"Stand in the place where you live, now face north. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before." -R.E.M.
Pastoral Stuff
Two Worlds
02/21/2010 12:37 AM
At the time I also realized I’d need to bring in a little extra income while she did this because we have quite a bit of student loan debt from seminary and we also have a decent chunk of credit card debt from not having much money and not always making the best decisions from when we first got married.
I’ll write about this in more detail soon, but I started a web design firm and have been getting quite a bit of business. It’s been great: I’m meeting people in Springfield I wouldn’t otherwise meet, I’m helping them out, and I’m bringing in some extra money for our bills.
But some weeks it’s simply exhausting. In addition to the 40-50 hours I work each week at Milestone, I have weeks where I put in an additional 20-40 hours with the web studio (like this last week). This often means little sleep, a perpetual sense of never being “caught up”, and an unhealthy dependency on 5 Hour Energy.
This is not a gripe; I love my work at the church and I’ve found that my work in the web development community has gone hand-in-hand with being a pastor. After all, I’m getting to know and influence people all over the city that I probably never would have met unless I’d been willing to roll up my sleeves and do some work in the secular world. But I’m trying to find a balance and I feel like it’s eluding me. I often feel like I bounce from one world (pastoring a church) to another (developing websites) and the disconnect between the two can often be jarring. One minute I’m working through difficult issues of prayer and counseling with a church partner, the next I’m explaining to a web client that it’s not a good idea to have 80’s hair band music auto-playing at full blast when someone goes to their health insurance website (yes...true story). One minute I’m organizing mission trips and talking to a local pastor about how he should handle a church member who’s poisoning the rest of his people, the next minute I’m trying to figure out WHY THE HECK THE WEBSITE WON’T DISPLAY PROPERLY IN INTERNET EXPLORER 6!!! (sorry...I get a little emotional about that)
So in conclusion: I’m running low on sleep and I’m in a constant state of whiplash. The church is by far my first love and it’s where the bulk of my time is spent, but I’m still having to invest some very heavy hours into my web business. Maybe the answer is hiring more part-time help, but until Emily is done with school we really need the money.
I suppose if I never figure it all out I can at least take comfort in knowing that it won’t have to be like this forever. In a little over a year Em will be done with school and I can take on a few less projects and not have to work non-stop all the time. Until then, you’ll have to forgive me if this blog gets neglected from time to time (as if that hasn’t already happened).
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Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Mini-Entry
07/07/2009 07:47 AM
I’m currently sitting in the performance hall for Poets, Prophets and Preachers and I thought I’d go ahead and post a mini-entry about one of the things that captured me last night.
Rob Bell said he was speaking with a book editor a few weeks ago. This editor goes through hundreds of books on a regular basis. She told Rob that when she starts going through a new book to see if it’s worthy of publication, she necessarily does so with her editor’s hat on looking for the things that an editor would look for; she doesn’t really get to enjoy and take the book in.
But she told him there are rare occasions where she can remove her editor’s hat completely after the first few well-written pages because she says, “I know I’m in good hands.”
Bell went on to explain that the preacher should be able to evoke the same trust within the first couple of minutes of a message. To put in the hard work required to master the art of the sermon is to allow other people to let down their guard, put away their critique, and “know they are in good hands.”
Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Day 2
07/06/2009 10:42 PM
I want to apologize in advance for failing. Day 2 of Poets, Prophets and Preachers: Recalling the Art of the Sermon will be impossible for me to recount in any sort of encompassing manner. We listened intently for around eight hours of pure brilliance today; trying to summarize it would be difficult.
So I’ve decided to take a different approach. Tomorrow is the final day of the conference; instead of giving a “play-by-play” I’m going to take tomorrow and Wednesday to process some of the things we’ve been discussing. I’ll then post a few entries to let you know the things that resonated with me most deeply and why.
Please continue praying for us. It’s been a great week, but we still feel like there’s so much more to learn and take in.
Shalom,
Josh
Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Day 1
07/05/2009 10:26 PM
Rob Bell was tonight’s featured speaker. This session felt like an introduction to the week and, as such, it served its purpose: to build anticipation and lay a little groundwork for the sessions to follow.
Bell began by announcing quite convincingly that the time has come to reclaim the art form of the sermon. He asked a rhetorical question: if you were to petition an average person on the street to share words they associated with “sermon,” what would they tell you? Would they say “exciting,” “engaging,” “life-altering,” “intelligent,” “artful,” “passionate,” etc.?
