10 yr. reunion

So, last weekend I went to my 10 yr. high school reunion. It went well. Not much to say about it. You know, the pretty girls weren't so pretty after all. Some have taken advantage of every opportunity, others have not. Many of us have kids and are a little larger than we were in high school. I did have the opportunity to play golf with my friend Scotty Dingess. He pastors the Gilbert Church of God. I shot pretty well, a 91 isn't too bad (considering I play MAYBE once every two months). Anyway, here are a few pics I've scammed off of some classmates myspace pages. Enjoy!

wednesday rewind

So, I thought that since I'm doing a Sunday Wind Down, I should also do a Wednesday Rewind, seeing as I am a youth pastor and my main experience time is on Wednesday. So, here it is... my perception of Wednesday...

• the food was awesome. Mary does an excellent job.
  
• last week I was running behind and the kids started arriving early... this week was just the opposite. When we kick off oxygen, I'm gonna set a time when the doors open. I think that'll be 6.15, with the music starting at 6.45. Of course, people can eat before that.
  
• Music could have gone a little smoother. We were minus a drummer tonight.
• We had alot of people out tonight. I'll be glad when vacations are over.
• I'm excited about some of the changes that we'll be making over the next few weeks. Just trying to prepare for whatever God's got planned this year.
  
• Shared just a bit about Chapter 2. I really hope it will be a turning point for our student ministry.
• Talked about how Isaiah's vision gives us a look into God's dream for our own lives and how we should respond. Good stuff. Don't think I communicated it too well, but can't blame the material.
• Had a good time hanging out with a couple of friends afterward.
  

I've got to get my stuff together now and get ready to leave for WV tomorrow. I'm looking fwd to the 10 yr high school reunion. I'm playing golf Friday with the pastor of the Gilbert Church of God (we graduated together). He's good... I'm not so good... but it'll be a fun time.

Sunday Wind-down

So, I've seen several people do these posts where they talk about their Sunday services. I thought I would join in and do one each week about Sunday and the previous week. Hopefully, it'll keep me blogging.

• We had a guest worship leader this morning. He really flowed well with the music and prayer times. It was sweet.
• I'm pretty tired of using EasyWorship and am fully ready to convert to ProPresenter. The only thing holding me back is the huge database of songs that I would have to convert or, more likely, retype.
• It was great to see my Pastor and his wife, together, in the altar. They are a great team and it really touched me to see them minister in the altar together.
• I am amazed at what God is doing in our church. I have rarely seen so many on the same page, hearing the same things from God. Call it foolish optimism, but I really believe God is going to do something amazing in Knoxville.
• Ate at Qdoba with the fam. It was nice, a little chaotic, but nice.
• CAT training went well. We were missing several students because of vacations, camps and various other summer activities. I really like our new theme and think the last Sunday night in August is going to be an important night.
  
• SNOTE was also tonight. Nothing like Sonic on a humid Sunday night in East Tennessee. The Reese's Blast helped comfort the body!
  

the return

So, I'm giving it a go again. This comes after much scorning from my friend Jamie about my lack of blogging. I hadn't given it much thought, especially since I don't find that I have very much to say, but I guess thats not really the point. Anyway, I thought I would return with an interesting story that happened on a recent missions trip to St. Louis.

So, I'm sitting at Shogun (a Japanese restaurant) with the rest of our St. Louis group. We were also there with the pastor of
St. Louis Harvest Church of God, the church we were working at. Anyway, so my cook guy starts pointing a bottle at me and yelling something that indicated he wanted me to open my mouth. Well, if you've ever been to a Japanese steak house, you know how they just throw food at you, open mouth or not. So, I opened my mouth, and he squirted this clear fluid into it, filling my mouth. He moved on to the person sitting next to me when I realized he wasn't squirting water... BUT SAKI--- JAPANESE WHISKEY!!!

Needless to say, when my church takes a missions trip, we go all out.

