February 2008

Good luck!

“Deep Rooted in Christ” is the devotional book written by Korean pastor Joshua Choonmin Kang, pastor of the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles.  I first heard of this book about a year ago when Richard Foster spoke of it at a Renovare event.  At that time it was available only in Korean but now, an English translation is available through IVP.  The book is divided into sections and comprises 52 readings, suitable for weekly reading.  Foster raved about this book when he spoke of it so I’m anxious to read it for myself.

Calvin Miller is also back with a book surveying the Celts with “The Path of Celtic Prayer”.  Miller’s research into Celtic spirituality is distilled into six disciplines designed to deepen our prayer life.  Knowing Miller, this will not be a book for the shallow “sugar coated” spiritual life.  It will be challenging, deep, and instructive.   I’ve loved his other works and am sure this one will satisfy also.

It looks like the spring months will be good ones for reading!

Edit: Well the folks at YouTube won’t allow the video to be embedded so I apologize.  You CAN however go to the YouTube site and watch it for yourself.  Just check out “West 54th Sessions” under Pat Metheny.  It’s there….Why they won’t let us post it on the blog, I have no idea.

After posting late last week, I began sifting through my old record (yes, vinyl!), tape, and CD collections and renewed my interest in Pat Metheny’s body of work. I can’t help it since I know these are just some posts that I’m throwing out there aside from everything else I write about but this clip from the late 90’s television show “Sessions at West 54th” just blew me away. The whole piece is good but if you’re pressed for time, just check out the first 4:30 minutes or so and watch the master work the “Picasso” guitar. Amazing stuff. Enjoy!

The summer of 1992.  I was approaching my 26th birthday and stopped into our locally owned music store and picked up a CD of Pat Metheny’s newly released “Secret Story”.  I remember listening to this in my car with my year-old daughter (now nearly 17) and thinking this was the freshest thing I had heard in all of my young life.  I was a die hard rocker and worked as a music director for a top country radio station in Missouri.  I had always dabbled in Jazz because of my mother’s underpinnings to the St. Louis jazz community but this album became a landmark in my collection.  To this day, I value it’s story in music among the best I have.  The video above is pretty cool in itself but you have to listen to the entire CD to get the picture.  From what I gathered, Metheny had a great nearly year long relationship with a lady who then broke it off after the summer and broke Metheny’s heart in the process.  That’s my take on it…The actual facts might be slightly different but Metheny himself at the time said the story tells itself in the music.  As I remember “The Longest Summer” (The Video), I could sense a feeling of exhilaration, passion, and freshness to the relationship.  Near the end of the CD, the sadness of the final songs leads one to believe the breakup was extremely hard.  A special 15th anniversary edition of the album was released late last year marking this album as a classic.  I’m torn between my favorite Metheny albums.  I believe this one was the best of its genre for the 90’s.  “One Quiet Night” which was released in 2003 has been his best for first decade of the 21st century.  Of late, Metheny has been recording with pianist Brad Mehldau and the two have put together two great albums in the last few years.  But “Secret Story” has to be the best album I heard in 1992.

“Your church is so nice and friendly…it’s just that it’s a bit small and we need something bigger…”  Those are words I’ve heard many times over the years as a church planter.  Truth is…I’m sick of them.  Our culture feeds this myth of the large church and the consumerism mindset of shallow people.  Even in Christian blogging, I’m beginning to see it.  When I entered the blog world a few years ago, I was discovering other writers, men whose churches were similar to mine.  Even amongst some of the larger churches, I found solace from friends who understood because everyone starts somewhere right?

So why all of a sudden are we seeing this alarming trend in blogging that lists the “top churches” and “top blogging pastors”?  I’ve nothing against those guys.  I’m sure many are solid, sharp folks but it appears the very cliques we disdain in our congregations are forming on-line in the blogosphere.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the most popular pastors (you know them…they are in your feed readers) and check out their blogroll.  I keep seeing the same 10-15 names on every single blog!  Really?  These are the only guys you get insight from?  All across the country, it’s the same “top ten” on the blogroll.  Personally, I think the creation of tags has made the blogroll useless on a site.  One can list their favorite links in a post and update the post with new links and just tag it with favorite blogs if someone is interested in searching it.  I’m likely going to do the same thing on this site in the near future.

Back to the issue of “top tens”, we now have other sites featuring blogs from the same guys.  Really?  Like nobody has heard of these fellas right?  If you’re blogging as a church planter or “progressive, missional, (insert name here), etc..” type of pastor or layman, you know these folks already.  I understand the concept of viral marketing thoroughly.  This is a small microcosm of that.  I read a lot of productivity blogs too and have been turned on to new sites by the recommendation of others.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  I guess my thought is what criteria do we use to recommend these blogs?  Is it purely church size?  Does size matter?  It appears so.  I’ve yet to see anyone list a guy whose church is running 200 and he’s “knockin’ it out of the park” to quote one of the famous blogging pastors.  How about guys under 100?  Perhaps we need to subcategorize the church blogosphere so we can identify those guys that are “nailing it” that aren’t seeing hundreds and hundreds of folks come through their doors.

