Month: January 2010

  • Interview with Jim Britts

    A few weeks back I drove up to Oceanside and shot this interview with Jim Britts. If you don’t know Jim, you need to! He’s a youth pastor at a local church who, together with his executive pastor, had a crazy idea of making a move. And along came To Save a Life.

    Let’s face it… Jim is squeaky clean. But I did my best to ask the questions I thought a youth pastor would want to know about the movie. If you’ve not seen a preview, this is a “Christian” movie with a pretty solid sex scene and doesn’t shy away from language. Time will tell if this added street credability or not.

  • So, you want to be great?

    “I aspire greatness with my life.”

    When I say that, almost universally people’s head will cock just a little bit to the side. American society, especially American Christian society, is so self-deprecating that you almost never hear a grown man say that.

    The truth is I am shocked how few people aspire greatness with their lives. If you don’t read anything else in this post, read this… “God wants you to aspire to greatness!”

    I believe aspiring to greatness is completely biblical. Check out how Jesus responds to his disciples. When his disciples ask him  he doesn’t shut them down. He simply tells them how to be great in the Kingdom! “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Mathew 18:1) “”What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” (Mark 9:33b-34)

    In fact, Jesus makes it clear in his response that there is a path to greatness in this life!

    Aspiring greatness is good and important. The church needs more men and women aspiring greatness.

    Jesus doesn’t shut it down. Greatness isn’t bad. The thing is… Jesus cares most about how you aspire to greatness.

    “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:4)

    “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Matthew 9:35)

    Jesus makes it clear. The path to greatness is paved in child-like faith and servanthood. These are just two examples I’ve pulled from the Gospel narrative. There are lots and lots more!

    See, I’m stupid enough to believe that Jesus was telling the truth! Not only can I aspire  greatness in my life, I should aspire to greatness. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

    Here’s the thing that shocks me. Most people get this wrong. I read a lot of church leadership blogs and I follow the ministries of a lot of “famous” preachers in the country. People who are labeled by the evangelical community as “great.” And the shocking truth is that a lot of leaders labeled as “great” are feeding people a lot of lies.

    • There are a lot of church leaders out there who think that they can make themselves great by creating structures and organizations which ultimately serve them. I’m just going to say it… you see this most in the baptistic tradition church planting and megachurch movement. The polity lifts up organizational leaders as great.
    • There are others who believe that being a talented preacher makes them great. Trust me, this doesn’t happen to me. But you can see it happen over and over again as a new preacher emerges and everyone wants to listen to them. Next thing you know, that person’s head gets about 10 times its original size and they start to believe that their speaking ability makes them great by default.
    • What is doubly shocking is just how unapproachable some “great leaders” are. You couldn’t touch them with a 10 foot pole. In some cases, their staff can’t even touch them with a 10 foot pole! They are off limits. They have body guards. You can’t make an appointment to meet them. You’ll never get to have them in your home. You can’t email them a question. You can’t leave a message on their voice mail. You might not even be able to leave a comment on their blog! Some of the “great leaders” that we lift up today in evangelicalism simply believe they are better than you and me.

    They may be great organizational leaders, they may be great preachers, but they aren’t better leaders than you can be if you just obey Jesus’ path to greatness. Honestly, some of those “great leaders” often jerks who twist scripture to elevate themselves above you and me. A man who does fancy stuff just to draw a crowd but twists Scripture to make others serve him isn’t a great Christian leader, he is a false prophet! People who veil great preaching as a way to push book sales or seminar registrations or big offerings aren’t great preachers… they are fancy talkers. The Gospels and pastoral epistles are full of advice on how to treat fancy talkers and hypocritical false prophet jerks.

    You think I’m rude for calling them names? That’s nothing compared to the words of Jesus in Matthew 23. Hypocrites. Blind guides. Fools. Greedy. Self-indulgant. Snakes. Brood of vipers.

    You want to be great? Jesus makes this perfectly clear, all you have to do is serve the needs of others.

    The first disciples, Paul, and  the early church all turned the religious community of the day upside down... they were great leaders even though the had no right to become great leaders. They ruffled the feathers of “the religious” by showing the God could turn “just anyone” into a great leader. It wasn’t Levites or even Bible scholars who turned the world on its head, it was ordinary people serving their way to greatness.

    It is upside down to aspire greatness by serving. And it angers me to see the evangelical religious community lift up people as great when, in fact, they are old-style leaders and not servant leaders. When I hear stuff like, “You need to be born to a good family to be a great leader.” Or “You need to be a part of a big-fancy megachurch if you want to be successful in ministry.” That stuff is clearly not from God. It is completely devoid of fact. And yet I watch as people lay their loyalty/money/attention at these people’s feet while ignoring the truly great God has probably put right in their local church already.

