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I’m really looking forward to this tomorrow. If you are in the area and you have a passion to reach the emerging culture, you won’t want to miss Dr. Mark Devine of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Pastor Darrin Patrick of The Journey talk about the intersection of Gospel, church, and culture at the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association building in Bridgeton off of Fee Fee from 10-2.

They will be talking about missiology, contextualization and the emerging church, among other things. And I’m sure there could be a palatable tension in the air with the controversy surrounding The Journey. My prayer is that there is a spirit of humility and receptivity to the topic at hand.

This conversation needs to happen. Any controversy needs to be quelled. Especially for the sake of mission and reaching the emerging culture in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Missouri and beyond. And I can’t think of any two persons better to champion the cause of ‘contending and contextualizing’ than Devine and Patrick.

I will try to post within the week a breakdown of the talk for those of you who weren’t able to attend.

This is the official press release from the SLMBA:

GOSPEL, CHURCH, and CULTURE

Thursday, June 21st from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m., pastors, church and mission leaders from across the area will gather at our offices for a day with Dr. Mark Devine of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Pastor Darrin Patrick of The Journey.

This day will center upon how to take the never changing gospel to an ever changing culture. What is cultural contextualization and what challenges and opportunities does this present to your church? What is the emerging church and who gets to define it?

This will be a great day of hanging out with fellow leaders, meeting new friends, and asking some relevant and yes, tough questions for the day in which we do kingdom work.

Here is Devine’s recent paper on some of the controversy swirling here in Missouri: Acts 29 and the Missouri Baptist Convention.


For those of you that don’t know, I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist church in southeast Missouri. As a Southern Baptist, there are some things that become a part of the vernacular. Things like the Cooperative Program, the missions arm of the SBC. Annual international mission-giving programs like the Lottie Moon offering -Moon was an international Southern Baptist missionary who labored tirelessly so her people group [Chinese] could know Jesus. I could go on…

This brings me to Dr. Ed Stetzer. I am a big fan of Stetzer, the newly appointed director of LifeWay Research, LifeWay’s missiologist in residence, board member of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, and pastor at Lake Ridge Church in Cumming, GA. As Mark Driscoll says, “Ed is a rare combination of rigorous biblical theology, pastoral kindness, and keenly honed missional wisdom.” I couldn’t agree more.

Last night, I hopped online to see Stetzer speak at the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in San Antonio. I have seen Stetzer speak on three previous occasions – two in-person at the 2006 Resurgence conference and at a Missions seminar in 2006 at the Baptist Building in Jefferson City, MO and one on-line at the 2007 Baptist Identity Conference at Union University, not to mention read his book Breaking the Missional Code and been through most of his Introduction to Church Planting manual.

Everytime I listen to Stetzer, I come away thinking he, in many ways, is a modern day prophet in a day where alot of dudes think they are but aren’t. He is brilliant, theologically robust, progressive, courageous. As for his San Antonio message, I was so moved by his challenge, that I e-mailed him in mid-talk just to let him know how encouraged I was.

I found a clip of Stetzer speaking last night in San Antonio. In the clip, Stetzer poked some fun at his fellow SBC’ers regarding Lottie Moon. In many ways, it is a profound statement on the emaciated version of much of SBC’s missiology. But the idea rings true for much of evangelicalism. Later on, he goes so far as to say to a room full of messengers this:

Let’s face it. Too many of our churches have chosen their traditions over their children.

Check out the entire clip below:


The Sacraments: Constancy or Constantly? – Intro

The Sacraments: Constancy or Constantly? – Part 1

If you’ve been following this series, we are talking communion. I am focusing in on a specific aspect of communion: its frequency. How often should we observe this sacrament? Does the Bible prescribe a model or pattern?

In Part 1, we saw what sparked my letter to the Worship Leader forum from Ken Guidan. Today, you see my comments to that ‘spark.’ Here are my comments that were printed about a year ago in the March/April 2006 edition of Worship Leader magazine:

Communion Concern
In response to Ken Guidan of Palo Alto Church of Christ in the November/December 2005 “Worship Leader Forum,” he asks, “Why are we backing away from weekly communion during our worship services?”

Scripture clearly asserts that communion is one of the church’s ultimate duties. And in giving this sacrament prime importance, Scripture gives us an indication that it should be done recurrently. We must never lose the wonder and mystery of this ritual in a day of short sermons and pop religion [or humorous worship, as Ken says.]

