• Time Lapse Video: Backyard Hummingbirds

    A few weeks ago we hung this little hummingbird feeder. We were amazed to discover that the hummingbirds (who nest in a tree in our backyard) discovered it within hours.

    Maybe it makes me sound old or stupid? But I don’t care. I love watching these amazing creatures in my backyard. And I love watching them up close when they are at the feeder.

    So every few days we take it down and clean out the little bottle of sugar water, then mix up some more for them. It’s really fun! We can’t believe how tame they are. (You can get like 6 inches from them.) And it’s really cool when they come close or “buzz the tower.”

    This morning, I thought it would be fun to set up my camera to take time lapse pictures while we went to the farmers market. All told, we captured about 2 hours of pictures… one every 10 seconds. 665 frames.

    The video above is the result.

    The song, as you may recognize, is from Jars of Clay. It’s called The Long Fall. (click here to buy it on iTunes)

  • How to Blog, Write, and Speak With Integrity

    Here’s a quick tutorial for how to blog, write, preach, or teach with integrity.

    Let’s say you’ve came across a blog post on Adam McLane’s blog that you really enjoy. In particular, you like something I’ve written to the point where it has inspired you to write your own blog post, magazine article, book, lesson plan, or sermon based off of the thoughts you had in reading my post.

    For example, let’s say you read my post The Personal Preference Sin:

    I’d like to talk to some people about a rabid sin running rampant and unchecked throughout the American Evangelical church. Maybe if you’re reading this today I’m meant to talk to you. This is, I believe, one of Satan’s most powerful devices for separating our people. And yet, this sin runs so deep and is so approved that it carries back to some things we hold sacred such as denominations… probably 50% of non-denominational churches founded in the past century are the result of this sin.

    That sin is personal preference.

    I love that post, too. It’s one of the most popular things I’ve ever written.

    It’s been quoted, remixed, preached on, etc. Which is all awesome and humbling.

    Now, how do you handle my intellectual property in a way that both you and I can be satisfied with?

    And how do you handle it if you’ve been paid to write, teach, or speak and you’d like to use something I’ve written?

    For blogs: (easy, peasy)

    • Do: Mention in the post where the idea for the blog post came from. “I was reading Adam McLane’s blog yesterday, and I came across this statement that I’ve been thinking about.” Or find a phrase to link to like, “That sin is personal preference.” Or even “HT to Adam McLane” with a link.
    • Do: Link to the original post, this helps your reader know how to find the source. And it helps my blog’s page rank with the search engines.
    • Do: Feel free to link directly to my post for whatever reason you’d like. You don’t have to ask permission for that. That’s awesome, thank you.
    • Do: Feel free to write a response or debate my posts. Just link to the source.
    • Don’t: Beat around the bush. It’s not fair to me for you to use my ideas/thoughts/words and not mention my name and link to me as the source. Don’t say, “a blog I read said…” or “a friend of mine recently wrote.” That’s not fair and it lacks integrity.
    • Don’t: Write the post without linking to me in the post or mentioning me and then privately email me a link thinking I’ll somehow be flattered. I don’t want to be a jerk, but if you use my thoughts as your own so that you can look good I don’t find it flattering. I think you’re a thief.
    • Don’t: Worry about any advertising revenue your post makes. As long as you properly cite my work for your blog, I don’t care that you make money.

    For magazine articles & books: (not as easy)