    You want to know if a church leader is a great person? Watch him/her. Is he serving others day-by-day or are others serving him? Greatness comes meekly. It comes to those who serve. Jerks and false prophets… They are not great leaders in God’s eyes. Again, the New Testament makes it perfectly clear how to deal with them.

    Back to you.

    You want to be great? Serve the needs of others. Have faith that is so child-like you are called immature for zealously obeying the Bible.

  • Facebook App Gets a Facelift

    I use the Facebook app for iPhone all the time. It is my #2 most frequently used app behind Tweetie. While periodically they have released updates, they’ve mostly been cosmetic or UI in nature.

    Last week’s update offers something brand new and fun. But it’s also something you need to be aware of even if you aren’t an iPhone user.

    Two new features:

    1. Push notifications. Starting with version 3.1.1 you will get notified any time a friend does something on Facebook. I haven’t decided if I like this yet or not. I’ve got a lot of friends on Facebook and consequently a lot of activity on my account. People leave comments, wall posts, reply to threads I’m replying to, and send me lots of messages. I love this activity on Facebook, it’s one of the coolest things about the site. And now, each time they do something, a little announcement pops up on my phone. The good news is that it doesn’t make a sound to alert me that there is a new notification. The bad news is it is an interuption and I’m trying to eliminate those from my day-to-day, minute-by-minute life. It’s not that I’m super important… it’s that I need to eliminate distractions so I can give people/projects my full attention. If you don’t know how to turn it off, go to your iPhone settings> Facebook>Push Notifications> and you will see that you can decide what types of notifications you’d like.
    2. Massive data schmooshing commencing

      Contact synching. This is, by far, the coolest new feature they’ve added to the Facebook app. If you turn on contact synching the app will look at your iPhone contacts on Facebook and merge stuff. So if a contact has a phone number listed in Facebook, it will automatically import. The fun feature is that it also pulls their current profile picture and uses it as the picture for that contact on your phone if you don’t have one already. That’s just slick! Here’s the kicker that will make some people mad. The iPhone app doesn’t care if you are friends or not. If you have a profile and you are in the iPhone’s contacts… it will pull that picture. For those concerned about personal branding, that’ll force you to be more professional about your profile picture on Facebook. If you represent your organization… it might be a good idea to keep that profile picture looking good too.

    More data schmooshing to come? I’m sure there is a more technical name for this, but I call it data schmooshing. That’s where information from one application/website is merged with data from another application/website and out of that comes a new, more complete data set. I’m excited to see where this Facebook app takes things. I’m hoping that as time goes on it will schmoosh data with my Google contacts as well as my Google calendar. If they all start talking better the Facebook app could become a must-have application for everyone.

    This is precisely why people are saying that Facebook could make a run at building their own operating system, just like Google. Yes, the Facebook phone may just be one of those surprise 2010 products.

  • Build something useless

    Why? It’s fun.

  • Welcome Back, Tic

    Life is crazy. I don’t know about other people, but my life is full of surprising moments.

    One of those crazy twists just took hold as today it becomes public that Tic Long is back at Youth Specialties.

    My first 5 thoughts about Tic coming back:

    1. Woohoo!
    2. Is this for real?
    3. This is going to be fun!
    4. Yes, I won’t be the only middle schooler in the office.
    5. What’s next?

    Here’s a little video I put together with some fellow peeps in youth ministry… enjoy! If you want to get a feel for how I feel, read the announcement over at YS.

  • The Guilt Trip

    Perhaps I am the only sick mind who has wondered if I could get away with a speech like this when taking the offering? And maybe I’m just a little passive-aggressive when it comes to offerings?

    If the ushers could please come forward for the morning offering.

    The offering is a time when the people of the church give back to God a portion of what God has given to them.

    This is an act of worship whereby you measure what you say you believe against what you are actually willing to put behind those beliefs, financially.

    If you are new to our church… perhaps this is your first time… we don’t want to pressure you to give. We recognize that you’re probably already feeling guilty enough. It’s OK if you don’t participate in the offering. No, really… we mean it.

    But, if this is your first time and you’d like to give, perhaps out of some cosmic belief that if you give money to a church it will make up for something you’ve done. Our theology says that it doesn’t make a lick of difference to God… eh, who are we to judge? Go ahead and drop that check, cash, or sin-laden stock options in the offering plate as it passes by. We’re a charitable organization. Even if it’s for the wrong reasons we really need the money during these hard economic times.