The reality is, the blogrolls we see today will be gone in five years.  The churches will likely still remain but will begin to transition into another category much like the favorite sons of the 90’s are doing.  by 2013, I’ll be nearing 47 years of age and by the church planting standards in the blogosphere, I’ll be a dinosaur.  The truth is, I’ll be entering my very best years and my dream is to have my graduate degree by then and enter the sweetest time of fellowship with Jesus I’ll have ever had.

Most of my favorite reads in the Christian blogging world aren’t even a blip on people’s radars.  Many aren’t subscribed to by 100’s but the meat of their words sure beats much of the pablum I read on a daily basis.  Here’s just a few…

Michael Quicke
Quicke’s blog is relatively new.  He is the writer of 360-degree preaching and 360-degree leadership.  He’s so new to this stuff (starting in his 60’s!), that he’s just using the blogspot format to get started.  A professor of preaching who has pastored a church that was thought to be dying revived, he has great wisdom in the scriptures.

Church Matters
This is the blog of the 9Marks organization.  I don’t always agree with EVERYTHING they write about, but I do believe this blog is spot on with many of its statements.  It makes some folks a little uneasy and angers others because they don’t want to be “attacked” but taking to heart what’s written here is good for us to chew on when we want to assess what it is we are doing.  Again, multiple authors post here so I do not agree with all of them, but I enjoy reading all of them.

John Atkinson
John is the small groups pastor at Bil Cornelius’ church.  Bil is the co-author of “Go Big” lest you think I’m against the mega-church which I’m not.  John’s blog is nice because the guy is transparent many times.  “I’ve been too busy to post”, “It rained on our cookout”, “People frustrate me”, etc…This is the kind of guy that I could hang out with at a hot wings place over a ball game and enjoy learning from.  His friend G. Brandon Cunningham also blogs and heads up men’s ministry at the church.  I include Cunningham in that offer of hot wings too.  Both are enjoyable reads when they can post and both are real in the struggles they face as Christians.

Terry Glaspey
Glaspey is one of my favorite writers.  I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him twice when I worked in the broadcast industry and he is as nice in person as he comes across in his writing.  His book “Great books of the Christian Tradition” now re-released as “The Book Lovers Guide to Great Reading” was outstanding in its recommendations of classic Christian literature.  The books he recommends are not what you see being written about in the blogosphere.  With so many new books entering the publishing world each year, it’s getting harder and harder to pick good books from today’s writers but Glaspey’s book ensures you will get the sweet cream of the crop of writing centuries old with his reading lists.  He’s written other books but “Great Reading” is still my favorite.  His blog recently went online and I am so glad.  I think it will be another extension of his creative, humble, writing self that we’ll see on a semi-regular basis.

There are many others that I need to include.  But these are some you just don’t see getting any plugs in the blogosphere.  They deserve as much kudos as any other site I’ve read in the past year.  Enjoy..and ENOUGH ALREADY!

If you or your church is looking for an outstanding Easter outreach, let me recommend “Simple” by Robert J. Morgan.  You may have read Morgan’s books on the classic hymns and the stories behind them in the “Then sings my soul” series.  You might have heard of him when you’ve used the “Minister’s Annual” that’s printed each year by Thomas Nelson but I believe this little booklet is one of his best works ever.  Why?  Because it gives you a chance to put a quality resource into the hands of first time attenders and new believers that gives them the basics of the Christian faith without being wordy or “over their head”.

Click Here to visit the SIMPLE website and check it out yourself.

The video features an opening statement by a good friend, Matt Markins, who himself is in leadership at a church in Tennessee.  I know these guys personally and they will take great care of you if you choose to use this resource.  For those who might want to use this for a message series, sermon outlines are available also if you ask for them!  We used this last year with great results…so much so that I now keep a case of SIMPLE in my car along with my New Testaments, to give to people I meet.  A new study guide is available as well to help you in your efforts to use the materials in the book.

As a church planter, I review a lot of materials for use in guest follow up.  This is among the best I’ve seen.  Many of us blog about wanting to keep things “simple” in our ministries.  Well, this is a great tool to do that while still being very, very effective.

My advice?  Buy it, use it, use it again…and again…with each new guest that comes through your doors! (and no, I’m not being paid nor am I with the company.  I just endorse what I believe in.)

Check it out and let me know if I can help you by sharing with you how we used in here at our church!