Joshua Blankenship from NewSpring blogged about these bears that Kent Rogowski has been taking apart and putting back together. Basically he opens the bears up, turns the inside out, re-stuffs them, sews them back together and then takes their picture.

Wow. Pretty creepy but very cool. +10 points to the first person that uses these as promo for a series at their church.

I’ve received two emails from a worship conference that I don’t intend to visit. Today I clicked their friendly little “opt out” link at the bottom and was taken here -

 So far so good. Hit the friendly “Remove” button and get this -

Not cool. So I hit reply on the email and let the robot know that their form isn’t working and I’d like to be removed from their list. Here’s the automatic (I must assume) reply -

This is an unmonitored email account.
If you would like to find out more about Conference XYZ, please visit our website at  www.ConferenceXYZ.com
If you need to contact us, please see the Contact Us page for our contact Information:

http://www.ConferenceXYZ.com/contact_us.html

Aha! No problem. One little step added to the issue but nothing I can’t handle. I find my way over to the friendly little contact us page and what do I see?? Well, have a look!

Now I’m not here to make enemies but if you’re wanting me to at least think good things about your conference and have a quick way to get information (I mean who uses a phone these days??) then you might want to include an email address where I could at least let you know that I’m not interested in your unsolicited invitations to your (I’m sure it’s fantastic!) worship conference.

Thanks.

I’m a sucker for TED talks. Wow.

Check out Kenichi Ebina and his amazing moves.

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About this talk:
Kenichi Ebina appears to defy the limits imposed by the human skeleton. He combines breakdancing and hip-hop with mime using movements that are simultaneously precise and fluid. In addition to the playful choreography, on exhibit here are Kenichi’s remarkable strength and agility as he first appears to be manipulated by a string, then plays with a beam of light, and ends the piece as an energetic hip-hop-dancing robot who expires as he loses his power source.

I got an email from the folks at re:create this morning giving us their last push for registration. If you’ve got some extra budget money laying around and you want to spend 4 days with some really creative people and eat some of the best food you have ever had in your life, come to Nashville with us in a couple of weeks. Details are here.

I was checking out the list of registrants and it looks like there’s a whole crew coming from Saddleback to be with us this year including Rick Muchow and Tony Guerrero. Rick is the Pastor of Worship at Saddleback and Tony is the Director of Creative Arts there. Tony also wrote a book called “Attracting Quality Musicians” that I’m excited about starting next week and will hopefully finish before meeting him in Nashville!

So, faithful readers. Any burning questions in your head that you’d like me to ask Rick or Tony? I’ll try and weasel my way in to sit beside them during one of our meals together and will do my best to get your question answered.

Michael posted this over at “Behind The Leaf”:

If the name of your kids ministry comes from Northpoint, and your series graphics are downloaded from Lifechurch, and your mission statement is a slightly modified version of Saddleback’s, and your website is a template, then you don’t have a vision.

Too strong?

Too strong?

UPDATE – Michael left a comment here and he has since updated his thoughts on this blog. There is some really good discussion happening over there! Go check it out.

I think I’ll be using these guys to design some promo stuff for Krazee Arts Camp 2008.

My pastor, Earl Marshall, has been blogging for a while and he posted this today:

Many years ago now (once upon a time) I remember musing with Seminary colleagues and students about a day when there would be little need for communicating pastors because the Christian celebrity talking heads would be beamed in to a congregation near you. It seems that there is a growing trend toward this style of multi-site teaching. If this truly catches on I wonder what kind of impact this will have on the development of the teaching gift in local church contexts.

Unlike much of what is happening in the US, multi-site/video venue churches are NOT common in Canada. In fact I can only think of two churches in Canada who are using video teaching as part of their Sunday morning programming. I’m sure there are others using video teaching out of need rather than because of mission or intent but The Meeting House and Connexus Community Church are really the only two that I know who use video across multiple campuses as part of their mission.

I’m sure this is a discussion that has come up for you if you’re in ministry, so what do you think? Do you agree? Are we simply inflating the “Christian celebrity talking heads” or are we making use of the best teaching resources we have available to us? Are we developing and valuing the gift of teaching or only leaving that up to the guy on the screen?

Let’s hear it!

I had a great phone call with my friend Mark on Wednesday. Mark is the worship pastor at a church near St. Louis and we met up last year in Nashville. Earlier this year he came up to visit and we’ve been talking about some training stuff that I’m going to do with people from his worship ministry in February. I’m looking forward to spending time with his team and talking about worship in a local church context and also getting the opportunity to lead worship with them on Sunday morning.

I think that the time that Mark & I have with folks from his worship ministry team is going to be beneficial for them and for me also. I love meeting new people, hearing about their journey and listening to what God is doing in their lives. Exciting stuff.

Mark is also the one responsible for spurring on my daughter’s Johnny Cash addiction. Awesome.

Yeah. Zack Kim wins. Wow.
HT: Transition Pete

So like I told you last week, I was away this past weekend leading worship for a junior high (or middle school, as you Americans like to call it) retreat at Muskoka Woods Sports Resort near Huntsville, Ontario. There is nothing better than getting away with family and friends to spend the weekend being crazy with 640 junior high kids and their leaders. Muskoka Woods is an A+ spot to do a thing like this and the weekend was amazing.