I'm a Regional Genius... and a little drowsy

what i'm reading now

sorry... i forgot to include what I am currently reading in my previous post. Granted, I could have just edited that post to include this bit of info... but, i didn't. For the past couple of months, since people started declaring for the 2008 presidential election, I have found myself intrigued by one Barak Obama. I have enjoyed listening to him speak when I've seen him on TV, and given the Christian upheaval over his "Muslim" background, I thought he would be a candidate worth checking out and reading for myself. I must say, from what I've read... I kinda like Obama. I'll be honest... I'm more than a one issue voter, which means I don't decide on a person based solely upon his/her position on abortion (this is, it seems to me, what many Christians do). I think violence is violence, whether it be unleashed on an unborn fetus, a Muslim woman living in Iraq or on the environment, and I don't know how much the difference matters to God. So, I have to pull on more than just the one issue. I'm reading Audacity of Hope. I'm only about half way through, but Obama is clearly a great communicator and writer. The book has come across genuinely sincere and very uplifting. The book really doesn't feel forced at all, but very authentic and comfortable. Even in areas where I disagree with him, Obama is still clearly respectful and gracious to those with whom he disagrees. Good stuff!

Books I've read since Christmas

So... I've read several books since Christmas and I thought I would share one or two thoughts about each of them, and maybe a link to their amazon page. As Christmas approached, I was reading Living Like Jesus by Ronald Sider. It was a pretty good book. Granted, seeing as I've read Rich Christians... it all kinda sounded very familiar. Next, I started my first N.T. Wright book, Simply Christian, which was incredibly refreshing. It wasn't so much that Wright said anything that I hadn't heard or thought before, but it was one of those books that reminds you of why you are part of this story. After I finished Simply Christian, I bounced around a couple of books that I didn't finish, waiting on the release of Rob Bell's Sex God. I could have read it much faster than I did, but I just took my time and read only a chapter a day. I'm sure it would be very possible to read it in an evening, or two. If you read and enjoyed Velvet Elvis, then I would recommend that you pick this one up too. Like I said, it is a very quick read, but you may just find yourself thinking about it much longer than you actually read it. I'm actually going to use some of it in our upcoming series at church, "Superman vs. WonderWoman". I'm planning on talking about God, Girls, Guys and Relationships. Mainly, I want to address what it means to be a guy/girl... how we exist in relationships and dispel the myth of the inferior female. So... thats what I've been reading. Enjoy!

are you going to watch it?

Yeah, I'm gonna watch the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" documentary on the Discover Channel tonight. I'll wait to leave my comments after watching it. Part of the turmoil is the whole "tomb" stuff... the claim that Jesus did not, in fact, rise from the dead, which is a big deal, and I don't mean to make it sound trite (sp?). But... really, this isn't "new" news/claims. John warned of such things shortly after Jesus' death and resurrection. The other part, of course, is the marriage to Mary Magdalene stuff. If you know me, then you probably know what I think about that. Its pretty much what I thought about the DaVinci Code stuff... so... we'll talk about it later, after I get to watch it.

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.

What if we started over?

Some have asked me to expand on the in/out discussion at Mars Hill... and I'm planning on doing that, but first I want to share a brief conversation I recently had while waiting on some food yesterday.

I was at Chic-Fil-A, which was packed by the way, with my pastor picking up some lunch. Looking around I saw that restaurant completely packed out. I wondered how many there were connected with a Jesus community... then about the same time I had two converging thoughts. The first was how could our "established" church connect them with Jesus and the second was how all the statistics say that planting a church is the most effective form of evanglesim. Then... it happened. You know, one of those moments when you say "what if..." then you have to decide whether or not you have the freedom to turn your edit button off and let your mind and heart ask. So I continued thinking... what if we started over? completely changed our mindset from that of an established/traditional/old church to that of a church plant. What would be the first thing we did? the next? the next? Continuing to roll this over in my mind... I decided to share it with my pastor, who thought it was a great idea and we spent the remainder of lunch talking about what that would/could look like. What if we tore down 2/3s of our existing sign and replaced it with a vinyl sign that just said "We're starting over." Now I know there are some inherent difficulties, some folk don't like to change, but could it happen?
So, what do you think? Is it possible for a church to start over? What would you do first? next? next? What are the difficulties, both practically and theologically? Feel free to agree or disagree...

rob bell and lex!

so... I thought that a picture of Lex with Rob Bell would be about the coolest thing I could put on here, the last night of the conference. There's really too much to say about today. The morning session was awesome. RB talked about alot of the things that i've been wrestling with over the past two or so years: salvation, heaven, hell, in/out, and the end of the world as we know it. Here's how it started... if we had to answer the question "how is one 'saved'," and the only thing we had to go on was the bible (tongue in cheek), what would the answer be. Well... forty some passages later, the answer was... there would be a lot of different answers. So where did we get the formula??? well... i could keep going about that...

