Nathan – amazing hour-long conversation yesterday. The awakening is truly taking place. let’s figure out this “family vs business” church thing together.
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Erik – you still owe me a phone call!
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Mary Claire – wow. My own sister! that quote was amazing…. i read it to Nathan on the phone…not much to add to that. love you.
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Jim – Thx for being willing and open to listen and talk back. There’s definitely a lot to process as we move forward with leading our churches differently. Journey well.
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Evan – man, it sounds like Andy’s talk at Passion was right on… industry people in Nashville have a hard time focusing and talking about who they are (to others)..it all boils down to “what you do.” This isn’t right. I wonder who I’ll be remembered as.
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Katie – sorry for the “comment bug” …. Phil fixed it…all should be good. “we’ve caved in”…. hmmm…. i think maybe that’s b/c it’s been an honest and well-meaning intent to meet people where they’re at…to be all things to all people… but something’s a little off, and it’s resulted in “caving in”…. our way of doing church (even the new cool ways) don’t hold water and we’re starting to awaken to that realization.
I think that’s because we have an unrealistic (or dated) perception for what people actually need and the way we’ve been doing church is a response to that perception. We forgot why it is we do/lead certain things/traditions and concentrate really hard on getting spiritual meaning out of it. We start spinning our wheels and spend more money trying to fix it, all the while the world is passing us by and we stay irrelevant to them. We try to reach out to them with our new cool stuff and our stories of serving the destitute.
Cool things happen in church… usually in the simple, and then systems are created and things are organized ….
(there’s definitely a lot to learn from the business world) … but next thing you know, a machine is created and we seek for better ways to maintain it.
We hear stories about living without the machine, and we dream of a life free of it (this happens at conferences usually…sometimes books and blogs) but we are unwilling to truly walk away from it all ourselves. We just hope to get good methods and tips from others’ stories so we can apply it to our “machine” in hopes it will run more efficiently and biblically.
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i don’t have all the answers (any actually)….. but i know something’s “off”. And it’s a fact that there’s an awakening to this fact. Let’s just concentrate on loving Jesus for ourselves and He will add all the rest unto us. it’s that simple.
how we respond to that with visual media? you got me.

“We thrive on telling stories but we are the last to live a good story by investing in someone else’s who has nothing to give back.” – WOW! Great thought but sadly so true.

I think your point gets at a deeper issue. I heard Skye Jethani & Ron Mortoia speak at the STORY conference workshops this fall and they both touched on this subject. Ron’s point: The Bible wasn’t meant to be another one of Aesop’s fables giving us feel-good morals that add another point in the “how to live life for idiots” book. Skye talked about how we have reduced Christianity to a how-to guide, as a problem remover. He said, “We have made it our mission to convince people that Jesus Christ is relevant to our felt needs – we’ve made him into a means to an end rather than an end in itself” I think the problem goes deeper…to the fact that we’ve caved. We’ve caved to the way society wants to live, to the box they want to put God into, to the way they want him to fit into their lives. Well, He doesn’t work that way.

As always, Proctor, Great thoughts. Love that you don’t want to have your thoughts “perfected & polished” before you write. It’s part of the messy journey of discovery.

Let us know if you decide to update after you’ve heard Andy’s whole message. He preached the same one to us at Passion this morning. If I remember correctly, he barely(if at all) mentioned this philosophy as having to do with a career/ministry. It’s more about being remembered for who you ARE, not what you DO. I understand what you mean, but that’s not what he really preached. Could elaborate more, but it’s better if you hear it yourself.

Love ya man.

I love your discussion of the whole meaning of Visual Worship and it’s place in the Church. I see the discussion on both sides and I hope that it raises the awareness for those involved that may not have even considered it at all. When anything, anything, makes it way into our heart and hinders our one true love we need to reassess our motives.

Thanks for sharing your heart.