The speaker for the weekend was Joe Loveless from Orlando, Florida. Joe’s dad, David, is the pastor at Discovery Church. It was kind of cool for me since I met David this summer at the Willow Arts conference when he blew my mind away in one of our breakout sessions. It was great to meet Joe and his friend Kirk. Joe’s messages for the weekend were on the theme of “The City Of God” and it was very clear that Joe had a deep, personal knowledge of the lives and worlds of these 12- and 13-year old kids. Joe was able to clearly and concisely communicate to them that they are created in the image of a God who knows them, loves them and desires to see them have an impact on their world.

The weather was beautiful and pretty typical for this time of year in central Ontario. Friday we had a wicked snowstorm, Saturday was ridiculously cold and Sunday was full of sunshine and freezing. I was enjoying the stories of you guys down south deciding to cancel church because of some snow. I know it’s a different world and you only had what was best for your people in mind but we do find it funny since we are continually dealing with 12 or 18 inches of snow coming down. Anyways, the weather was beautiful and it only made the weekend more enjoyable!

Avalanche is a retreat that is run by a denomination up here called the “Baptist Convention of Ontario & Quebec” and they have an amazing support ministry for youth pastors and youth groups. The typical youth group at an average-sized church up here has maybe 10-20 kids so for them to be able to find community, resources, programming ideas, etc etc to make their youth program happen, most youth pastors (or volunteers who lead their youth ministry) usually need some kind of help. Alvin Lau, Darren DeGraaf and now Tim McCoy have done some amazing work in developing a culture of leadership that helps both students and youth pastors as they grow from junior high to senior high then on to university and out to the real world. It’s been very cool to see some of these kids grow in confidence and ability over the last several years. (Sidenote: Imagine how cool it would have been for a kid used to going to youth group with a handful of other kids to be in a room with about 700 other people going crazy and worshipping God!) Here’s a photo of a bunch of the leaders who were acting as team captains for the weekend -

So what was I doing up there? Before I came on staff here, I spent about 5 years touring and recording with a great group of guys. We had the opportunity to travel all across North America and parts of Europe with our band. Towards the end of our time together, most of our ministry focused on leading worship for youth events and retreats like this one. But then we grew up and started getting married and having babies who need to eat food – something that those in travelling music ministry aren’t always able to provide! With that comes some changes – and knowing that God is still faithful and working in each of our lives. It was SO good to get together again with these guys and have the opportunity to lead these kids in worship. We hadn’t played together since we had done this same retreat last year but we very quickly fell back in to the groove and we were able to really enjoy what we were doing and also really focus on helping these kids worship God through music. Here are some photos -

Alright, so on to the confessional side of things. Junior high retreats are this really unique mix of fun, party songs like “The Happy Song” by delirious? or “Every Move I Make” by David Ruis and then edgy, inspired stuff like “No One Like You” by David Crowder or some of our own songs as well as some really dedicated worship stuff like “Shout To The Lord” by Hillsong or “Forever” by Tomlin. I love the challenge of trying to take kids from a place of hype, excitement, yelling-like-crazy to being focused solely on Christ and being engaged in worship.

Three things -

1. I used the Igniter Tracks for the first time this weekend for two songs – “No One Like You” and “Awesome Is The Lord” by Tomlin. Wow. Killer. So awesome. They really helped create a vibe that we were going for. You can see that the screens were a mix of lyrics and IMAG on the outer screens – the centre screen was rigged to be 16:9 so we ran the HD videos for those two songs instead of just having the lyrics on their own like other songs. Playing to a click is not a big deal for us so once we had the arrangements (the sheet music that’s included on the disc is VERY helpful, fyi iWorship) we were able to really rock out on these songs.
2. Having an A+ tech crew will make your life much easier. And this weekend we were fortunate to have people I consider to be the best of the best of the people we’ve ever worked with. We met Trevor from Yake Audio maybe 5 or 6 years ago and he instantly became our go-to guy for audio. We took him on tour with us, flew him to Turkey when we went in 2005, recommended that promoters rent gear from him and hire him – and if they didn’t hire him we hired him ourselves!! My friends George & Eric headed up all of the video production and those guys are ANIMALS! I keep praying that George will get fired from his job so that we can come and work with me at the church but I don’t think that’s going to happen – mostly because George is AMAZING at what he does and if he did get fired there would be a lineup of about 20 churches wanting him to come work for them. None of us could afford him though ;) But seriously – these guys are maniacs. Nevermind how much time they put into the tech stuff BEFORE they even get up to camp, the amount of hours that this team puts in during the retreat to pull everything off is amazing. They are the ones that make the rest of us look good – and some of us need lots of help with that.
3. If you want your church/ministry/organization to be mission- and vision-led it has to start at the top. Period. If the guys at the top aren’t setting, communicating, living and breathing vision then you will also be what you’ve always been. The team from BCOQ has clearly set vision for themselves for ministry and they are following hard after it because they believe that God has called them to do ministry in a certain way. The standard for their events are very high and the result is that you have people step up to meet the challenge. It has been amazing to see the growth in the leadership culture of this organization over the last several years. Well done, guys!

So, all in all, my weekend away was amazing. As always, it was our prayer that God would be honoured, glorified and lifted up and that by His grace and mercy He would bring kids to a commitment of faith for the very first time in their lives. Our dream is that someday kids would look back on their lives and say “It was really at Avalanche 2008 that God became real in my life and I made a decision to give my life back to Him because of what He’s done for me.” It’s awesome to do events that are planned and executed well but our real desire is to see change in the lives of those kids.