Sacred Digital: Chuckk Gerwig

My current fav Mac Dashboard Widget is the YouTube Widget.

If you download the ut widget you just hit f-12 and your Dashboard appears and whoooosh you can view the latest YouTube vids without even loading your web browser. YouTube is a culture barometer and world class info source, it's worth keeping track of ...and it's filled with fun stupidity too.

Another nice widget with more eternal value is the Logos Bible Widget.

Today is my last day as a"professional" youth pastor. The last 24 years have been consumed with high school students and their world, it's been really fun!

This weekend I officiated at a wedding for one of my old students from 15 years ago. Much of that core group of old "kids" were there ( they are now all around their 30's), we reminisced for hours about the wonderful life and ministry we shared together years ago. Many of them are key volunteer ministers and a few are vocational ministers now, what a blessing. God provides just the right conclusions to life chapters. Thank you Jesus - life if GOOD!

Tomorrow starts a new chapter, Elevation. I'm on stoked.

Christianity as a religion continues to become less and less respected by the average person on the street. This article at the Barna Research Site confirms what many of us experience in our interactions with not yet Christians. Worth a read.

NOTE: the previously linked article was incorrect. My thanks to the amazingly vigilant Dan Kimball for catching the error! The article link is now correct. TKX Dan.

ht: Thud

Video-games are impacting our culture in huge ways... but are often outside the knowledge of many ministry leaders. Many church leaders go out of their way to keep up with current books and films but often are vaporous in the v-game knowledge department. The narratives of games like Halo and World of Warcraft are the frame of reference for many humans (and orcs and elves) in the emerging generation. Guess what, these players aren't just teenagers anymore.

In the midst of many of these games are stories of good vs evil, redemption, sacrifice and greed... sermon-food. For example...

More reason to buy a faster computer or console system as ministry research tools!

How do you "like to think of Jesus"?  It's vital that we see Him as He is and not as we wish He is- here's a great video clip for a sermon and some personal reflection.

I'm off to Lake Tahoe for our annual SCBC staff retreat tomorrow - fellowship Jetskis and fun.  It will be fun to get away with Andrea for a few days; we'll ride the Harley up and back which will make for a nice long ride together.  I love my wife and going riding together is a special time

I was in a couple of airports last week.  Airports are strange; if you travel alone, even though you are surrounded  by throngs of people there is a  certain loneliness.

Loneliness in a crowd is a sad thing. 

For many folks coming to church services or visiting a church is a "lonely in a crowd" experience, they come in sit alone, are un-recognized, un-embraced, alone  -in a crowd.  There is usually a cold empty seat or two between them and the other people in the room - the 14" gap of sadness.  

A friend of mine mentioned that she recently visited a new church and felt "like she had been invited to someone's home for a meal and was then completely ignored". 

Promotion minus hospitality = loneliness in the pews.

How could this be different?   ...begins with One

Jesus loves the poor.  In fact, Jesus was poor.

Ever hear a message that just sucked you in and made you ask yourself "how do I need to change - right NOW?" 

Tim Keller's stellar sermon "Doing Justice" is one of those messages you HAVE to hear, it's simply that good and that important.  Compassion and action are words that are vital to Elevation thinking.  It's vital that we continue to learn from the Word of God and evaluate our actions and thoughts from the Eternal Standard.

Listen to this message, it can be downloaded to your mp3 player or listened to directly on your computer.

Caution: if you listen to this before bed as I did your mind may be very awake for a while! 

Peter tells us in his first epistle " always be ready to give reason for the hope that is within you". 

Question , how many people have asked you about this lately? 

Maybe we need to develop deeper relationships so that people can see the hope and joy inside our lives and want to know where the well of such things is located... 

Ed Stetzer has some ideas on how to get started in these postmodern times.  Great thoughts on starting "spiritual discussions" - worth a read : HERE. 

Elevators, read this one.

