Month: March 2005

i love taking care of the technical aspects of a worship service. i really enjoying trying to push the envelope of what we are presently doing. i tried doing a little of that during our discipleNOW. i stole an idea from the 2005 national youth workers’ convention and shot two images side by side on a super large screen. this enabled us to shot lyrics on one 9′ wide section of the screen and highway video vibe movies on the other 9′ section of the screen. we could then swap sides between video and lyrics at will. we also had the ability to shot half of an image from each projector and create an 18′ wide image all the way across the screen. i thought it was a cool backdrop.

of course, that’s the problem too. i love doing this stuff but i’m not the one who needs to be doing it. i have to start training and developing a tech team that can take these tasks over, set the up, and run them during an event. i have to find people who care about these things as much as i do. that’s the real issue. i have to find people who are convinced that the technical aspects of a worship service are incredibly important. i need people who are passionate about using technology to help people worship. it scares me to give up control of this but it has to be done because i need to be spending time with kids rather than making sure a cable is hooked up properly.

i recently found this at “cat’s cradle and i had to post it because it is amazing. i get so jealous of people who think like this. i love her outlook on grace. i’m not sure about you but i’ve been a couple of the people listed below and i have definitely worried about JESUS saying the things listed below (even though I know in my head that HE wouldn’t).

What Jesus Didn’t Say….

… to the woman at the well. “Well, first you have to make a full confession of everything you’ve done and then we’ll talk. ”

… to the woman with the hemorrhage. “Don’t touch me. You’ll get me all dirty and contaminated.”

… to the Canaanite woman. “I don’t care what you say, the gentiles are still dogs and dogs should be kept outside, not under the table.”

… to the thief on the cross. “Since you were a thief, it’s okay. I’ll square it with Dad. Now if you’d been a homosexual it would be a totally different story.”

… to the 5,000. “Ok, here’s lunch, but first I have a sermon to give here and then the boys will be passing out commitment cards for you to sign. No signature, no lunch.”

… to Peter, floundering in the water. “Pete, Pete, Pete. Hasn’t anybody taught you how to swim?”

… to Mary, meeting him on the road just after Lazarus’ death. ” Well, everybody dies sometime, and I had some very important business to attend to. I just couldn’t fit a visit into my schedule before now.”

… to Martha, bustling about the kitchen and fussing about Mary’s sitting down on the job. “Mary, get your lazy butt up and go act like a normal woman. Shame on you for forgetting your place like that!”

… to the rich young man. “Hey, salvation may be free but it ain’t cheap. But I would like some sort of commitment from you — 10% or so would work. You can see the guy who takes care of the purse, Judas.”

… to the scribes and Pharisees who were trying to trap him. “I’m behind you, fellas. Those rules are there to be obeyed to the letter, and if you can make a little profit off them, so much the better.”

… to the people on the mount, “Listen. I’m telling you to love your neighbor, but make sure he isn’t *one of them*, if you know what i mean.”

… to the crowd, “Do unto others before they do unto you.”

… to Mary, his mother, at a party, “Bug off, Ma. If these lazy jerks can’t plan adequately for this, why should I pull their irons out of the fire for them?”

Of course, he didn’t say any of this. That, I believe, is why we have the gospels, the “good news” not “the good news — and the bad news.”

these are the initial thoughts on the discipleNOW that we had this past weekend:

• our host homes and leaders were great this year. i heard very positive experiences during the weekend. i do think that next year we will use the concept of an event blog at a much earlier date to encourage even more idea swapping. this year’s blog seemed to help some in communicating with the leaders and thus doing it even earlier should help even more.
• andy neely (the youth minister at springhill baptist church in mobile, alabama) was great. he did a wonderful job of communicating.
• ten shekel shirt was great. they did a superb job of leading us in worship and i throughly enjoyed hanging out with them. lamont (the lead singer) and austin (the drummer) are both very passionate about social justice issues – especially modern day slavery in southeast asia and eastern europe.
• we got rid of the polaroid scavenger hunt that we had done in the past and instead went to a wild goose chase on l.s.u’s campus. it went very well. the kids were completely worn out and we may need to shorten it just a little next year.
• i need to work on improving the student center sound system. we had to borrow some equipment from the ring and the stuff we borrowed was junk we should have had already. in the future i will add a 31 band graphic equalizer (i’m considering the behring FBQ3102 and the dbx 231) a compressor or two (i’m looking at the behringer mdx 2600 and the dbx 266xl), and a few other sound system nic nacs.

you’ve probably heard this by now from several different sources but i figured i would add my memory to the collective consciousness … stanley grenz has gone home. i loved his writing and was really impressed the one time i was able to meet him. i was in seminary when allot of grenz initial theology of community started coming out. he came to campus for a lecture series. after his message grenz came to the systematic class i was in at the time and spoke for awhile longer. after that i and tons of other people gathered around to hear still more. it was pathetic because we were all just trying to meet him. i was most impressed that he put up with it all. since that day i have continued reading his stuff and being challenged by it. he’ll be missed.