My Worship Revolution

The list of podcasts (in order) I listened to on the way back to Santa Cruz the other day:

Man.  That's a whole lot of challenge for one drive!

So, what have you listened to or read that has really challenged you lately?

Yesterday I left Temecula to head toward Santa Cruz at approximately 1:00 p.m.
I finally arrived at my home at approximately 3:15 a.m.
How did a drive that can be accomplished in 7 hours end up taking 14 hours?
Simple.  I grew up in Southern California.  I worked in Southern California.  I have lots of relationships in California.  So I can't drive through cities without stopping to spend time with people.
So I stopped to hang with a portion of the staff from my Long Beach church family.
I stopped to hang with an old friend who's a college pastor in Downey.
I stopped to literally meet my half-sister in Thousand Oaks.  Well, I met her once when I was 14, so this qualifies as meeting in my book.

I realized on the drive home (which left lots of time for thinking) that this is a microcosm of how I view and approach life.
1.  It's more about the journey than the destination.
2.  The journey is all about the relationships.

So my encouragement…slow down today.  Take a moment to stop sprinting to the finish line without much regard for the people or the process.
Don't get me wrong.  The finish line is important.  But the reality is, in real life, it is either moving or just leads to a new finish line.
You'll spend a lot more time on the journey.  So put a little extra investment in a relationship along the way today.  In the end, it will probably be worth the time.

Started a 3 week series at church yesterday called The Other Side.  Talking about stuff beyond this world.  Spiritual warfare, angels, demons, heaven, hell, etc.

Yesterday was on the "parallel war."  The battle between God and Satan for our souls.
To kick off the series, thought it could be really interesting in a place like Santa Cruz to go downtown and get some opinions on the existence of another dimension.  The interactions didn't disappoint.

Check out the video we used to open the series:

Next week we'll hear what those people had to say about heaven and hell.

And in week 3, we doing a panel discussion of the pastoral staff on common questions about the topics.  We've encouraged our church to submit their questions over here.
Should be a fun series!

Wow.  Week 2 and I already almost forgot about this weeks flava.
But I didn’t disappoint.  Better late than never.

As I said, one of the goals here is to uncover some hidden gems to segments of people that read this blog that may not read the other segments.
A huge contingent of bloggers out there right now are all you crazy mom bloggers.  It’s insane to me the amount of traffic that some of those mom blogs get.

Well, I have a friend who has a blog, and she’s a mom, so I think that qualifies.
If you are another friend from the Revolution days, you probably already read Liana’s blog.
For the rest of you though, allow me to introduce you.

I might get in trouble for using that picture.  But hey, she posted it on her blog today.  Maybe if enough of you go over there and visit her, she’ll forgive me?

She lives in Long Beach, works as Starbucks, is married to worship leader and graphic designer who is also pretty awesome (sometimes awesome people marry awesome people, and that’s cool), and is the mom of a 2 year old little girl (she is 2 now, right?).  Whether you know her personally or not, she has a hilarious and pithy (am I using that word right?  Pithy…yeah) way of writing about life with her family and being a mom.

So go and enjoy the life of Liana at her blog, Look @ Me, Look @ Me.
And make sure you scroll down far enough to see her husband, Keith, singing Material Girl at the church.  Well worth the watch.

See ya again next week with some more link love.

Today we celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick.  An opportunity to celebrate a great man of our faith by toasting him with a Guiness sounds good to me, but how many of us actually know who St. Patrick was or what he contributed? 

Wikipedia never disappoints.  Check out this article with lots of great info.  Here's a few excerpts that point out the importance of who he was:

In other words, Patrick contextualized the Gospel to the people he was with.  He lived misionally.  Now that's something worth toasting!

Also found this article with 10 facts/legends about St. Patrick.
And for those of you with a much shorter attention span or who don't wanna read anymore, check out this entertaining look at the life of St. Patrick.

Happy St. Patricks Day!!

My Monday morning with the boys.

So for my first week of sharing the love, I introduce any of you who don’t know him to my friend, John Voelz.

I met John over 2 years ago when I went to Recreate for the first time.  He’s one of those guys who you can be in a crowded room with and he has that personality that draws you to him and you really want to get to know him.  He pastor’s a church as a team with 2 other guys out in Michigan.  Great heart, incredibly creative, innovative thinker.  Be ready to put your thinking cap on for some of his posts.

