Allow me to briefly share with you the highlight of my week at Recreate.
Soon after I’ll fill you in on more of the week.

Today is the release date for an album called Beautiful Things from a band called Gungor.
Formerly Michael Gungor Band.

Truth is, I wasn’t really looking all that forward to Gungor.
No good reason.  Only I knew he had helped write Friend Of God, and I shared a few weeks ago about my love for that song.
Didn’t really know much else about him.
OH MY GOODNESS.
Now I know that he is possibly the best musician in Christian music out there right now.
(I know some would say that doesn’t mean much, but he’s better than most secular artists too, if that helps.)

The concert would be better referred to as an experience.
There was media that went with it, a 10 piece band including a cello, violins, a xylophone, and a freaking keytar of all things!
It was written in 2 movements – dust and breath.
I was quickly immersed in this spiritual musical experience that absolutely blew me, and everyone else in the room, away.
At one point, they were playing and I remember feeling so raptured by the beauty of the music and emotion and I looked around to see hands in the air and tears on faces around me.
Mind you this was during a long stretch of purely instrumental music – no words.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen music in and of itself effect people in such a way in the culture we live in.
Chris Vacher wrote a great post about the experience over here.

Real quick, let me invite you to check out 2 videos.
The first one below is them sharing about their new album and the experience.
Right below that is a little video I put together from Recreate.  The first 6 minutes or so are the start of their performance.  Then, there is a clip from Kim who was sitting next to me of the last minute.
You gotta love all the heads bobbing in unison at 7:05.

The video doesn’t even begin to do it justice.
But at least it gives you a small sense of how we responded that afternoon.

I highly recommend that you go buy that album now.
Enjoy.

After high school I moved to Orange County to join The Young Americans.
I had spent 6 years in choirs at my school and doing theater.
In some ways, I had become one of the “big fish” in the pond.
When I started rehearsing with Young Americans, I found that I was among the best of the best from all over the country.
Most of the people in the room could blow me out of the water in at least one discipline, if not several.
Sure it was intimidating at times.
But even more than that, it was inspiring.
It was challenging.
It made me better.
I was able to learn from the people around me.
Just being with them pushed me to be better at everything.  There was no other choice.

That’s kinda how Recreate is for me in the ministry world.
Tonight I had dinner between Leeland, an incredible recording artist and even more incredible worship leader, and JVo, a pastor and one of the most creative people I’ve ever met in my life.
Today I had a one-on-one discussion with Ian Morgan Cron, author of Chasing Francis, about how I can better live out contemplative spirituality in my daily life.
I get to learn from Randy Elrod, another incredibly creative dreamer and entrepreneur who has been a mentor to some of the biggest names in the Christian music world.
I get to pick the brain of my friend Bobby Triplett who planted a church a year and a half ago in a very similar fashion to how we are, and he is doing it well.
I could go on for a while like this.

The point is, being around these people inspires me.
Most of them are light years beyond me, and rather than be intimidated by that, I choose to learn from them and be challenged to better myself.
That’s just one of the many reasons this has become such a valuable week in my life every year I am able to make it out here.

How about you?
Who are you surrounding yourself with that is better than you?
How are you being challenged to better yourself?

After we arrived, we found that there was a massage chair and some free massages.

I grabbed a good front and center seat at a dinner table for the evenings music and settled in for my rub down.

As people started showed up we all started mingling.
As I twittered earlier, any week that begins with a massage and a pint of beer promises to be a really great week!
I wasn’t able to come last year.  It was SO great to see so many of these people again.
It’s amazing how from just this one week in a couple of past years you really get to know these peeps and it was so refreshing to say hey and to catch up with them.  There is this instant camaraderie you have as Recreators.
Tonight was sponsored by Compassion, so we had some great food and alongside Spence Smith, Dan Perkins shared some about their churches trip to Togo.

After an amazing meal and dessert, Amy Grant opened us up with a small concert.

Now I have to admit, Rachel is the Amy Grant fan of the family.  Me, not so much.  Was just kinda before my time.
But truth be told, she has been pretty amazing the 2 times I’ve seen her here at Recreate.
She’s done a pretty good job of keeping her sound pretty recent.  And also, there is a depth to her songs and lyrics that I appreciate that I don’t feel as much in the old school stuff.  Unfortunately, I think that has probably come from some painful life experiences and being open and authentic with some of that, but I guess that is how God refines us most of the time.

Here’s a couple vids of her playing:

And of course, in a room full of worship pastors, everyone started singing along with this classic…

And in honor of Rachel, I did have to get a pic with Amy to bring home..

I told her that my wife was a big fan.
I think she kinda thought I was a kook.

Finally, this is what was going on outside as we were enjoying the night…

Apparently, they aren’t so used to snow on the roads here.
But this CA boy enjoyed it!

