The Oscars

Well... I haven't posted in a while, and I know that if I don't post soon, then once I post, everyone will say things like "Welcome back!"... "where've ya been?"... and "good to hear from you." Well, in order to avoid that, i've decided to throw up a quick post while watching the Oscars. I'm not a big Oscars fan... I haven't had the opportunity to meet them yet, but I'm sure they are a fine group of men. They should probably invite Oscar the grouch from Sesame Street to join their team. Oscar Robertson was a great ball player. Oscar Wilde was a pretty famous author. Oscar Hammerstein II is considered one of the most important figures in the history of American musical theater. In fact, he is the only person to win an Oscar who is actually named Oscar. Oscar Mayer makes some pretty good bologna. Oscar de la Renta makes some pretty good clothes. I once went to school with a kid named Oscar... he picked his nose alot.

i've published a website

just thought i would let anyone interested know that we've published a website for the student ministry. Click here to visit the website. I've purchased www.lhstudents.tv, but i don't know how to redirect or mirror yet, but i'm talking to the lad who is doind our church's website to help me do it. let me know what you think. its pretty basic, but its just iWeb.

Interesting article on church re-structure

I found this article at THEOOZE and thought it was quiet interesting. He makes a very good point about the way our churches are structured and why it, in itself, creates the "20% of the people do 80% of the work" phenomenon known as church.

Classic Apple Commercial

to be relevant or not to be relevant... is THAT the question?

One of my favorite Rob Bell quotes is something I heard him say the other week. It goes something like this. "... relevant, by the way, if you use the word, you're probably not."
I love this quote. When I heard it, it was followed by a critique of how we do discipleship. Here's the jist of the continual, cyclical problem. We, as the church, want to reach people. So when those people finally get "saved" we immediately pull them into some sort of program (often held AT the church, or at least usually with only other church people) that takes them out of their community on a regular basis. So... we continue to discipleship them... making sure they've got all the right information so that when they go out of the church, they are ready to do ministry. Unfortunately, we have so repeatedly removed them from their community and culture, that then we must train them on how to be "relevant" to (and catch this) their own culture.

So, I had this rolling around in my head. Then I thought, do the execs at MTV sit around talking about being relevant to their audience and culture... how to make sense in the pomo world? Probably not, though I'm sure they've done quiet a bit of market research. Anyway, I thought more about MTV. You remember when MTV just played music videos... their main shows were like Yo' MTV Raps and the Headbangers Ball? In other words, they transmitted culture made by those often outside their own corporation. Others made the videos, MTV played them. Then something changed. MTV started their own programming... they started creating the culture. MTV doesn't worry about being relevant to culture because they've moved to creating culture. So where does that leave the church? I'll leave that to whoever reads this... because quiet frankly, I don't know if any of this makes sense.