But with any issue related to Christian practice in the context of corporate worship, we must let Scripture inform our traditions and not vice versa.

In short, the Bible does not dictate how often the Lord’s Supper should be observed; it just says is should be. My belief is that when the Bible does not mandate the frequency of a specific practice, there is freedom for the local church to determine its regularity.

I share Ken’s passion for communion, especially his concern with those who do not regularly observe it. I believe it should be a recurring part of corporate worship. But when he asks, “Why do so many of our churches celebrate communion less than weekly?” I hear “Why don’t all churches agree with our belief that communion should be observed weekly and no less?”

Communion is an essential in Christian worship, but its frequency is a non-essential issue. For me, I am more concerned that the Church embraces communion’s meaning and importance whenever it is observed, not how often its observed.

Later this week, we will look at the flurry of comments that found their way to future Worship Leader forums over the next few months related to this conversation. The mere quantity of interest in this issue showed me that communion is something we need to be talking about as worship pastors, local churches, and Christians as a whole…

At the end of this series, I’ll talk about why I responded the way I did. And you might even be surprised on my take of the issue at hand: frequency.


I have been reading Dan Kimball’s new book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, over the last few weeks. Hard book to read but a good book to read if you want a snapshot of what emerging generations think about the church and how to best minister to them.

Not a good book to read if you don’t care about or know there is such a thing as emerging generations or you like your ‘prison’ – as Kimball puts it – of the church office. Ouch. Did I say that? Well, you get the point…

In Part 2 of Kimball’s book, he outlines for us what emerging generations think about the church. Within Part 2 – in Chapter 5 – Kimball highlights why young people outside of the church think the church is too ‘organized.’ One of the more specific impressions that emerging culture has is that the church is made of leaders who function like CEO’s and desire power and control. And Kimball thinks he knows why:

In many churches, particularly the larger ones, our use of language furthers the impression that the church is an organized religion….in the 1980′s, churches began applying business principles to the church. Pastors and leaders began using some of the language and metaphors of the business world, including business descriptions to our titles, such as executive pastor, senior pastor…

To those who value churches functioning as corporations or businesses, as many baby boomers did, this was fine and made sense. But in our emerging culture, this comes across very unlike Jesus, since it equates the church with big business and only reinforces the idea that the church is organized religion.

I bring all of this up because today I read something hilarious that made me think about this part of Kimball’s book. So sit back and enjoy this recent article from your source for Christian news, Lark News:

Entire church staff goes executive

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A church staff concerned about not showing favoritism recently added the word “executive” to every staff member’s title.

The Youth Pastor is now the Executive Youth Pastor. The Executive Pastor is now the Executive Executive Pastor. His secretary is the Executive Assistant to the Executive Executive Pastor.

“I appreciate the title upgrade,” says the Executive Nursery Coordinator, formerly just the Nursery Coordinator. “It makes me feel more professional.”

But the Executive Executive Secretary to the Executive Senior Pastor — the top man at the church — says the church is now concerned that people with double “Executive”s in their titles may be seen as unfairly advantaged. “We may have to do some more tinkering with the titles,” she says.


At the end of May ’07 on this blog, I wrote:

In the 2005 November/December edition of Worship Leader magazine, Ken Guidan, Worship Coordinator for Palo Alto Church of Christ in Palo Alto, California, wrote an interesting aside about Communion in the Worship Leader forum – a place for people to sound off about all things worship. For some reason it hit a nerve. And I responded. And Worship Leader printed my response. And then a flurry of responses came in. And they were printed as well. And to boot, Ken and I began further discussion offline.

Over the next weeks, I would like to unpack this for the relevintage readers. Some of this may not be revolutionary stuff, but it is interesting to observe real-life conversation about such an important thing for the church and church leadership, including worship pastors/leaders.

That brings us to part 1 of this series. To kick off this series, I am going to reprint Ken Guidan’s comments to set the groundwork for where we will be heading over the next few weeks. Here’s Ken:

Including Communion
I am wondering why we are backing away from weekly communion during our worship services? I have visited several worship services in several churches, and the praise team is exciting and encouraging, the songs uplifting and the message inspiring [and often humorous]. But Jesus said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” [Luke 22:19]. And in the Worship Leader Profiles, I cannot remember a time where the sample worship set included communion.

