The guys at LifeChurch.tv are putting out the call for churches around the world to preach a 4-week series together starting the June 7-8 weekend called “One Prayer”. Craig Groeschel has put together a video that explains why they are doing this and how they see it playing out – very interesting.

They’ve set up a website with more info and instructions and a list of pastors whose messages will be available for this series. Looks like an incredible concept and something that will definitely get a lot of people talking.

Some of you may have seen JVo’s post about printing bulletins on paper that had flower seeds in it. People were encouraged to take their bulletin home from church, plant it and have flowers in the garden a few weeks later. Very cool. I think we will definitely use this idea at some point when we do a series on spiritual growth, environmental stewardship, or something else where this could be a very physical take-away for people.

Here’s a link with more info – http://www.flowerseedpaper.com/seeds/flowerseed_lotka_computer_paper.html

Lotka paper is made from the bark of the Daphne bush which regenerates naturally providing a renewable resource. This paper is acid free and your purchase will benefit the economic enterprise of rural craftspeople in Nepal. The seeded paper on your right can be planted in soil to produce a gift of flowers for the recipient of your correspondence. All lotka papers are 50% recycled content. Both styles are 20# paper that is safe to laser or inkjet print at home.

I’ve blogged a couple of times about “The Shack” – a book that our staff and elders have been reading this year and has generated some good conversation. The author, William P. Young, is coming to speak at a church in Kitchener this weekend and if you live in southern Ontario you may be interested in checking this out.

If you want more info, head over to www.grandviewchurch.ca -

William Young Friday Session
7 – 8pm
“Why How We Understand God, His Nature and Relationship Within the Trinity Affect The Way We Live Our Lives: Why The Story of the Shack Is So Incredibly Powerful.”

8 – 9pm
Roundtable Discussion: William Young, Ian Campbell, and Dr. Barker. “Papa, The God Who Roars, and the God Who Weeps!”

William Young Saturday Session
9 – 10am
“The End of Future Tripping: Joy’s Companionship”
10 – 11am
Q & A Session with the Author
11am – Noon
Book Signing

The Afters – Never Going Back To OK
A nice follow up to their debut album. The whole myspace/yourspace thing comes off as a little hokey but there are some good musical moments on this record. “Tonight” and “One Moment Away” are my favourite tracks so far.

 

 Ben Cantelon – Daylight Breaks Through

I bought Ben’s CD after seeing that he co-wrote “Happy Day” with Tim Hughes. Good stuff from another solid UK worship leader. His songs are less congregational that Hughes or Redman but still a solid collection of songs. He’s definitely influenced by those guys and is probably still developing his own style but I think we’ll be hearing more and more from him.

 

Starfield – I Will Go

Some good representation from the Canadian boys. This is their third album released on Sparrow (they did at least one other full-length as indies in Canada) and my first impression is that it’s the weakest of the three so far. I know bands usually have a sophomore slump but I think this may be the slump record for these guys. They are sort of being cast as the new Delirious/Newsboys and I think they are still growing in that. The good thing is that these guys are STUPID talented and focused on God so they will continue to grow and continue to produce good music.

 

Eddie Kirkland – Orthodoxy

Love it. I’ve got to find a way to do “Hands Of The Healer” in a service. This is so different from the typical worship stuff that’s out there right now and if he’s as influenced by Chesterton as I think he is, you know this is going to have solid theology behind it. If you’ve seen the videos and responses to “How He Loves Us” online and have not really felt as WOW about it as other people seem to be (I’m including myself in the “I’m not so sure” group) then you may want to hear his version of this great song.

Lee McDerment – A Matchlight In The Dark

Lots of hype about this CD in blogworld. Lots. And it is warranted – solid record, good music, great lyrics. Lots of people are pumping this album as “worship for men” and I think that’s only part of the story. This is a solid record with songs that could definitely be used by churches whose sound lines up close with what’s on the radio.