    • Do: Mention my name and properly attribute my blog in the work.
    • Do: Ask me what I think about the idea before you submit it to your publisher as a remix. I have a contact page, I’m pretty easy to work with. I’m not trying to be a jerk, at all, I’m just trying to make sure that if you use my idea to make money, that I’m properly attributed and/or compensated.
    • Do: Allow me to have a look at what you are saying about me, my blog post, etc. before you submit it.
    • Do: Ask me in a way where it’s OK if I say no. Chances are pretty good we can work it out. But it might be that I need to say no and it’s helpful if I’m being asked to know that I won’t be seen as a turd if I say no.
    • Do: Spell my name correctly, that’s a pet peeve.
    • Do: Expect that if you are going to treat me like a ghost writer for work you intend to publish for profit, that I will expect some level of compensation. That’s only fair.
    • Don’t: Think you are going to get away with it because we don’t know one another or you think your sphere of influence and mine don’t intersect. It’s embarrassing for everyone when I get a Facebook message from someone who read something that sounded just like a blog post of mine in a denominations magazine or something like that.
    • Don’t: Pull the “it’s Kingdom property” line on me or “there’s no new ideas out there.” Particularly if you are going to get paid for work you forgot to attribute to me. We all learned in middle school that plagiarism is wrong. I’m not out to make money on my blog (notice there are not ads) but I’m also not out to make money for someone else. If I write something and then two months later the exact same idea and outline is in a magazine, that’s not a coincidence.
    • Don’t: Assume that because this is a public blog that this is somehow public property and you can just harvest my ideas, change some words around, and then sell it.

    For lessons, sermons, and classes: (easy, peasy)

    • Do: Acknowledge my work. If you publish your notes, just attribute my work like any other book or website.
    • Do: Proceed without asking. As long as you aren’t pushing off my work as your own, we’re cool.
    • Do: Share with me your notes, how it went, etc. I’d love to see how you turned a blog post into something else. Maybe we can even agree to put it in the free downloads section of my blog?
    • Do: Feel free to print off a blog post to share, just attribute the URL so that people can know where to find me.
    • Do: Contact me if this is going to be a regular thing. If you are going to take something I’ve written, turn it into a lesson, and then take it on the road to make a living… that’s different. We should talk about.
    • Do: If you feel like I should be compensated because you were paid an honorarium (or salary) for work that was essentially mine, please make a contribution to my church.
    • Don’t: Try to pass off my thoughts as your own in a sermon, lesson, or class. It is embarrassing when people in your audience/class contact me and tattle. The internet has made the world pretty small.

    Postscript #1: It’s obvious why I’ve written this post. I’m tired of seeing my work ripped off and unattributed all over the place. It’s not right. And it certainly isn’t fair. Most of it is just sloppy so I am assuming its because people don’t know that they are supposed to attribute things or they don’t know how or that content written on my blog actually is my property and they are not free to generate revenue off of it. Now you know.

    Postscript #2: Why are people in ministry the worst ones? Shouldn’t Christian leaders demonstrate integrity in all areas of their lives? Especially intellectual property?

    Postscript #3: These are pretty much the same rules you should put into play for any blogger. So while this post is about me and my content, you can safely use this as a guideline for most blogs.

  • To Eat More, Guess Less

    Kristen and I are completing our first year of transforming our backyard into an organic garden. The first year has been full of fun harvests and humiliating defeats.

    If we’ve learned anything about gardening in the first year it is this principle: To eat more, you need to guess less.

    • We’ve learned that when we planted things is as important as what we want.
    • We’ve learned how to adapt our watering to the weather as opposed to just setting a timer.
    • We’ve learned how a baby weed is just as dangerous as a major one.
    • We’ve learned that is something gets bigger than you wanted, prune it right away or it’ll take over the garden.
    • We’ve learned that if we want to keep our harvest coming, we need to be patient in spreading out when we plant so it doesn’t all come at once.
    • We’ve learned that planting something in the wrong season really doesn’t work.
    • We’ve learned that your yield is directly proportional to the quality of soil where you plant at.

    We didn’t know anything walking into this. So we guessed a lot. And we let our emotions get the best of us a few times.

    But heading into the second year, we’ve learned a lot and documented what we did, we hope to eat a little bit more with less mistakes in 2011.

    Isn’t this the same as with any other endeavor? You might guess and get something right by accident. But experience always yields a better result.

  • Just Make it to Harbor

    Imagine how good this guy felt when he got the boat into harbor?

    What a metaphor for life!

    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like this.

    Life is ugly sometimes.

    And just pulling into safe harbor is exhilarating.

  • My Kids Aren’t Your Target Audience

    Imagine the freedom of hearing this one phrase.

