Kirk and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

A Blessing, from the Celtic Prayer website via Scott McKnight

Let nothing disturb thee,
nothing affright thee;
all things are passing,
God never changeth!
Patient endurance attaineth to all things;
who God possesseth
in nothing is wanting;
alone God sufficeth.

In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

Beats all hell out of Bobby McFerin. Tomorrow is Monday.

Fellowship Tech vs. Shelby

I confess that I've been an unabashed Shelby Hater. Shelby has not been working well in our environment. I'll spare you our nightmare of a version upgrade that Shelby had documented would be unsuccessful and lead to loss of data.

I've been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to make the move to Fellowship One.

Now, I have some additional research to do. Arena looks interesting.

What I do know is this. We will probably not reach our potential without radically improving our processes. Tools drive process. We need a tool.

Hiring a Kid

Todd Rhodes highlights a church hire that makes my heart ache.

I pray for this young leader. I have no doubt that he is an amazing pulpit presence. I'm certain he lights up the room.

But there is more to being a senior pastor than preaching and teaching. All the moreso is a huge church. That is all about leadership, and much of leadership is learned. With no church leadership experience, he has a huge learning curve just figuring out how to deal with the daily difficult situations that come up when living in community.

I don't know this young man, and I won't presume to know him or his heart. But I worry for him. I pray that this church has the wisdom to provide this young man with mentoring and coaching in leading his congregation and staff. I pray that he has a strong enough sense of self to manage the challenges and temptations that are simply part of a position like this.

kdl

It's All About the Weekend

Of all the changes that First Church has experienced in the past two years, probably the biggest culture shift we've yet to navigate is developing a real focus on the weekend.

In church, it is all about the weekend.

The guys at Granger preach it. Same with Fellowship. Most recently I stumbled on the the Church Leader Insights podcast, and they put it in a new way. Nelson Searcy calls it the Thursday Midnight rule. Same concept, but expressed in a new way. In their world, everything that can possibly be done in preparation for Sunday morning is done by Thursday night at midnight.

In a broader context, the concept is really pretty simple. Our efforts need to FOCUS on the weekend. Everything else we do SHOULD be secondary to getting ready for a weekend of amazing experiences in worship, and for our youth and children. Our resources should be PRIMARILY focused on the weekend experiences.

Why?

Because it's the weekend where we have our first and best impact. Visitors don't come to a small group. They check out the weekend service. Mom's and dads evaluate based on the weekend experience that kids have. It's not that everything else we do is not important. It's just simple logic that our best shot at converting a visitor to a regular attender happens on Sunday. It's where that first decision point happens.

As a staff, we probably have some changes to make. Most programming staff take Friday off. We close on Friday afternoon. I wonder if that is a momentum killer? Would we all be better off to take Monday?

Here's where I trip up. There is so much other stuff on my plate, that it's way to easy to let the weekend slide until Friday, or Saturday, or even Sunday morning. That puts our Sunday morning experience at risk. It's just flat dangerous.

So, my focus for this week will be on putting the weekend first, and let everything else fall in place after that. I suspect that my stress level will be lower by being more intentional about operating this way. My internal priority has always been Sunday. I've been careless in letting my practice get out of synch with that priority.

More than Meets The Eye

An update on our Compix CG graphics situation. This gets even more entertaining.

The new CG is here, and after being fired up and tweaked still looks like crap. Lots of jitter in the key channel.

That's not a good thing. What's interesting to me is the additional issues it brought to light. In working through the issue, our enterprising engineer Dan Stark noticed that the output was behaving differently on each of our two switchers. So he started testing them as well.

Seems the switchers have an issue too.

So... we're getting two new Echolab switcher frames, and probably another new CG.

Don't you wish technology issues were just single issue, straightforward, one button solutions. Systems are so deeply integrated today, troubleshooting is about peeling back layers, and you I'm learing that you usually find more under the layers than you were counting on.

Two Tribes

There is a great article over at Christian Week (ht to Scott Williams) that speaks well to the tension between emergent and the established church.

Darryl Dash quotes Alan Roxburn, comparing the relationship between these two tribes as "next-door neighbor's with a high fence built between them independently trying to invite their other neighbor's to different block parties being held on the same Saturday afternoon."

I think that's a pretty good analogy, although I'd point out that it's not just limited to the emergent/traditional relationship. The same dynamic existed in the early 80's when praise and worship, seeker oriented services began spilling south out of South Barrington. The "traditional" at the time didn't much like having a shiny new kid on the block.

Roxburn calls for the two tribes to refocus on the gifts they can give one another.

Emergent embraces the liturgy, art and some of the worship form of the traditional church. It seems very cautious and wary of structure. Or to be more specific "the idolatry of structure, according to my friend Todd. Yet, some structure is necessary, especially as growth in the community occurs. There is danger in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Traditional churches are, frankly jealous of the fact that emergent churches have the ability to draw in the young, and specifically young families. They often have facility and resource, but often can't get over the hump of change to design an experience that will draw a new generation.