The obvious answer is “no.” Many words may come to mind for the average person, but the aforementioned list is unlikely to be recited. It’s likely that the average person sees the sermon as something to be endured, evaluated, or disregarded as utter propaganda (often understandably so).
It’s time to reclaim the art form of the sermon.
Bell went on to talk about the “naked vulnerability” that often comes with delivering messages to an audience: doubting whether anyone listens, hearing crickets while sharing a potentially life-altering message, and the baggage that comes from your own body of work. The examples he gave are difficult to fully understand unless you are a regular preacher; they resonated deeply with me.
For those of you preparing to embark on your first pastorate, you likely have some idea that delivering a sermon week in and week out is a towering task. I assure you that doing it with excellence is a much more difficult task than you can possibly realize at the moment. And that’s why Rob Bell’s next statement needs to be well remembered:
We need to stop preaching because we have to say something and start preaching because we have something to say.
People should look forward to the sermon. They should be excited to hear the burning words that have welled up inside of the preacher all week; words that will cause their emissary to spontaneously combust if he or she cannot finally release the pressure valve by spewing forth the message that has been howling to be set loose.
To preach such a message is to:
- witness (testify to the truth you have learned)
- remind (point to the fact that God has more in mind than this)
- return (call for repentance and change)
- sub-vert (show there’s another story going on besides what we see)
- provocate (use loaded language to warn)
If we understand that preaching is a subversive act, Bell points out that we’ll open ourselves up to the possibility of being ill-received. We open ourselves up to the possibility of misinterpretation, confusion, anger, ignorance, fear, jealousy, critique, and agendas.
But...
...we also open up the possibility of truth, light, hope, repentance, comfort, inspiration, solidarity, compassion, revolution, and resurrection.
It’s a beautiful and timeless truth that we can’t bring about the possibility of good if we’re unwilling to open up the possibility for bad. In my estimation the whole of the Biblical account speaks of a God who has worked within the tension of this paradigm since the dawn of creation.
Bell says the words of the preacher can create new worlds for people; new perspectives from which to view existence, new categories from which to gain understanding.
But the message of the preacher shouldn’t stop at the end of the sermon. Bell described a fallacy of the modern age: that the message ends when the public speaker concludes; that the speaker has the power to once and for all finally settle the topic at hand.
Life-changing messages don’t work in this way. Life-changing messages pose more questions; they invite the listener to wade into the great depths and complexities of the preacher’s words. They can’t possibly resolve themselves in the time it takes to deliver them, and thus they invite their listeners to trade passive roles for active ones.
Life-changing talks start talks. They don’t end them. It’s less about the last word and more about the first word.
I arrived this week in near-burn-out mode. Since helping plant Milestone Church a year ago life has been relentless; a pastor is never “off the clock” and that can make for stressful and tiring days. Tonight’s message began a restorative process that I pray will continue for the rest of the week.
Truth be told, my church needs me to be rested as much as I need to rest.
Conference Blogging
07/05/2009 03:29 PM
All this week I’m in Grand Rapids, Michigan attending a pastor’s conference. It’s being put together by Mars Hill Bible Church, home of Rob Bell, and it’s called Poets, Prophets and Preachers: Recalling the Art of the Sermon.
I’m really looking forward to it. Preaching and teaching make up a big part of what I do at Milestone Church and I’ve definitely discovered something in the last twelve months: preaching 40-50 times a year is a challenging task. It’s difficult to stay fresh and continue to pump out edifying content to grow the saints while keeping it interesting and relevant week in and week out.
I’ve got a couple of weeks of sabbatical coming up at the end of July and the first of August. This conference comes at a perfect time and will hopefully serve to give me some food for thought heading into that period of rest, prayer, and planning for Milestone Church.
This week I’m going to do several “mini-blogs” about the conference and about my experience in processing the information. My friend David Calavan has also decided to come, so as we discuss and work through some of the material I’ll let those of you who are curious in on those discussions.
I think it’s going to be a good week.
Why I Walked Away From Seminary, Pt. 2
06/05/2009 05:11 AM
I arrived at East Texas Baptist University in the fall of 2000. I remember not being entirely sure of how this whole college thing would work out. My parents had both started college, but neither had graduated and they seemed to be perfectly happy and quite intelligent. So I didn’t actually know if I was going to finish because I kind of assumed that at some point I would start traveling and preaching or leading worship; if college got in the way of that, I’d just quit.