    If you are a regular attender of the church, this is for you. (Eyeball the church treasurer- A wink for style points.)

    To those who are faithfully giving to God, you are awesome. I think you are awesome. The church treasurer thinks you are awesome. And we’re pretty sure God is smiling on your faithfulness. I’d like to give a shout out to Dave Ramsey and Suzi Orman. Teaching people how to budget… brilliant!

    If you are a regular attender of the church and are not giving regularly, what’s wrong with you? No seriously. Talk to someone and figure it out. You gave your mailman a Starbucks gift card for Christmas but not a thing to the church. Yeah, we saw that. It’s not cool.

    [Another quick glance and wink to the church treasurer]

    While Mary Johnson sings the Ray Boltz classic, “Thank You for Giving to the Lord” we’ve prepared a little slide show of cracks in our church walls and pictures of our staff’s children. Please note that Tiffany and Peter could really use some dental work. And that the pastor is driving a 1987 Buick LaSabre.

    Let’s pray.

  • Collaborate Locally

    Photo by jerobins via Flickr (creative commons)

    Among my people, the evangelical tradition, is an inbound weakness of separation. As a result our people naturally fracture.

    We tend to think that good leadership is creating a culture of people who agree with us– precisely. And seperating over something is seen as a sign of strength.

    Need to understand this better? Study the history of how most U.S. Denominations were created. Many were formed after one group of people was dissatisfied about something unrelated to the Gospel. (Sin of personal preference)

    We have it backwards.

    Read Revelation 2-3.

    Jesus will judge us on our ability to build the Kingdom in our community.

    Jesus is not impressed with our ability to separate locally and collaborate nationally.

    He is impressed with our ability to collaborate with people we may not always agree with and reach our community.

  • Poll: Will the online church fad grow or fade in 2010?

    Of course, you are welcome to leave a comment with your theory.

  • No Limits, Baby

    O, to be a no limits kind of guy!

  • 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2010

    What’s going to be the next cool thing? Of course, I can’t predict the future. But I can see some technologies that are just on the edge of getting to the masses which I think will be game changers in 2010. All are just a price-point change away from radically changing the way we interact with the world.

    Here’s what to look for in the coming year:

    1. Location-based mobile everything. Smart phones have taken over the mobile phone world. GPS-enabled smart phones. With the incredible popularity of iPhone 3G3 and the recent emergence of Droid OS phones, I think we’re about to see an explosion in the sophistication and participation of location-based games. Two that are on the market already, Gowalla and Foursquare, have gained traction among early adapters from Twitter and Facebook. While fun, I think in a year we’ll look back at them like we did at Pacman after Nintendo hit the market. Also, once more mobile Twitter clients become geolocation enabled I think we’ll really see some games (and utilities) pop onto phones that are wildly popular.
    2. Augmented reality takes off. This technology is getting increasingly cheaper. And as this comes out of the lab and high-end marketing applications to generally available among web/graphic designers… look out. Here’s a video that gives you an idea of how cool augmented reality is:
    3. Scams are back. Technology has a Wild West feel to it again. And any time you have a wild west feel, you have scammers waiting to cheat you out of money. The interconnectedness that we all love also makes us vulnerable to scammers. As we link more and more of our lives to Facebook and Twitter, we are lured into trusting that those gateways are safe and secure. But they aren’t! Let’s say you connect your Twitter account to your Amazon.com account or Mint.com accounts. Bam, you are a sitting duck. Scammers have proven they can trick you into giving them your Twitter password and from their they can/will gain access to all sorts of personal information. The unhealthy trust we all have that Twitter/Facebook are ensuring that people who access their API will truly adhere to the terms of service has set us all up for scams. This will be big in 2010.
    4. IRL. The first three things on this list point to the need for In Real Life to be a tech trend to watch. Experience is back. Meet-ups, events, and tech free zones are a trend to watch out for in 2010. Of course, those things don’t really provide the intimate relationships our souls crave, but they are legitimate experiences people seeing the world through augmented reality and redefined friendship will seek out in 2010. In the church world I think we’ll see the closing of many online church campuses, satelite-feeds, and other non-IRL “ministry” things as people seek human interaction more than the convenience of church from their laptop or mobile phone.
    5. Interactive storytelling. In 2009, YouTube enabled a feature which allows you to post links to other YouTube videos from within the player. I think we’re just at the beginning of some fun storytelling and “choose your own adventure” types of viral videos. Here’s one that I really like to give you an idea: (enjoy your adventure)