    A parent affirming a youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    What would happen if parents stepped into their role and discipled their teenage children, and at the same time affirmed the church’s youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    Game changer.

    G-A-M-E-C-H-A-N-G-E-R

    The reason so many youth workers feel like babysitters or cruise directors is that they are regarded as such by many people in the pews. (And sadly, by their bosses and governing boards who see them as a way to attract or keep parents of teenagers.) The attitude is… “Well, we give money to the church which funds this persons salary and the program they run so we should allow the expert to pour into my kid and I’ll just step back, get the most for my money.”

    This makes some logical sense because its visible. But it is missing the point, missiologically and ecclesiologically.

    Modern church youth ministry, as a movement, sprung out of parachurch ministries like Young Life and Youth for Christ in the 1950s-1960s who stepped up to answer the call the church would not… reach lost teenagers. It was primarily a method of evangelism. And it operated well outside of the walls of a church because the methods often used to get students interested in the Gospel freaked churchgoing adults out.

    In the 1960s and 1970s churches woke up a bit and started hiring youth workers of their own. (Lots were former YFC and Young Life staff) And all of a sudden the vocation of youth pastor started to shift from something that looked like a missionary to something that looked like a pastor.

    As things have morphed over the years many youth ministries focus has shifted from non-church teenagers to almost entirely church kids. Youth ministry has gone from being mostly about evangelism to mostly being about discipling church kids with an evangelism strategy which boils down to, “Bring a friend.”

    That’s a bad thing! And as I’ve said over and over again… we’re reaching a decreasing amount of the population with this strategy. Some try to dismiss me by claiming I’m just deconstructing. I’m not deconstructing, I’m calling the church to recognize her strategic failure and change!

    Personal Example

    I’ve always known this to be true. (That my churches job wasn’t to reach my kids, but to reach the lost.) But I suppose economic realities and race make it obvious enough for my dense mind to notice now that we go to a mission-styled church.

    I don’t want my church reaching my kids. If I sit in on my churches kids ministry program and it is targeted at my kids I know something is wrong. Why? We’re a mission church in a neighborhood where 75% of the people don’t speak English in their home and even more are not from the U.S.A..

    My kids aren’t the reason my staff raises support! I know this and I celebrate it. I’m pleased that my tithe doesn’t help create a ministry paradigm designed to disciple my kids. Why? That’s my job!

    Their job is to reach the neighborhood!

    Why is acknowledging this important?

    1. It changes my attitude from entitlement to supporting the mission of the church.
    2. It clarifies expectations.

    Your Role as Parents

    If you are like me, a Christian parent, your role is vital. Deuteronomy 6 is abundantly clear. A life with Jesus isn’t reserved for the temple. You’re to talk about God in all that you do, everywhere you go, and in your own home. You are to impress on your children that your faith is real. If you want your kids to believe in God it is up to you. If you leave it to your church to do you have failed as a parent. (If your church is telling you it is their job tell them they are wrong, they need to hear it.)

    Your tithe is an offering to God not a ticket to entitlement to church programs. While it is our role to oversee and make sure that the church is not misappropriating funds– It is hardly an offering to God if it has strings attached to it which stipulate that the church will create programs to entertain and disciple your children.

    Imagine

    Imagine the freedom it would create to your church staff if you uttered this simple phrase, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    Go ahead, try it.

  • Moments of Awe

    Awesome is one of my favorite words. While my day is full of moments of awesome there are only a few moments in life described by the word awe.

    Here’s a few…

    • Hearing the words, “I’m pregnant” from your wife. (Trust me, as much “awe” is created the first time at 24 as at 34 when it wasn’t expected.)
    • Seeing the sunrise over the mountains or the sunset over the ocean for the first time. (Whoa, there are colors I never even imagined!)
    • Meeting a starving person who asks if they can pray for you. (Whoa, you mean you can really praise God even when you aren’t comfortable?)
    • The birth of your child. (Whoa, you and me doing that can result in this?)
    • Witnessing 50,000 worshipping God in a city where hundreds of thousands just died in an earthquake. (Whoa, how is that possible?)
    • A young lady sharing her deepest fear and how God showed up in front of her peers. (Whoa, her words are more powerful than mine.)
    • The realization that Jesus died for me. (Whoa, the son of God… was perfect… and gave his life for me?)
    • A jet-lag induced early morning walk through a crisply cold city in a foreign country. (Whoa, discovering this place is amazing!)
    • Riding the Maid of the Mist deep into Niagara Falls to feel the full force of gravities simplicity. (Whoa, I’m soaking and exhilarated at the same time.)
    • The moment you realize you both feel the same way and knowing you’ll spend the rest of your life with her. (Whoa, there really is someone just for me.)

