The pastor of Church of the Highlands (another church we’ve checked out) recently started blogging. I find it to be very encouraging and effective. That is a cool thing.
Other churches are actively using our project, ChurchWeblogs, to consolidate blogs of staff and members. Christ Church of the Valley is one. You can see their CW site here. That, too, is a cool thing.
Much of the New Testament can be seen as Paul blogging from prison. He just used the technology of the day. Much like letters, weblogs have the ability to be very personal yet facilitate community.
And it’s remarkably cheap. You can set up a weblog for free and push it out to thousands of church members and billions of strangers. Compare that with the massive overhead for video/radio, and the relatively low footprint of those mediums.
So you would think that this would be something churches are embracing.
Yet there is still much fear out there in churches about weblogs. Some require huge disclaimers. Some staff blog anonymously to protect their jobs. And sometimes staff are outright forbidden to do it. I’m not sure why this is.
As far as I know, staff and members drive by plenty of liquor stores and regularly push their carts past the wine aisle at Wal Mart. They could easily create a PR catastrophe.
Staff/members regularly interact with people in uncontrolled environments. They could easily say or do something wrong.
So it would seem that this is just a situation to be managed. But I think there is a “there-be-dragons” component. The web is still spooky to many folks:
“Hi, I’m Chris Hanson with Dateline NBC. Have a seat over there.
Do you want to explain the Antinomianist tendencies of your last blog entry? Here’s the transcript.
You know you’re sending people straight to Hell, right?”
So it’s good to see churches that are pushing past the confusion and using the written word to generate old-school Christian community. That’s a cool church thing.
We visited Mountaintop Church this weekend, and while there were several cool things about this church, the one I want to mention are the birth announcements.
In the nursery they had a whiteboard that had the announcement of the birth of a baby girl, and the parent’s names. The same information was on a chalkboard in the book store.
As a technology dude, you’d think I’d be saying that these should have been up on a churchwide network of plasma screens or something. But chalk and dry erase is technology, and the handwritten nature of the announcement was very effective. It kind of stuck out, and I took notice of the info. I think the words were in pink.
I was further reminded of the joy of our two kids being born and the community support we had. It said alot about how this church functions.
To get a handle on this, think about the Amish. The Amish are commonly perceived to be anti-technology. But if you read up on it, you find that one of their main issues is that they believe technology destroys relationships as God intended. Thus, you may hear a power saw at a barn raising, but phones are often frowned upon.
Likewise, I’m sure there is a way to put birth announcements in hi-def to multiple screens throughout a church. And I bet there’s a way to do it in a very positive way that builds relationships as God intended.
But it was cheap, effective, and did the Right Thing by using a chalk board.
OK, here’s a revelation from the wide wide world o’ churches. I’ve always thought this, now experience confirms it.
Loud music is good for worship.
Notice I didn’t say any particular style. Whatever style you play for worship, make it louder.
Whenever I tell people I sing…99% of the time the response is the same. It’s something along the lines of “well…you don’t want to hear ME sing”.
Personally, I think nearly everyone has a good singing voice. It’s primarily a function of practice and confidence. I also think that God would not tell us to sing without giving us some ability.
So…given this very scientific figure of a 99% Oh-no-I-can’t-sing ratio. it follows that 99% of the people out there don’t like to hear their own voice.
And it actually is scientific. One ‘fun’ thing about singing is that when you hear your own singing, it’s always whacked out. You’re hearing all sorts of phasing and resonance and audible ‘junk’ that goes on in your head. In fact, when you sing “right” you typically sound crappiest to yourself.
So to sing well, you have to develop a sense of what you sound like outside your head. You can’t make adjustments based on what you hear. You have to adjust based on what you know.
Thus: You practice to figure out what is right. You develop confidence to have the courage to sing in front of thousands of people even when you sound awful in your head.
(and you cushy singers with the in-ear monitors….you just better hope they always work right and the mix is good)
To the typical 99% congregational singer, who lacks practice and confidence, hearing their own voice will shut them down quicker than a punch in the gut.
So how do you get them to sing out like God wants them to?
Here’s what I’ve seen. When the music is loud, people sing. When the music is quiet, people don’t sing. Don’t argue with that. It’s true.
You know what the funny thing is? When the music suddenly gets quiet, people suddenly sing louder. I think it’s because they hear other people singing louder than themselves at that point.
Plus, they’re in the right mindset, They’ve been singing their hearts out in worship, not thinking “what do I sound like” or “am I embarrassing myself?”
