

Relevance

Gotta have video, gotta have lights

Gotta have drama, gotta keep it tight

Gotta be a hip pastor, cool on a stool

Gotta have coffee bars and ministry tools

Does any of this sound familiar? Hey, look, I'm not knocking churches that have and do all this stuff (I work at one, minus the coffee bar), but if that's all we're about, we've missed it.

I'm a bass player. And I'm a good one. Not boasting, but I've done some pretty big gigs in my career. Back in the late 1990s, I lived in Tulsa, OK, and at that time, all the denominational churches there were in a push to create a "contemporary" service. It was great for me, because I had my pick of all the good gigs. I often joked that if a good bass player could form the word "Jesus" in his mouth, he had a church gig somewhere.

Really, all they were looking for was a rock band to do worship. What they were actually NEEDING was true authentic worship, but not many of the music pastors understood that. I often thought of it as a form of godliness, but denying the POWER thereof, but that's a whole other blog.

Fast forward to 2007, and the buzzword is "relevance." We have churches doing all sorts of things in the name of relevance. We've untucked our shirts, left our cuffs unbuttoned, gotten the faux-hawk hairstyle, all in the name of relevance. Well, if that's all you've got, then all you've got is nothing more than a cookie-cutter template of Chrismetrotisexualanity. I believe that all of these things are OK in and of themselves, but when it becomes what defines you, then it's wrong.

So, you might ask, "Well, Mr. Know-it-all, self-proclaimed bass player extraordinaire, what do YOU think relevance is?" I'm glad you asked.

Check out my post Monday and I'll tell you.

Clean Pond, Clean Heart...

I recently did a little home improvement project, where we (Jamie C. and myself - THANKS Jamie!) created a goldfish pond in the courtyard next to my kitchen (which is off to the right as you're looking at this picture). I love it. I'm the first one up every morning.  I let the dog out, then I feed the fish. It's nice. It's still dark, the lights are still on in the pond, and it's a neat little quiet time for me.

On the down side, I have two trees that loom overhead, and with trees comes fallen leaves.  No big deal right?  Well, when we first built the pond, I was quite studious about getting the leaves out. Needless to say, I slacked off a little, and before long, my pond was all green and murky, long past the "green water" phase that comes with having a new pond.

This past Monday, I cleaned out the pond.  I drained it, then proceeded to retrieve enough leaves to fill a plastic grocery bag.  I made a new pledge to keep it clean this time around, and hopefully, I will.

As I was fetching out leaves last night, I started thinking about the human heart, and how many times we just let stuff pile up, and we only deal with it after it's become all ugly and murky.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why not take care of it while it's still manageable, without having to go back and make more work for ourselves?  Why can't we take every little effort to keep our hearts pure?

Now that my pond is clean again and I can see the bottom (and my six goldfish and two algae eaters) again, the initial joy is back, and I LOVE the way it looks, especially when the lights are on.  The whole area is much brighter now.

I want my heart to be that way also.

Vision

We hear a lot of talk about vision.  We're told that "without vision, the people perish."  Some would say that you'll never prosper financially unless you can envision yourself in that lifestyle.

But what about vision for the church media guy?

My vision, which I'll admit is sometimes (often) limited, has less to do with our weekend services than does the vision of (wait for it, this is going to be revolutionary to the ENTIRE church media community) my pastor.  So often, we creative folks thrust our vision (and our agenda) onto the pastor, but I believe we do our jobs best when we let his vision be thrust upon us, then do what we can to accommodate that vision.

I recently read a new Christian arts-type magazine.  They're just on the market.  It was one of the cooler things I've seen in a while. There were articles on creativity, relevance, pop culture, relevance, music, relevance...well, you get the picture.  What I didn't find therein was anything relating to finding out what your pastors wants and executing THAT.  Although everything in the magazine was cool, and correct, I just found that last little bit of information lacking.

You want to have a successful church media ministry?  You want to have people touched by what you do? You want to keep your job? Learn the vision of your pastor.  A somewhat well-done video piece that falls in line with where the pastor is going will do far more than the most slickly-produced video filled with eye (and ear - can't forget the audio guys!) candy that doesn't take the audience from where the pastor is to where he is going.

Fortunately, I serve a pastor with great vision, and he gives me 99.762% creative control over what we produce (the other .238% drives me nuts, and he knows it). You may not find yourself in that position.  But trust me, learning his vision, and catering to it, will go much farther towards bringing the changes you'd like to see than imposing your views on him.  But guess what, if those changes never come, you still have to serve his vision.

On another note, we shot a video piece with my 7-year-old daughter yesterday.  It's a sermon intro for our Thanksgiving series.  When it's done, I'll post it.

Well, I finally did it!

That's right...I started a blog.  It's the new thing (although people have been doing it for years).

Here are a few things you WON'T find here:

- Self-righteous rants about what's wrong with the Church.

- Sports trivia.

- Nude photos, especially of me.

Here are a few things you WILL find here:

- Insightful comments on how to effectively use media in ministry.

- Links to other sites that I feel would be helpful to my readers.

- Stuff I think is cool.

OK, that's about it, except to say, that I love when people leave me comments (wait, no one has ever left me a comment, so I can't say it that way).  Uh, please leave me comments.