outside is better

Digitizing Devotion...my latest experiment

In January I started reading a 90 day plan for the Bible.  It puts you through the entire testament in 88 days, a pretty hurried pace.  About 2 weeks into it, I modified the experiment even more and decided to not follow my paper calender and regular bible. I am only reading scripture using either my phone or iPad.  This includes research for school, some sermon preparation, my more prayerful reading times and the previously mentioned 90 days.

I am halfway through, and I can say that the experiment is interesting.  It is quicker to underline things electronically, it just takes a finger tap.  But I have a harder time going between passages when I think I see a connection. One of my favorite reasons for reading large portions of scripture is placing these connections together. 

I am doing this because the way people are reading the Bible is changing. It has to be understood, especially when we think about what it would mean to be a bookless society (I don't think this will ever happen), but how does it change when people are only reading scripture on a screen in worship?

So it is just an experiment. In April I can offer my thoughts on the whole enterprise. 

All this said, how do you read scripture?

Related Posts:
A Community Textology
Creating a Rhythm of Scripture
The Place of Scripture and Worship Leadership

Worship is an Arms Race...

I was packing up to head to church Sunday morning, and I had to remember to grab my mics and a few mic clips.  For those that serve in rougher areas, you might have had to do this to combat "walking off". But we always have what we need, and are able to work around 4-5 different services with tons of nationalities represented.

I think back to my touring days, and my friends that serve as Technical Directors at large churches and how our conversations usually lead to the newest A/V gear designed for churches.  Even when I led the Worship Design Team at Asbury we had to keep up with the variety of ways people wanted to show clips or use a slide presentation.  With the demise of live music in smaller venues, and the rise of the Mega-Styled church, the audio-visual world loves churches. We bring in BIG money and the industry keeps technology updates aggressive and frequent.

Folks, we are in an Arms Race

We have to have the latest version of Propresentor, cause that is what they used at Catalyst.  If we want the Easter program to go well, we have to get 5 new intellabeams and the church down the street just got in ear monitors, so we need to find 5 grand in the budget for that.

For musicians in church, we have the same stress. If you play electric guitar, you have to have a Timmy overdrive and a delay with tap tempo dotted 8th notes....cause that is what the guys from HillSong use. Worship leaders have you ever felt the need to have a fancier guitar than what is currently getting the job done, because the "big guys" aren't even using Taylor anymore? Drummers, maybe your quality Pearl, Tama or even DW kit isn't cutting it, because the newer custom drum market has been baptized and there are "christian" companies that make killer trap sets. As a guitar player, I love gear, but I have to always remind myself that it doesn't matter in the scheme of things.

Does your Pastor feel the need to get an iPad for his sermon notes?  Those things are handy, I would love one (EDIT, I have had 2 by now)...but I wonder how many TD's have bought a few iPads just out of peer pressure. Having an iPhone is possibly more important, because it is necessary to use apps like YouVersion  to keep your teaching and discipleship ministries up to date with what the church plant down the street does.  Think how we often force older pastors (and I don't mean senior citizens. Those in their late 40's early 50's.) to use social media because that is what our church needs to do, but it is hard because they never really understood email.

Keeping up is the elephant in the room, especially with smaller churches or new congregations.  We have convinced ourselves that in order to keep people in the seats we have to stay on top of trends and equipment and have let it slip in as gospel message. Performative excellence has become a subset of the Great Commission.

The place where this simply doesn't work is that God is timeless; Christ is the same always (Heb 13:8). The gospel is without innovation, it doesn't change.  The way that we interact within our culture changes, and it is important to have the ability to resonate within changing cultures.  But we can't allow that to invade our worship. We live within a consuming, entertainment oriented and material culture.  That must be kept in mind when we design and lead worship, but it should not be the driving vehicle or motivation.  Creative for the sake of creative isn't ok. I have to tell myself this very often, because I find many new things to be fascinating and really awesome.

