We had a beautiful Spring day yesterday. It was in the mid 70's with an every couple of hours heavy downpour. I took this around dusk in our backyard. It's obviously a path made from stones and it was just after a rainfall. The temps are supposed to get in the mid 80's by Saturday, 90 by Sunday, and stay in the mid 80's early next week. Very cool for Memorial Day weekend.
I've started a new blog. Yeah I know, but it's not what you think. I've started this blog to bless and encourage the blessing of my city. It's called Living in Woodstock, IL and it's all about life in Woodstock (go figure). Actually, it's a non-political, non-advertisement, and completely pro-Woodstock, IL site that intends to spark conversation about and enjoyment of our city.
It's really just about my experiences (personal and family). I'm not really sure how it will work, IF it will work, or what exactly it will become in the days ahead. But I figured it was worth a try.
So check it out and let me know what you think. But please, don't comment there. That's for locals and Woodstock lovers only. Thanks.
Bob Hyatt has started a new site, PastorHacks. "Less time on tasks, more time with people. That's the goal..." Very cool idea. Grab the feed, read the blog, share your insights and questions.
Sobering, weighty, personal, and some great advice (though more practical than spiritual) from Mark Driscoll: "Death by Ministry."
This is a must read by Michael Spencer for anyone who has been reading the online junk about Mark Driscoll's new book Confessions of a Reformission Rev. and Driscoll's "vulgar" stories and colorful language. By the way, does anyone know what "confessions" means? (That was rhetorical.)
**DISCLAIMER** >> I will delete comments intending to rehash the discussion here. It's been overdone elsewhere.
I have some great CD's that are burning up my iPod right now. But first let me update you on my hardware. I now have a black 30GB iPod and Sony headphones. Both rock hard. Yeah buddy.
Okay, 4 CD's...
Page France (myspace): Hello, Dear Wind
Reviews: Pitchfork, Pop Matters
Must Hear: "Chariot," "Jesus"
I picked this up thanks to a recommendation by Rick Bennett (who also recommended Band of Horses, below). It's an ear-pleasing blend of comforting acoustic sounds, lyrics that feel what they say, and a ton of biblical imagery and lyrics. It's one of the most thought-provoking CD's I own, and that's because there is a ton of Jesus (in a way you wouldn't expect, trust me) and no CCM involved. It's what Christocentric art should sound like. Fantastic. From Pitchfork...
Nau is a true prodigy-- at age 21, he's writing songs with uncommon theological complexity. Let's spell it out in no uncertain terms-- in 21st century America, Christianity has been hijacked by some evil men. Jesus said that it's easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. But in an age of mega-churches that lavish money on high-end AV equipment and contributions to PACs that would undo every social program designed to counteract uneven wealth distribution, Jesus' central teachings of compassion, forgiveness, and charity have been forsaken. His national face has become that of a cruel tyrant, peering down upon humankind with the miser's disdainful grimace.
Hello, Dear Wind accentuates the common traits of Christian music that is able to penetrate the secular world, with an unfettered joy that would scan to conservative Christians as almost pagan. It deploys Christian tropes poetically and not pedantically, brimming with reiterative Biblical imagery -- angels and burning bushes and trumpets, but also circuses, kings and crowns, wind, trees, and fruit.
Cloud Cult (myspace): Advice From The Happy Hippopotamus
Reviews: Pitchfork, Pop Matters
Must Hear: "Living on the Outside of Your Skin," "Transistor Radio"
I found this because the cover intrigued me at Borders (although my cover is different than the one pictured). I listened to it for a minute on the in-store CD scanner thing, and it was fantastic. After googling it on my Treo phone and finding out it has received good reviews, I picked it up. It is getting more listens on the iPod than anything else, though Danielson (below) is close.
It's eclectic. One of the most ear pleasing yet creative CD's I've heard. A mix of acoustic, computer work, heavy beats, some rock flavor, and more. I love this CD, and am listening to it as I write this. Plus, it's recorded on a CD made from recycled materials.
