September 2007

By now, many in the blogosphere have read about Mark Driscoll making some comments regarding his thoughts about certain aspects of the “Emergent” church movement. If you haven’t, no big loss. It fact, it’s probably a blessing. Just move on to something more important.

If you have, then let me say the same thing. Just move on with it. I read and respect much of what Driscoll has to say but in the large scope of things, it doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree. If you put your thoughts out there in the blogosphere or in a podcast, you’re likely to get called out. Your chances of such grow exponentially if you’re a high profile guy like Driscoll. I doubt if I said the same things, it would have had nearly the limited impact it did in the blog world on some who apparently follow Driscoll’s every word.

I have bigger things to worry about. The church needs more people. It needs more salvations. It needs more baptisms. I don’t have time to play tit for tat with people who want to question others’ intentions. Oh, I might share my opinion on the culture and even within some things that alarm me in Christendom but I’m not going to take my time to call out every person I disagree with nor waste blog space carrying on about it. Driscoll has been taken to task for everything from overweight wives, out of control young men, “limp wristed” leadership (as he called it), and now this. Personally, I don’t care. Give it a rest. We need to be focused on winning the lost and discipling them into strong Christians. Everything else is just fodder really.

If you want to read some good leadership/preaching material, pick up copies of Michael Quicke’s preaching and leading books from Baker Books. Both are excellent reads.

This morning’s news headlines featured this story on Disney Pop Tart Vanessa Hudgens and her now famous nude photos that have been widely circulated on the internet.  The 18-year old star of the now wildly famous “High School Musical” franchise is barely an adult (and only in legal terms here) and yet, according to media wonks, this photo shoot should catapult little “Gabriella” (Her HSM persona) into the stratosphere.  Just look at this quote…

“Did anybody really know or
care about Paris Hilton before her sex tape surfaced?� a high-profile
television executive told FOXNews.com. “This scandal is making her a
household name � it will definitely elevate her into real star-studded
status.�

Wow!  “Real” star studded status.  As if being a multimillionaire in your teens isn’t enough.  Through careful marketing of not only the movies but also all the paraphernalia related with it, Hudgens has set her and her future family up for life.  Even before this scandal surfaced Hudgens and her HSM co-star and current boyfriend Zac Efron were already holding out for multi-millions for the theater version of High School Musical 3 set to debut sometime next year.

Let me tell you what I see…

I see a young girl, very immature, making a very, very foolish mistake.  She must be very insecure to have taken the time to have someone at the ready with a camera to take a picture of her nude while dressing in a bedroom and then to send those pictures across the internet.  According to credible reports, this isn’t the first time this has happened.  When Hudgens was a minor, she reportedly sent risque photos of herself to Nickelodeon’s Drake Bell of the popular “Drake and Josh” series.  This happened before the HSM series takeoff when Hudgens played a bit role as Bell’s girlfriend in one of the shows.  What is going on here?  A young girl with star fantasies badly in need of security.  A real relationship with Jesus is lacking in her life.  Another quote from the article says:

And it seems Ness is certainly
trying to undo the damage, attending church with her parents,
cancelling her Jay Leno interview and posting a message of thanks to
supportive fans on her Web site.

Well, I certainly hope her church attendance was for the right reasons and not a public relations ploy to try to repair her image with pre-teen girls across the country.  THAT has already been irreparably damaged.  My nine-year old, who doesn’t listen to the news, couldn’t help but hear about this scandal from her little friends at school.  She came home and told me she was a “Sharpay” only fan now (Sharpay is the character played by fellow HSM star Ashley Tisdale).

What bothers me most about this is that our culture largely celebrates immaturity like this.  It even revels in it.  Adults especially should be appalled at this.  A girl barely old enough to be a legal adult posing nude and having her body splashed all over the internet.  As a parent, I’m angry because my youngest daughter is now hurt by this and I’m incredulous at the overall response because my oldest daughter is just 18 months younger than Hudgens (or to look at it another way, she’s as old as Hugens was when the first HSM film was made in 2005 and debuted in January of 2006).

I pray God will give us a sense or morality about this and that parents will use this as a way to train their children to make wise choices and give in foolishly to what the mainstream says is quite alright.

This week’s “Barron’s” magazine features an article on Nokia cellphones.  The first cellphone I owned was an old block Nokia that worked great until I decided to run over it with my car.  Kyocera then became the model of choice on my old Cricket account until I switched to AT & T (the old Cingular).

According to this article, Nokia has some pretty sweet models in the works and their San Diego factory is working with AT & T to develop some models available with my cell service.  Much of what’s available in their new lines will feature services comparable to the IPhone but reportedly with better reliability and durability.  Prices for the top-end models will be steep, at this posting, nearly $700 for their top of the line phone, but there are several middle models for less that adequately check email and have wi-fi capability for use in places like my favorite coffee shops.  I still have another 15+ months to go on my current contract with AT & T so I think I’ll sit back and wait to see what develops.  By then, prices will have come down dramatically I’m sure.  Apple is already trying a mid-course correction to offset this challenge in the future.  It appears Nokia doesn’t want to get caught off guard again like it did when the Motorola Razr came on the scene in 2005.  Motorola has been floundering of late, not quite sure what to do with its future since it’s splash with the Razr.  I’m glad I didn’t buy into that hype either.