Tonight was even better. The theme was the absolute necessity of endlessly reclaiming your innocence. After some awesome worship time, RB gave about a 10-15 min talk preparing for about an hour plus altar service. It was beautiful. There were people being anointed with oil for healing of sickness and weariness. Some were standing under a Hebrew prayer shawl and the elders of Mars Hill were praying for them. There were communion elements around the stage and other elders served communion. And in the center of the stage was a big cross were many were just crying out. It was all.... honest. The Spirit of God was there, and we were all aware of it.

"Josh needs"

Since all of my posts have been about the conference, I thought I would post something off-subject for humor sake. I did this a little over a year ago, and well... it raised a very long discussion about the use of profanity... sorry. This time, no profanity (I was only copying and pasting what was on google...); so... without further delay... Here's the January 2006 edition of "Josh needs" (copied straight from google.com)
1. Josh needs a replacement tray so his daughter can dine in NEST style.
2. Josh Needs Extra Lovin' to Keep Mind Off ScarJo.
3. Josh needs some way to let off some steam other than either insulting his staff in a thank-you speech or yelling at everyone about the numbers not lining up. (sorry)
4. JOSH NEEDS A HAIRNETT
5. Josh needs know there is a large community of supporters wishing him well, and waiting for his return. (ahh... how touching... thanks you guys)
6. Josh needs to get Bob the highest resolution available for the logo.
7. Josh: needs a new macbook pro :( (YES!!!)
8. Josh needs blood, you have the kind he needs, so your coming back with me.
9. Josh needs to know that staying far, far away from that serial skank would be in his best interest. (um... okay)
10. Josh needs to stop looking at the ridiculous plasma section and come back to cathode-ray reality. (what?!)

so... the jist is to google "____________ needs" (insert your name in the blank) and find the first 10 that are interesting or make you laugh... or you find entertaining... you get it.

After lunch

Walking in after lunch, i thought i would take a couple of pictures of the outside of the old mall. Thats the YMCA on the left and Playworld on the right. In the middle is one of their main entrances. I'll take a picture of another main entrance this morning, and perhaps share it... or maybe i won't. Anyway, went to the Q&A session, and found out something that totally blew my mind. I knew that Mars had hired Don Golden to be their Lead Pastor, but I thought that was their different name for Executive Pastor (handling the business side) because RB still does most all of the teaching. Well, found out in the Q&A that DG really is the "Lead Pastor". He oversees all the ministry, casts vision, makes decisions. RB submits to his leadership. Now... when is the last time you heard of a preacher who, after drawing a big crowd of people, who say... "hey, i'm not real good at this leadership thing, thats not where God has gifted me, what if we brought in somebody to be the Lead Pastor, I would submit to their leadership, continue teaching/preaching because thats what God has gifted me to do... could that work?" Very interesting.
The student session went well. Nothing to dramatic to report. I'm just really amazed at the complete and total level of honesty that you see here. Maybe I'll include a little story in a comment.

The night service (session) was awesome. (sorry for the blurryness of the picture) RB talked about the arts of teaching, preaching and creativity. Again, awesome. I really think RB might be one of the best I've ever heard. If you've read Hope's blog then you know about the cool factor of the music. For me, the cool part was the risk factor. They said, "what if we took some old hyms and sang them over some funk music...? okay, try it." When talking about taking risks, RB said, "We have nothing to fear, because the tomb is empty" (at which point we all shouted with joy... really, not a "pentecostal whoop" but a "yeah...! all right...! whoo hoo...!). After the night session, they had a concert by "The Vigilantes" (they are an indie band who attend Mars Hill... RB gave them a big bowl as a tip jar to raise money to buy them a new van.). Hope and I would have stayed but it was getting late for Lex and 24 was coming on.