Needless to say, entering into college with that kind of attitude doesn’t exactly lend itself toward putting your best foot forward in your studies.
But why did I need to worry about that anyway? After all, I was majoring in religion, a subject I practically already knew frontwards and backwards. Though I never would have said it out loud, I had grown up in church and been to Sunday School more times than I could have possibly kept track of. What on earth could my professors possibly teach me about the Bible that I didn’t already know?
And then I found out that angels may have had sex with humans.
That’s right: Genesis 6 threw me for a huge loop on my very first day of class. My Old Testament professor at ETBU was walking us through the syllabus and going over a rough outline of what we would be studying for the semester when he casually mentioned the passage.
“And in a few weeks we’ll look at the flood narrative,” he said, “which starts in Genesis 6 with the unusual prelude, ‘When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.’ We’ll be talking about what that means and the fact that many biblical scholars understand it to mean that angels intermarried with human women. If that is understood as true, it would be considered one of the evils that angered God to the point of destroying nearly every living thing on the earth.”
So imagine being little Mr. Know-It-All from Grand Saline, Texas. Mr. Future-Conference-Speaker. Mr. Sunday-School-Is-My-Middle-Name.
Now imagine having angel sex thrown in your face on your first day of college.
To an outsider, it would have seemed small and insignificant. An inconsequential fact mentioned merely in passing. An interesting bit of Bible trivia.
But it rocked me to the core. Because if I didn’t know about that...if something mentioned in the first five minutes of my first class while we were just looking over the syllabus was that alien to me...
...what else did I not know?
*part 3 will be posted on Monday
Why I Walked Away From Seminary, Pt. 1
06/03/2009 05:32 PM
We moved over 1,000 miles, we took on a huge financial burden, and we threw ourselves into our work with vigor and determination. Within two years I had a supremely healthy GPA and was well on my way to graduating.
And that’s when I walked away from seminary. This is the story of why.
But to understand it, you’ll have to have a little background.
A Tale of 2 “Josh Crain”s
At the age of 16, I walked down the aisle of Main Street Baptist Church and announced to my pastor and my church family that God had called me to “the ministry.” Looking back, I realize I didn’t know exactly what that meant. In fact, I probably assumed that I was either supposed to travel and lead worship or travel and preach. My father had done those things for years, and I suppose I could see myself preaching to thousands of teenagers at “Youth Evangelism Conferences.” After all, that’s where the “real ministry” happened.
To be honest, it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Because of the opportunities my father had been blessed with, I’d already been leading worship in front of thousands of people each summer. And in a little over a year from the time I walked that aisle at 16 I would have the opportunity to lead worship with my dad and brother at YouthLink 2000, an event held on New Year’s Day of 1999 where we would stand on stage in front of 25,000 students.
At the age of 18 I felt like I was living a double life. There was the “Josh Crain” who attended tiny Grand Saline High School in east Texas: generally respected and mostly well-liked, but certainly not the star athlete or the most popular kid in school.
Then there was the “Josh Crain” who got to stand in front of hundreds and thousands of students and play electric guitar, sign autographs, and have a ton of cute girls from youth camps try to get his phone number. No one from high school got to see that side, and I always wondered how weirded out they would have been to see that going on in the summers.
Thankfully my parents did a great job of not letting some silly “youth camp celebrity” go to my head and I was able to get through high school as a mostly humble, if not a little self-righteous, 18 years old kid.
And what does a self-righteous 18-year-old kid who’s called to “the ministry” do when high school ends? Well, I suppose he goes to a Christian college to prepare himself to preach to thousands of teenagers at Youth Evangelism Conferences.
*part 2 will be posted on Friday
Stripped
04/07/2009 05:15 PM
Last week my wife and I went downtown with some friends to grab some Mexican food and look at the art exhibits on display during the monthly Springfield Art Walk. I noticed one of the stores, Good Girl Art Gallery, had a few pieces that had been created by local exotic dancers. The pieces were interesting and fresh; they were honest and real.
And they made me start thinking about exotic dancers.
I’ve been living in Springfield for 9 months and I’m always surprised when I spot yet another strip club in town. For a city that has a mostly clean-cut, Bible-thumping reputation, Springfield has a thriving sex industry.
And I’ve heard plenty of stories about exotic dancers. One nurse told me that she helped an injured stripper a few months ago who kept referring to her boss as her “master.” She told me that the young woman seemed brainwashed and detached from reality.
