Month: April 2005

wednesday night at the view we shared stories of our visit with our friends at the beautiful feet church of fort worth, texas. we told these stories from two places in the back that had been set up to convey some of the meaning we experienced. so much of what we experienced at beautiful feet was about the restoration of lives and the junk that we humans need to be “saved” from. so we set up two stations for people to speak from. first was a station that was composed of “junk” – many of the people who went to beautiful feet went to this station to express the junk that they realized was in their lives and the junk that they had seen there that was separating people from GOD. the second station was a station of restoration and it had physical reminders of some of the physical work that we have seen done at beautiful feet – many people went to this station to talk about the change that they saw GOD make in their own lives and other people’s lives.

overall, it was a cool night. i loved hearing the kids and adults talk with such depth. they weren’t saying “oh it made me thankful for all i have”. no they came away saying “the homeless men and women were just like me – they had the same needs that i do.” it was great.

i’m pretty excited about what we are going to try and do this coming sunday. as you may or may not know this coming sunday is earth day. for some reason years ago some evangelical leaders most have gotten together and decided that we CHRISTians aren’t supposed to care about the earth and therefore we have given the whole ecological movement over to others. this means that earth day in baton rouge is mixed up with a random new age labyrinth project (labyrinths aren’t new age – i love them – but the vision behind this project is not CHRIST centered) and metaphysical alternative healing sources (touch therapy, aurora reading, etc. typically there is quite a bit of not necessarily CHRIST-friendly stuff surrounding some earth day celebrations.

when i heard about the events or baton rouge’s earth day on the radio i had a sudden desire to be a part of the event. so i called the contact person and asked if we could be a part of the “alternative healing” booths. the alternative healing section is where you go to learn about different strategies for healing. this means “healing” tecniques such as vibrational therapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, healing touch, reiki, herbal remedies, aromatherapy, nikken magnetic therapy. so i aksed the contact lady if we could join the “alternative healing” section of the event. i explained to her was that within the CHRISTian tradition there is a long history of praying for the healing of individuals and washing people’s feet. i asked if we could set up a booth among all the other “healing” booths simply for the purpose of praying for people who ask for it and washing their feet. i promised we wouldn’t try to push anything on anyone and would not ask for or accept donations and that all we wanted to do was praying for people in the name of JESUS asking for their healing.

i seem to remember JESUS saying in scripture that if HE is lifted up that HE will draw all people to HIMSELF. so if we could go and pray for people and thus lift HIM up in the midst of earth day then HE would accomplish something good. we wouldn’t have to be obnoxious or forceful or anything like that for something good to happen. GOD would simply take care of what needed to happen just by us being there to pray for people.

the contact person said she liked the idea and would probably come and let us pray for her but that allowing us to come and do that was not her decision so she would pass it down the line. yesterday i received another call asking more questions. that person’s response was also positive but they said they couldn’t make the final decision. so right now i’m still in limbo waiting and hoping that this sunday we will get to be in the midst of 40,000 people praying for individuals and trusting GOD to be GOD in their lives. i really hope we get to do this.

SIDE NOTE – please don’t read this as an anti-earth day post. i believe GOD created the earth and therefore it is special and sacred and should be taken care of. if i remember right that was the first job given to humanity … to take care of what GOD had created. earth day is pretty cool and most of the people involved have no problem with CHRISTianity. we evangelicals have just dropped the ball on the environment and therefore earth day is not the normal place to find us. it should be though.

seven years ago i became involved in my first youth oriented worship service. this was when i was in carthage, missouri and i really didn’t want to do it at the time. it was suggested by a church member who i respected and i did it mainly just because he felt strongly about it. we structured the service as a worship service as just another worship service only with a slightly different flavor. thus it was for everyone rather than just for teens. it was a different approach to worship rather than a truly alternative youth only worship service. of course, this post is not really about a discussion concerning separate youth worship services (which i’m not really a fan of).

nope this post is about a graduation announcement that i received this week. one of my teens from carthage is graduating college in may. he sent me a graduation announcement and on the bottom wrote “i thought you’d like to see what that kid you taught to run sound is up to these days. thanks for giving me a start. daniel” daniel was the first person i ever taught to run sound and a/v equipment. every sunday he was there helping set up and get ready for the service and then helping to tear it all down again after the service. for three years we worked together. turns out that the kid had a real passion for it and decided that it was the profession that he wanted to train for and follow. so in may daniel will be graduating with a degree in mass media studies for the purpose of working with a/v equipment.

who knew that running sound and powerpoint for that little service would start off a career?

i know that i’m not ahead of the technology curve for the rest of the world but apparently i am for baton rouge, louisiana (which isn’t saying much). nobody i have talked to about podcasting has had the slightest idea what it was. this includes our church computer guy. when i realized how easy podcasting was i thought it would be a great idea for the church worship services (which we put on the net in an mp3 format). i went to discuss the idea with rob (the computer guy) and he didn’t have the smallest idea of what i was talking about.

i’m not sure if this means that we are ahead of the curve for the area or if our church is simply that far behind the times.