Sacred Digital: Chuckk Gerwig

This is a GREAT audio podcast regarding Understanding Culture as Christians and leaders.   It's from The 2006 Resurgence Conference, the speaker = Ed Stetzer.  If you are planning on being part of the Elevation launch listen to this podcast, it will give you a feel for my heart and equip you with some great vision and a mindset for reaching those outside the walls of church subculture!

You can listen to it online or download it to your iPod etc  from THIS site.  It is also available free at iTunes store in the podcast section.

On The iPod; Ryuchi Sakamoto - Insen - ambient, floating, brilliant...  This is the soundtrack I would choose for reading the book of Genesis

 - For the record I like John Mayer; great guitarist, nice songs, cool voice. 

Touring bands use something called a rider which specifies what the concert promoter must provide for the band in order for them to do a show.  Some bands contracts calls for of the provision of certain types food, specific brands of condoms backstage, massage, fresh boxer shorts, no brown M&M's etc.  Here's a snippet from John Mayer's hospitality rider - fun reading.  To see the list of demands for other bands check this site out. 

...A shaved head is too chilly and high maintenance, the hair is back.

About a month ago I was on a plane flying south and I fell into an interesting conversation...  The man sitting next to me was in his mid-thirties, he was causally dressed and seemed relaxed.  As the plane screamed across the California skyline he kept peering at my laptop screen to see what I was working on.  Finally he asks "what are you flying south for " and I tell him I am a pastor and I was headed to a church in Southern California to share ideas with them on how to start new expressions of the church that will better engage people in a postmodern world.  He began to tell me that he recently started attending a church and was interested in God.  I asked him about the church he attends, what drew him, what it's like, if it fits him well and the like.  He made this statement when we spoke of the worship music at the church he has been attending:

"of course ...you have to get past the music..." 

The worship was so out of his culture-mix that it was a barrier for him to overcome if he wanted to find out about God. He was willing to endure the music because he was searching for God. 

Now here's the question, shouldn't we embrace music that is culturally contextual and even winsome for those who are of this newer mindset and the emerging generation?  Most "contemporary" services use music that was contemporary 25 years ago, -for some people the sound and style is nails on chalk board, even for many Christians.

The plot thickens... as we continued our discussion the stewardess brings the man a beer he had previously ordered and I saw him tense up as she asked "did he want a Bud, Bud Light or Bud Select".  He spoke quickly and nervously, it was obvious he was very uncomfortable having a beer in front of a pastor. 

So let's see: His understanding of God-stuff is that the music is something to be endured and you should feel awkward drinking even one beer in the presence of a Christian...  Hmmm.  Time to think about how effective we are in bringing the barrier free Gospel to those who are not yet familiar with the Goodness of Jesus.  How often does our subculture or personal preference issues stumble not-yet-believers? 

For the record, I put my new travel friend back at ease by mentioning "I have never tried Bud Select, Budweiser has a kind of bitter flavor to me - what is Select like?"  - he told me about it, relaxed and we talked about God for the rest of the plane ride.  Food for thought.

On the iPod: The Creatures -Anima Animus

Sunday morning (July 8th) my oldest daughter Carly and I head for Odder, Denmark on a new mission,  Andrea and Jessi will be staying home as we fly off to the Chaos.

Denmark, along with much of the world is a truly post-Christian zone.  Most Danish people and especially younger people will never enter a church or engage Jesus.  Example: We had a Danish girl over last month who shared she wasn't sure why a young person would ever go into a church other than for a wedding.  We will serve the local church and Youth for Christ in helping to raise up a new generation of young Jesus- followers.

I will be traveling with 17 of my students and the amazing Chris Gudnason to help Youth For Christ Denmark put on a big sheeebang called Danish Oasis.  We will spend the first week setting up circus tents, building bridges, walkways and basically assist in building the encampment for the 2500-3000 Danish people that will attend the event.  The second week our team will lead ministry  for 250+ middle schoolers in one of the huge tents, the one parked waaaay out by the city sewer system - pandemonium will ensue.  I love pandemonium!

Youth for Christ has set up a website that will have pictures and updates throughout the trip - tune in and check up on the fun.  I will have internet access and will be updating this blog on Sacred Digital with my pictures, stories and impressions from Denmark as well.  Keep us in your prayers!