And what’s the draw to this lifestyle? Typically it appears to be money, drugs, or both. The average exotic dancer makes between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. If they have a drug habit that needs to be fed, it’s not uncommon for club owners to help satisfy that craving as well.
Another nurse told me she was working in the Emergency Room one evening when an exotic dancer came in with her family. This family was bragging to anyone who would listen about how much money the girl was bringing in for them, even going so far as to show her portfolio to people.
As I began to think and talk about exotic dancers, a more clear picture of them began to emerge. Granted, it’s somewhat of a generalization, but many dancers are in it as a last resort. Many have low self-esteem and very little support system. Many of them have lived a hard life.
But they don’t need to be saved from stripping. They need to be saved from emptiness. They need Jesus.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder what Milestone Church can do to help exotic dancers in our area. I don’t think raiding the strip clubs or standing outside with picket signs are the answers. But I don’t know if there is any other church in town that’s willing to step down into the mire in order to help lift these girls out because it won’t be an easy or squeaky-clean task.
Maybe we’ve been called to get down in the dirt and show them Jesus.
Sex is More Than a Muscle Spasm
03/13/2009 05:40 AM
It just so happens that he finds himself in a new location trying to make new friends. No longer surrounded by any safety net, he’s having to work out his salvation with “fear and trembling” while overcoming the adversity around him.
Lately he’s been getting hung up on the “lust” topic.
His friends want to know why lust is a bad thing; it feels natural and it “doesn’t hurt anybody.” They say “God designed us to be attracted in this way to girls,” and though my friend tries to bring the subject around to marriage, he’s struggling a bit and wants to have some clarification.
Here we go... Read More...
Pastoring Without a Handbook
09/02/2008 04:58 PM
Hello, all. Been a few weeks since I’ve had a chance to really give an update, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to do that today, as well as to dole out a little pastoral “wisdom.”
I’ve been a senior pastor for 2 1/2 months now. There isn’t really a handbook for how to handle every situation you come across and I think it’s okay to be honest about something: there isn’t a great solution for every problem you’ll face. So sometimes you just prayerfully do the best you can.
Get comfortable with the fact that you won’t always know the perfect course of action to pursue in any given situation. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s difficult to know all the repercussions of any single decision that you’ll be forced to make.
I say all this (vaguely, I realize) to encourage other pastors and church leaders. You will face some difficult decisions over time and you will face opposition from people both in your church and outside of it. The best advice I can give you is simply this: follow after Jesus Christ with all of your heart in everything you do and every decision you make. Filter everything through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you do that, if you honestly try to follow hard after Him in everything, then you can irreproachably sit back and let the chips fall where they may.
As a church leader, your integrity is everything. Don’t compromise it.
Even when it’s hard; even when it may cost you your job.
For the last 2 1/2 months I have faced challenges that are completely unique to my church. Without going into details, I’ll just say that there was a lot to do when I started here and a lot of very difficult decisions to make. I feel that we’re through the worst of it, however, and we’re now in a place where we can simply move forward and minister to our community and our world without the distractions of the past. This is more than a “positive” step forward; this is the beginning of a new era and a fresh start for our church.
In the last month we’ve gained a new name, a new facility, and a new website. We’ve left the problems of the past exactly where they belong: in the past. We’ve started fresh and I’m so excited to see what God has for us moving forward. It’s truly an exciting time.
Last week I spent countless hours (countless because I was half asleep for many of them) working on our new website, and I’m happy to announce that it’s now up and running. We’ll be adding new content to it over the coming weeks and months, but it’s now officially open to the public. Check out the new website if you’d like, and let me know what you think about it. You can view it at this link.
I’ll try and post a little more later this week about the series we’ve been doing and how it’s affecting our thought process going forward. In the meantime, I hope everyone had a happy Labor Day.
Be blessed and be a blessing.
I’ve been a senior pastor for 2 1/2 months now. There isn’t really a handbook for how to handle every situation you come across and I think it’s okay to be honest about something: there isn’t a great solution for every problem you’ll face. So sometimes you just prayerfully do the best you can.
Get comfortable with the fact that you won’t always know the perfect course of action to pursue in any given situation. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s difficult to know all the repercussions of any single decision that you’ll be forced to make.
