History in the Making

Graphic design that stabs your heart and leaves you bleeding

Found this absolutely stunning message graphic from the Frontline ministry of Mclean Bible Church on their staff blog. It's sort of a blend between an end times rapture chart and a heavy metal album cover... but I love it. The layering, the subdued but powerful colors... ahh, I could eat it up. This says epic in every sense of the word.

I can't cook but they've got me interested

I can't cook.

In seminary, my regular dinner consisted of Chef Boyardee cans... unheated. I didn't even bother to microwave them.

But now that I'm watching Top Chef on Bravo, I'm enamored with cooking. The artistry, the excellence, the attention to detail. Makes me want to be a chef.

I can't think of a better reason to put so much effort, creativity and excellence into our Sunday services. We don't want to just make disciples... we want to make disciple-makers.

"What if" preaching

What if you couldn't start with the Bible as an authoritative voice in people's lives. What if you couldn't start your messages with, "Are you ready to dig into the Word today? Then turn with me to..."

Don't get me wrong: the Bible is authoritatively God's word, and I believe in its power to transform hearts and minds. I also believe that no scripture we utter will return void. But what if you couldn't even gain an audience around the Bible as a place to start communicating spiritual truths?

So begins the work of a missionary.

Maybe you're not in a geographic location that matches this reality. But the longer I'm here in northern Virginia, the more I recognize that the Bible cannot possibly be a starting point in reaching people for Christ. My hairdresser is Buddhist; my barista is Muslim; my neighbor is atheist; and my friend is a burned Jew.

In these cases, the Word has to first become flesh.

The flesh of a friendship. The flesh of some humble questions. The flesh of shared interests in music and movies. The flesh of dinner together. The flesh of an embrace during a difficult time...

If the Bible has immediate application and adherance in people's lives, I'm probably not reaching the right people.

But "vicar" does have a nice ring to it

I was a party a few weeks ago, and a guy who knows I'm a pastor came up and asked, "How's the flock?" It caught me off guard because it sounds like something you'd hear "Prudence" ask the vicar in a Hallmark movie. I stuttered out a "fine" but my mind was running algorithms to understand the question. It's not the flock in the pen that concerns me so much as the lost sheep stuck somewhere out there in ravines and thickets. I'm not here to guard the gate. I'm here to do search and rescue.

Surround Sound Ecclesia

Matt stopped by the theater yesterday to inquire about their digital projection system and saw God at work... He brought along a great new guy on our tech team, who knows how to create cables that can connect the most unlikely pieces of technology together. He could probably connect your toaster-oven to your car if he really wanted to. Also, the theater's projector maintenance guys just happened to be in the building... and they stuck around extra long to chat it up with our team. Nothing conclusive yet... but God was def at work.

Trip to the Circus

Wy and I couldn't have had a better time at the circus tonight. Front row parking... and front row seating. Magical experience for the little guy. Okay... and me too. =)

Giving Good Gifts

I'm so excited to take my 3 year old to the circus tonight. The anticipation of doing this gives me such a fresh appreciation for God's pleasure in giving me good gifts as well.

Matthew 7:11 - "If you then though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

Random Thoughts on a Thursday

• Matt is testing the digital projectors at the movie theater this morning
• We're still waiting on confirmation for whether we can use the theater on Christmas Eve
• I'm headed to our regional church planters gathering in Alexandria today
• I'm taking Wyatt to the circus tonight -- he has no idea what that is yet
• Neil Greathouse just sent me 3 great books off my wishlist. Thanks Neil!
• Our fall small group semester at RCC is starting full force this week
• Ains and I made a minivan-shopping attempt last night... but no dice. Something's not feeling right. hmmm
• During the summer, we have an abundance of drummers in our church from the college kids... but our drummer shortage in the school year has made Matt pretty resourceful. He's turning people into drummers who only have steering wheel experience. =)
• I'm loving our "experiential experiment" on Sunday mornings by integrating multimedia throughout the message. We're getting better and better at the art of layering visual, audio, and interactive elements to keep the message engaging. I've been seeing more emotional responses, as well as spiritual, coming from our congregation. Intellect, emotions, will.

Fast Company issue on design

Fast Company Mag features an issue on design this month. Says that neither marketing nor engineering drives sales as much as design. The shape of the Coke bottle, the contour of a soap dispenser, the beauty of a vaccum cleaner... Application to the church is creating irresistible environments. How we design our worship space matters to people far from God. And if we think God doesn't care about it, just read Exodus.

Blog World Expo

In Las Vegas this October

Andy Stanley on Vision

Andy Stanley makes some great points about vision in his new little book called Making Vision Stick...

GM used to have clear vision when it created a stair-step progression in its line of cars. As young people grew older [and their salaries increased], GM would provide cars at each level of success... from Chevy to Pontiac to Oldsmobile to Buick to Cadillac. Now, with cloudy vision, all of their car lines overlap and compete with each other. It's a mess.

At North Point Community Church, they actually achieved their vision ~ to create a church that unchurched people would love to attend ~ and recently had to change their vision to take them to the next level. What permission giving in today's age of vision-never-dies to keep the church adaptable.

Pizza Apologetics

Yesterday, I met a fitness trainer who looked like he could bench press my car. He asked about my iPhone, but then noticed my Bible and started talking about his Muslim father and Catholic mother. Said he was neither. He used pizza to describe his religious views...