Band of Horses (myspace): Everything All The Time
Reviews: Pitchfork, TinyMixTapes
Must Hear: "The First Song," "Monsters"
This has received a lot of play on my iPod in the last two months. A bit like My Morning Jacket, but more enjoyable in many ways. Not so quirky. A little Neil Youngish. Shinnish. The music is filling, atmospheric. Truly delightful.
From Tiny Mix Tapes...
It's as stunning a debut as I've heard in a long time, and it signals that we'll be hearing a lot from these folks for years to come.
Must Hear: "Cast it at the Setting Sail," "Did I Step On Your Trumpet"
Honestly, this music can be kinda weird. Very weird, actually. And I don't know what to say other than it's by far the best weird music I've ever heard. It's really incredible. This dude is a Christian, and again, he probably makes the CCM folks shudder. From Pitchfork...
None of Smith's previous records-- and in fact, very few indie releases this year-- have flat-out rocked like this one, with blaring trumpets signaling snares to exact their force beneath sweeping multitracked vocal choruses that simply won't stop crescendoing. On standouts like "Ship the Majestic Suffix" and "Bloodbook on the Half Shell", the music builds to such immense heights, and increases tension so far past the expected breaking point, that the inevitable release is nearly dizzying. But Smith also grasps the inherent malleability of such a sizable ensemble, and though he most often uses it to breathe life into the album's darkly apocalyptic overtures, he also wisely crafts shimmering psychedelic passages that prevent it from becoming too claustrophobic.
Thanks to Kevin Cawley for pleading with me to check out Danielson. Well worth it.
A couple of weeks ago I was able to meet Jon, the Baptist. Jon (Whitehead) and his wife Aryn (sorry it's a camera phone image) were planning to come to Chicagoland for his sister's graduation from Wheaton College, so he sent me an email hoping we might be able to meet up. We knew it would be tight since we were leaving for Seattle that day, but it was well worth the time to grab a Caribou Coffee meeting on the way out.
Jon and Aryn are from Texas Kansas City, where Jon is a lawyer. He had some good thoughts on the future of the SBC (let's just say that he recommends a lot of Ex-lax and throne time, the porcelain one...okay, not really...but that would have been wise...and funny). And like me, Jon married way above his head.
Head over to Jon's blog and check out his thoughts. Good guy.
A couple of weeks ago I found the sign up date for kid's baseball this summer here in Woodstock for my two oldest boys. So yesterday I loaded them up in the car and headed to Sports Authority to buy some real baseball gloves. After getting a good fit and taking a few minutes to soak up the smell of leather, we grabbed three gloves (one for each of the boys and one for me). We also bought a couple of regulation baseballs.
We came home and de-tagged, went outside and started to play catch. At that moment I realized I have never taught anyone to play catch with gloves that catch and balls that can hurt. My kids are all experts at wiffle ball and Nerf stuff. But this is the real deal.
So we formed a triangle, I told them to hold their gloves out face up, and I started under-handing the ball to them. They missed most of the first 20 throws, but every time one would catch the ball it was a triumph. Then they progressively started catching more, and more. All the while I was also teaching them the proper way to throw by pushing off with their right leg while shifting their weight over their left.
Then just before it was time to come inside for the night I decided to toss the ball a little too close to my oldest son's face. He missed the ball, but the ball didn't miss him. It popped him on the lower lip which was punctured by his lower teeth drawing plenty of blood, a swollen lip, and a few tears (his upper teeth fell out naturally, I didn't throw it that hard!).
After comforting my son and putting the kids to bed 30 minutes later I realized that the hour I spent playing baseball with my boys wasn't just a great time with my kids, or just a proud moment as a dad. That would have been enough. But it was also an hour of training at the McCoy Missional Learning Center (MMLC).