Now to get some sleep to be ready for all of the fun that awaits us tomorrow!

Kalein – A Greek word used in the New Testament (I believe only once).  It’s meaning: calling.  It’s underlying nuance: beauty.  The beauty of your calling.  Thus – Kalein: Beauty Is Calling.

Kalein is the brainchild/dream of Randy Elrod.  He has purchased around 150 acres outside Nashville, TN to serve as a retreat center.  A place where artists from all over can come to develop and discipline their crafts under the teaching of master teachers.  A place where artists can be prepared to go out into the world and create the culture.  5 star accommodations.  In really cool tree houses.  Gourmet food.  A beautiful setting.

This year at Recreate we became the first group Randy had brought out to see this land outside of his board and a couple close friends.  He said you had to be on the property to really catch the vision.  On a certain level, he was right.  But hopefully you can get a piece of it from the pictures and video below:

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We arrived and all received hay rides up over a ridge to get onto the actual property.

After arriving, we all had the opportunity to take a tour on the hay, which is where the video above came from.  As we were out, we managed to have a friend meet us along the path.  Check it out:

Oh, the captions I’m sure we could come up with for that photo!  We definitely weren’t in Cali anymore!

We all met back at the bonfire…the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen, where Randy shared with us the heart and motivation behind this dream that God had put in his heart.  We finished that time with a very special ceremony of sorts.  Randy has a good friend with Native American heritage who he says he has learned a lot from regarding the way their people view and respect the land.  This friend came out to bless the land where so much will be taking place.  I threw together a video with some snippets of this special time.  Check it out below.

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So…cool thing happening there, but why so encouraging for you Bobby?  Here’s the deal.  Randy is a dreamer and an inspiration to be around.  He is a regular, down home guy who received a vision from God, and now he is taking huge leaps of faith to see it happen.  The road has been extremely difficult, but God has seen him through it…and still is.  He shared about the million dollars that it will take to get the first buildings up and running, power run and everything.  He has none of that.  But already there are possible, interested donors stepping forward to make it happen.

There are certain people in my past who have been big dreamers.  These people are so encouraging and inspired me to dream as well.  As I saw the fruition of what Randy is already doing, I was so extremely challenged to dream so much bigger than I do.  But even as I type this, I am reminded of something that I just wrote.  This ultimately isn’t Randy’s dream, it’s God’s vision given to him.  Yes, I need to dream big.  But even more than that, I need to be asking God to give me a vision, a BIG vision, for what He wants.  And when those things become clear, be obedient in following through and watch God work.

And so, more than anything, I need to ask, and also surround myself with dreamers.  Surround myself with creatives.  Surround myself with people who are too naive to think any dream is too big to accomplish.  Time to seek those people out relentlessly.

Thanks for the inspiration Randy.  Thanks for the example.  And I encourage the rest of you to be praying for this project in the meantime.
Can’t wait till I get to visit it someday further along in the process.

How about you?  How big are your dreams?  Are they so big that without God, there’s no way they’ll ever happen?  If not, why not?

Thursday was by far the most amazing day on a personal level at Recreate.  Nathan had a great recap where he referred to it as the best morning in Recreate history. 
It began with a visit from Mark Stuart, lead singer from Audio Adrenaline.  Wow.  It was incredible hearing him share so authentically from the struggles of his life.  His vocal chords giving out.  The end of AA.  His marriage falling apart.  Hearing how God spoke to him and carried him through it all was inspirational.  And I said it once, but it’s worth repeating, I’ve never heard someone share so openly and honestly and it made all the difference in the world.

Mark also shared about the ministry he is currently heading up, the Hands and Feet project.  It is a ministry to orphans in Haiti.  Please go by their site and find out what you can do to get involved.  Seeing his video and hearing about it gave Rachel and I a hunger to go over there and help out.  Who knows, maybe one of these days we’ll make it happen.  I loved the answer Mark gave when asked if they facilitate overseas adoptions for the kids into families over here.  He responded that while they would not get in the way of that, it is not their mission or goal by any means.  Rather, they want to raise up a generation of devoted Christ followers who can significantly impact their nation of Haiti.  Pretty cool I thought.

Then we entered into a rich time of worship and communion.  During that time, Mike Lewis, the Jesus Painter did three paintings.  Look him up on YouTube and you can see some incredible work from his One Way project.  Music was played and worship led by Mark Roach and Mark Lee, songwriter and member of Third Day.  If you haven’t watched the video of this time in my earlier post, go check it out.

To finish off our morning, we listened to Ken Davis share with us.  WOW.  By the time he was done, there seriously was not a dry eye in the room.  He was absolutely hilarious as he shared stories from his own life.  yet the truths he shared were profound and went deep.  He encouraged us mainly to not miss some windows of opportunity to love our families and to be satisfied in Christ where He has placed us right now.  Wish I could share some notes or more detail with you, but I couldn’t do it justice.