One note, I DID finally have an IPhone sighting this past week.  The president of Summit Christian College, which is relocating to Denver, pulled his IPhone out of a special case he had during a prayer meeting I was at on Wednesday.  He was able to pull up his Bible for our scripture reading.  Very nice…but still not enough to want me to purchase one even at $400.

I wake this morning to the crisp cool air of the coming fall season.  This is my favorite time of year.  Not very hot, not icy cold like the winter.  Just right for a good cup of coffee, my bible, and a journal.  That’s how I started this morning at about 5:45am as I sat out on my little concrete patio reading and reflecting in the quiet.  It brought to mind an old 4Him song I still enjoy listening to nearly 11 or so years after its release.  It’s called “Sacred Hideaway”.  I’ll not share the whole song with you but you can look up the lyrics and I’m sure for .99 you can download the song.  But as I pondered my day today (more on that in a moment), the quiet brought to mind the first part of the song:

“There’s a shadow I can’t see

He is watching over me”

I so much feel this cover as I wake each day.  How can I explain having all my needs met each week, each month, each year?  Soon, the quiet time of reflection ends and I must begin the task of waking my children, preparing my calendar and task lists for the day….Ahh, how good the coffee tastes when it’s quiet and it’s just you and Lord….The song continues:

“Just beneath what lies between

“I have found a secret place

“Flaming arrows deep in flight

“Still within this life

No. Sometimes like Elijah, I just need to hide under the broom tree for a while until God visits me and reminds me that there’s much worse that could be happening.  I could be in a country where my calling could mean I could die any day and never feel the embrace of my wife and children again. No…I will go.  My heart is burdened for these families.  I’m tearing up as I write somewhat cathartic this morning.  Thank you Jesus for loving me and loving our church.  Help me to be the leader you called me to be.  Amen.

I’ve been in a quandary of late.  My “Man Bag” I’ve used for years is finally starting to fall apart.  What to do about a replacement?  I’ve seen several church pastors whose blogs I read rave about the “Timbuk2″ custom bags they’ve purchased but I just couldn’t make myself pay the high price for one.  Lo and behold, just as I’m about to give up on my search, I stumble across the blog of church planter Matt Mehaffy who writes about a “man bag” he purchased based on the popular bag carried by “Jack Bauer” of the television series “24″.  The “Heavyweight Classic Messenger Bag” (pictured above) is available online for a fraction of the cost of those other bags and is designed to last.  With shipping and handling, I paid a little less than $27 for the bag above and it’s significantly better than the bag I have now.

I have a feeling this bag will be a popular purchase for the rest of us who are budget conscious but need something trendy and durable.  I like the basic stuff but you can actually purchase this bag in a number of different styles (of course, they cost more).

The funny thing was, Mehaffy’s blog was visited by thousands based on this post!  My friends at Moleskinerie picked up on it due to Mehaffy mentioned he carried his Moleskine in the bag.  Truly the power of the man bag is here!  I can’t wait to receive mine.  I’ll let you know more about it once I’ve used it for a while!

So Apple is now slashing the price of the Iphone by 33%.  Read about it here on Fast Company’s blog.  A bunch of people who just couldn’t wait to get theirs are now upset with Apple and Steve Jobs because they feel they paid too much in June for theirs.  Tough!  It’s called the free market system.  Get over it.

I said in the early going that the IPhone was overpriced and too expensive to operate.  It’s the reason I avoided the fancy ads and the gushing of people with far too much money on their hands lining up in the early morning hours for a phone!  Let’s see, I already had an MP3 player, I had a decent cellphone I had just purchased last December, and I have wireless internet available to me everywhere I go to work on my laptop.  Why on earth would I need to run out and purchase this when I could go waaaayyy cheaper with a blackberry (if I even wanted to spend that much?).  Efficiency isn’t measured by how expensive and up to date your gear is.  Efficiency is measured by how you get things done!  An Apple Iphone could definitely up the productivity quotient in your life but it could also keep you right where you are if you’re lazy.

In any event, Steve Jobs heard the whining after the announcement so now he going to give every early buyer (through Apple or their exclusive carrier AT & T) $100 in Apple stuff to make it up to them.  Yea, you can go in and get some new headphones for the old IPod you don’t use any more because of your cool phone. Maybe you can get a charging stand for some other item.  Pick up some Apple stuff today!

