dan kimball here for abandoned: worship as life seminar 2008

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: art, community, emerging church, emerging culture, evangelism, examining, missiology, my favorite songs, planning, post-Christian, q & a, quotes of note, radio, social justice, sports, theology, worship
• Date: May 6,2008

It is with great excitement that I announce that Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA, conference speaker, and author of The Emerging Church, Emerging Worship, and , They Like Jesus, But Not the Church and co-author of Listening to the Beliefs of the Emerging Church, has agreed to be our keynote speaker for the Abandoned: Worship As Life Seminar on Saturday, September 27, 2008!

Dan will speak in four sessions on various issues such as the emerging church, emerging worship, the future of worship in the church, etc.

I must say that Kimball’s book, The Emerging Church, absolutely changed my life. It set me on a course of deconstruction and reconstruction in my ecclesiology and Emerging Worship did the same for my worship philosophy. It is an unbelievable honor to have him come.

If you remember, last year Sally Morgenthaler and Shaun Groves were with us. It was a time of great challenge and encouragement.

My vision for Abandoned remains focused on the emerging worship conversation and educating, encouraging, and spurring on MBU Worship Arts students, as well as the local church worship community. The mission for the event is:

1) Simply put, Romans 12:1. We are ‘abandoned to worship as life’ because we have been commanded to offer our bodies of living sacrifices. Living – as in all of the time. That means our spiritual act of worship, or our spiritual lifestyle, never ceases. It’s not a something we clock in to do when we go to church and then clock out. Because of the cross the ‘temple’ of worship is now our own hearts. We don’t go to church, we are the church. And that means worship can and should happen everywhere, including the church.

2) ‘Worship as life’ eludes to the idea that as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, it impacts the people around us. This is the missional aspect of worship. In other words, as we personally worship God, we have a conversation, a connection, an intimate exchange of love between Father and child. After we’ve experienced this love in a time of worship, how could we not share the love we have been so freely given with others? Why wouldn’t we want those around us to experience what we have? If not, our worship has terminated on ourselves. We have to remember our salvation doesn’t end at the point we receive God’s free gift of grace. We have been saved to continue to redeem the world. So our worship should propel us outside the four walls of the church.

Soon, I will have an announcement regarding the artist[s] that will be here to close the day out on that Saturday evening. Be looking for more information regarding the seminar in the months ahead!

interview with sally morgenthaler

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible study, Christianity, Gospel, abandoned, art, church, community, culture, emerging church, emerging culture, evangelism, leadership, missiology, music, pastoring, photography, poetry, prayer, q & a, seminar, theology, video, worship
• Date: Sep 27,2007

I am excited to post another interview in preparation for the Abandoned: Worship as Life seminar this Saturday, September 29 on the campus of Missouri Baptist…

It is a distinct honor to have you listen on my conversation with one of my personal heroes and now good friend, Sally Morgenthaler. Many will know Sally from her best-selling book, Worship Evangelism and her appearance at many worship conferences over the last decade. Well as is the case with us all, Sally is evolving. But you’ll have to listen in to see how and why…

Note: Sorry for the quality. You’ll hear an echo with the audio. Just imagine we did this interview in a cave and you’ll forget about it after a while. Man, technology…

interview with shaun groves

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, abandoned, art, blogging, books, church, family, fatherhood, humor, independent music, music, parenting, planning, q & a, seminar, songwriting, theology, video, worship
• Date: Sep 26,2007

In preparation for the Abandoned: Worship as Life seminar this Saturday, September 29, I am going to be posting some interviews of the speakers throughout the week. Stay tuned…

Yesterday, I had the privilege to speak with Shaun Groves who will be with us on Saturday. As you will hear, Shaun is a great guy who is deeply insightful and hilarious to boot. I hope you’ll take the time to listen.

conversations with morgenthaler: part 1

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, emerging church, leadership, pastoring, q & a, quotes of note, sacred space, worship
• Date: Aug 6,2007

As I mentioned yesterday in my announcement about the abandoned: worship as life seminar at MoBap in September, I have had the privilege to be in conversation over the last couple of months with Sally Morgenthaler, who has been consulting me as I build this brand new Worship Arts major.

I can’t think of any expert and thinker that I would want more to ’speak into’ this new program. It has been a great honor to engage with Sally in this way and I’m excited to state again that Sally has graciously agreed to let me post some of her answers to my questions during our consulting conversations here on this blog.

In many ways, this will give you a taste of the types of things Sally will be talking about at abandoned. Also, some of our first conversation is what led me to speak about my topic, “Keeping the Sacred Space Sacred: Caring About the Right Things as Worship Leaders and Worshippers.”

In Part 1 of this continuing ‘Q & A’ series, Sally talks about her growing concern about production-driven churches and the impact the worship space has on our corporate worship:

Have we trained our people to care about the wrong things? Particularly, high production at all costs?

Sally: This describes so many of the large churches – over 1000 – that I have worked with and seen over the last few years who ironically have stopped growing, many of them are in denial that they are actually losing ground – they are saying that they are at least maintaining – where the last few years that is hard to even say that because the losses are becoming pretty evident.

The really savvy leaders are asking the deeper questions. However most leaders, especially if they are of the baby boomer variety, even young boomers, old X’ers who were trained by boomers, are going for the band-aid – let’s get a VJ machine, let’s get another screen, let’s increase the production value – thinking if they increase the excellence factor – the cool factor – that it will fix whatever problem.

It is a paradigm that is all about ‘people come because it’s a good show’ and if people aren’t coming, the show isn’t good enough. That is the paradigm that came of the 90’s which really came out of a pretty strong 80’s performance paradigm. It got entrenched in the 90’s. Many churches added praise and worship choruses in the 90’s. Make it good, if you are slacking, make it better.

What impact does the worship space have on worship?

Sally: Buildings are us. Buildings determine what we do and how we do it in worship. They are not neutral. If all we have is a box and a stage, it is driven by a broadcast value. Those churches are built for presentation. They are not built for interaction. They are not built for anything that would come close to a mystical experience.

Short of going back and asking how the environment impacts the worship and how we are helped to engage with God at a different level and with other, all we are left with is to tweak what they were built for which is performance.

To ask the question is very scary for many large churches. Because then we have to say, “We have the wrong kinds of buildings…”

It is an identity issue if a church’s identity is performance. When someone says ‘let’s create some intimacy’ it doesn’t jive with a performance mentality.

If a church is going to spend more money on technology to increase the excellence to bring more people in, that fits into the performance value. Making a room smaller, taking the stage and eliminating the distance – which is a huge issue for emerging culture – doesn’t feed the performance identity.