We had a great day today at The Crossroads. We were down a little because of the Memorial Day weekend, but attendance is still over double what it was at this time last year.
Today, we closed out our "God on your iPod: Classic Rock" series. It was an incredibly fun series that God really used in our people's lives. Today, we did "Revolution" by The Beatles, and I talked about how to live a revolutionary life. It's a theme I've shared before, but it always seems to capture people's hearts. People are just wired to hear that God designed us to change the world.
Each week in this series, we have had an impromptu band from the audience play the song for the week on Guitar Hero or Rockband. It has been a great way to engage our people in the service. It gives everybody a laugh, and it helps people stay engaged. I love serving a church where we can be creative and have a blast as we worship God.
Our band rocked the house today. For a closing song, our worship pastor did an original song that is straight up awesome. It was a great day, now I'm ready for some rest.
Oh yeah, I finished up my work with the Census Bureau this week. Now on to being a stay at home dad for the summer. Can't wait to get to spend some quality time with my kids and with some of my friends that I haven't seen in forever.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Maybe Tomorrow
I had intended to come home and do some blogging tonight, but I worked an eleven hour day at the Census Bureau today, and I am just beat. This is my last week at the Census. It has been a good experience, and I have worked with a variety of neat people. I will blog about it more later.
I am incredibly grateful to have had this job. It has enabled us to finally get free of a mass of credit card debt that has hounded us for the last ten years. I really encourage you, if you are wrestling with debt, bite the bullet, take a second job, and get it paid off as fast as possible instead of trying to eat away at it a little at a time over years and years.
I'll just close by saying yesterday was yet another great day at The Crossroads. Attendance continues to grow, and each week we are seeing new faces and people put their trust in Christ.
So, that's all I got for today. There's more I'd like to get to, but it's not gonna happen tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
I am incredibly grateful to have had this job. It has enabled us to finally get free of a mass of credit card debt that has hounded us for the last ten years. I really encourage you, if you are wrestling with debt, bite the bullet, take a second job, and get it paid off as fast as possible instead of trying to eat away at it a little at a time over years and years.
I'll just close by saying yesterday was yet another great day at The Crossroads. Attendance continues to grow, and each week we are seeing new faces and people put their trust in Christ.
So, that's all I got for today. There's more I'd like to get to, but it's not gonna happen tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Jesus Dunking
Yesterday was an awesome day at The Crossroads. Yesterday evening we all went to a local YMCA Camp to use their pool for baptisms. Thirteen people went public with their commitment to follow Jesus Christ. It's the most people I've ever baptized at one time.
From the beginning one of our passions at The Crossroads has been seeing people's lives changed. Yesterday was just an incredible testimony to how God is doing that.
Just a few highlights: We baptized two couples together. Really cool to see God at work in the life of a husband and wife together. A father and his two sons took the plunge together. A mother and daughter also got dunked. I love seeing families transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ. The little girl is painfully shy. Getting baptized in front of a big group of people was a really hard thing for her to do. So, when I baptized her, I was reminded all over again of just how big a deal this baptism thing is. It's about publicly telling everybody, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ." So, I teared up a little as I brought her up out of the water. Finally, three of the baptisms were young girls, and their dads actually performed the baptisms. It was so awesome to see the look on both fathers' and daughters' faces. A truly beautiful moment.
From the beginning one of our passions at The Crossroads has been seeing people's lives changed. Yesterday was just an incredible testimony to how God is doing that.
Just a few highlights: We baptized two couples together. Really cool to see God at work in the life of a husband and wife together. A father and his two sons took the plunge together. A mother and daughter also got dunked. I love seeing families transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ. The little girl is painfully shy. Getting baptized in front of a big group of people was a really hard thing for her to do. So, when I baptized her, I was reminded all over again of just how big a deal this baptism thing is. It's about publicly telling everybody, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ." So, I teared up a little as I brought her up out of the water. Finally, three of the baptisms were young girls, and their dads actually performed the baptisms. It was so awesome to see the look on both fathers' and daughters' faces. A truly beautiful moment.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
An Ethic of Social Media - Part 2
For the sake of brevity, I'll just say Twitter from here on since that is the form of social media I use most often, but the principles apply to all forms of social media, whichever one you use.