And the reason I thought I’d start with him…he made me laugh last night with a post he put up about the similarities between LOST (he’s an avid fan) and doing his taxes.
Here were a few of my favorites:

John, thanks for making me laugh.
The rest of you, go visit John,  And tell him I sent you.
You won’t get anything out of telling him that.  It just sounded good.

I tried to call it Friday's Flavor, but it just didn't roll off the tongue right.  Sounded too…uptight.

Anyway, here's the deal.  Right now in my Google Reader I have 113 subscriptions. 
Some of those are "high profile" bloggers that many of you read. 
Some are personal friends who just have great writing ro interesting stories, but not much of a reader base, so you may never get to hear from them. 
Some of them are just great blogs that feed my mind on topics of leadership and/or ministry.
Almost all of them are worth your time to check out (with the exception of a few that never update and need to just be dropped off my list, or the ones whit nothing but pictures of their kids that you only care about if you know them, like I do.)

This whole blog thing is all about spreading the link love, so I thought that each week…errr…most weeks (leave some margin for error there) I will share a link to a blog that is well worth a visit.  If it grabs your attention, go by and subscribe if you see what you like.  If it doesn't, check it out anyway and never go back if it sucks.

We'll see how this goes.  If it goes well, I figure I have enough blogs in my pocket for a few years of this category.
And how I'll choose which one each week?  Who knows?
Perhaps they write something that grabs me that week.
Perhaps their life intersects with mine that week.
Perhaps I just like them and know you may not read them otherwise.
Perhaps I coupldn't decide, so I just printed out a list and threw a dart.

In any case, let the link love begin with the next post…

Oh, and who are you reading that I should try and squeeze into my RSS reader?

Saturday morning, my brother-in-law Joel was in Santa Cruz to take some pictures of the boys and of our families.  There will definitely be a post with some of those when I get them all, but he posted a few to start out on his blog.  Also check out his business website for him and his business partner Kenny.  If you’re in SoCal and need family pics, I highly recommend them.

Along with the kids photos, Joel posted a couple shots he took of me.  I liked how they came out and promptly decided to use this one for my Facebook profile pic:

The feedback?  My half-brother Kevin said I need a teardrop and tattoos on my arm, my mom said I needed San Quentin printed across my shirt, and even Rachel’s cousin asked on Joel’s blog who the hard core convict is in the pictures.

I guess when you’re as tough looking as myself, it’s hard not to look menacing.
So as not to disappoint, after a little Photoshop fun, and per Kevin’s suggestions, here I am sporting the new body art.

The look is kinda growing on me.
Should I get started with the sleeves or the teardrops?

As I walked in the door for dinner last night, the T.V. was on to CBS.  Caleb was playing in the dining room while Rachel was finishing up dinner in the kitchen, and as I walked in, I happened to catch this segment on the news that caught my interest:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Man, they really packed a lot of thoughts into that 2 minute segment.
Found it interesting though.  A couple lines that especially caught my interest:

"Since 1990, 10% fewer Americans identify themselves as traditional Christians."
"Americans with no religious identity at all has nearly doubled to 15%."
"So called, non-denominational gatherings are growing."
"Many of his members are fleeing religious labels."

I also read an article this week about the use of the word "Christian" vs "Follower of Jesus."

I guess two things came to mind for me here.  One, I'd say it's true that many want to get away from the traditional labels.  Some friends like to note the fact that you will rarely hear me use the word Christian, but more usually will say Christ-follower.  There are lots of preconceived ideas and judgments that I think automatically pop up in one's mind when they hear the word Christian in our culture.  And unfortunately, most of those things aren't based on who Christ truly is, but rather on how we've portrayed Him often times in Christian sub-culture.

The other is that in addition to that, many people, I think especially but not limited to my generation, are definitely steering away from loyalty to a particular denomination.  In fact, I think many are turned off by heavy presence of a denomination in a church.  We're often more concerned with the heart and vision of an organization and less interested in tradition.

So perhaps Americans aren't "losing faith" so much, as the title of the segment suggests.  Perhaps it just looks different than it has in the past.  People are looking for something more genuine and organic.  I'd argue that if we don't consider how we operate in the changing landscape of faith in the west, the Church will continue to lose it's effectiveness in our context.

What thoughts did you have as you watched the segment?
Whether you're a 'Christ-follower', a 'Christian', a 'seeker', an atheist, or none of the above, do share.
I'm curious.