So, regardless of what kind of music you’re playing, if you want people in your church to sing out, crank it up a notch. It will take a good sound engineer to pull this off without making it harsh….and you’ll have to deal with the “too loud crowd” (who really are not worshiping anyway and just want to complain about their self-centered experience), but you’ll have a worshiping congregation in no time.
This product is released under the creative commons license. That means you could play a nine inch nails song in your church without additional license.
But to play a Christian song, you’re probably going to need CCLI. Better go check those invoices and fill out those reports.
So I had the kids tonight, and we picked up a Hide and Seek Safari for the evening.
This game is like the airport. Except instead of sweeping hundreds of passengers for weapons, you’re sweeping your house for a monkey.
The lights start bllnking when you get close, then a shrill tone sounds as you get very close to the monkey. Which is to say, this is just like hunting a real monkey in your house.
Seriously, this is actually a great toy. We’ve burned about an hour playing it and it’s fun everytime. Plus, it’s a game that all ages can play…even our 3.5 year old.
Well, people have started to ask questions so I might as well come clean. Wouldn’t want that nasty Turkish prison rumor to start up again.
Our family has decided to visit other churches.
We have been at Hunter Street for 13 years, and we love Hunter Street. We love the people. I love the music ministry and enjoy my level of involvement immensely. The church means, has meant, and will always mean a great deal to us.
But I want to get out there and see what other believers are doing. I (obviously) spend a chunk of time on the web, and I have also visited quite a few churches in support of music. I’m fascinated by the different styles, techniques, and organizational approaches out there.
I love seeing the great diversity and differences in the body of Christ . I love seeing the things that don’t change. I love seeing how some folks excel at certain things.
So this is primarily a research project for our family to see what’s happening in the world. I can’t say if we will leave Hunter Street or if we’ll jump back in when the time is right (yeah, I know I’ll be payin’ back some dues!). I just don’t know.
In the meantime, I’ll probably blog about our visits to other churches. I will only say positive things, of course. It would be downright evil to visit someone’s church then hop on the web and comment negatively. There’s too much of that in the world, no need to add to the pile.
So far we’ve visited 3 churches, one extensively. More on that soon.
I’m kind of a student of pop music. I examine melody lines and chord progressions of popular songs like a scientist would study grasshoppers on Easter Island.
Assuming the grasshopper busted out in happy Whoa-Whoa’s and Nah Nahs, and gave people a happy feeling.
That said, compared with some of my friends (Jacob?) I’m a mere babe in the woods when it comes to the subject. And I mean crying baby, not like…a “hot babe” in the woods. That would completely change the meaning of the phrase.
So whenever I hear a song that’s made it to television, I run over to iTunes and buy it.
Check out the chorus to “I love it when you call” by “The Feeling” (good grief, are these kids even thinking about band names anymore?):
O I-I,I-I,I
O you could chose a friend but you don’t seem to have the time
O I-I,I-I,I
I wonder if you ever get to say what’s on your mind
O take a little time, take a little time
I love it when you call
I love it when you call
I love it when you call
But you never call at all
So what’s the complication it’s only conversation
I love it when you call
But you never call at all
Now this is not a Christian song. And to say you could make it one would contain far, far too much of the “God is my girlfriend” flavor for my taste.
But driving along in the car it’s definitely possible for Christ himself to reach out of that tune and give you and old fashioned Peter style rebuke. Not with every lyric and note, but with the meaning behind it.
Plenty of free stuff hitting the web. Including Coldplay, Motley Crue, and Metallica. To be fair, Metallica will probably have to pay people to download their music…that’s a whole new model.
So this is a good time to talk about Thirdcat, which is something a friend of mine and I are working on. It’s going to be a system that allows labels and musicians to:
a) Put together a collection of mp3’s, pictures, videos, text, and other media into a digital “album”
b) Price the album with any of the new pricing models, including the name your own price model
c) quickly send that link out to networks of people via Email, Facebook, Myspace, etc.
d) create solid, monetary incentives for fans to recommend projects to their friends
There’s a whole lot of stuff to it, but you’ll just have to see it.
Coding for the beta version is about 90% done. We’ll need about 20 testers, if anyone is interested.
As I’ve mentioned, I think all Christian music should have a “name your price” component to it. Even “take it for free”. That seems to be the most New Testament model out there for a ministry. But there’s not really a way to do that right now, so we’re building it.
In the meantime, I just decided this weekend to start giving away CDs. So from now on I’m going to carry them around to give away. This idea comes from a recent interview I read from a local pastor. More on that later.
Next time you hear one of our more fundamentalist leaning brothers/sisters say something like “your music looks just like the worlds music!”, point this out.
The world loves choirs, robes and preaching. So as churches, we better stop that….