What I'm mulling is a new paradigm. Not a church within a church... But the church recognizing the gifts and strengths of each part, and partnering together for effectiveness.

I see a few examples of that. Dan Kimball wrote recently about our need for 'Gandalfs'... mentors in faith and ministry. He mentions the fact that his church is partnered with an "aging congregation," and that they are working together in partnership. I'm not sure what that partnership looks like, but I think it's worth studying.

Perhaps we can emerge from within the existing traditional church, ending with an intergenerational community that embraces all. That, I think, ought to be our goal.

I thought I had a quarter tank...

It really helps when the gas gauge actually works.

Got a call from my favorite middle school youth dude today... stuck in the middle (sorry Sean) of nowhere. Seems the church van just up and quite running.

He was flat out of gas... which was sort of not his fault, since the gas gauge was screwed up.

But... he'd driven from Wichita to KC... and back to Wichita... and most of the way back to KC. Like 700 miles. So that would be pretty good milage for a full sized van.

So Ken, you get today's salute. You were laughing even though you were stranded on the side of the road... and I get to make fun of you! Life... is good.

Walking the Talk

From Mark Batterson:

"Church planting is in my blood. We currently have a church-planter-in-residence on staff at all times so we're always in the process of planting a church."

"Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

Matthew 28:19 "The Message"

There is, I think, something to be said for putting your money where your mouth is. As cool as I think it is that the Kansas Area United Methodist Church now has a full time staff person dedicated to church revitalization and church-planting... how cool is it that a single church makes equipping and training new church leaders a priority in time and resources.

Once again, my hat's off to National Community Church and Mark Batterson.

The Heat is On

The news is out. It gets hot in Kansas in July. The Wichita Eagle ran a story today on different organizations and individuals response to the heatwave. First Church received nice coverage.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/15062286.htm

We were contacted by the reporter early on Monday morning, and immediately put the reporter in contact with the correct staff person. By early afternoon, the reporter and a photograper were at the church. The result is a very nice piece that reflects well on us a community, taking care of one another.

Free media is the best media.

The Idolatry of Success

Michael Spencer has a facinating and convicting post on the Idolatry of Success in the American church. It's a reasoned and well defined exposition of the dangers of the prosperity gospel, and our uniquely American sense of entitlement to blessing. He shines a light on the fine line between growing the Kingdom, and growth in the local church as the measure of our success. He contrasts success as a goal, versus success as a set of values that drive our behavior.

His last paragraph caught my attention, for obvious reasons.

"A final word to those who will work in the visual and communicative arts. One of the great ministries that is most needed to the church itself is to break the visual hold of the idolatry of success. As scripture says in 1 John 2:16 Everything that belongs to the world—what the sinful self desires, what people see and want, and everything in this world that people are so proud of—none of this comes from the Father; it all comes from the world.

This visual, sensual aspect of idolatry can be attacked with a commitment to the values of Jesus and his Kingdom in the visual arts. Much evil has been done by those who have used the ability to create visual communication in the subtle service of the idolatry of success. I hope that younger communicators will realize that we can begin to see God’s Kingdom differently if we can see the world that God loves differently."

I'm still processing this. What does my commitment to Christ look like in the visual arts? How can we portray this world in the way God sees it? How can we hold our mirror to the world, so as to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom?

I'm Feeling Much Better...

Wow. I feel much better.

For the past two weeks, we've been doing battle with our primary on-air graphics machine. It's a dedicated PC running proprietary software with a proprietary board outputing SDI video. We used it to configure a router, and perform some other tasks.

That was a bad idea. We ended up with a corrupted driver, which should have been an easy fix.

Heavens no! We couldn't get drivers to load. Couldn't get the machine to recognize the board. Heck, I couldn't even get it online to download software. I've been troubleshooting PC's for a long time. I'm not a wiz by any means, but if you tell me what to do, I can certainly get through just about any problem. Not this time. I was feeling pretty stupid.

Just got off the phone with the manufacturer. Seems our trouble was a bit more serious. The motherboard was shot. No response from any of the PCI slots or the ethernet port.

So... I'm not a PC idiot afterall!

And that makes my day.

Plan Strategically - Act Tactically

Laurie and I were talking the other day.

I don't think that you act strategically. I think strategic thinking is about planning.

You can't be strategic in crisis. You act tactically. Tactics are born from strategy.

So, that's strange...

I've been "out" in the blogosphere with the particular blog for like 36 hours. Only one person knows that I'm here. (Hi Andrew!)

So... how's come I've already got two subscribers. Hmmmmm.

A Work In Progress

I've been telling folks that they need to be active in blogging for about two years now.

I suppose it's about time for the cobbler to buy a pair of shoes!

Our team at First Church is very much a work in progress. In many ways we've jumped into the deep end of the pool, going from minimal technology, to maximum potential. We're blessed with an amazing toolbox.

This blog will chronicle our progress in learning to use the tools.