 

 Tommy Walker – I Have A Hope (single)

I was on worshipsource.com randomly a couple of weeks ago and heard a preview of this song (I didn’t buy the whole album) and was instantly hooked. Tommy Walker is a genius of modern-day worship songwriting. I was actually trying to figure out a way to try and make this song work in our Easter Sunday service but it didn’t happen. We will definitely be doing this one – at least as a presentation song – sometime soon.

 

Nichole Nordeman – Recollection

I have loved Nichole’s songs for a long time. Buying this album was a no-brainer for me. She is one of the most poetic, expressive songwriters out there and the depth of meaning tied up in seemingly simple lyrics blows me away.

Alright – so tomorrow we are kicking off our new series here at OBC, “identity”. We’re talking about the things we do around here that make us unique. For this series we’re talking about breaking each service in to two parts – worship/community at the front end and teaching/application at the back end. We’ll focus on a certain aspect of the character of God during the worship part and move to the teaching part out of that.

The plan for tomorrow -

Because Of Your Love – Paul Baloche – F
Announcements/Offering/Meet & Greet
Scripture
How Awesome Is Our God – Chris Vacher & Craig Douglas – C
Yesterday, Today & Forever – Vicky Beeching – E
Unchanging – Chris Tomlin – E
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – F
Prayer
Teaching – identity:ignite

For the worhip section we’re focusing on the “unchanging-ness” of God. I don’t think that’s a word but it’s the second time I’ve used it so that makes it official. It’s going in my dictionary. We’ll be using the songs, scripture and prayer to remind people that God is the same today as He’s always been and can have faith that He will be the same tomorrow and the day after.

“ignite” is a cool concept for us – basically it covers the understanding that everyone in our church would take their own spiritual development seriously through Sunday morning, small groups and spiritual disciplines. We’ll be covering Sunday morning tomorrow – why do we do it? how do we prepare? how do we engage? Good questions to be asking and I’m looking forward to working through this stuff with our congregation tomorrow. We’ll also be providing people with some resources that will allow them to take some next steps in the area of spiritual disciplines – personal Bible study and prayer, specifically.

I’m actually off stage tomorrow morning. I try and do this once every couple of months so that I can check stuff out from our congregation’s perspective and also to give our musicians a chance to run rehearsal and the service on their own. Because I oversee our “first impressions” (greeters, ushers, etc) it’s good to be on the ground with them every once in a while.

You may have seen the video from Buckhead’s Good Friday service but there’s another post that you should probably check out.

First, go to the Buckhead Production blog and watch the edited video and see what these guys were able to pull off on Good Friday. Even in the shortened version you can tell that the experience was Christ-focused, meaningful and impactful.

After you’ve watched that head over to the Buckhead blog and read a post from Amber who produced the service. There is some great info here and gives some good insight into the brainstorm/production process at Buckhead.

Carlos did a confessional too showing some of their rehearsal time and showing some behind the scenes stuff.

I’ll be heading out real soon to head down to London, ON for a good day with old friends and new.

I’ll be having breakfast with an old friend that I haven’t been able to spend some good time with for a few years – it’s amazing how quickly time passes once marriage, kids, jobs, etc enter the mix.

I’m having lunch with a worship pastor at a church in London – I’d send you to their website but they don’t have one. When you see some pictures of the church you’ll be scratching your head about that. They’ve got a brand spankin’ new beautiful building but no website to tell people about all the great stuff they’re doing and give them opportunities to take some next steps in their involvement with the church.

I’ve got the chance to speak at a one-day conference tomorrow that is designed to help young artists figure out their calling and make some sense of the whole business side of being in a band. I’ve been able to give this seminar a few times and the response has always been positive so I’m excited about the content being helpful for people tomorrow.

To close off the day I’m having dinner with my friend Marty who has just transitioned out of full-time ministry. It will be good to see him and hear how things are going in his life.

Then I get to go home and get some sleep before Sunday morning comes.

My pastor, Earl Marshall posted some of what he experienced before and during our Easter services on Sunday -

It all started with one of our elderly men sharing with me his own story of life change.  Before the first service this gentleman waited patiently for me as I finished a discussion with another individual and once I was done asked if we could speak somewhere in private.  When we got to my office he proceeded to tell me how that on Tuesday morning of this past week at 4:00 a.m. he had become a follower of Jesus.  I did not know that he wasn’t a follower of Jesus.  On his own admission he told me that all his life he has been a religious man but that the last couple of months our teaching on Sunday mornings has clarified for him that following Jesus is not primarily about believing about but believing in Jesus.