I'm teaching my kids how to do something they can love that will put them on teams with other kids, and those kids have families, and some of those families don't have Jesus. And the only physical distance between us and them can be bridged by "Play ball" and "Batter up" and "Atta boy" and "That's my son, at third base. Which one is yours?" and "Good to meet you. We'll see you at next week's game."
On the airplane soon after takeoff, flying from Seattle to Chicago, I noticed Mt. Rainier and had to try to capture the view. It was amazing, as you can see. I played with this photo a bit to darken it and I added a sepia tone.
Also see Joe Thorn's Friday photo.
I put a post up over at MBB about Michael Foster's efforts at missional networking in Cincinnati. It's inspiring to me, and I hope it will help trigger all of us to do similar trans-denominational networking in our cities and regions.
iMonk likes Driscoll's Confessions. Flashback to my review here.
Philip Ryken considers the words of Tim Keller on the New Perspective at a Pastor's Colloquium at Trinity Evangelical in Deerfield, IL.
Donald Miller is interviewed at Out of Ur: "Donald Miller Isn't Hip." A clip...
You've said that the church "uses love as a commodity." What do you mean?
Miller: We sometimes take a Darwinian approach with love—if we are against somebody's ideas, we starve them out. If we disagree with somebody's political ideas, or sexual identity, we just don't "pay" them. We refuse to "condone the behavior" by offering any love.
This approach has created a Christian culture that is completely unaware what the greater culture thinks of us. We don't interact with people who don't validate our ideas. There is nothing revolutionary here. This mindset is hardly a breath of fresh air to a world that uses the exact same kinds of techniques.
We made it home. I'm busy finishing my sermon for tomorrow. See all our Seattle and trip pics. I'll recount our crazy travel issues from Friday when I have some time. Enjoy the Lord's Day.
I'm flying right now out of Seattle. I set this to post on Friday. This is a trashed wall of a building (the last wall standing) and the sun peeking through. It's across the street from Mars Hill Church.
Okay, it's VERY late. So this will be very short. I may expand on some stuff later, and I don't claim to be able to make sense of stuff so late.
Smokin' guns, Tim Keller just rocked. I'll explain this talk a bit, but the rest will be brief.
Keller's third and last session was up first this morning, "Doing Justice." Geez. A friend said it was the highlight of the conference. It certainly was one of the most important talks I've ever heard on ministry. Keller described injustice as that which damages the fabric of shalom. Shalom is the way things ought to be. When the body is healthy, it has shalom. All bits and pieces are harmonious. So with culture, as the bits and pieces do well together, there is cultural/city/neighborhood shalom. But when that fabric is damaged (as it always and often is) then we do justice, or reweave shalom.
Keller said that power has to be given to others if we are going to do anything good. Our job is to enable flourishing. We are born in certain circumstances we didn't look to be in. People haven't asked to be where they are. And Christians should give away power to those who don't have it as the work of justice. Keller said that biblical righteousness is about being willing to disadvantage yourself for the advantage of the community. His question for us: Does your city rejoice that your church is there? If they don't then we aren't working justice.
Matt Chandler of The Village Church of Dallas was next. I first heard Matt in Dallas last summer at Acts29, and he was great. But today, it may have been the most important message I've heard. I said Darrin Patrick's message was really good for me, and Matt's was like picking up where Darrin left off and pressing even harder toward Jesus. I wrote in my notes: "I would gladly let Matt start again and say it all over again." It was that good.
Eric Mason talked about reaching the hip-hop generation. Good, solid stuff. We heard a couple of rap songs. Very interesting on contextualization.
Mark Driscoll batted clean-up by talking about the Gospel, the Cross, and mostly about penal substitution. It was a "hot" talk, and he was pretty fired up. Good, biblical stuff.
Last things...We were able to hang at the Driscoll house for 1 1/2 hours tonight with about a dozen other guys. The conference audio should be online in a couple of weeks. And please pray for our trip back. We fly out at 2:30 central time. It has been a great, great trip but we really miss our kids.
