Marva Dawn Challenges Our Sabbath Practices

I have been challenged by many colleagues throughout my ministry to observe a day off. Several years ago I read Randy Frazee’s Making Room for Life and challenged with two thoughts: (1) that in scripture the day begins at sunset so the rhythm of the day is relationships, rest, and work; (2) that we work from rest and not rest from work. In Genesis 1 we are created in the image of God on the sixth day, charged to work and produce, and spend the next day resting with God on the Sabbath. As a result I no longer talk about a day off … I am trying to work into a practice of Sabbath. In this clip, from the folks over at The Work of the People, Marva Dawn pushes me to explore with the church I serve how to incorporate a truer Sabbath-keeping into our life together.

Too Old, Too Young, or Too …?

I found a couple of posts at Fast Company this week that challenged my thinking about how I see the audience that the web can attract to what we do in churches, non-profits, businesses, or even (God-forbid) politics. The first was a post from Richard Brooks in response to a colleague’s assertion “Our target audience is too old for blogs. They’re too old for Tweeter (sic). They’re too old for Facebook. I don’t see our audience reading blogs.”

Brooks responds:

“Do you mind if I add my .02?” I asked. Since I made and served coffee to our guests already, they may have felt indebted to me, but in any case they asked me to continue.

“Blog posts are just like Web pages; each blog post you create is another opportunity to rank well at the search engines. You don’t have to worry whether your audience reads blogs, just if they use the Internet and search engines. (And I assume you do believe that, otherwise you wouldn’t have an e-commerce store.) Your blog posts can attract that search traffic and either funnel the prospect to your site or we can e-commerce right to your blog itself.

“According to some recent surveys the fastest growing segment in Facebook is women 35 and over. A lot of ‘grandmas’ are joining Facebook because that’s where they can see their grandkids’ photos. The average age of someone on Twitter is 31 (which means a lot of people are older).

“A strategic combination of search engine optimization and social media marketing (along with some hard work) can definitely increase the quantity and quality of traffic coming to your Web site. Plus, with social media you can better engage your audience and get feedback from them on what your next products should be.

“You might end up being a little ahead of the curve for some of your audience, but better to be a little ahead than behind.”

So there I thought to myself, I have been making some wrong assertions. I wonder who else has?

Then I read Lindsay Pollack’s interesting reflection on her new assistant and what she brought to their work together. Pollack is a member of Generation X and her assistant is of Generation Y. She offered the following observations in her post “Why I Love My Gen Y Assistant.”

1. She brings up things that never occur to me.
2. She’s just tech-ier.
3. She understands personal branding.
4. She’s not really into the 9 to 5.
5. Her energy is phenomenal.

I give thanks that God has placed members of the Gen X, Gen Y, Boomer, and Silent generations on my team. It often makes for interesting conversations and usually means that we can make better decisions together than we could make separately. The above posts also remind me that I need think through the positives that each staff person (and their generation) brings to the table and avoid the easy cliches about a generation’s supposed shortcomings.

Join in on the NINES Conference

Recently I have become intrigued with folks who challenge each other to say something powerful in a short time. First I met the folks at TED Talks who moved their live conference format to the web. At their conferences a wide variety of speakers had exactly fifteen minutes to present an idea. They now have taken their “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world” to the web with over 500 talks available online.

Then last month my colleagues Doug Ward and Dennis Peay introduced me through their tweets to a similar event in Raleigh called Ignite Raleigh. At that event presenters had 5 minutes and 20 slides with to meet the challenge “enlighten us, but make it quick!” By the way, you may want to check out Derek Brown’s “What Would Jesus Tweet” presentation.

Now the folks at Leadership Network and Catalyst have combined to bring together 70 presenters who were asked the question “If you had nine minutes to talk one-on-one with thousands of church leaders, what is the one thing that you would tell them?” The result in a series of nine minute videos that start running at 9:09 AM (CDT) on 09/09/2009. Its free, you can eat and drink your own snacks, check your email, send a tweet, and update your Facebook status and never leave home! What’s not to like!

For more information and to register click over to The NINES Conference now!