We're back from Mexico - it was a great trip.  We found the best taco stand in the known universe - Taco's Arana..the holy Nirvana of taco stands (I am addicted to Mexican street food and have tested more than a few stands). They had a pepper at this place called a Chili Bomba, it is the hottest pepper I have come across - it nearly melted one of my students to his base elements.  His strong  reaction to the nuclear pepper provided great evening entertainment for the customers and restaurant staff.

One group of our students led a vacation bible school , women's bible study and sports ministry in a sprawling, graffiti-ed, trash-strewn condo complex in Tijuana - it was a blast and God was at work in and through the students. The Gospel was preached and incarnated.  If you were to show up you would have found skits, music, crafts, testimonies, bible stories, sweat and the occasional used hypodermic needle in the play area we lovingly call the "dustbowl".  2709 piggyback rides were given and 642 games of Futbol were played in the blazing heat, the American's lost most all of the games I think!

Some of our other kids built a brand new home for a family that had been living in an aging aluminum trailer.  Giving house keys to people who didn't have a house 5 days before is....powerful.  Jesus was on hand, sitting at the corner of the hot new roof, He was smiling. 

BEFORE -  

AFTER -      

The final group of our students ministered to and loved on kids at an AMAZING  orphanage, run by our friends the Palau's  they were blessed and a blessing.  One day we took about 20 of the children to the beach to play in the sand and the waves it was wonderful.  If you don't know about the Palau's work in Mexico check it out at the link in the last sentence, it is Christ-soaked - plug in with these people!

Well I'm home for about a week then off for a few days in Alabama with my dear friend Andy Wulff!

On the iPod: Audioslave - Out of Exile

Missional churches are very different than Seeker churches, the wonderful Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church explains the difference.  Breath mission my friends.

Does anyone really need an item like this?   ...and don't miss the companion item, here...

In the GOODNEWS Section: The clock is ticking down to Ele-Vision this Tuesday Nite!

  ...yeah baby !!!!

On the iPod: Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High

Find Out About The Elevation Dream: keep THIS Tuesday evening August 7th free for Ele-Vision, a vision-cast, Q&A and prayer evening for Elevation. -6:30pm @ the Santa Cruz Bible Coffeehouse.  God is brewing something tasty for Santa Cruz and beyond, come find out if He is calling you to cook along with Him at Elevation.

LOGO UPDATE: A huge thanks to everyone who has been submitting Elevation logos, we have a bunch of nice candidates already!  If you'd like to join the fun and submit a logo for Elevation there's still time - we'll be taking submissions through the end of July!  Logo submissions details are found at THIS entry.  We'll pick one official logo and use the other entries over time for special events and the like.

On The iPod: Joe Walsh - So What  This album along with his amazing "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get"  are among the most soulful classic rock albums of all time.  They remind me of driving across snow covered West Virginia in my cousin's red Firebird when I was a young kid.  My cousin had both albums on 8 track and they were the soundtrack for the long snowy drive to my grandfather's funeral.

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. 

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

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

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!

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

#'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).

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

 - 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. 

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

  -- The new iPhone is almost here and will be cooler than a penguin's pahtoot. Here is the official "check it all out" iPhone movie.  I will wait for a year or two till it comes out with a bigger hard drive and the bugs get worked out. 

In the meantime I just picked up the Treo 700p.  It does about everything the iPhone does like accesses the web, runs googlemaps, address book, calendar, YouTube, txt, phone, email etc etc.  In a cool turn of events I had enough phone upgrade mojo to get it free and even score a $50 store credit which was a double happiness.

This is a cool thing: if you have a bible program loaded onto your smart phone you can cut and paste verses from the Scriptures into a text message right on your phone and send them to folks you may be counseling, encouraging or interacting with in some way.  I just tried this last night, it was sweet!  It's a new way to quickly and directly input the life changing Word of God into a conversation with someone in real time.