What a great day in Seattle. The temp was nice, the sun was out, and day two of the the Reform & Resurge conference was fantastic. I'll go speaker by speaker with a few brief (it's really late and I'm really tired) comments. All quotes are as exact as can be after trying to understand my fast and sloppy writing. You may not understand the context of something, but consider yourself blessed for what you do understand. :)
First up, the second and final session taught by Ed Stetzer. Much came from his new book Breaking the Missional Code (see Driscoll's new interview with Stetzer about his new books). I won't give all the info, including a couple sets of lists. But I will say the first list includes 10 shifts for moving people toward culture and the second includes steps to understanding culture. Good stuff. He also gave good advice on how to get beyond demographics in knowing culture.
Josh Harris followed Stetzer and talked about a "humble orthodoxy." It was very good. I've heard Josh speak before and I always learn much from him. He taught from 2 Timothy 2:14-26, 1. Teach the truth faithfully, 2. Live the truth faithfully, and 3. Represent the truth humbly.
Quotes: "We are to avoid controversy that distracts people from the gospel." "Living Truth becomes a living lie when we don't embody it ourselves." "You should be suspicious when the voice in your head says, 'You don't need counsel on this decision.'"
Tim Keller gave the other two messages of the day. The first was on "Being the Church in Our Culture." He provided a paper/article for the talk. Here's his six-fold model for the church relating to culture. They can read as one sentence.
1. More Christians living long-term in cities
2. ...With a better understanding of the gospel
3. ...Living as dynamic counter-cultures in the city
4. ...Integrating their faith and their work
5. ...Radically committed to the good of the city as a whole
6. ...Contextualizing the Gospel message
Quotes: "Christians are to be alternate cities in every city." "People in our churches need to understand the theological meaning of ordinary work." "We are taught how to raise up church leaders, not culture leaders." "Christians are supposed to live in the city as a counter-culture, but are not supposed to take power." "Unless you are radically like [the culture] and radically unlike [the culture], they are going to shrug."
Keller's second talk was on "Preaching the Gospel." He said you can understand the Bible diachronically (through the story) or synchronically (topically). Some new evangelicals try to focus on the former, older evangelicals on the latter, but both are needed. He focused on the Gospel as the agent of change in both unbelievers and believers as it tears down our idols and leaves us with Jesus.
Both talks by Keller were excellent and well received. I was able to ask about suburban/rural incarnational ministry during QnA, since he focused on urban ministry. I was also able to talk with him after the last session. He speaks again in the morning.
I had the chance to meet Mark Horne and Dan Cruver today, and shared lunch with several friends I mentioned yesterday plus Drew Goodmanson. Drew is a great guy and an elder at Kaleo in San Diego who knows more about the internet than the founder, Al Gore. I had a nice chat today with Shaun Garman of Red Sea Church in Portland. Shaun is a godly young pastor who we first met at the Acts29 conference in Dallas last year. I also had a brief 'hello, love your books' with Donald Miller after he showed up for Keller's first talk.
I've met several guys who recognized me from this blog and decided to say 'hi.' I love making these sorts of connections, and many of these guys seem to find my blog because they are looking for Tim Keller resources. One of those guys is Darren Larson from Wheaton, IL. He only lives an hour from me but we meet for the first time in Seattle. Strange world. Check out his blog.
I failed to mention yesterday that I talked for some time with Scott Thomas, who has been the Acts29 replanting guy and is now heading up the whole dealio. Very cool for everyone because Scott is a great guy. He always listens like you are the most important guy in the world and has great penetrating questions and insights. We hope to talk more with him tomorrow. Read a great "replanting" article by Scott.
FYI, I believe the conference audio and video will be available for free at some point on the Resurgence site. How cool is that?
The Reform & Resurge conference is on full force. Three speakers today. First was Darrin Patrick of The Journey Church in St. Louis. Darrin is an SBC'r and a church planter with Acts29. His talk was just perfect for me, exactly what I needed.