Although usually a solemn time during any worship service, this should be the pinnacle event of our worship. It is Jesus’ death and resurrection that gives us hope; it is why we are here.

It doesn’t make sense that we should skip it, or only do it once a month or twice a year. Why do so many of our churches celebrate communion less than weekly?

My response to Ken’s statements coming later this week…


why the worship band shouldn’t be a band

I found an intriguing and provocative article from Tom Curley, Christian Arts Pastor and Lead Worshipper at Northridge Church in Pensacola, FL, on verticalmusic.com.

Not sure how I found it. I guess that is the rabbit hole the blogosphere can be [man, that sounded like Yoda].

Here is a quote taken from the article:

…the “worship band” model has also brought with it a new set of problems that have frustrated many worship leaders. Most of these problems stem from the fact that the musicians and vocalists who volunteer to serve in a local church worship ministry have only experienced the “band” model. These volunteers have great intentions and want to serve God with their talents, but they may need a better understanding of how playing music in a local church setting is different.

Read Tom’s entire article here: I’m With the Worship Team.

I’m going to follow up on this article with a response this week. Stay tuned…


unseen struggles of leadership

Nobody ever told me this, but it’s really hard for leaders to hear from God sometimes.

And when we say we’re absolutely sure God told us something, we mean we’re, like, 85% sure.
That’s about as good as it gets for me anyway. Because I’m a sin scarred human with unpredictable emotions, shaped by diverse life experiences, and limited in my understanding of the mind of God.

And it seems like the closer you get to a big breakthrough, the harder it is to hear, feel, or perceive God’s instruction.

One of my mentors told me that the reason God seems strangely silent at the times when we need Him the most is that teacher is always quiet during the test.

-Steven Furtick, lead pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC, from his blog on the unseen struggles of leadership

Recently, I was in an assessment where I was asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how sure I was being led to do something. In the back of my mind, I knew they wanted to hear ’10′ but in front of my heart, I knew I needed to be honest. I said ’8.’

Why ’8?’

If I would have said ’10,’ where is the faith involved in me following God? Isn’t faith a huge part of following God’s will?

In other words, if I know what God wants me to do, why do I need God? And further, why would I need God in the future once he has disclosed his will to me? God’s will goes beyond the point of decision to the future that follows that decision.

The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.

Hebrews 11:1 [MSG]


Though I don’t agree with Brian McLaren on everything, I think he has hit the nail on the head with this. Check out this video, “The Worship Industry,” from The Work of the People.

The Work of the People is a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians who tell stories and ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. TWOTP utilize their gifts to create tools for the Church to engage universal spiritual issues through progressive media.

Check out their site. Some pretty provocative media for churches to use in their church services, etc. I highly recommend it!

[HT: Dan Wilt]


Sometimes people put to words those things that have evolved in my heart and mind over time, especially in areas that I am particularly specialized and/or gifted in. You know, those things that you do but you don’t know how to explain it to someone else. [I often deal with this when it comes to questions about vocal technique. I have a hard time describing the evolution of a pop voice; I can't seem to remember on the spot how I got where I am today...]

Anyways, I came across this recent entry from Bob Kauflin’s blog and thought, “Yeah, that is something I do but don’t realize I do and I would want to pass this on as a guiding principle to any young worship leader” so that is what I’m doing. Here’s the excerpt I resonated with:

So how do I help them focus on the words we’re actually singing? At the very least, I have to be thinking about them myself. I’m constantly asking myself questions in my mind like, Why is this true? What difference does it make? What if it wasn’t true? What’s not being said here? What does that word mean? Why does this line follow the last one?” As I answer those questions specifically, it helps me interact more with what I’m singing, and it has a greater impact on my soul. When I’m leading, I’ll simply share some of the answer to those thoughts with the congregation through spoken or sung fills.

…done well and with genuine emotion, brief exhortations can be an effective way to motivate people’s devotion to the Savior.


the lone worship ranger syndrome


In all honesty, there is something about the Lone Ranger that many of us gravitate toward. It’s an attractive ideal – taking on the world, defeating the enemies of God to the name of love, writing the songs that make the whole world cry, then riding off into the sunset as people ask, “Who was that masked worship leader?” But even the Lone Ranger had Tonto [and his horse Silver].

-Paul Baloche from his article, “Half Done,” in the March/April 2007 edition of Worship Leader Magazine


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