Songwriters have varying definitions of what makes up a good song. Paul McCartney and John Lennon supposedly had a rule that if a song did not grab them at its simplest version, with one person and one instrument, there was no way it could be made better with the full extent of arrangement and production.

If Christian worship depends on the dog and pony show...we have to start thinking "is this really Christian worship?"  Production has always been a part of worship, the early church was highly experiential, but it was always to tell the story of God and draw the person deeper and deeper into Christ.  We can argue this for our current corporate worship system, but it is not necessary to rival the cold war in our acquisition habits.  To think we need 92 channels of aux sends for God to reveal himself shows a gaping whole in our theology.

I am consistently for innovation (and this post is as much a confession as it is anything else), but not at the expense of how we view the operative qualities of the relationship between God and His Church. 

The elements around us are part of the story, but they are not necessary for the relationship.

Top 5 Church Website Mistakes

I ran a blog series last month directed at new pastors and social media.  I spoke with a good friend about the topic and he said that I should do another post about Church Websites.  I agreed, because most are horrible at best and really don’t serve their best purpose. 


5.  Non church members are used in the photography.
Stock photos can be expensive, and many times in order to save money churches think stock images will be cheaper than having a photographer come to a few events.  The folks on the website are often picked by the web designer.  With the advent of digital cameras, most churches have access to digital photography cheaply. 

What I would do is find the best mom/grandmother who has tons of great images of their kids and enlist their help.  Doing basic editing is accomplished through free software that comes with almost any computer ( I am partial to Apple iPhoto).  In a few planned sessions, tons of great images of YOUR congregation can be taken and sorted through to find what should be edited and place in consideration for the website.  If an event is sparsely attended, just find another that would work. I say this because I spent alot of time editing a video for a childrens ministry that didn’t work simply because it was a lightly attended sunday.

This is important for many reasons.  It tells your congregation that they are good enough to be on the webpage, and models don’t need to be used.  It gives people who are searching for the church an idea of the demographic of your congregation.  It is an honest portrayal of who you are.

4.  Key information is hard to find.
My number one pet peeve in this area is finding the staff.  Often for the sake of relevance or seeker issues, the staff isn’t named.  Please-make this easy to find.  Don’t list it under other headings like “ministries” or some other Christianese.  Call your pastoral staff what they are.  I don’t want to see your 29 volunteer small groups leaders. 

Realize that people go to church websites for very few things.  The biggest reason for non members is to find out about your church.  Make information such as service times, directions and staff really easy to find.

3.  Too much information.
It’s great that you have an active church with many ministries.  I also understand how hard it can be to get that information out to participants.  But if you have a large amount of constantly revolving information, think about other avenues to get it out.  I think facebook fan pages are great for this.  Assign a few leaders administration access, and equally name every ministry (such as First Church Youth, First Church Children, First Church Worship...etc).  Most churches need to have an official abbreviation now to use tools such as twitter, and facebook.  Figure one out an make it official.  Then begin to use these tools for this information that is specific to just a small amount of people in your congregation.  Advertise these pages on your main website, but keep it clear for static information discussed in #4.

2.  Cluttered Websites.
These are the sites that were designed to be updated by the church secretary 5 years ago.  For years they have been growing into an uncontrollable mass of information that is plagued by formatting issues, multiple fonts and dead links.  Execute website bankruptcy and start from scratch.  Either find the money to keep a designer on retainer (college students are great for this) or get a template site like clover.  It will be worth it.

Once a new site has been established, make a policy regarding posting images like multiple logos, emblems, or pictures for every item on the site.  Keep the site trim and locate primary static information in easy to find places.  Take advantage of other means for your various ministry sites and link to them. 

1.  Outdated Information.
If you are going to have a website, write a policy regarding when information will be taken down.  When I was in college ministry, we had a few students whose job was to take down old flyers the DAY AFTER an event.  Nothing was worse than seeing a ministry advertise for new small groups forming 7 months after they have been decided.