the first session: the eucharist

It's lunch break for the conference. We just got out of the morning session, and let me tell you... wow, it was awesome. i don't really have a lot of time to go into it, but it was beautiful, mysterious, inspiring and downright honest. This is mainly a seminar about the local church, so the morning session looked at what is the church and why is she worth dying for. RB made a beautiful statement when he said that the church is the eucharist, broken and poured out for many. Then he proceeded to go through the NT passage either talking about the eucharist or suffering, how our power is in our weakness, and that as leaders, our mission is to be the eucharist, a gift from God broken and poured out so that others may have life. Then he went into how if you are continually pouring and breaking, then you must have a time where God puts you back together and pours into you... again, strongly showing the importance of the sabbath. It was really awesome, the whole session. Even the Q&A afterwards was cool. At one point, when talking about how he disliked "mega-church" stuff, but how God has led him(them) into this position of prominence and power, RB said that he would manipulate his platform and do whatever he could to give those who do not have a voice (the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized) a voice. He would take all the money he could get from those who had money, so he could give it away to those who don't... because God is with the oppressed. It was awesome... I wish you (whoever you are) could have been there. Well, there were plenty of other things I could talk about... and perhaps even more impactful than what I've shared here, but I need to go so I can get back to the old shopping mall (where they gather for church... they make this point often).

sunday night's gathering

So I went to Mars Hill tonight. It was... really good. Not exactly what you might think a +10,000 person church might look like. First, just finding the place is a feat. I read in Velvet Elvis that when they were planting the church, RB wouldn't let them put out a sign to show people where they were located. They still don't have any signs out. I googled their address to get directions, and knew they met in an old shopping mall. I was looking for some sort of sign when I got on the road, but alas there were none. (and I hope this sounds how I want it to...) To find it... I just followed all the other cars. A bunch were turning into this parking lot, so I turned. The only signs were for a YMCA and Playhouse. I parked and noticed A LOT of people walking toward this door, so I followed them and finally saw the name Mars Hill Church on the glass door. I continued following everybody till I found a seat. Worship was a mix of music and scripture reading. I found it deeply moving, almost to the point of tears. Right after the music, RB got up and started the teaching. No frills, no hype. Just raw, straight-to-the-point stuff. The sermon was part teaching, part interview of a Mars member. Media was extremely minimal. The music and sermon were both projected on screens, but just a black background with white words. The songs were either old hymns or home-written. The band had a certain Coldplay feel, as it was very piano-driven with that soaring guitar adding to the sound. It all felt very honest. Maybe thats just me reading into it because of my own preferences. Well... its late and I have an early morning. This is the schedule for the conference. I'll try to blog as much as I can. I'm going to try to find a recorder of some sorts so I can record the sessions. We'll see how that goes.

snowy drive, notre dame and rudy

So this is the scene outside our Kokomo, IN room when I woke up this morning. Mind you, there was no snow when I went to bed, around midnight. I knew this was a possibility, but oh well... we drove on anyway. I'll give it to INDOT (Indiana Department of Transportation), they had the road pretty much clear by the time we left. There were times when it got slushy like in the middle, but nothing treacherous.


Stopped on the way to try to see the Notre Dame campus. I took this picture from across some large pond next to the Sacred Heart Parish Center. I had to take the picture from there because evidently you have to have some sort of pass to get on campus. Everytime we tried, there was a gate keeping us out. Oh well, it wasn't that important anyway, I just wanted a cool picture standing in front of these two buildings... this will have to do.


Needed something to eat after Notre Dame, stopped at Fazoli's in South Bend. Talked about Rudy and how South Bend didn't look that impressive (their sign going into the city says "Building a 21st Century City"). Hit the road again and got to Grand Rapids around 3:45 pm. We are trying to rest right now... well, Hope is trying and Lex is very awake. I'm blogging watching the Bears/Saints game. Mars Hill's night gathering starts @ 6:00. I'm excited. I'll post my first impressions afterwards.