On the iPod: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here :: WYWH was this year's album for our 4th annual "Pink Floyd Listening Party  Under The Stars" during our high school group's Wakefest Wakeboard Trip.  We are the only youth group I know with an annual Pink Floyd listening party - I love my kids, they too are cooler than a penguin's pahtoot.

It's great to be back after a week of hot sun and big fun houseboating with my students at Wakefest. 

We had a great week overall and an excellent opportunity for prayer because --> Wednesday evening one of my students went into a mega-asthma episode.  His meds wouldn't work and we were camping in a remote location far from the marina and even farther from a town and medical help.  His breathing became so fast and shallow that we picked him up and threw him into a speedboat and raced him to the docks.  The 10 minute boat ride felt like an eternity as he got worse and worse.  After the crazy breakneck boat-ride through the dark we arrived at the dock - his breathing was ultra fast and very shallow, and his pulse was racing.  Everyone remained calm but it was intense.  We prayed the prayer of desperate men, men in need of a great and merciful God. 

Then...

When we pulled in to the dock my student stopped breathing.  Just like that, he ...  just ...   stopped ...      breathing ... as the boat bobbed quietly in the darkness by the dockside. 

One of my staff guys is an emt and gave the boy mouth to mouth, no response for about a minute...  then a cough, a gasp and breath!  Soon a medical helicopter descended to rush him to the hospital.  In the air they administered meds and a breathing treatment.  I jumped into a car and headed down to the hospital. 

An hour later my kid was up text messaging his pals, smiling and joking with me in the emergency ward bed.  When I told him he had stopped breathing in the boat at one point he said  " I what?".  Wheeeeew.  We think he needs a cool special t-shirt that reads:  Wakefest 2007 : It'll Take Your Breath Away.

The punchline: in a fluke event we just happened to have a speedboat with us when he got sick, we normally have only a slow row boat with small motor at our camp, if God had not placed a speedboat at our disposal that evening this would likely have been a much different post.  God is worthy of praise.  Now for a 2 week rest before I head out to Denmark with my student mission crew - by then my adrenaline should be back down to a normal level.

For the record I'm breathing : highly missional in philosophy, more evangelical in theology (but not culturally) - and not fully reformed so maybe there's a fifth team MD.  Or a 5.1?

I decided to go follicle-optional for this week's houseboat trip as a little surprise for my students.  Andrea isn't a big fan :: I just learned this. I think it gives me a kinder gentler look, kinda like your friendly local pediatrician / vivisectionist.  Guess what else I learned, when you shave your head the fresh skin feels strangely like a dehydrated porpoise.

After I scraped my head free of that huge mop of hair I've been sporting I realized that painful cranial scorching may be a real  issue at the lake this year...

Who needs photoshop when there is a perfectly good Gillette razor in the bathroom drawer .   Off to the lake I go :: no email or cell or blog coverage 'till Friday night.

Next week I leave with 85 - 90 high schoolers and 25 + staff and boat drivers for a wild week of house boating, wakeboarding and tubing on Lake McClure: Wakefest 2007.  I feel a bad sunburn coming on and a lack of sleep in my future - summer is funner.  Life is good if you let it be.

Usual away-disclaimer: we have a dangerous, unstable, gun toting human staying at our home and the dog does have rabies and is in heat so burglars beware.

Elevation is the name of the new ministry and community that I will be leading and pastoring.  The name has a special soulful tingle for me personally.  Elevation was the name of the ministry my heart-brother Dan Snow was engineering at the time of his tragic and early death. 

So Dan, Elevation lives in your honor.

 In this aeon time and space matter less, yet our churches seem mired in time and space... Ten Challenges Facing the Church in Cyberspace is a great post that you should read.  How could you or your ministry better seize the ether?  Dream with me how we can touch people: locally, nationally and globally through technology and through the internet in particular.  Elevation will be seeking to leverage technology to love and serve the world in unique ways from it's inception, dream with me.

On The iPod: David Sylvian - Dead Bees on a Cake