My Worship Revolution

At EMI records today in a songwriting workshop.
This is some amazing stuff we’re hearing.
On another note, I had a similar post to this last year.
How many Apple laptops can you find in this picture taken today at EMI in a room of worship leaders?

Today (Thursday) was definitely the most personally enriching and impactful day of Recreate this year.  I’m wiped after a long and taxing day, so I need to crash.  I’ll share more later.  But to get a small glimpse in the meantime, take a peek at our communion time with Mike Lewis, Mark Roach, and Mark Lee:

It was amazing.  And I want Mike to come to Santa Cruz.  Badly.  Good night.

A little behind.  I’ll post some highlights for each day over the next few posts to catch up.  So much has happened, I can’t even come close to hitting it all, so why try?  Eh?

Dr. Thom Parham

This guy is part of the WGA and a film professor at my wife’s alma mater, Azusa Pacific University.  He spoke about "Finding Our Passion in Filmmaking" and had some great thoughts!  Here’s a couple highlights:

• You can encapsulate truth in a story and catch them off-guard and make them connect the dots and figure out what you’re talking about.
• Studios may think we’ll eat anything.  We need to refine our taste to appreciate good movies.
• Craft films with substance and beauty
• Just because a filmmaker adheres to a different worldview doesn’t mean he or she has nothing to say
• Christians are the new gays in Hollywood: everyone wants to play one, no one wants to be one. –Dean Batali
• Don’t be afraid to “get real” – if we want to connect with people we need to show them we have the same problems they do
• Movies are not evangelical, they are pre-evangelical
• Art that people dislike and inspires discussion is better that art that is forgettable

Oddly enough, I left this session now wanting to see 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up.  Sounds odd, I know.  But Thom had some great insight into the maker of those movies and his work which somehow tends to be subversively conservative.  He shows the downside of that lifestyle in going so far over the top in that direction.  What would happen if a Christian movie maker created a film with  similar method?  Something to ponder.

His point that probably rung true with me the most was the need for more Christians "behind enemy lines" in entertainment.  We tend to get one or two back there, get excited, and leave them on their own to get picked off.  To be successful in creating culture we need to see hundreds of artist trying to break across the lines.  I guess I appreciated this in part cause I’m so sick of us telling our youth that they need to use their talents to create Christian music and art.  Let’s get them out of the bubble and let them create redemptive art in the marketplace!

Jon Tyson

This was the smaller group discussion time with Jon.  Again, the guy is brilliant and is doing some pretty awesome stuff in NYC at his church, Origins.  He had 2 main points to discuss:

1. Making sure we don’t create ahistorical churches
2. The death of alpha male leadership in the church

Being that our group was the cluster of smaller churches, we chose to focus more on the former (being that the latter tends to be more of a mega-church mentality, however we are far from immune to it in my opinion).  I can’t even come close to summing up all we talked about there, but here are a few thoughts I was able to pull out of the mix:

• There is a difference between contextualization and relevance
• Our churches need to be rooted, not relevant
• People need to understand their place in the greater picture of Christian history
• I really need to look more into "narrative theology"
• We try to get people to serve in our church on Sundays and devalue the other 160+ weekly hours of their lives, although we would never overtly say it.  (Wow…there was a lot behind that.  That one really hit me between the eyes!)
• Teaching is not the solution

As a result of our discussion, I went to Amazon during it and ordered The Shaping of Things to Come.  It’s on its way and I can’t wait to check it out.

Well, here’s one way to get a new lawyer:

Last night this is where we had dinner.

The Factory in Franklin.  Very cool venue.  Very good food.  Very, very good music.  After eating we had Jared Anderson, Paul Baloche, and a coule other incredible song writers/singers.  Here’s a piece or Jared Anderson’s song, Amazed:

It was a night of incredible music and worship.  Until of course we were interrupted by tornado sirens.

I know what to do in an earthquake, but what the heck is weather?
We eventually got started again, and in case you were wondering, we didn’t get hit by the weather.
After we got started again, the power went out and we just worshipped right through it without being phased, and it was a pretty cool experience.

Throughout the night, Paul kept referring to us as leaders being able to relax this week and allow Jesus to wash our feet this week.  This is one of the main purposes of Recreate.  Refreshment.  And it is has already been an amazing week to be poured into.  I owe a HUGE thank you to Ed, my lead pastor, for allowing me to be here.  For seeing the value in eing filled.  And I always know he has go my back at our church.