On the iPod:  Velvet Revolver - Libertad

Pray for David Thew and Sojourn Church, the brewery they meet in burned down! <--Read about it.  and...Fresh updates at Jesus Punx

#'z?

Here's an article of merit that addresses the ugly question --- how do you measure ministry success.  Is it bricks, bucks,  bodies in attendance or another "b" word like bullshitake? - (to quote the excellent Guy Kawasaki).

A fine looking crew... for a circus.  Off we go tomorrow, keep is in prayer.

We arrived safe and sound here is Odder Denmark after 36 hours of car, plane, train and foot travel.  The country is very beautiful and the people are a joy to serve with, these people have a great sense of humor and love life.  Today we spent 12 hours laying sections of flooring in an enormous muddy circus tent that will hold 2500 people in a few days, it was hard work and everyone is a bit sore and tired. 

One of the young Danes thanked us and said that when this tent is full of people praising God and learning about Him you will know that God used you.  Last year they had no American team to help with this event, it took the locals 3 full days to place the main tent flooring down - this year it was done in 12 (grueling) hours. We put up more tents and lay more flooring all day today and again tomorrow and begin to prepare for our direct ministry to junior and senior high age kids next week when the party starts.  This will be a BIG party -they expect over 3000 people.  Denmark is a country that is truly post Christian 98% are " members"  of the state church by birth and baptism but only 2% attend church, most of those who attend are elderly people, not young people...but there is a small exciting movement among some of the churches and some of the youth here.  Pray with me a new wave of Danish Christian youth, pray that our efforts here will serve the local church is starting a fresh uprising!  Last night I sat up till 1am with a couple of the young Danish leaders discussing the need for a new culturally relevant churches and sharing ideas abouts  incarnational ministry as a principal means of reaching not yet Christians.

More to come, off to pull up circus tents and lay wood flooring.  Pray for dry weather!

In this month's prelude to the Chopper-Gospel --> Big Bear Choppers make nice street metal.  Cool deal =  if you go to their site you can even see videos of their bikes in motion.

On The iPod: Alice In Chains - Dirt :: this would be the soundtrack to riding the motorcycle (pictured above) down Sunset Strip towards the PCH on a warm summer night with your bro's images blurred in the rear view mirrors because of extreme acceleration.  Ahhhh..life!  I MISS the warm L.A evening rides to Rick's Drive In in Van Nuys and the old Thunderoadhouse on the Sunset Strip with my pals!  You guys rock - u know who u are!  One day again...

Yesterday was fun!  It rained on an off as we set up more circus tents for 11-12 hours - kids and staff saw exhaustion close up and personal.  There were about 8 tents put up, some were huge and some were just big.  It was a GREAT day serving and laughing and knowing that things were different at day's end then they were at day's start.  The group is doing great, everyone is pretty healthy, sleeping well , working very hard and enjoying themselves. 

...Heard around the breakfast table moments ago...

Michael Kaufman just said: "I've never been so sore in my life" -- Ben Fisher said: "The Danish food gives me gas"... Dani Z said: "Can I have my voice back?"...Daniel Halverson: "The Danes eat well, if you like Danish food", Chuckk said, " Wow am I dizzy, and I like it!",  Michael and Dani said " Eric just had a child and we named him Sebastian".

Everyone agrees the Danish custom of having bread with choclate on it for breakfast is from God.

 --Scot McKnight, the author of The Jesus Creed  is a very intelligent man and has written an excellent series of blogs on the missionality of Jesus.  There are 15 "Missional Jesus" posts (so far) in the series. I recommend reading them all in 1 - 15 order.  Here is the page where the most recent post is found and you can navigate backwards to post number one from there. 

If you may be an Elevat-or or Eleva-trix in the future, read through these posts I think they will bless you.  As you read ask you: what was truly important to Jesus?  What was and is the Missio Dei?  How could Elevation  be formed as a mob obsessed with the Mission of Jesus?

