C3 Conference

The C3 Conference is coming in February. Haven’t been there in 2 years. Totally hope to make it down with some of our team this year. If you’ve never been, it is PHENOMENAL!!! It’s by far and away the best of the church conferences I’ve been to.

Marketing That Captures

One of things I love about urban church planting is the challenge. It demands an entirely different way than the suburbs. Over the last couple weeks in our staff meetings we’ve wrestled with the question on how to approach a demographic that is saturated with marketing. In other words: what works and gets attention in the suburbs seems cheesy and see-through in Uptown. Therefore, how do we capture the attention, hearts, and minds of an urban culture that has no use for church whatsoever. When their thoughts of Christ is a church of their youth that was boring and judgmental, how do we bring them to see a revolutionary hero that died for them so they could be free and know Him forever? Our team has been working hard and has some great stuff planned. These next couple of months are going to be very cool…

Spaces

Reading Luke 10:38 tonight. The account of Mary sitting listening to Jesus while her sister Martha is working.

1. What Martha is doing (work) is good.

2. What Mary is doing (taking a space in her schedule to hear from Jesus) is better.

Far too often in our lives, including ministry, we tend to follow Martha’s example. Working at the office, then at home. We don’t even need laptops now with the ability to check and respond to work emails from our phones. Noise dominates most of our lives.

Jesus’ words to Martha cut to the facts: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things.” I constantly have on my mind this week’s sermon, planning for the upcoming series, administrative stuff that needs to get done even if I am not the one responsible for it still enters my head, meetings, creative elements, even remembering to pray for people. And it’s all good stuff, it’s all a part of people coming to meet Christ or growing in their knowledge of Him, but often I find I begin to drift toward the “so many things,” that I have to force myself to remember “but one thing is necessary.” And that of course is that part that Mary chose. The spaces where I shut up  and God speaks. The stillness and eagerness to hear from the Creator.

Sunday Afternoons.

Food with friends after church.

NFL games.

Nap during late NFL game.

Hangout with Angie and Elizabeth.

Pizza.

Simpsons.

Attempt to feed Elizabeth cereal.

Sleep.

Creative Teaching Elements. This worked for us, what has worked for you?

Creativity in the church is becoming cliche, much like “under the bus,” “synergy” and “good to great” in the business world. Yet, in a culture where creativity is thrust in front of us in marketing and design as companies invest thousands and millions of dollars into their products just so our eyes stay focused on their product for 2 seconds longer than the rest, everyone is becoming more creative. Rock shows have become increasingly creative utilizing different media elements in the shows besides just music. (Blink 182’s tour, Coldplay, etc). Some restaurants focus on smells to put you in the right atmosphere. In short if we want to minister in a culture of creative mediums we need to think creatively in the message we present. Most people’s view of church already is “out of touch,” and “boring.” While I absolutely love attending an old school church, I realize that isn’t the culture I have been called to minister too. Uptown is a creative place. Our message has to speak to them where there are at. I love sharing and getting ideas from other church pastors/planters/speakers. So with that, here’s some stuff we have done recently that worked well for us:

1. We did a 6 week expositional series on Gideon. The whole series revolved around in McManus’ words: Going from the life we knew to the life we never imagined.” I brought my golf clubs and the whole series revolved around how so often in life we start out well, but we soon find (like my shots) we are veering to the right or left and we spend days, months, years in the rough, watching others fly by on the fair way of life. We talked about how just like in golf we need to shoot for par, not in golf, but God’s P.A.R. which is the stages he takes us though in life.

P.A.R. Each of us is in one of these stages of life. The first stage is

Preparation: Most people are in this stage. It’s the hardest stage. The most frustrating stage. Tiger Woods is known for his play in tournaments but he spends hundreds of hours each week working on his swing. Just like Tiger Woods has to prepare for a golf round, God takes each of us through preparation stages. Here’s the thing about this stage. Most people never leave this stage because there is a huge barrier between this one and and the next one. FEAR. Fear causes us to settle rather than moving on. Fear immobilizes us from getting to the next stage:

Action: This stage is the is where we find out what we are made of. God puts his super on your natural skills, talents, and abilities.  Most of us don’t make it all the way through this stage. Because as we progress through this stage, we get opposition, we find out there are hard costs, but as we move through this stage it goes from why am I doing this to, I can’t believe God allowed “me” to do that. That was amazing. And at the end of this stage we move into another stage, the

Reflection: In this stage we see a different person than we thought we were. We look back and realized that through the preparation and action stages God has revealed a part of ourselves we didn’t even know was within us. There is a problem with this stage though. Most of us want to stay here. We have good Memories, Nostalgia.