If you are going to keep revolving information on your site, keep it revolving.  If you think the site will lay dormant for awhile, go through and clean up dated material.  Nothing makes a church community look more dead than information that is 18 months old being at the top of a website.  People will immediately make assumptions about your ministry.

These are just a few things, but I often think the worst is that churches aren't intentional about their web presence.  I always encourage people to sit down and figure out why they want/need a site and then design in that direction.  It will give you the best end result and allow for many of these kinks to be worked out.

Who are You? (Online)

After spending the last 8 yrs online as a blogger, I have spent the last few months looking back as to the person that I appear to be to those who have never met me.  Also, I am increasingly getting contacted by people asking my opinion on certain things that I often write or talk about, even though some of these folk I have never met.

Facebook has grown so much in the last year that I actually wrote a piece (here) about who I am now, because I made the decision to friend people that are a part of my history, but don’t travel in the same social circles as me.  I also am reconnecting with friends who I have not seen in a decade.  I keep Facebook connected to my blog and twitter, so it isn’t that hard to see what I am up too.

Potential employers also have learned to use Social Media in regard to hiring new team members.  I am happy (but surprised) that I have never had to delete anything online.  If someone wants the links, I can give them where I was blogging clear back to 2000/2001.  They only work sometimes (blogger likes to hide things that old), but they are there.

What I have made conscious decisions regarding is who I am online.  Many people that choose to be active online have to either secret things away or choose to be their “professional” self online, and have separate (and usually hidden) accounts for personal interaction.  I have decided to be myself online, and that means involving myself in things that I am passionate about, while also realizing how silly I can be at the same time.  I don’t have a problem following “bigfoot” stuff on twitter, and I regularly tweet about Mad Max.  Facebook is the same, I interact with people in the way that I choose to.  If anything, Facebook is the least professional thing that I do, because it really is about interaction with other people.

But we are you online?  I will delve more into that (specifically) about myself tomorrow, and the unique challenges that my job as a vocational minister present.

Social Media and the Kingdom of God

One of the things that I have been doing since leaving Nicholasville Baptist Church is teaching seminars on Social Media.  Till now, most of those have been done in the context of business, but tonight starts a series at Asbury Seminary.  Besides the nasty cold that I have had, the last few days have been taken up with my thoughts about social media and the kingdom.

A few years ago, I blogged about this sort of thing fairly often, but of the last year or so it hasn't surfaced.  The more that I think and teach about it, I am planning on bringing the topic up around here more.  But the main thing that I am going to stress tonight is the idea of connection.  Often, we use social media tools to just broadcast the same old message in a new way.  I understand the global power of these tools, but I am all about localnomics...and I think facebook/twitter/whatevercoolnewthing can have a large bearing on how local faith communities interact with each other.

So if you are in wilmore drop by tonight (at the Wesleyan Student Center) or tomorrow at lunch in Cordelia.  For others, I will be teaching at Common Grounds in Lexington on Friday afternoon to a more business crowd.  I would love to see you at one of these events.

Animated Backgrounds

Green Mechanical
Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

I have been making worship slides/backgrounds for the last year or so.  Earlier this year I dived into making animations, and I figured I would start posting these backgrounds as well.  You can see the clips on Flickr, but you can download them here.

The movie file for this guy is here, it is a larger file so it may take a bit.  It is a little busier than I would like, but I wanted to go ahead and post it.  Feel free to use it, their are some credits on the Flickr.

Falling in love with software

After a hour or so getting ready for another sermon on Baptism I have fallen in love again with Accordance.  A few weeks ago I went to a training event held at Asbury (you can read the post about it here).  I ended up buying the IVP dictionary set while I was there and it is really helping out today.  While you can buy them all individually, having them in a search-able format right inside my computer is great.   I have been using the "Dictionary of Biblical Imagery" and "The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology" the most.

