Leadership and Contemporary Worship Institute 2008

What are you doing in the first part of October? I want to personally invite you to Leadership Institute and Contemporary Worship Institute here at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners will be the keynote speaker for Leadership Institute.

Leadership Institute

Contemporary Worship Institute

I am looking forward to presenting with Jeff and Amanda in the workshop - Equipping Volunteers to Care for the Congregation. Leave a comment if you are planning on being here and I would love to meet you in person.

Open Source Liturgy

I read a post this morning that really piqued my interest:

Open Source Liturgy Project: Developers Needed

A call from the General Board of Discipleship for developers to work on an open source project for the texts of communion, baptism, service of Christian marriage and service of death and resurrection. I think that this has the potential to be an important part of the work of renewing the church.

Check out the post for more information on the project and how to submit your name, if interested in being a developer.

Internet Campus - Conclusion (8 of 8)

This wraps up the series on the benchmarking trip to LifeChurch.tv to look at their internet campus. I want to make sure you know where we have been and where we are going on this series. First, previous posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Is
• Not
• New Staff
• Care
• Live
• Terry Storch

Next week, I am going to respond to some questions about internet campus including:

• Why start an internet campus?
• What about sacraments?
• What about the Book of Discipline?
• What about the incarnation?
• How could the connection be utilized?

What else? I want to hear your hardest questions that you have when thinking about an internet campus and will seek to respond to each one. You can post a comment here or email me directly with the link in the About Me page. Thanks.

LifeChurch.tv Internet Campus - Terry Storch (7 of 8)

We were able to spend some dedicated time with Terry Storch while we were at LifeChurch.tv and I wanted to share what amounts to notes from a brain dump / Q and A time with him. Good stuff.

• Don’t look at spending a lot of time for a final release incorporating all the features
  • Look at getting the 40% that you want to nail done right. Then work at getting the next version with the next set of features.
• If you try to build it all in the first place it is likely that you will get:
  • 40% right on
  • 30% not what you wanted at all or is actually useless
  • 30% is average functionality
• It may be easier to do something offline or physically than it is to do it technologically
  • Downloading a PDF, adding a check and sending it in the mail may be the best option over an online solution
• You can’t solve every problem by throwing better technology at it.
• Part of his role is to bring altitude and perspective to the particular ministry area
  • Is this really a problem worth trying to solve?
  • What is the problem that you are really trying to solve?
  • How much time is it really going to take?
• You may end up saying no because it is not worth the time and effort.

We the Purple

We the Purple by Marcia Ford is a look at independent voters in America with a Christian perspective. Ford has published several books with this latest addition taking her distinct perspective to the political arena.

We the Purple is both about and finds its primary audience in independent voters - those who do not claim a political party. Ford takes the reader through many aspects of the independent voter from the nuances of registration in states to the potential that the internet has for independent voters to organize. Included are many profiles of independent voters from across the country.

Ford writes in a very personal way and uses a mix of data, definitions and vignettes to draw attention to what she see as the plight of independent voters - lack of attention or respect. She often quotes others as a part of bringing the point home.

I enjoyed learning about independent voters and the political environment in various states in response to these voters. I find myself resonating with those who do not claim a particular political party, but did not find Ford’s description of the independent voter particularly compelling. I also found stereotypes of people of faith in response to politics that I do not believe are the case any longer. I recommend this book to those who are interested in learning more about independent voters.

Free Book - Wild Goose Chase Contest

As a part of being able to give an early review of Wild Goose Chase, the author and publisher made it possible to give away a free copy with a contest right here at Thoughts of Resurrection. That’s right, I said free.

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post with a reason (or reasons) why I should choose you as the winner of the contest and I will ship a fresh copy of Wild Goose Chase to you free of charge.

I will choose a winner from all of the comments and ship the book to you via the USPS on August 18.

Wild Goose Chase

“Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit - An Geadh-Glas, or ‘the Wild Goose’” (Mark Batterson). This is the story behind the title for Mark Batterson’s latest book, Wild Goose Chase. About Mark from the back cover of the book:

Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of Washington D.C.’s National Community Church, widely recognized as one of America’s most innovative churches. Mark is the author of the bestselling In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day and a widely read blogger. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Lora, and their three children.

In Wild Goose Chase, Batterson has created an excellent text seeking to inspire the reader to step into the adventure of chasing the Wild Goose.  The main thrust of the book is to address cages that we find ourselves in that prevent us from chasing the Holy Spirit and God’s dream for our lives. Batterson covers the cages of: responsibility, routine, assumptions, guilt, failure and fear. Batterson assesses each of these with a refreshing mix of biblical narrative, personal experience, perspectives from church history, and stories from National Community Church. Each chapter closes with hope, next steps and probing questions for self-reflection.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wild Goose Chase, finding it inspiring and encouraging. Batterson writes well and uses solid examples from both inside and outside the church world. I was struck by Batterson’s use of scripture throughout the book - both in narrative examples and subtle endnoted references. This technique was quite effective and it reminded me of the style of some of John Wesley’s writing.

Wild Goose Chase will be released on August 19 and you can pre-order a copy from Amazon here or find out more about the book including a free download, preview chapter and Mark’s 10 Steps to Setting Life Goals at chasethegoose.com.

I will go back to Wild Goose Chase in the future and I heartily recommend it to those seeking to find or rediscover the adventure of pursuing God’s dream.

LifeChurch.tv Internet Campus - Live (6 of 8)

One of the things that I found to be most fascinating in the trip to LifeChurch.tv was that currently the content used for the internet campus is not live. While the content (video stream) is not live, the worship experience is live. Those who are there to worship together make the experience live, even though the content was recorded at a worship experience at an earlier time.

They had previously had live streaming from one of the physical campuses, but found that this did not allow for production for the internet campus to match what was happening in the video stream. It turns out that people do not care if the content is live, the experience is live and worship happens.

Who knew?

LifeChurch.tv Internet Campus - Care (5 of 8)

As I am currently serving as a Congregational Care pastor at Resurrection, I was particularly interested to hear how LifeChurch.tv does care on their Internet Campus.

There is a team of volunteers that serves to pray with people live before, during and after the worship experience. This seems to be a key area in which care is provided for the people of the internet campus. Life groups (small groups) are encouraged to be able to respond to life events. The life groups that meet physically may be able to provide this support more tangibly than those that meet online.

Brandon Donaldson, Internet Campus Pastor, does have counseling sessions with members of the internet campus - primarily via phone, although Skype has also been used for this purpose.

Bishop Scott Jones is on Facebook

That rocks!