My thought when I read this was “So he’s giving in?”  I mean, anyone who’s in business can do what they want but why reward people for overpaying for their technology?  These people were foolish enough to purchase them on the day of their release…they wanted them badly enough to wait a loooong time for them.  They chose to part with some of their hard earned cash to trade it for a product they thought would make them ‘tre chic and now, they want free stuff because the thing isn’t selling well because it was overpriced to begin with.   To tell you the truth, I have yet to see anyone using one of these phones though my AT & T store assures me many have been purchased.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not knocking Apple.  I love their PC’s and Notebooks.  The next computer I buy may very well be an Apple though I’ve not decided just yet.  I think Apple hit a note with their “I-Pod” brand of digital music players and now, they are cool again.  But the IPhone wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Sure it looks great on those TV ads.  I love the one where the guy looks up a seafood restaurant online after watching “Pirates of the Caribbean” on the little screen.  But I could tell right away this was going to be a pricing nightmare.  When you break it down, I’m not going to pay that much for a phone and all of the related add on costs to make it work to its full potential on the AT & T network.  It’s just too much.

Hopefully, the nuts who purchased these things early and the whackos who really paid too much on Ebay the day afterward realize that technology is fleeting.  These first IPhones could very well end up with the Apple Newton on the tech heap.  Remember the Newton?  The 1993 PDA that could do it all but never caught on.  I’ve thought about buying one of those on Ebay for $10 or so just to have one again.  They were great technology but rarely used and are largely forgotten in today’s marketplace.

I guess Apple’s worried about losing customers but for me, I sit and grin with my trusty little Samsung phone that’s still clicking for much cheaper…Oh yeah, and my MP3 player, A SanDisk model I purchase at Comp USA for under $80, is doing just fine with my audio book collection!

Seth Godin has an excellent post on his blog today. Since today is Labor Day, he writes about the work habits of today compared to those of years past. While this is written more from the business perspective, church pastor/leaders have much to benefit from his thoughts. To wit:

The meaning of hard work in a manual economy is clear. Without the leverage of machines and organizations, working hard meant producing more. Producing more, of course, was the best way to feed your family.

Those days are long gone. Most of us don’t use our bodies as a replacement for a machine — unless we’re paying for the privilege and getting a workout at the gym. These days, 35% of the American workforce sits at a desk. Yes, we sit there a lot of hours, but the only heavy lifting that we’re likely to do is restricted to putting a new water bottle on the cooler. So do you still think that you work hard?

The ways we work change. When I was younger, I was more of the mindset of the manual worker that Godin quotes. Just work harder and the results increase. That may be true in some jobs but not in pastoral ministry. I see many pastors beating themselves up by trying to grind out what they did 20 years ago with more intensity and the people they are trying to reach have changed. Needs haven’t changed. They still need God but the ways in which we reach them HAVE changed. Peter Senge wrote a great book several years ago called “The Fifth Discipline” which again is a business book but speaks of systems thinking. The key in Senge’s book and the crux of Godin’s thinking is that we must be constantly learning from our outside environment (the things that drive people both to and away from church for the purposes of this discussion) and finding ways to learn and adapt to overcome those obstacles. If we are constantly mindful of the changing world around us, we can be successful in reaching people. Again, this is spiritual work so not EVERY aspect of business applies here but why not use the best thinking in that arena to increase the percentages of those we CAN reach. This thought was reinforced by another quote from Godin in the same post:

Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells — and helped the company trounce Kmart — probably worked fewer hours than you do in an average week.

Notice, he mentioned the success here. Target still lags behind Wal-Mart in retail sales but what it has done is establish itself as a niche retailer. I will shop my local Target stores for this very reason. There are many things I find in a Target store that never show up on Wal-Mart shelves and that’s OK. Wal-Mart claims the lion’s share of my retail dollar because I’m on a budget and have to save money and for the things Wal-Mart does sell, they usually have the best price. Target is competitive because they offer me choices I can’t get at Wal-Mart. I buy clothing, gifts, certain beauty items my wife likes, and other niche items from Target.

To put this in the church perspective, I realize I’m not going to have a church that’s everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, my loyalty to the historic doctrines of my denomination will cause me to say NO to many a good idea if it doesn’t fit within the context of those principles I see as vital to the sucess of the church. That doesn’t mean I can’t have a church that’s constantly learning, growing, and changing to meet the needs of a lost community we need to reach. You can do all of those things while staying true to your principles. It just takes HARD WORK as Godin states. The problem for many pastors I know is that it’s easier to coast and continue doing the routine things they’ve always done rather than embrace a new paradigm and making it work in their church context. Nobody wants the extra work and/or the risk that goes with it. My favorite quote from Godin’s article makes a fitting closing for my thoughts:

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

Isn’t Jesus worth it?

The church I pastor is beginning 30 days of prayer today.  For the entire month of September, we will be praying through a devotional on prayer that I’ve adapted for our church.  We will essentially divide the month into three segments of ten days each.  Each segment focuses on a different aspect of our Christian walk.  The first ten days we will deal with our sin and subsequent call to obedience to God.  The next segment will discuss bringing glory to God and honoring Him.  The last segment discusses evangelism and our call to reach the lost.  I’m praying for great things for our congregation.  I hope this is the start of good habits for many of them.  I know not EVERY one will do it but many committed last week so if you would, please pray for us.

Also, If you haven’t already, check out my other blog: “The Productive Pastor”.  My post today deals with my purchase of a new notebook system.  I’m curious if anyone else has used it yet.