Join in on the NINES Conference

Recently I have become intrigued with folks who challenge each other to say something powerful in a short time. First I met the folks at TED Talks who moved their live conference format to the web. At their conferences a wide variety of speakers had exactly fifteen minutes to present an idea. They now have taken their “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world” to the web with over 500 talks available online.

Then last month my colleagues Doug Ward and Dennis Peay introduced me through their tweets to a similar event in Raleigh called Ignite Raleigh. At that event presenters had 5 minutes and 20 slides with to meet the challenge “enlighten us, but make it quick!” By the way, you may want to check out Derek Brown’s “What Would Jesus Tweet” presentation.

Now the folks at Leadership Network and Catalyst have combined to bring together 70 presenters who were asked the question “If you had nine minutes to talk one-on-one with thousands of church leaders, what is the one thing that you would tell them?” The result in a series of nine minute videos that start running at 9:09 AM (CDT) on 09/09/2009. Its free, you can eat and drink your own snacks, check your email, send a tweet, and update your Facebook status and never leave home! What’s not to like!

For more information and to register click over to The NINES Conference now!

Join in on the NINES Conference

Recently I have become intrigued with folks who challenge each other to say something powerful in a short time. First I met the folks at TED Talks who moved their live conference format to the web. At their conferences a wide variety of speakers had exactly fifteen minutes to present an idea. They now have taken their “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world” to the web with over 500 talks available online.

Then last month my colleagues Doug Ward and Dennis Peay introduced me through their tweets to a similar event in Raleigh called Ignite Raleigh. At that event presenters had 5 minutes and 20 slides with to meet the challenge “enlighten us, but make it quick!” By the way, you may want to check out Derek Brown’s “What Would Jesus Tweet” presentation.

Now the folks at Leadership Network and Catalyst have combined to bring together 70 presenters who were asked the question “If you had nine minutes to talk one-on-one with thousands of church leaders, what is the one thing that you would tell them?” The result in a series of nine minute videos that start running at 9:09 AM (CDT) on 09/09/2009. Its free, you can eat and drink your own snacks, check your email, send a tweet, and update your Facebook status and never leave home! What’s not to like!

For more information and to register click over to The NINES Conference now!

A Brother’s Wisdom 1 – Nothing But Joy

As Queen Street Church begins a teaching series on the Letter of James I will post a few notes and links. I am especially grateful to Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed for the title of my series, “A Brother’s Wisdom,” and his thoughtful postings this past year from his soon to be released commentary on James.

Let’s check in with James, chapter 1:

Salutation
1 James, a servant (or slave) of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.

Here James, the brother of our Lord, begins a conversation with a Jewish community dispersed around the world (most likely outside of Israel). These Jews are more narrowly “followers of Jesus” as is James. James humbly introduces himself as a servant and reminds us of his brother Jesus in the process. We begin with a portion of James (verses 2-4) which is often quoted as a key to positive thinking. McKnight suggest we should read the rest of James to understand that the “trials of many kinds” (verse 2) look more like the following:

1. 1:2-4 suggests he’s talking about the sorts of things that try one’s very faith and that lead to the virtue of perseverance.
2. 1:5-8 suggests he’s talking about the sorts of things that lead us to cry out to God for wisdom.
3. 1:9-11 suggests he’s talking about stuff the poor are experiencing and here we can explore all kinds of texts in James, including the judicially-sponsored exploitation of the poor (2:1-7) and the oppression of the poor by the rich (5:1-6).

We continue reading from James chapter 1:

Faith and Wisdom
2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6 But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7, 8 for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

First (verses 3-4), James offers pastoral counsel to his fellow Jews in the midst of their troubles of living in a Roman world and under suspicion and often rejected by their sisters and brothers in the Jewish Community. McKnight offers this gem “James takes the long haul view of suffering. He’s not a wimp; he’s an aggressive, active pastor who knows that God will bring justice and, in that situation, they were to take it on the chin and endure the suffering. God would bring justice.” Further, no where does James suggest that God sends suffering our way or that suffering is an act of God. Rather, James promises that God will be with us in our suffering and through that suffering (testing) produces faith and that from faith comes maturity and completeness (perfection). This may remind us of the Paul’s words: “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:3-5).