Because Twitter is an electronic media, it may be easy for us to forget that Twitter really is just another form of speech. The words may be in text and they may be delivered via the internet, but it is still speech. So, the same biblical instruction related to how we speak should govern our use of Twitter.
There are two scriptures that have particular bearing on our use of Twitter. Ephesians 4:29 relates to what we post. It says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." The first question we need to ask before we tweet is, "Is this beneficial to the people who listen?"
Now, granted, there is a lot of room for what can qualify as "helpful for building others up." As a pastor, I often tweet about my normal, day to day stuff. I think it is tremendously beneficial for my people to get to know their pastor as a real person. I also often tweet humorous stuff. I think laughter builds others up, and it is really just an important part of my personality. So, I'm certainly not saying that everything you tweet has to be serious or teaching something life-changing. However, it does mean that the general tone of our tweets should be positive, encouraging, and uplifting. Stay away from negative, mean-spirited, cutting tweets.
The second scripture, Colossians 4:6, relates to how we respond to others: "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Second, ask yourself the question, "Is my response to this person a demonstration of the incredible grace of Jesus Christ that I have received?" I often see people jumping someone else on Twitter. I'll get into more of the details of that particular piece of Twitter ethics later, but simply following this scripture should keep us from doing that. Frankly, some Twitter conversations get very uncomfortable very quickly for everyone else who is "listening." Remember that other people are witnessing your conversations, many of whom are not followers of Jesus Christ. Is the way you respond to other people on Twitter more or less likely to make your pre-Christian followers want to experience the grace of the Christ you profess to follow? Twitter is a social media, so the way you respond to others is very important.
Proverbs 16:28 says, "Gossip separates the best of friends." Although a great tool, Twitter can become one of the largest gossip machines we have ever encountered. Be careful about what you post about other people.
One of my personal favorites is Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." Sometimes the best thing to tweet is nothing at all. I'll confess, I'm not always the best at this. Sometimes I tweet before I think, and that's dangerous. It's probably a good habit to get into to read back over a tweet and pause just a moment before you hit send.
There are a lot of other scriptures related to our speech and the use of the tongue that should govern our tweets, but I'll stop there. Next time, I'll share with you a way of understanding Twitter and how that should inform how we use it.
Because Twitter is an electronic media, it may be easy for us to forget that Twitter really is just another form of speech. The words may be in text and they may be delivered via the internet, but it is still speech. So, the same biblical instruction related to how we speak should govern our use of Twitter.
There are two scriptures that have particular bearing on our use of Twitter. Ephesians 4:29 relates to what we post. It says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." The first question we need to ask before we tweet is, "Is this beneficial to the people who listen?"
Now, granted, there is a lot of room for what can qualify as "helpful for building others up." As a pastor, I often tweet about my normal, day to day stuff. I think it is tremendously beneficial for my people to get to know their pastor as a real person. I also often tweet humorous stuff. I think laughter builds others up, and it is really just an important part of my personality. So, I'm certainly not saying that everything you tweet has to be serious or teaching something life-changing. However, it does mean that the general tone of our tweets should be positive, encouraging, and uplifting. Stay away from negative, mean-spirited, cutting tweets.
The second scripture, Colossians 4:6, relates to how we respond to others: "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Second, ask yourself the question, "Is my response to this person a demonstration of the incredible grace of Jesus Christ that I have received?" I often see people jumping someone else on Twitter. I'll get into more of the details of that particular piece of Twitter ethics later, but simply following this scripture should keep us from doing that. Frankly, some Twitter conversations get very uncomfortable very quickly for everyone else who is "listening." Remember that other people are witnessing your conversations, many of whom are not followers of Jesus Christ. Is the way you respond to other people on Twitter more or less likely to make your pre-Christian followers want to experience the grace of the Christ you profess to follow? Twitter is a social media, so the way you respond to others is very important.
Proverbs 16:28 says, "Gossip separates the best of friends." Although a great tool, Twitter can become one of the largest gossip machines we have ever encountered. Be careful about what you post about other people.
One of my personal favorites is Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." Sometimes the best thing to tweet is nothing at all. I'll confess, I'm not always the best at this. Sometimes I tweet before I think, and that's dangerous. It's probably a good habit to get into to read back over a tweet and pause just a moment before you hit send.