I really think one of the important things to learn when researching something is how to actually research it.  I keep pretty heavy notes most of them time, but the best system is the one that works for you.

My Geek Day

Today I am sitting in on an 8 hour seminar about Accordance Bible software.  I have owned the software for around a year, but usually fumble through using it.  I realized that I have to start showing my geek card when I do something like this the first day of my spring break.

What is funny is who is here.  Unlike most every other Mac-centric event I have ever attended, 90% of the people here are probably over the age of 50.  I love hearing their versions of the usual "Pro-Mac" jokes that all of us carry around in our pockets.

But I am settling in for a long day of getting the upper hand on this wonderful piece of software.

Multi-Media in late 4th Century baptism.

I have spent the last few days holed up in my office finishing some media work.  It has had me thinking about something.  A friend of mine and I have mentioned trying to write an article about the use of technology in worship and some ideas came a few days ago. 

I also had read an article about late 4th century baptismal practices in Jerusalem (can you get more geeky than that?), and I think I have found a point where they converge.  Reading the baptism article, I was thinking about how these practices remained secret even after Constantine made Christianity the legal religion.  There are alot of myths involving what happened when Constantine did this, but lets just think about how the church now had some imperial money to play with, especially the church (not a church, but the church) in Jerusalem.  Part of their structure still exists in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Inside of the baptismal room (no longer existing), was a tremendous amount of imagery, and they also took advantage at the fact that they were located at the place of crucifixion and burial of Christ.

The only thing that had really changed for the church at this point was the ability to practice their religon in the open and in more permanent places.  In our words, lets just say the Church got some bling.  While everything was heavily ornamented, it all had purpose, and those being baptized had been educated to be aware of the imagery.

So what if us, in the 21st century, used our technology to transmit images that would be in the minds of the worshippers, aiding them in their worship, and not serving as decoration or backgrounds for song lyrics.  How can we invoke worship with images, and communicate that this is not "idolatry", but then again, we never really hear that word today anyway...

The church in this article played with senses, realizing that they were an important part of the experience of being baptised, and made sure to take advantage of every option to make sure the person knew this would be a night remembered forever.  In fact, unless you were a deacon or deaconess assisting in the service, your own baptism was the only one you ever saw!

I wish I could find a copy of this article online, but I can't.  I really think that they are some important thought in it regarding how we use technology in worship.  Theirs was mosaic and a gigantic heated pool, ours is a powerful projector and motion software, but both have their rightful place in worship.  So how do we separate un-necessary show from technology that actually leads people in worship?  How do the technicians not take advantage of the tools in front of them to influence the act of worship (believe me, they do)?  I think putting these two together really is moving this article to be seen in a good direction.

Do you want to be a Bibliography Monster?

I really don't like making Bibliographies.  It reminds me of really bad papers on model airplanes that I wrote in middle school.  But in seminary, and being in an Academic tract, I have to deal with them and maybe even learn to enjoy them.

A friend (jeremiah) turned me on to Zotero: The Next Generation Research Tool.  Zotero is a firefox extension that "knows" when you are at any sort of a source page, and prompts you to let Zotero save the information.  You can catalog sources, and export them in an un-holy amount of formats for your bibliographies.  What I do when I am doing preliminary research is keep Amazon.com open and just search for the book.  I find it and the icon prompts me and I just save it there.

No writing down and no trying to figure out complicated formats. When you are ready to see your information (and see Zotero) just go to your tools menu in your browser and it pops up Zotero on the bottom of the page.  Here is a shot of it with the book we just saved.

You need Firefox, Navigator or Flock and to download the plug-in from the Zotero site (linked above).  Then you can get going NOT writing bibliographies.

+++++++

I know I have been talking about it alot lately, but "Just a Guy" over at GoingtoSeminary.com has some great thoughts about what it is like to live in this season of life.  This post is great and it brings alot of thought to the difference between grad school and seminary, something I didn't really understand at first.