"Your god may be pepperoni; mine might be sausage; someone else's, the tomatoes. But we're all mixed together on the same pizza and baked together. We're all eating the same pie."

Besides getting a little hungry, I was scrambling mentally to keep up with all the inconsistencies. People are so quick to philosophize about spirituality because it keeps God away from our hearts where he can convict us. So we reduce him to a pizza.

Hope-based Futuring

One of the destructive tactics of Satan is to destroy any hope we might have for how God can use us in the future. Once we discard God's view, sinning doesn't seem quite so bad. We think, "It would be important for me to have integrity or purity or selflessness if God were going to use me... But he isn't, so it's no big deal." But this is Satan's goal. To put us in a hope-choke-hold, so we cry uncle at every temptation.

Look at David. After God told him he'd be the future king of Israel, he had to wait 13 years living in caves. He may not have lost all hope, but this is the time he started taking on multiple wives. I may not be pope someday, but I want to live as though I'm the future "something great." Once Satan takes away that hope, anything goes.

From shrinking heads... to enlarging them

A friend of mine from the Philippines, Darwin Sokkoken, asked our church to help him continue a spiritual legacy in his native homeland. His grandfather was a headhunter in one of the most underdeveloped parts of the islands until the 1930s. The tradition was bound to continue with Darwin's father until the Episcopal church sent missionaries [along with the army] to teach and preach to the natives.

A priest named Father Woodward scraped up enough money to send Darwin's father through school. This made a huge impact on Darwin's life because he not only found Christ... but he got to go to school himself. Darwin now has his PhD and is now leading the church planting efforts of Asians throughout the United States for the NAMB.

In his spare time, Darwin is continuing the legacy of Father Woodward by trying to scrape up enough money to send other Filipinos through school back home. A young girl named Penny is his first project of compassion. We just sent him $500. You can to at: Tribal Filipinos Development, Inc., P.O. Box 1328, Annandale, VA 22003.

Mush

I've been pushing our boys in the double jogging stroller three times a week with Ains on the "scout bike," as I call it, to watch for cars. Our boys are getting so big though - I feel like I'm pushing one of those sleds at football practice. Whenever I hack up a lung, Wy calls out from the front seat, "What's that, dad!?"

Getting over the learning curve and Ben's Karaoke debut

Every time we introduce new technology into our services, we go through at least one agonizing morning of learning curves and technical glitches [last week was it]... But within a week or two, we're pros at it, and we're ready to take it to an even higher level.

I used the AirClick remote control this week, which uses radio frequency, rather than infrared signals. Ahhh, the difference. It was incredible. I could've advanced our presentation from the Starbucks down the block if I had wanted to.

Also, made my karaoke debut on Sunday. I looped the intrumental rift in Bruce Springsteen's "Secret Garden" to make a background point about the futility of trying to heal our wounded hearts through relationships... and was coaxed into singing it by the good people at RCC. Fun stuff...

Surprised by a Movement

I was meeting with our state's Church Planting Management Team several weeks ago, describing our long-term vision as a church. We don't want to be just one church plant. We want to be a hub of more and more new churches expanding in concentric circles throughout our region. I'd love to see church planters-in-residence come on-board, get invested, and then take resources, people, and talent out to plant even more churches.

The other day, one of the leaders on this team called me and told me something shocking. He said that I wasn't the only one who shared this vision with their team. In fact... in the course of meeting with the other church planters in our state... they had been approached by no less than 11 other planters with the same dream.

Shamed by Starbucks

Doing last minute prep at Starby's for tomorrow morning... And I see a couple of wheelchair-bound ladies headed for the door, so I grab it for them. The baristas spot my act and reward me with a free latte. Oh the shame. So many people do waaaaaay more in our church to impact people's lives than open a door, and I don't have a reward mechanism. While my day has been made.

Gas Station 1, Church 0

I was getting ready to drive home from a long day in Richmond on Thursday and stopped for gas at a pretty tricked gas out station in Glen Allen, Va. The kind with a "cafe" inside, some outdoor seating, a full-service car wash... but still... it was a gas station.

Yet there was a phenomenon going on that rattled my mind. There were huu-undreds of young adults, young couples teeming in and out of the place carrying buckets of beer. The outdoor seating was overflowing and there seemed to be a band getting ready to play. It was about 5:30ish, happy hour. Staggering to my car... I noticed even more young couples walking over the hill to the... gas station [did I mention that yet?].

Stuff like this kills me. The church has to compete with the Sunday newspaper, Meet the Press, warm covers, IHOP, weekend recreational sports... and now gas stations!

I don't know about the righteous part, but I've got the fervency down

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. ~ James 5:16

Last night, I had the most incredible experience of answered prayer. Our 1-year old Dylan has been sick for the past few days... keeping us up all hours of the night. After a 13-hour day in Richmond yesterday, I was dying for a good night's sleep... but Dylan was so congested, he was breathing through his ears.

Rocking him at night, I prayed a prayer that was so fervent, it brought tears to my eyes. Not just for me and Ains... but for Dylan.

Immediately... and I mean immediately... I heard his nasal passages open up, as his breathing became clearer and clearer. I slept in his room, just in case, but he didn't wake-up even once during the night. Wazzup.