Thanks for the support.  Thanks for letting Rachel and I be inspired and ministered to this week.  Watch out. I’m comin back fired up and full of ideas and excitement!

About to head to dinner after day 1 at Recreate.  Not too much time, but I wanna throw up a few notes and info for all you following along who weren’t able to be here.  Don’t think I’ll have a ton of time to share my processing right now (haven’t even had much time to process!) but I also like having these in one place for me.

Vicky Beeching

Started off the morning by being led in worship by Vicky Beeching.  Jaime, you would have loved it!  It’s too bad that she can’t really lead worship, though.  (For those of you that are a little dense, that statement is dripping with sarcasm.)  It was an incredible time of worship and a great way to jump start the day and the conference.  Video here:

Jon Tyson

WOW.  This guy is a pastor in New York.  He is like 32 years old and ridiculously genious.  He talked about coming trends and looking around the corner.  Here’s a couple of notes and quotes that really hit me.

• Holistic Missional Theology
  • Man was made to create culture, not just to be gardeners of Eden
  • The church should be in the world recreating and restoring all of culture as it was intended for the flourishing of all humanity
  • Are you limiting creativity to only creating better services?
  • Help people see the renewal mandate of creating good culture as something everybody does.
  • Why sit downstream in the river and complain about the flow when we could go upstream and put something in the water to change the flow
• Divine Imagination
  • Caesar Augustus captured the imagination of Rome…that is what he did well.
  • Early Christians took the Acts of Augustus and turned it into the Acts.  It was a subversive piece of literature with a better story than the one that was there
  • Christians captured the people’s imagination away from Caesar that Jesus is a better God.  They captured their divine imagination
• Banksy Imaginative Prophet
  • •    Our culture has forgotten how to discern good art
• What are you doing that is provocative to capture peoples divine imagination?
• Better services are not the final solution, better lives being shared in the weekend services is the answer.

Man, I can’t wait for our smaller session with this guy to discuss!

Matthew West

A surprise artis this afternoon was Matthew West.  I’m not personally familiar with much of his music, but he was great.  He also shared a piece of a documentary they filmed last year about his having vocal surgery and sharing what he learned in his "weakness" and "brokenness."  Here’s a piece of a new song of his:

Other stuff too, but there’s the highlights.  Gotta go!  More later!

Kinda expected the first couple "bonus" sessions to be kinda chill.  Just listen to some stuff, not be too intense til maybe dinner tonight.

Already expectations are exceeded.  Mind blowing listening to the knowledge of acoustic properties from Audio Ethics.  Some interesting comparisons between America’s churches and Recreate represented churches from CCLI.

But the one that really hit me between the eyes was from a founder of Sermon Spice.  He shared from a passion for digital media and the use of it to reach our culture.  (Loose) Quotables:

• We’re at a time when Hollywood is actually coming to us and we are missing out right now on a huge opportunity. 
• We kinda have a corner on the story telling market with the greatest story there is to tell.
• You’re church can become a place not for creative Christians, but creatives in your community.
• Sidenote: Check out this great video he shared with us.

So there was a lot more to it than that, but not much time to really ponder right now.  I know I was especially challenged in 2 ways:

1. I need to write more again.  Never felt like I was all that great at it, but others always affirmed it in me and I actually really enjoyed doing it.  Time to get creative and motivate myself to write more again.  Scripts.  Dramas.  Whatever.
2. Hmmm…maybe a Santa Cruz film festival?  I know, sounds odd out of context.   But who knows.  If I can flesh it out in my head this week, we’ll see what happens.  Just know that video has always been a love of mine and something that we could possibly use more out of our church to entrench ourselves in a Santa Cruz culture rich with artists and talent.

Time to go get some of the amazing food I’ve been looking forward to.
I think this is gonna be an inspiring week.  I’m stoked.

…and Rachel is already missing our kid like crazy!

Who am I kiddin?  I miss him too.
Just not enough to already need the iChat, though, but it was fun!

Just in time, before we hit another Sunday.
Here’s last week.  Chck it out:

This week, bolting out of service like a madman to catch a 1:50 flight to San Diego.
Watchin the Super Bowl with mine and Rachel’s fams.
Leaving Caleb with my Mom.
Catching a 10:30pm flight to show up in Nashville Monday morning.
See ya in the south!
(I can’t wait for the food!!  I’m fat and coming back even fatter!  Serious diet time after next week!)