I say all this (vaguely, I realize) to encourage other pastors and church leaders. You will face some difficult decisions over time and you will face opposition from people both in your church and outside of it. The best advice I can give you is simply this: follow after Jesus Christ with all of your heart in everything you do and every decision you make. Filter everything through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you do that, if you honestly try to follow hard after Him in everything, then you can irreproachably sit back and let the chips fall where they may.
As a church leader, your integrity is everything. Don’t compromise it.
Even when it’s hard; even when it may cost you your job.
For the last 2 1/2 months I have faced challenges that are completely unique to my church. Without going into details, I’ll just say that there was a lot to do when I started here and a lot of very difficult decisions to make. I feel that we’re through the worst of it, however, and we’re now in a place where we can simply move forward and minister to our community and our world without the distractions of the past. This is more than a “positive” step forward; this is the beginning of a new era and a fresh start for our church.
In the last month we’ve gained a new name, a new facility, and a new website. We’ve left the problems of the past exactly where they belong: in the past. We’ve started fresh and I’m so excited to see what God has for us moving forward. It’s truly an exciting time.
Last week I spent countless hours (countless because I was half asleep for many of them) working on our new website, and I’m happy to announce that it’s now up and running. We’ll be adding new content to it over the coming weeks and months, but it’s now officially open to the public. Check out the new website if you’d like, and let me know what you think about it. You can view it at this link.
I’ll try and post a little more later this week about the series we’ve been doing and how it’s affecting our thought process going forward. In the meantime, I hope everyone had a happy Labor Day.
Be blessed and be a blessing.
Church Marketing Stinks
07/10/2008 04:02 AM
I don't like church advertising.
There. I said it.
I've been listening to some local Christian radio stations over the last several days because I've come to an unsettling conclusion: if we want people to know that our church is around, we're going to have to do a little (I can't stress the word "little" enough) advertising. But there are a couple of major problems:
1. We're not really interested in "Christian radio" people. God bless them if they want to come, but we're pursuing the unchurched.
2. We simply cannot fall into the same kind of "bigger is better" church advertising campaigns that plague this city.
I want to speak a little on that second point. If you listen to the radio stations that local churches advertise on, you'll hear a pretty amazing tug-of-war: "Our children's ministry is the best," "Our youth group has the best facility," "Our music is the most contemporary," "Our preaching is the most encouraging," etc., etc.
Churches have taken marketing principles from the corporate world and just plugged them into the religious community. And you know what? In the past, it's worked.
But there's a problem...
If you build your church on consumerism, you'll have a building full of consumers. Whenever the next great church with the next great preacher or music leader or fireworks extravaganza comes along, your people will bolt. And even if that never happens, even if you're always the best show in town, it's difficult to turn consumers into Kingdom of God minded people because you encouraged them to have a "me-first" mindset from the very beginning.
So what's our big ad campaign? We're going to make a few posters; print out a few business cards. But our people are going to be the driving force behind everything that we do. If they don't love on their friends and family then our church won't grow. If they don't invite the people closest to them to plug into our small Christ community then our Christ community will remain small.
I'm excited to be part of this church and I see the fire in the eyes of many of our members. Because of that, I'm longing to see how God's going to use us.
In closing, here's a rough draft of a flier idea we've had. Kinda goes against every church in our city, but we like it. Let me know what you think:
There. I said it.
I've been listening to some local Christian radio stations over the last several days because I've come to an unsettling conclusion: if we want people to know that our church is around, we're going to have to do a little (I can't stress the word "little" enough) advertising. But there are a couple of major problems:
1. We're not really interested in "Christian radio" people. God bless them if they want to come, but we're pursuing the unchurched.
2. We simply cannot fall into the same kind of "bigger is better" church advertising campaigns that plague this city.
I want to speak a little on that second point. If you listen to the radio stations that local churches advertise on, you'll hear a pretty amazing tug-of-war: "Our children's ministry is the best," "Our youth group has the best facility," "Our music is the most contemporary," "Our preaching is the most encouraging," etc., etc.
Churches have taken marketing principles from the corporate world and just plugged them into the religious community. And you know what? In the past, it's worked.
But there's a problem...
If you build your church on consumerism, you'll have a building full of consumers. Whenever the next great church with the next great preacher or music leader or fireworks extravaganza comes along, your people will bolt. And even if that never happens, even if you're always the best show in town, it's difficult to turn consumers into Kingdom of God minded people because you encouraged them to have a "me-first" mindset from the very beginning.