    There are moments in life so full of awe that words truly defy them. I think that’s the history of the word awe right there. Something happened and a persons jaw dropped and said, “Awe.”

    Getting back, recreating them, and remembering them creates years of inspiration.

    Oh, that we might live a life inspired by awe.

  • Sabbath Breakers

    “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

    Exodus 20:8-11

    Kristen and I are drawing more and more clear lines around Sunday– the culturally accepted Sabbath day.

    Our new family rule is:

    Church activities on Sunday are limited to the worship service and children’s church only. No meetings. No nothing.

    There have been two general reactions to mentioning this new rule on my Facebook profile.

    1. People who don’t work at a church applaud. They feel the same pressure to get involved with everything at church and want to reclaim Sunday morning as a time of worship-only as well.
    2. People who work at churches don’t appreciate my sentiment quite the same. (Staff at my church get it.) The over all impression I’ve gotten from church staff is that they wish they could make Sunday a Sabbath for themselves, but they have too much work to do and try to turn either Saturday or Monday as a Sabbath.

    Now… let me be fundamentalist for a second.

    Under what circumstances is it OK to willfully break the 4th commandment?

    None. The principle of Sabbath is just as clear and relevant today as all of the other commandments. It’s not OK to covet my neighbors wife if it grows the congregation, is it? It’s not OK to steal if I do good, is it? It’s not OK to create an idol for the sake of expanding a ministry, is it?

    So why is it OK to willfully break the Sabbath by doing a million things on Sunday morning in the name of church?

    I don’t think it is. Hence, we’ve drawn a line. (Here is a good time to mention we’re not asking anyone else to do this, it’s our personal conviction.)

    This is where the grey area comes in

    The command of Sabbath is a trust issue. You work the fields six days a week and you trust God to provide for you and your family on the 7th. Generations of God followers have taken that literally. But we’ve entered into an age where that is seen as a figurative command.

    Jesus talked about the Sabbath a few times and he seemed to have a non-legalist perspective on the Sabbath. (See Mark 3:1-6)

    In fact, Jesus gave 11 examples of when it was lawful to break the Sabbath. (source)

    1. Pulling an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath was permitted.
    2. Circumcision is permitted on the Sabbath.
    3. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
    4. The precedent of David and his men eating the shewbread.
    5. Priests work on the Sabbath and are blameless.
    6. The ministry of the Messiah is greater than the ministry of the Temple.
    7. God desires mercy from His people and not sacrifice.
    8. The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
    9. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
    10. It is lawful to lead animals to water on the Sabbath.
    11. The Father works on the Sabbath.

    Back to my house, bring this home

    The principle of Sabbath is abundantly clear. All throughout the Old Testament we see that God’s people struggled to maintain the Sabbath (trust issue) and God punished His people as a result. (Numbers 15 is the most extreme example for habitual individual Sabbath breakers, for an en masse examples, just look at the exiles.)

    I’m audacious enough to believe that God still cares about the Sabbath. I can’t lead my family to sin by working seven days a week and in turn expect God to bless my family. (Just like I couldn’t expect God to bless me financially if I didn’t manage my money well. Or other areas of clear trust/sin issues. You can’t expect God to bless areas of your life in which you exhibit willful sin.)

    As I talk with church leaders– we all treat Sunday morning as our big day. It’s the day we try to cram as much as we possibly could into the service as well as the opportunity people’s attention and presence afforded us. Sunday morning is anything but Sabbath.