There are a lot of other scriptures related to our speech and the use of the tongue that should govern our tweets, but I'll stop there. Next time, I'll share with you a way of understanding Twitter and how that should inform how we use it.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
An Ethic of Social Media - Part 1
I'm a big fan of social media. I use it to connect with people, make new friends, learn about people's struggles so that I can encourage them and pray for them, reestablish relationships with old friends, communicate with people in my community, and just have a lot of fun. I often encourage people who aren't engaged in social media to give it a try and see the incredible world that is out there.
But social media is an incredibly new phenomenon. Think about it, just ten years ago, email or possibly chatrooms were our greatest exposure to personally connecting with other people on the internet. Today, for many people, it's hard to imagine our lives without Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or a host of others. "Social media" has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena in American culture. Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users logging 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Twitter, the fastest growing social media site, now has over 100 million users and adds 300,000 new users every day.
As a church planter, social media has become an incredible tool for ministry. I strongly encourage all of our people to connect with me, each other, and the ministries of the church through our Facebook and Twitter presences. We may be one of the most social media connected churches out there (I know, that sentence sounds funny, but social media is so new that there aren't even adjectives to describe it yet.). Over ninety percent of our attenders (I'd guess about 99%) have a Facebook account, and approximately 75% of our people are on Twitter.
We use these outlets to communicate about upcoming stuff in the church, to promote our Sunday services, to remind people of the main points of the message during the week, to distribute information specific to our ministries, to do polls about important topics, and to send out invitations to our friends, just to name a few. Twitter and Facebook are a great way to get information out rapidly to a large percentage of our church members in an incredibly rapid manner. Need to change a meeting time? I can do it in a matter of seconds. Someone facing a crisis? People can find out about it and begin praying quickly. Have a need for a particular ministry? Put it out there for all the Twitter and Facebook world to see.
Twitter and Facebook are also incredible ways to "close the back door of the church." If someone attends our services for the first time and I can connect with them through Twitter or Facebook within a week or two, I can almost guarantee they are going to get plugged in and become an active part of our church.
So, I'm a really big fan.
However, like so often in the past, our use of new technology has outpaced our thinking about that technology, particularly the development of an ethic of social media. How should we relate to others on social media? What should we post or not post on social media? Are there dangers we should be aware of related to social media?
I certainly haven't developed a full ethic of social media, but I've developed a few principles for social media with my use of it fairly extensively over the last three years. I'll share those principles in the next few posts.
But social media is an incredibly new phenomenon. Think about it, just ten years ago, email or possibly chatrooms were our greatest exposure to personally connecting with other people on the internet. Today, for many people, it's hard to imagine our lives without Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or a host of others. "Social media" has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena in American culture. Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users logging 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Twitter, the fastest growing social media site, now has over 100 million users and adds 300,000 new users every day.
As a church planter, social media has become an incredible tool for ministry. I strongly encourage all of our people to connect with me, each other, and the ministries of the church through our Facebook and Twitter presences. We may be one of the most social media connected churches out there (I know, that sentence sounds funny, but social media is so new that there aren't even adjectives to describe it yet.). Over ninety percent of our attenders (I'd guess about 99%) have a Facebook account, and approximately 75% of our people are on Twitter.
We use these outlets to communicate about upcoming stuff in the church, to promote our Sunday services, to remind people of the main points of the message during the week, to distribute information specific to our ministries, to do polls about important topics, and to send out invitations to our friends, just to name a few. Twitter and Facebook are a great way to get information out rapidly to a large percentage of our church members in an incredibly rapid manner. Need to change a meeting time? I can do it in a matter of seconds. Someone facing a crisis? People can find out about it and begin praying quickly. Have a need for a particular ministry? Put it out there for all the Twitter and Facebook world to see.
Twitter and Facebook are also incredible ways to "close the back door of the church." If someone attends our services for the first time and I can connect with them through Twitter or Facebook within a week or two, I can almost guarantee they are going to get plugged in and become an active part of our church.
So, I'm a really big fan.
However, like so often in the past, our use of new technology has outpaced our thinking about that technology, particularly the development of an ethic of social media. How should we relate to others on social media? What should we post or not post on social media? Are there dangers we should be aware of related to social media?
I certainly haven't developed a full ethic of social media, but I've developed a few principles for social media with my use of it fairly extensively over the last three years. I'll share those principles in the next few posts.
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