My Worship Revolution

We head out this past Monday to cut down our Christmas tree.  Had a blast with the fam.  Got the tree home, and thought I’d share our decorating festivities with you.

So with no further ado, our tree from start to finish…in 60 seconds.

I do have to extend a quick apology to my German readers.
Apparently Sony owns that song, and they don’t want you to hear it on YouTube if you are in Germany:

Just in case you were sitting in Germany wondering why you can’t see the video.
My sincere apologies.

Last night I watched The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian for the first time.
Not sure why it took me SO long to get around to that one.  Such a good movie.
I was so captured by the story and some of the simple yet profound writing.

It made me wonder… who/where are our modern day C.S. Lewis’s?
Who is our Tolkien today, telling stories that reflect the nature of God in an engaging and powerful way?
Where is the Lewis, capturing our imaginations in telling stories of redemption and hope that reflect deep theological truths pointing us back to the greatest story of all?
We truly have the greatest story available, and it seems to me that we have lost the art of telling that story in creative and captivating ways.

Perhaps we need more pastors and leaders today who have graduated from film school rather than seminaries.
Again…just a thought.

“But God is present in reality no matter what unreality our practices and our ponderings imply.  He is forever trying to establish communication; forever aware of the wrong directions we are taking and wishing to warn us; forever offering solutions for the problems that baffle us; forever standing at the door of our loneliness, eager to bring us such comradeship as the most intelligent living mortal could not supply; forever clinging to our indifference in the hope that someday our needs, or at least our tagedies will waken us to respond to his advances.  The Real Presence is just that, real and life transforming.  Nor are the conditions for the manifestations of his splendors out of the reach of any of us!  Here they are’ otherness, openness, obedience, obsession.”

-From The Captivating Presence (via this prayer guide)

One of the books I read recently that had a big impact was Culture Making by Andy Crouch.  One of the big ideas of the book…the only way to change culture is to create new culture.

A few weeks ago I caught this story on Sunday Morning on CBS as I was on my way out the door.
Take 3 minutes to hear about how Brent Green of L.A. created culture in his neighborhood.
I found it pretty fascinating and inspiring.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

…Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
-Jeremiah 29:7

I love the part of the video where he talks about how much he loves his city and wanted to give back.
I found that it was somewhat difficult to fully wrap my brain around the best ways to create and cultivate culture.  This is a perfect example.
A lot of churches and Christ followers like to get out and do our one day service project and go to sleep feeling good about ourselves.  But imagine if we used the talents we had on a regular basis to really bless our city with no strings attached.  Who woulda thought that a passion for plants and landscaping coupled with a little bit of vision and a heart of generosity could bring a neighborhood together and reduce crime.

So what do you have to offer to the community you live in?
How can you use your passions to start meeting your neighbors and bettering your city?
Perhaps starting there could be a lot more effective in the long run than a lot of our “outreaches” and crusades.
Just a thought.

God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him…through trials.
-John Piper

That statement has had a huge impact on me over the past several years of my spiritual formation.  Fortunately I haven’t had any terribly dramatic trials to overcome in that time, but I figure they will come at some point.  That’s just kinda how life works.

For those of you who haven’t heard, there is a fairly well known pastor from Texas named Matt Chandler who is going through some serious trials as we speak.
I’ll let the video speak for itself from there.
Go check out the 5 minute video from this blog post from Matt.
It is well worth the time.

Inspiring.  And pretty amazing.
Makes you think, how will I/have I reacted when life blows up?

**Disclaimer: this post is rated PG-13 due to anatomical language.
Consider yourself disclaimed.

A few weeks ago, Elyssa was watching Caleb before church while Rachel and I had sound check/worship practice.
She later told me about a little conversation they had.
Caleb let her know he needed to go poo poo.  So she took him in the bathroom, and waited outside the stall while he did his thing.
Then he hollered out to her from the stall.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Caleb:  I can’t get my penis down!  How do I do it?
Elyssa:  Ummm, I don’t know Caleb.  I don’t have a penis. I’m a girl.
Caleb:  What?!
Elyssa:  I’m a girl Caleb.  I don’t have a penis.
Caleb:  Really?!  …Can I see?!
Elyssa:  Ummm…noooo.  You’ll need to talk to your mommy about that.

She decided that was a conversation maybe Rachel should have with him instead of her.
It scares me a little to imagine what other things are gonna come out of his mouth as he gets older.
I’m learning that life is pretty much never boring with a toddler.

So, I have now pretty much finished moving my blog over to a new platform.
Goodbye Typepad.
Hello WordPress.
And boy was it a royal pain. Mostly cause of Typepad.
They don’t make it easy to move your pictures over.
But I digress…

I plan to have a slightly busier/more involved theme here at some point in the near future.
But until that unveiling comes, I thought I’d I’d go simple.
Minimalistic.
Consider it the calm before the storm.
1 column.
Just the content.
Lots of white.
No links.
2 pages-about & archives.
Don’t worry. Y’all will get your link love back soon.