The next few weeks here are going to be fun. One of the things that our elders have been talking through is our membership process – we’re a church that is almost 150 years old and of course some of the things which were important and meaningful 20 or 50 or 100 years ago is probably not important and meaningful to our people today. We are not very “high pressure” when it comes to membership but we have tried to be very intentional in how we communicate what it means to be a part of our church.

At the beginning of this discussion we started talking about developing a new kind of membership class that would help people understand more about our church, our history, our function and give them some opportunities to take some “next steps” in their involvement here. We knew that we didn’t want to create the typical membership class that was just information download and as we’ve worked through the process what we’ve come up with is something we’re calling “identity”.

Here’s the basic concept – our mission statement as a church (the reason we exist) is to “glorify God by making disciples who love Him completely and others sacrificially.” There’s lots of stuff packed in to that statment but that’s a discussion for another day. When we look at that mission statement and start dreaming about what it would mean if our church would really take that mission seriously we come up with a long-term vision for our church, that we would “Transform Our Region, Transform Our World.” Again, lots packed in there but that has really become a tagline for lots of our ministries and activities here – people have really latched on to it.

As we’ve looked at that vision we’ve put some thought in to a “vision path” or strategic plan that we call our 4 I’s – invest, invite, ignite, impact. Here’s a quick rundown of each of those 4 I’s -

• Invest – the expectation that every person in our church would have a growing relationship with someone who would not call themselves a follower of Christ with the intention that we’d be able to share our story and share God’s story
• Invite – the church leadership’s responsibility to provide events across every ministry area (kids, youth, adults, etc) which leverage those invest relationships and give people an opportunity to discover more about what it means to follow Christ
• Ignite – the reponsibility on every person in our church to take their own spiritual growth seriously through 3 S’s – Sunday morning, small groups and spiritual disciplines
• Impact – the active “living out” of our faith in our region and in our world

As we started talking about how we were going to kick off this “membership class” the first time we realized that it was important to run our whole church through it. What better way than Sunday morning?? So we’ve taken the content and adapted it to a Sunday morning context and will be delivering it over the next four weeks. The format will be a little bit different – we will still worship, hear from God’s word and meet together to encourage one another but there will be much more crowd interaction and feedback from the congregation as well as more direct resourcing for people to help them take a “next step” in one or more of these areas. Our goal for this series is that every person who calls OBC their church home would take a next step in their spiritual journey over the next four weeks.

So what do those next steps look like? It might be a commitment to Christ for the first time, baptism, getting involved in ministry, joining a small group, putting a plan together to make personal Bible reading a priority, etc etc. Every week we’ll be giving people resources focused on the content of that week that will help them with that next step.

This Sunday we’re going to be look at IGNITE and how Sunday morning fits in to that. We’ll sort of be stepping in to the matrix a little bit – we’re gathering on Sunday morning to talk about why Sunday morning is important and trying to make Sunday morning important while we gather on Sunday morning :)

I’m going to be blogging through this whole series to give you a bit of an inside look on how we’re doing things.

This post is part of Carlo’s Creative Chaos series.

We ran a camp last summer for 8- to 11-year old kids called Krazee Arts Camp. The focus was on just letting kids experience new forms of artistic expression without feeling any kind of pressure to produce good art. Every day kids rotated through six art workshops with krazee names – Art Attack (arts & crafts, sort of), I’ve Got Rhythm (dance), Joyful Noises (music), Running Wild (sports & games), Act One (drama), and Expressions By Hand (puppets).

Overall the camp was a homerun but the real highlight was our Variety Show on Friday night. We brought all the kids back and they brought parents, neighbours, grandparents, friends, etc etc to show them the great art stuff they had been doing during the week. It was a great night!

To give you a bit of a feel for what we did, here’s a little recap video -