So what's our big ad campaign? We're going to make a few posters; print out a few business cards. But our people are going to be the driving force behind everything that we do. If they don't love on their friends and family then our church won't grow. If they don't invite the people closest to them to plug into our small Christ community then our Christ community will remain small.
I'm excited to be part of this church and I see the fire in the eyes of many of our members. Because of that, I'm longing to see how God's going to use us.
In closing, here's a rough draft of a flier idea we've had. Kinda goes against every church in our city, but we like it. Let me know what you think:
What's in a Name?
07/10/2008 03:26 AM
When I first became pastor of a church in Springfield, Missouri, I knew there were a lot of challenges ahead of us: a new location, a new time to meet, a complete reimagining of how we do ministry, etc. One of the tasks that I was actually looking forward to, however, was changing our church's name. I figured that it would be somewhat simple and relatively exciting.
I was wrong.
It's a nightmare. : )
For the last several weeks we've been asking for suggestions, ideas, and prayer. We've had a pretty good response and quite a few solid suggestions. But we're also facing some formidable challenges.
One thing I've noticed is that most of the churches around Springfield sound more like country clubs than communities on a mission: Timbercreek (our old name), James River, Scenic Drive Church (no, I'm not making that up), Ridgecrest Baptist, Glendale, Parkview, etc., etc. It's not that these are inherently bad names; they just seem more like places you'd go to play 18 holes than commune with Christ and live life with fellow believers.
And this has been part of our challenge: to come up with a name that actually symbolizes what we feel called to do. It's harder than you'd think.
We've thought of LOTS of great names. The problem is that it's very difficult to find an internet domain name for a church that's not already taken. Or to think of a church name that isn't already prominently known.1
Journey Church? Taken. The Way? Gone. The Gathering Place? Don't even think about it; that domain's been taken for years: .com, .net, .org...you name it, it's not there. The sad thing is that most of these sites don't even belong to churches; they've been bought up by squatters who are holding them ransom and trying to get churches like us to pay an exorbitant amount of money to buy them back.
And we could always add a hyphen or the word "Springfield" to the URL, but that seems confusing and overly long (ex: www.JourneySpringfield.com).
So we're still thinking, but we need to get this nailed down pretty soon. If you feel like you have any great ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
I was wrong.
It's a nightmare. : )
For the last several weeks we've been asking for suggestions, ideas, and prayer. We've had a pretty good response and quite a few solid suggestions. But we're also facing some formidable challenges.
One thing I've noticed is that most of the churches around Springfield sound more like country clubs than communities on a mission: Timbercreek (our old name), James River, Scenic Drive Church (no, I'm not making that up), Ridgecrest Baptist, Glendale, Parkview, etc., etc. It's not that these are inherently bad names; they just seem more like places you'd go to play 18 holes than commune with Christ and live life with fellow believers.
And this has been part of our challenge: to come up with a name that actually symbolizes what we feel called to do. It's harder than you'd think.
We've thought of LOTS of great names. The problem is that it's very difficult to find an internet domain name for a church that's not already taken. Or to think of a church name that isn't already prominently known.1
Journey Church? Taken. The Way? Gone. The Gathering Place? Don't even think about it; that domain's been taken for years: .com, .net, .org...you name it, it's not there. The sad thing is that most of these sites don't even belong to churches; they've been bought up by squatters who are holding them ransom and trying to get churches like us to pay an exorbitant amount of money to buy them back.
And we could always add a hyphen or the word "Springfield" to the URL, but that seems confusing and overly long (ex: www.JourneySpringfield.com).
So we're still thinking, but we need to get this nailed down pretty soon. If you feel like you have any great ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
1 We love names like Mars Hill, Mosaic, Imago Dei, etc. We're working toward that kind of mission-minded name, but every time we think we've landed on one we find that it's already being prominently used.
How I Fell In Love With the Church Again, Part 1
05/14/2008 05:01 PM
Two years ago I wrote a song; it was a ballad about a woman named Lady Lou. When I was young boy, Lady Lou chose to show me kindness. She fed me when I was hungry, clothed me when I was naked, taught me when I was clueless. She held me and pampered me and told me she loved me.
But when I got older, she turned on me. Her warm smile disappeared and the light in her eyes grew dim as she pushed me away time and time again. She stabbed me in the back, she rejected me for petty differences, and she withheld the love and the comfort that she had lavished on me as a child.