The only problem is, there’s something I’m sorta starting to like already about the simplicity.
Will almost be tempted to leave it that way.
But I won’t.

So just for fun, swing by and get a quick glimpse of the new design at myworshiprevolution.
OK…now it’s time to get back to some more regular blogging…I think.

It's been pretty slow going on my blog here for quite some time.
I could blame it on the microblogging format of Twitter and Facebook as some others have.
And that would actually be fairly accurate.

But that's not it.
I think we just go through different seasons in our life.
And rather than taking a lot of time to blog recently, it's just been more of a season for silence.
A time for listening.
Reflecting.
Seeking.
Hangin out more with Jesus and with family.
In a way, this blog is like an extension of me.  So when I'm in that season, my blog kind follows suit.

And it's not that there's nothing to say, either.
There have been some blog posts bouncing around my dome, but just haven't taken the time to pull em out.
All that to say, that's why it's been slow.
So I'll probably start posting some more here and there.
But it's been nice being quieter for a little bit.
And it's nice to not feel too pressured to blog for the sake of blogging.

Thanks for stickin with me.

My family was gone for a little over a week.
Last night they got back home.
They pulled into the driveway at 11pm.
I walked out to help with the kids.
As soon as I walk out I hear Caleb yell, "Daddy, daddy, daddy!!"

I walked around to this side of the van, and I kid you not, he literally leaped out of the car and into my arms.
Then he just laid there with his head on my shoulder as I brought him inside.
And he says as he's hugging my neck tight, "I missed you daddy. Did you miss me when I was at Patience's house?" (They visited Rachel's best friend while they were gone.)

There is nothing that warms a dad's heart more.
I am so stoked to have my wife and boys back in town.
So after a week of taking care of them, Rachel got to stay in bed while I got up with them this morning.
Caleb came over and started singing "We're Going On A Bear Hunt" at one point.  A song from a book he and mom got at the library, and I think used at Creative Play.
Seriously, the only thing significant about this is that he's just really cute.
So for those who care, check out the video:

I love the way he says, "Thick, oozy, mud" at 1:43.
The hands on his mouth for the tiptoe at 3:15.
Oh, and the face he always makes when he's trying to think of something, like at 3:30 and 4:22, it cracks me up every time.

The bachelor week had some fun, but I'm just glad to be daddy again.

Last week I was reading the most recent issue of Relevant magazine.  In the front is an article by the publisher/founder, Cameron Strang, called Embracing the Real.  In it, he talks about Twitter and Facebook and their cultural effects. 

As I was reading, I came across the following lines:

But little by little, Twitter is starting to resemble a high school
popularity contest, where people campaign for votes and can tangibly
see how liked they are by how many people follow them or respond to
what they say.

As more celebrities and important people have come to the party
(fashionably late, of course), they see their peers already have tons
of followers, so they feel they should too. There is open campaigning
to “RT this” or straight-up asking for people to help them get more
followers. Left and right, even normal users are signing up for Twitter
sites that guarantee to get you “400 new followers a day.” (Just so you
know, you can’t do this without people knowing—it sends out a tweet in
your name to everyone saying you’ve signed up.) I’ve even seen pastors
sign up for those.

Which begs the obvious question—why? This Twitter shift is adding
fuel to the MySpace/Facebook culture that places value (and for some, a
means of self-worth) in the number of followers you can accumulate,
even if 90 percent of them are incognito spambots.
[read the whole article]

Some really great points there.  I'm just not sure that it's all that different from culture before all this technology was introduced.

He mentioned that pastors he knows have signed up for services to up the number of followers they have.
He talked about the culture of placing value and self-worth in the number of followers you can accumulate.
But is this really any different from how pastors and churches have operated for the past 50 (at least…probably more like hundreds of) years?  

So many pastors I know find their self-worth in the numbers.
How many people I can get to show up on Sunday.
How many people attend an event.
How much money was in the offering plate this month.
Even if the people sitting in those seats are proverbial "incognito spambots."
And I've been just as guilty as the rest.

Perhaps this is just a greater reminder that there are much better ways to measure effectiveness than the "number of followers."
Perhaps we should look at the deeper issue of where we find our self-worth.
Perhaps social networking and technology isn't creating new problems, but simply surfacing the issues that already there.

Let's try and care less about how many people are following us.
Let's care more about the quality of what we're doing and saying.
Let's care more about the amount of transformation in ourselves and the people we journey with.
Let's find our self worth not in everyone else's measure of success, but by the trueness to our own calling.
Or better yet, in being, rather than doing.

I'm still figuring out how to do all that.
You're invited to join me.
We can't do it alone.