Second (verses 5-6), McKinght reminds us that the readers of this letter were “were mostly the oppressed poor (cf. 1:9-11; 2:1-13; 5:1-6) who were tempted to find justice (1:20; 4:1-2; 5:1-6) and perhaps even by using violence (1:20; 4:1-2).” So the wisdom being sought is how to secure the rights and privileges that the rich and powerful never concede without a fight. So following the teaching of Jesus, we should ask, seek, and knock at the door of our God seeking wisdom (see Matthew 7:7-11). Later, James will challenge his readers to engage in peace-mongering (McKnight’s word) in the face of oppression for “the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace‑loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17).

Poverty and Riches
9 Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, 10 and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away.

James introduces a thought that will be returned to throughout his letter. The rich will disappear like the the flower of the field (it also seems interesting that implication in verse 9 is that the rich will boast in being brought low). Here James echoes the words of his brother in the “Sermon on the Plain” where the poor are blessed and the rich have words of woe spoken over them (see Luke 6:20-26). He also speaks to his mother’s promise that the proud will be scattered, the powerful will be brought down from their thrones, and the rich sent empty away (see Mary’s Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55).

James continues ….

Trial and Temptation
12 Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. 13 No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 14 But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 15 then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved.
17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Temptation and blessing are an interesting pair tied together by James. It is important here to see James’ truth (and it better become ours) that God does not send trials and temptations. Those temptations arise from desires within us, which lead to sin, and ultimately to death. James also clarifies for us that the trials of verses 2 and 3 are not from God as well.

We continue with James …

Hearing and Doing the Word
19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Sometimes, I think God’s word just speaks for itself. I cannot figure how anyone can can say that just hearing the word of God and not doing what it tells them to do is being faithful to Jesus. In verses 26 and 27 James suggests (at least the following): bridle your tongue, care for the poor (literally the orphans and widows), and do not live the world’s way. The difference is between observing oneself in a mirror or looking thought the window of God’s way (law) of liberty. Which will we choose? In the interest of not having a worthless religion, let me ask you to consider doing at least one of these this week. Hold your tongue, care for the poor, or live unstained by the world.

This week I also encourage you to write the following words on your heart:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

Learn to tell your story …

We live out a stories about who we are, not a list of propositions. This may not seem obvious to some of us, but its true. Kaihan Krippendorff, one of Fast Company’s Expert Bloggers, noted the following in a post yesterday about the power of narratives:

When humans first started to communicate with each other, they did so by sharing stories. They kept their history and traditions alive by spinning a tale to connect a sequence of events. Because this has been going on for so long, there is something instinctive in our brains that makes us attuned to narratives and stories.

Stories are how we learn. As Iacoboni explains, “Early on in life we learn a lot of things through stories. As a child, you listen to your parents and teachers and you learn lessons from their stories about right and wrong. When you go to bed, you are told stories. There is something almost primal about our evolution and development that leads us back to listening to stories.”

So to be a great communicator, a person needs to understand the importance of using narratives. To get people excited about a new idea or thought, he or she needs to be a great storyteller.

I appreciate that Krippendorf left us with homework.

1. Does my company have a story? Where did we come from and how did we get here?
2. Can I craft my company narrative in a way that other people can relate to?
3. Can reliving my company narrative on a daily basis make my business stronger and more focused?

I got to get to my homework now, so why are you still reading?

What’s in a name? Mission or Church?

Brad Abare over at Church Marketing Sucks described traveling to Hawaii for a co-worker’s wedding. While there they worshiped at Blue Water Mission, a new church in downtown Honolulu. Brad was struck by the name and it got him to thinking about “Another name for church?” Brad posts the following:

Mission. I think I like it. The word “mission” conjures up all sorts of things in my mind, including:
* Intentionality and focus
* A task or duty to be completed
* Sending out or being sent
* A haven and refuge
* A spiritual place
In other words, mission sounds a lot like church!

Brad left me with the question what defines church? What does the word church conjure where you live? For those who are leaders of other organizations and businesses what words describe what you do? Do they make sense to a broader public? Just wondering …