So that was an incredible morning.  The afternoon was the most peaceful/inspiring/challenging of the week for me.  But I’ll share that in another post or two.  It’s deserving of it’s own.

Finally, we finished the night with Word music, where we worshiped with Jeremy Riddle, Mark Roach, and others.  Again, great food, great music.  Enjoy a few snippets of Jeremy and Mark:

On Wednesday afternoon we all visited Lane Motor Museum in Nashville for an exercise in creativity.  As we showed up we had some time to look around and enjoy looking at some very interesting vehicles like these:

Or this one that burned coal above the front tires for fuel:

Randy’s daughter had been here on a trip with a class from her design college, and her teacher gave us a handout and walked us through the same exercise they had been through.  After sharing this story with us (seriously, go read it) he encouraged us to walk around and really take in the design elements of each vehicle and think about how and why things were created.  It was a great reminder of all the creativity and design that goes into so many of the mundane things we take for granted everyday.  There are so many things to pull inspiration from that I consistently walk right by.

On a few side notes, there were some other fun vehicles that grabbed me.  Like I’ve said before, everyone in Santa Cruz has gotta have a gimmick.  I found mine.  I want to roll around Pac Ave in this car!

Of course, I figured I’m already more likely to see this car in Santa Cruz, sticker and all:

Rachel wouldn’t mind something amphibious though:

And of course, a special wing with some perfect rides for our bike ridin pastor:

Anchor Fellowship With 15 EMI Songwriters

EMI hosted a night at Anchor Fellowship where we had another amazing meal and a night of tons of music and worship from 15 songwriters who were there on a songwriters retreat.  Some of the writers included Vicky Beeching, Matt Maher, Michael Gungor, Mark Byrd, Steve Fee, and several others.  Just check out the pics and see if you recognize a couple:

Here’s some fun worship with a great new song I really enjoyed from Matt Maher:

It was amazing.  And I want Mike to come to Santa Cruz.  Badly.  Good night.

Dr. Thom Parham

This guy is part of the WGA and a film professor at my wife’s alma mater, Azusa Pacific University.  He spoke about "Finding Our Passion in Filmmaking" and had some great thoughts!  Here’s a couple highlights:

• You can encapsulate truth in a story and catch them off-guard and make them connect the dots and figure out what you’re talking about.
• Studios may think we’ll eat anything.  We need to refine our taste to appreciate good movies.
• Craft films with substance and beauty
• Just because a filmmaker adheres to a different worldview doesn’t mean he or she has nothing to say
• Christians are the new gays in Hollywood: everyone wants to play one, no one wants to be one. –Dean Batali
• Don’t be afraid to “get real” – if we want to connect with people we need to show them we have the same problems they do
• Movies are not evangelical, they are pre-evangelical
• Art that people dislike and inspires discussion is better that art that is forgettable

Oddly enough, I left this session now wanting to see 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up.  Sounds odd, I know.  But Thom had some great insight into the maker of those movies and his work which somehow tends to be subversively conservative.  He shows the downside of that lifestyle in going so far over the top in that direction.  What would happen if a Christian movie maker created a film with  similar method?  Something to ponder.

His point that probably rung true with me the most was the need for more Christians "behind enemy lines" in entertainment.  We tend to get one or two back there, get excited, and leave them on their own to get picked off.  To be successful in creating culture we need to see hundreds of artist trying to break across the lines.  I guess I appreciated this in part cause I’m so sick of us telling our youth that they need to use their talents to create Christian music and art.  Let’s get them out of the bubble and let them create redemptive art in the marketplace!

Jon Tyson

This was the smaller group discussion time with Jon.  Again, the guy is brilliant and is doing some pretty awesome stuff in NYC at his church, Origins.  He had 2 main points to discuss:

1. Making sure we don’t create ahistorical churches
2. The death of alpha male leadership in the church

Being that our group was the cluster of smaller churches, we chose to focus more on the former (being that the latter tends to be more of a mega-church mentality, however we are far from immune to it in my opinion).  I can’t even come close to summing up all we talked about there, but here are a few thoughts I was able to pull out of the mix:

• There is a difference between contextualization and relevance
• Our churches need to be rooted, not relevant
• People need to understand their place in the greater picture of Christian history
• I really need to look more into "narrative theology"
• We try to get people to serve in our church on Sundays and devalue the other 160+ weekly hours of their lives, although we would never overtly say it.  (Wow…there was a lot behind that.  That one really hit me between the eyes!)
• Teaching is not the solution

As a result of our discussion, I went to Amazon during it and ordered The Shaping of Things to Come.  It’s on its way and I can’t wait to check it out.