Sacred Digital: Chuckk Gerwig

Sacred Digital

2008-07-04T18:03:01Z

Special thanks go out to my pal Smittie for updating and fixing the Chuckk Gerwig webpage. It now has links to my blog here, to Sacred Ink (my Tattoo art project), to my internet video series, to the Elevation Santa Cruz webpage and to my weekly podcasts at iTunes.

Worldly Music In God's Church...

2008-07-03T18:03:53Z

Here's a great blog post from Dan Kimball about that evil worldly instrument... the pipe organ! Worth a read.

On the iPod: Led Zeppelin-In Through the Out Door & Vampire Weekend-Vampire Weekend

New Look

2008-07-01T16:12:30Z

Shazam : The Miracles of Jesus is off and running as of last Sunday. Here's a peek at the superhero theme environment the Environment Team has cooked up for the series. Well done once again team!

God is

2008-06-30T16:30:55Z

If God had a Facebook page the status would read " God is". Some yahoo gave this Ravi Zacharias' clip about God's existence a combatant title (why do so many evangelicals always seem on the attack?) it's a cool video clip about God's is-ness.

ht: Dave Guzman

Californians Love Religion... Not So Much

2008-06-23T20:34:28Z

Here's an interesting survey about Californians and religion.

Our Lady Of The Bloody Road Rash?

2008-06-21T17:14:17Z

When you fall off a moving motorcycle the tarmac loves to lick the skin off your carcass ravenously, the aftermath is called road rash. Maybe if your religious enough the Blessed Virgin will swing by as you leave your bike for the horizontal journey and save your butt... or maybe not...

Shazam!?

2008-06-19T21:43:30Z

Truth be told I'm not a huge fan of the flaccid children's picture book depictions of Jesus. The late 20th century pop art version of my Great King can be, well, lame. He's either painted as a gentle lamb-carrying pre-hippie or a comic-book superhero with abs o' steel. Jesus is never painted more Disneylicious than when a picture replays one of His world-rocking, mind-bending miracles. The miracles of Jesus deserve closer examination so for our next series at Elevation we're going to dive into the deep NT narrative.

When Jesus breaks the bounds of the natural He leaves powerful insights into who He is and what He is like.
Shazam!: The Miracles of Jesus premiers Sunday, June 29th.

On The iPod: Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Church Planters: GOOD Children's Ministry Music That Doesn't Suck So Much...

2008-06-14T16:17:39Z

It's hard to find appropriate music for postmodern children's ministry. But given this new Cd and a bottle of Nyquil for each child your postmodern kid's ministry will be a big success. ht: Phil McKenna

Green Sound

2008-06-13T00:13:53Z

We NOW have the first 2 weeks of the Green series podcasts up on the Elevation website in case you were looking for them. Sorry for the delay.

Green has been a fun and interesting journey: week one I created a live soundscape with audio loops as I taught (which is a handful), I've had to really wrestle with my own lack of Greeness, the ElevationEnvironmentCrew (atmosphere team) made the room look amazing, and the topic has been way more controversial than I expected.

RockStar

2008-06-06T03:10:13Z

As you know, my partner in ministry and Worship Lead @ Elevation; the Fabulous Omar Spence has an interesting family heritage. Omar's Father is the late Skip Spence of Jefferson Airplace and Moby Grape. Omar, some of the members of the Doobie Brothers and some of the members of Moby Grape will be playing a tribute concert in celebration of Skip's music this month here in Santa Cruz. I'll be there and wanted to invite you too. OFFICIAL INFO

Friday, June 20th @ 8:00pm at the Rio Theatre located at 1205 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz. ::: This is a concert celebrating Skip Spence's life and music career featuring songs Skip wrote for Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and his solo album "Oar". ::: Please note this is not a "Christian" music event. :::Tickets are $20 in advance or $24 at the door. For more info check out www.ospence.com

Poster Boy?

2008-06-05T02:00:16Z

I ran into this article online recently and had to laugh at how the author described me. And here I thought I was the poster boy face of conventional Republican Evangelical ultra right wing Bible-belt pastors... Shocking.

Visual Series Rewinds

2008-06-01T16:33:38Z

Something we've been doing at Elevation that may be worth passing on is Visual Series Rewinds. Like many teams we spend mega-hours each month putting together Keynote visuals for each week's message. We use photo stills, animations, video clips, audio clips and series color branded backgrounds to help our visual learners connect more deeply with Jesus and the teaching. After all that work it's a shame to just file it away like all the cool treasures in the Area 51 warehouse (and yes, I LIKED the new Indiana Jones).

We do this: at the end of each series we take all the best "slides" from all the messages in that series and put them into a single presentation set it to music and play it at the end of the last message in the series. The idea is to help people recall and reconnect the messages in the series as one piece instead of just a bunch of individual thoughts.

Whoo Hoo! -Tonight we start our new series: GREEN.

Logos For Mac

2008-05-30T21:58:45Z

God news for Mac-types Logos Bible Software has a free alpha version of its software for download that will function on Macs. If you have a logos library of books this means you can now access them from your Mac. Even though I run the full Windows version via Fusion on my MacBook Pro it is nice to have the Mac version for a quick startup quick look at my books even though all the features aren't in place on the Mac version yet. If you don't have a PC copy of Logos and its library of books you'll have to wait for the full release of the Mac version of Logos coming... well sometime. All I can say is that I started using Logos many many years ago on PCs and it has revolutionized the depth of my study of God's Word and quickened it at the same time. I can't say enough good things about Logos. Logos is like the Cuban Montecristo #2 of Bible software - it's smokes nicely!

What Do Pastors Do When They Get a Day Off?

2008-05-25T17:24:54Z

Location: The Pacific Coast Highway above Big Sur. Riding as an act of worship, thank you Lord.

Church Planters A New Idea For Meeting Space!

2008-05-22T04:43:59Z

Church planters know that finding a place to meet in todays world is getting tough! Maybe instead of hassling with schools and theaters we should look to the past and go underground. Really, underground.