We then followed Gideon as he went though each of these stages.

2.  I gave a message on Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana, and tied that in to how every week Jesus does a miracle every week all across the world as He changes water into wine in people’s hearts. Those who serve experience having a hand in the miracle. When people came into the service we gave them bottles of water, when they left they gave us the water, in exchange we gave them bottles of wine with out church mission (Love = Extend. Serve. Grow) on it. Unless they were under 21. Then they got sparkling grape juice. It Absolutely Drove Home The Point!

3. Right now we are in our “Got Stress” series. I borrowed a weight bench from a friend that we have up each week and talk about how often in life without thinking about it we add more and more weight onto our life and before long the commitments, schedules, and expectations pile up and start trapping us under stress. From large weights like jobs to small ones like even fantasy football, we can unknowingly put stress on us we don’t realize. So we talked about what the Bible says needs to be on the barbell of life, what needs to come off, and that stress is so much more than a feeling. There are physical, psychological, and chemical aspects to it that if we aren’t careful will hurt us, much like physically lifting more than we are able to. Getting free from alot of unneeded stress so we can do what God has created us and called us to do.

So, that’s a few things we’ve done recently that has helped us present the message in a creative way that made an impact.

What have you done well that worked for you? I’d love to hear it!!!

New Books Rock.

I picked up a new book today: “Leading On Empty.” Totally looking forward to reading Wayne Cordeiro. I’ve seen him just a couple times via video, including his talk for the God Is… series in June. Gonna start it tomorrow!

money and the church.

this weekend The Exchange church is continuing our series “Got Stress?” dealing specifically with financial stress. I’m taking the approach, “how to have financial stress.” in other words, how to go into debt. In doing research I found this interesting website.: http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php which has a ton of stats on the credit card problem in america.Uptown Minneapolis is predominently young. And with each generation it seems debt is on the rise.

People outside church often remark how the church is only after their money. Which of course we as  pastors shake our heads at because they don’t understand we don’t want something from them, but rather we want something for them. But with the rising debt situation it will be interesting to see if more and more pastors talk about money from the pulpit/stage (however you define it). After all, God talked alot about money. Why don’t we?

unbroken time

almost 2am in the morning and i’ve been working like crazy. my daughter is sleeping, my wife is sleeping. and i still have a ways to go. i finished one project, and have this weeks talk to get writing. i find that especially in this first year of church planting (we launched in jan), that time is difficult with an infant. i spend my days taking care of a 6 month old which is absolutely awesome. i spend my nights with my family which is the best time of the day. and that leaves the occasional one or two nights a week where i work until early in the morning, to work on church and also spend extra time in scripture. its those latter moments especially which i love. its the time where God refreshes, guides, corrects and encourages me to go further. unbroken by cries or the phone. its wonderful. and a lifesaver.

Money money money

I’m preparing for this weeks talk at The Exchange in the Got Stress? series. This week: Finances. Considering most of the church is 18-30ish I’m look forward to it. I think it’s absolutely awesome how much God talks about finances in the Bible. It’s often the one thing that will mess us up more descreetly and subtley than anything else. It also keeps people from doing what God created them to do. After all, if you’re deep in debt, that’s all you focus on. Random though just popped in my head: maybe instead I should take the other angle to get the point across: teaching people how to go into debt and be slaves to money. hmmmmmmm.

Also, hope the rain stops soon. Would love to get out and take some pictures of Uptown for the website.

This week should be sweet because….

Tonight we are going to the metrodome to watch Favre take on the Packers. MNF!!!

Tuesday the new site should go live.

Wed. night we have a creative meeting at church about our upcoming spring series Dirty Little Secrets. This might be the most controversial series we’ve done so far. I’m totally excited about it. Also excited the idea was put up by people who didn’t go to church until they came to the Exchange and figuring out ways to reach Uptown. Just awesome.

Thursday, I’ll be wrapping up the talk and at night the Office wedding.

Friday I have the feeling is going to be an awesome day off with Elizabeth