Lady Lou, Lady Lou, all I want to do
Is Just sit and be held by you
Lady Lou, Lady Lou, no matter what I do
You turn away, you walk away from me
So I try and I fail, 'cause I don't know, I can't tell
What you want, my dear Lady Lou
But I'm starting to know, 'cause it's starting to show
You're not the dear I thought you to be
Lady Lou was the most hurtful person in my life because it's brutally painful to have someone you love turn against you.
Lady Lou was my metaphor for the church.
Through my employment on three different church staffs I saw how ugly the church can be. I witnessed the political maneuvering and the backbiting. I observed people who were more willing to shout charges of heresy than to sit down with their perceived enemies to discuss their differences. I saw pastors turn on staff, congregants turn on one another, and cliques fighting other cliques over the most ridiculously shallow things you can imagine.
I saw others targeted and I was targeted myself. And throughout all of this, I began to grow more calloused toward the church. The church that I revered, loved, and had committed to serve for the rest of my life seemed as if it were trying to push me away. "Unwanted." That's how I felt. There are deep scars from all of this conflict.
For the last two years I have struggled through all of these issues. At times I've thought about it too much, to the point that it was unhealthy. And then God began to pierce through my calloused heart and heal me from the inside out.
I'll write more about that journey in Part 2.
But when I got older, she turned on me. Her warm smile disappeared and the light in her eyes grew dim as she pushed me away time and time again. She stabbed me in the back, she rejected me for petty differences, and she withheld the love and the comfort that she had lavished on me as a child.
Lady Lou, Lady Lou, all I want to do
Is Just sit and be held by you
Lady Lou, Lady Lou, no matter what I do
You turn away, you walk away from me
So I try and I fail, 'cause I don't know, I can't tell
What you want, my dear Lady Lou
But I'm starting to know, 'cause it's starting to show
You're not the dear I thought you to be
Lady Lou was the most hurtful person in my life because it's brutally painful to have someone you love turn against you.
Lady Lou was my metaphor for the church.
Through my employment on three different church staffs I saw how ugly the church can be. I witnessed the political maneuvering and the backbiting. I observed people who were more willing to shout charges of heresy than to sit down with their perceived enemies to discuss their differences. I saw pastors turn on staff, congregants turn on one another, and cliques fighting other cliques over the most ridiculously shallow things you can imagine.
I saw others targeted and I was targeted myself. And throughout all of this, I began to grow more calloused toward the church. The church that I revered, loved, and had committed to serve for the rest of my life seemed as if it were trying to push me away. "Unwanted." That's how I felt. There are deep scars from all of this conflict.
For the last two years I have struggled through all of these issues. At times I've thought about it too much, to the point that it was unhealthy. And then God began to pierce through my calloused heart and heal me from the inside out.
I'll write more about that journey in Part 2.
Some Days I'm Embarrassed to Be a Pastor
05/02/2008 03:29 PM
Being a pastor is hard. I'll admit it. There's always more you can do, prepare for, discuss, study, etc. So I sympathize with many pastors who find themselves facing criticism while trying to also serve their churches.
That being said, there are days when other pastors kindly make me want to tell people I'm a plumber when asked my vocation. Apparently Roger Byrd of Jonesville, South Carolina thought this sign would be a nice, non-racial, non-political way of reminding people "what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ."
When a local news organization asked Byrd if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd replied, "I don't know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don't know. He says he's not. I hope he's not. But I don't know. And it's just something to try to stir people's minds."
Good think that Byrd says the message, "wasn't meant to be racial or political."
You know, except that's all it was.
That being said, there are days when other pastors kindly make me want to tell people I'm a plumber when asked my vocation. Apparently Roger Byrd of Jonesville, South Carolina thought this sign would be a nice, non-racial, non-political way of reminding people "what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ."
When a local news organization asked Byrd if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd replied, "I don't know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don't know. He says he's not. I hope he's not. But I don't know. And it's just something to try to stir people's minds."
Good think that Byrd says the message, "wasn't meant to be racial or political."
You know, except that's all it was.
Worship Wars
03/30/2006 05:23 PM
Recently I was asked to lead worship for a large church in the Dallas metroplex. Four other Christian musicians generously agreed to join me despite the fact that we weren’t getting paid. I know these guys well, however, and they just want to help the Kingdom of God in any way that they can.
The way that we were treated by the church, however, made me wish I had given them the weekend off...
Read More...The way that we were treated by the church, however, made me wish I had given them the weekend off...
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