The second phase of our trip is beginning, we have finally completed the festival set up.  This event is amazing there are huge meeting tents everywhere, and now bands, vendors and campers are arriving.   We will set up our small camping tents today and get ready or th onslaught of 3000 festival-goers.  This is exciting.  As you know there are very few Christ followers in Denmark and we are in the midst of the largest gathering of those people in this country.  Is it wonderful to see the small community of Christ-lovers God is calling together to pursue a fresh reformation here in Denmark --there is a prayer request in this.   It has become clear that our mission here is to encourage and serve the local leaders that God has raised up in this country - this is worth doing, something is afoot in this country!  The local church leaders know little about the Emerging Church but are doing emergent things by nature, they desire to reach this generation with fresh methods and Biblical faithfulness- I wish I could take some of these young leaders with me to start Elevation. 

Tomorrow the festival officially starts, half out team will be running a wild middle-schooler program the other half will be coming with me to lead a prayer ministry for the 15-25 year olds in another area of the festival grounds.  We will be laying hands on and praying for people that respond after the meetings.  They provided a nice how to pray "over people" training time for our sub team, the kids are feeling excited and challenged to be providing shepherding care and prayer for people face to face! 

So into the human fray we go for a week, then next week after the festival is over we will tear down the whole camp...that will probably be the most physically challenging event in the life of almost everyone here - weeeeee!!!

If you'd like to see what our students are saying, thinking, feeling and learning check out the official trip blog for their blog entries.

Here's a fun fact about our trip to Denmark; this place is CRAWLING with spiders.  They are all over us in our tents, the places we do ministry, everywhere...crawling on you...asleep and awake. All the arachnophobes are being cured during their stay here.  Fun.

Every boy needs a good motorcycle rally once in a while.    Street Vibrations...Here's where you'll find me September 20-22.  If you are a reader and a rider look me up if you get up for the rally!

Yesterday I spend a couple of hot hours digging in the dirt.  The whole camp of over 2000 adults left the conference grounds, dispersed into the surrounding area and served the town of Odder at 600 different ministry sites.  It was great seeing cars filled with people leaving the conference to serve the local people with the love of Jesus.  It was fun jumping into cars with strangers to go to Danish people's homes not knowing if the driver or the people you were headed out to meet would speak English. My job was to go with a group of people to a woman's home to clear brush, dig out her garden from a mass of overgrowth, trim trees and get her yard in back in order.  She is an older single lady who really needed the help and appreciated it very much, she said it was all to much for her to upkeep - we preached the gospel of sweat, kindness and love with our hands.

While we were working I met a great young man named Martin, he is studying theology in Copenhagen.  As we worked we talked a bit about the need for churches globally to engage the culture of this new time.  Young leaders everywhere are feeling the need for the church to understand the cultures they live in and make the beautiful unchanging Gospel understandable to the people of this generation.

I mentioned some good books to Martin, so Martin, here are the names of those books.

The Shaping of things To Come - Frost and Hirsch

The Emerging Church - Dan Kimball

On July 12th I blogged about Scot McKnight and his series of articles on Missional Jesus.  Small world... this morning I found out that Scot is here in Denmark at this very conference, I just spoke with him a moment ago after he finished his session challenging the Danes to missional living.  It was strange to have met him here after just writing about him.  Also, the first night we were here the Glen Kaiser Band played, remember the Res Band? - great blues and boogie!  Also I didn't know I'd run into some of those Bog Bodies I had read about - but Tuesday we were out in town and saw some dead guys at a museum...spooky crusty old dudes...  The picture below is of a bog man, Glen Kaiser is aged but is better preserved.

On The iPod - Stone Temple Pilots - Purple

We have one more day here at the camp and then we hit the road to Copenhagen, to Paris to New York to Home.  Train to train to feet to plane to plane to plane to car to bed.  We tore the whole camp down today, circus tents, stages, flooring, trash, and bathrooms -we're tired  now.  Grand attendance event total was 3400 people - this was the largest and most powerful Christian event in Denmark this year.  People found Jesus, got equipped for ministry, trained and deeply encouraged. 

It's so good to be home again after the journey.  Home is a magical place...Home is the place where the special pillow and comfy chair resides.  Home is where my right arm rests comfortably over the ribs of my wife as she sleeps.  Home is where my Labrador Retriever welcomes me with an almost Christ-like love (and a scent not unlike a huge wad of warm earwax).  Home is the place where my shoulders fully and completely relax.  Home is where great Mexican food is only 1403 steps from my front door. 

Thanks to all who prayed for me and mine on our Danish Journey, it's good to be home...for 2 weeks, then it's off to MEXICO for yet another foreign mission encounter!