    And for people in the pews its inborn hypocrisy. We say, “Put God and His ways above the ways of the world.” And yet, by our actions as leaders, we put the ways of the world ahead of the 4th commandment. By our desire to cram as much into Sunday as possible, we exhibit willful disobedience.

    Our words say, “Run to the Lord of the Sabbath and He will give you rest.”

    Our actions say, “Flee these crazy church people who want to make your Sunday even crazier!”

    As I think of the hundreds of staff meetings I’ve attended, planning hundreds of worship services, I want to go back and ask myself this simple question: “Instead of trying to maximize what we can do on Sunday morning, why don’t we talk about how little we can do? What would happen if we modeled Sabbath on Sunday’s by doing the maximum 6 days a week and called our people to a minimalist experience of worship?”

    There is another way

    This is where our family is headed. We want to trust God with our church life. We trust Him with our money. We trust Him with our children. We trust Him with our marriage. We trust Him for safety, security, and most importantly… our salvation.

    So now we’re going to trust Him with our church. We trust that as we turn Sunday into a Sabbath day for our family and willfully skip the busyness our church provides… that God will bless our church.

  • Inverse Relationship Between Church Attendance and Business Models

    Yesterday Tim Schmoyer was kind enough to mention a recent blog post in his weekly round-up video.

    I thought some of the questions that the original post raised warranted a video response to Tim.

    What do you think?

    Is there anything to this inverse relationship between churches acting like businesses and a decline in attendance nationwide?

  • Freedom to Doubt

    There is great integrity in a leader who fosters doubt in his congregation

    Humans possess curious natural instincts. Of all of creation, no creature is more curious than humans.

    God created us with this natural instinct. It’s as evident in the Garden as it is in your heart today.

    Great faith is produced within an ecosystem where question is a free fulcrum between doubting God and having great trust.

    Doubt is not the enemy of faith.

    Indoctrination is.

    Doubt is normal, it lives in a persons heart from his first breath to his last.

    Fear of questioning inhibits faith development.

    Doubt is not the enemy of the church.

    Fear of doubt is.

    Great faith does not come through eliminating doubt.

    Great faith comes when a person has measured doubt’s full weight and chosen faith.

    Consider Thomas

    Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

    A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

    Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

    Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

    John 20:24-29

    What’s the point?

    Often times, the biggest doubter among you– given the freedom to doubt, will develop the deepest faith.

    We are not called to eliminate doubt.

    How did Jesus deal with Thomas’ doubt? He chastised him a little, but allowed Thomas to express his doubt. Jesus didn’t look down on Thomas because of his doubt. Instead he knew that by allowing Thomas the freedom to doubt, a faith weighed and tested, would generate great faith.

    And as a result Jesus knew Thomas would become a rock solid believer and took the Gospel to India.

  • Late Fall Planting

    The eggplant harvest continues

    Admittedly, we’ve fizzled in both our zeal for gardening and our zeal for blogging about our garden in the last couple of months. Life got incredibly busy and we kind of went on cruise control in the backyard.

    Truth be told there hasn’t been a lot to report. As early Fall rains came, the weeds grew fast and furious. Likewise, the bugs came and ate our bok choy and broccoli.

    Today, I spent a couple hours weeding and planting two types of lettuce. One, a red, is called “Incredible.” Who wouldn’t want to eat incredible lettuce? The other, a green, is just your standard bread and butter meat-n-potatoes lettuce.

    There are three surprises in the garden right now.

    1. Apparently jalapeño plants don’t die in San Diego. We have two very strong plants that have continued to grow and get stronger after their initial harvest. I was surprised to discover a plethora of little white flowers yesterday. The first batch was super hot… it’ll be interesting to see how batch two produces.
    2. The same is true with our eggplant. As I picked five good-sized, deep purple eggplants today I saw several more blossoms. I’m looking forward to more eggplant all winter long.
    3. The last surprise is that our cucumber plants have regenerated! I was just about to pull these baby plants out of the ground as weeds when I recognized the long tentacles and a distinctive yellow flower. I’ll give them a few weeks to see if they will mature.