He said that your biggest challenge in ministry is yourself. He used James 1:1-4 to talk about how those who walk with God will be a mess because God wants to build our character through trials. The process of going through trials is painful, but we need to focus on the product of trails not the pain of trails. Why would we want to avoid trials when it's the trigger to God's power?
The second speaker was Anthony Bradley. I didn't like it. Seemed like a good guy with something to say, but he didn't get it out.
The third speaker was Ed Stetzer, the church planting and church researcher with NAMB. Great missional stuff. He used Acts 17 to make four points. 1. Acknowledge spiritual questions in culture, 2. Understand culture, 3. Acknowledge the positive and rebuke the negative inside the culture, and 4. Proclaim Christ.
Stetzer said that the HOW of ministry must be determined by the WHO, WHERE, and WHEN of culture, but that the church is currently answering questions that no one in the culture is asking. The church has then become a culture in itself. But what the church needs is to hold two truths in tension, that we mus be contending for the faith (Jude 3) and contextualizing by becoming all things to all men (1 Cor. 9).
Great quote: "Preaching against culture is like preaching against somebody's house. It's just where they live."
Second great quote: "The stumbling block of the cross has too often been replaced by the stumbling block of the church." Most people aren't being recruited by other religions, they are being repelled by ours.
Today I was able to sit with Kevin Cawley and Brian Brown. We had some discussion after the day ended with Kevin, Brian, Bruce Chant, Bill Streger, and Pete Williamson. I also met a handful of other bloggers and blog readers.
Sidenote: I'm reading and planning to blog-review Stetzer's new book Breaking the Missional Code soon. The book is about how Tom Hanks finds the code for missional theology in the glow of Thomas Kinkade paintings. Okay, not really. But it's very good so far.
For lunch we had it catered by a local barbeque restaurant, Porter's Place. Wow, was it good. We were told to be sure to "meet the man." So we saw a guy who we figured was "the man" and asked if he was. He said no but went and got "the man." "The man" is no man, but one of the most powerful hot sauces I've ever experienced (and I've experienced a couple of very hot ones). That's "the man" that I tasted a drop of on the toothpick (see pic). Literally burned my mouth and made my eyes water for 15 minutes or more.
Tomorrow, more Ed, Josh Harris (who I met tonight at the hotel), and Tim Keller. It's gonna rock. For now, the donger need sleep. G'nite. Oh! And be sure to keep up with my Seattle pictures.
We ate breakfast this morning at Cafe Minnie's. Omelets the size of your head. Sheesh. Then we took a trip to the top of the Space Needle. Beautiful day, beautiful view. 
Click on the pictures for a larger version, and take a peek at my other Seattle pics.
Reform & Resurge begins in the morning. Hopefully we can meet up with a few of you tonight. We are in the Holiday Inn, Room 204. Give our room a call, or email me.
We left Bloomington, IL this morning at 7:06am, flew to Chicago O'Hare. Then took off at 8:35am for Seattle and arrived at about 11am. A couple from our church, Mike and Gail, were already here and picked us up. We went directly to Pike Place Market and watched them toss some fish around. What a cool place, tons of fruit and vegetables for sale, a bunch of cafes and restaurants. We ate at the place where Tom Hanks ate in Sleepless in Seattle. I had shrimp cakes. Yeah buddy. Good stuff.
Then we checked in at the Holiday Inn and took a short break. Refreshed, we went to Sonic Boom music store (through the recommendation of some of my blog readers). What a great store. Found a couple of CD's I've been looking for and couldn't find in my neighborhood. Then we went to the 5pm service at Mars Hill Church. It was great. Maybe more on that another time. Dinner at P.F. Changs, which rocked as usual. I also got a few pics along the way. I'll try to get a few of those up tomorrow.
It's been a very, very long day and I'm exhausted. Nighty nite.