On the way home this weekend, we found ourselves in a flash traffic jam in a remote section of interstate. From the commotion about a mile up the road, and from the amount of emergency vehicles, we figured that it was a bad wreck.
As we got closer, this was confirmed. A badly mangled motorcycle was all over the right side of the highway. It was in several large pieces, and none of them looked like they hadn’t been severely damaged. In the middle of the wreckage, a couple sheets covered a small pile of something. We quickly realized that it was the body of the unfortunate rider.
20 or so yards later, a state trooper was taking pictures of a semi truck.
It was pretty sad to realize that the person who, just a few minutes earlier, had been happily motoring along was now a statistic. How quickly a life can become an item of history.
I looked up the news article later. Turns out his name was James Randall Price. He was 21 years old.
Alot of times people ask me “you know that thing you blogged about but didn’t really get too specific? Well…were you talking about XYZ?”
The answer is usually no. I don’t find too many specific things to generalize about.
However, I often see the same patterns across my family life, my job life, my church life, my music life, my random life, stuff I think about when I’m staring at the wall, and stuff that God seems to whisper and yell through all of the above and things not mentioned.
Today it’s about leadership, growth, and abilities. We recently hired another employee in my group. And as the leader it’s my responsibility to…well…lead.
We don’t tend to grow or expand our abilities by doing the same things over and over. A physical workout is not about repetition. Repetition just gets you tired.
A workout grows our muscles, strengthens our tendons, and improves our overall health and ability by moving us beyond our ability…and temporarily breaking stuff in the process. This is why we get sore. We have to wound ourselves before we get better, faster, and stronger.
If you never add weight. You just get tired. If you only do one exercise, your body adapts and progress stops. You have to constantly push yourself not just past your ‘comfort’ level…but to the point where you actually stress your body so that it will respond….learn…grow. It will expand to fill what space you give it, and that deficit is temporarily damaging.
Of course, you must be cautious not to injure yourself..but knowing the difference is a whole other post.
So, when you’re a leader tasked with developing and enhancing the capabilities of your group, you have to learn what you can about what motivates them, then task them in ways that will make them grow and be productive.
And here’s the tricky part. To grow as a leader, we must task them in ways that will test our capabilities as a leader. This includes taking a risk when things don’t feel so safe.
When someone is “not ready”. Is it the person who is not ready? Or is it us that’s not ready to fly by the seat of our pants a bit? Is adding 5 pounds really going to make it an impossible lift?
When we’re keeping someone safe…are we really just protecting ourselves from the prospect of someone who fought their way back through the woods and came back bigger, stronger, and faster?
Are we ready for their smile and the thrill of victory? Are we ready for that to push us beyond ourselves?
As we become better leaders, we directly control less and less of our organization. As we grow to that point, we have to shift from being a hands-on decision maker to trusting our abilities as leaders so that others can make the decisions we used to make.
That loss of control is going to result in soreness. But it’s going to make us much, much stronger leaders.
Are we ready to do that so that our organizations can develop their abilities? Are we ready to lift a few more pounds and not be stagnant?
Due to some dietary changes, our family is drinking organic whole milk. This changes a lifelong rule that my wife has about whole milk.
The rule is that it doesn’t exist, and you have to buy the chalky water that is skim milk. It’s useless. It really is, and at least one remedial dietitian agrees. So for now we’re kickin’ it old moo with whole milk.
My daughter’s take: “Dad…we have this new milk that will give you a real milk mustache!”
There are multiple problems when more traditional congregations move to clapping, but the most annoying one is the “1 and 3″ clap. That’s where you clap on the first and the third beat.
This technique works for some tunes…more likely you country/bluegrass/quartet tunes or other things that have more of a “square” beat. Think squaredance. There’s a reason it’s called that.
But if you try 1-3 on anything with a groove, well….it’ doesn’t work. Most songs need a 2-4 clap. If you can’t envision that, it’s generally where the snare drum hits in a song.
1-3 clapping indicates that people are trying to clap. It’s not spontaneous.
I love the stories behind popular songs. It’s a reminder that 95% of hit songs would never make it past the first step of one of those songwriters workshops. Hardly any of them meet the criteria of what’s considered a “good song”. Yet there they are with millions sold…the lyrics and melody forever etched in the ears of humanity.
This is especially problematic in Christian music, which has grown up kind of parallel to country music and inherited alot of the standard overlays.
Not that there’s anything wrong with country at all, but it has it’s own distinct writing style and methodology. It seems pretty crazy to limit Christian music to that particular standard.
Paperback writer
Paper back writer (paperback writer)
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
It’s the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn’t understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It’s a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Paperback writer (paperback writer)
It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I’ll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
