the missing piece….

So I have a rule….don’t blog just to blog. Blog because you have something to say.

The past month I haven’t had much to say. I’ve been working, I’ve been getting ready to go home for vacation and in the process wasn’t doing much to enrich my mind until this happened….

On the Tuesday  before Christmas, I wrote an article for my church’s weekly enews deal. I was really digging it because I felt I had a perspective that people would feel strongly about either positively or negatively. In the article I wrote about how foolish it seemed that when something bad happens at Christmas we always say things like “it’s a shame for something so bad to happen at Christmas”. I’ve always given them the sideways head tilt and thought “what does Christmas do to enhance the horribleness of a situation? It would be just as painful no matter what time of year it was.” How little did I realize the bomb was about to drop on me.

I won’t go into the specifics, but the conversation that ensued not an hour later rocked my foundation and made several things brim to the surface. There were feelings of anger, resentment, sadness, and fear. Fear because a situation hadn’t changed that I hoped would. Fear because I didn’t have the ability to tell anyone why I was so down. I went home and cried. I cried harder than I had in years. The tears I didn’t have at my grandmother’s funeral finally broke through. All the fears, anxieties, and anger finally broke through. In that moment there was no one that could comfort me. No one…

So I did something that even to this day baffles me, I pulled out my guitar and started playing a song and singing. Oddly it wasn’t some lover’s lament crap, it was the Fee song “Glory to God”….Fighting through tears trying to sing a song that in my mind was the last I thought I would play was oddly healing. I was able to worship and let the innermost sadness in my spirit get through…instead of pushing it down and ignoring it, walking through life and letting it build…I finally let it out.

Two days later I went home and didn’t know what to say. There was pressure to do something else, throw in the towel, and move home. I almost did it…then I went to a conference in Atlanta and two revelatory things were said that is making me hang in there even though there is a heavy sadness engulfing my spirit….

The word “equip” in english comes from a greek word that means “to prepare and repair” simultaneously. This brought to light the idea to me that when God is equipping you for something He’s not just preparing you for the journey ahead, He is repairing the parts of you that hurt. The parts of you that don’t fit right….

When I heard this I got angry again…I’ve felt like I’ve been prepared a lot but there hasn’t been a lot of “REpairing”. Then someone said this:

” Before we decide what we want to do we must first decide who we are going to be.”

I immediately went OH SH*T in an audible whisper that made many people around me looked at me like I was a leper…

I wanted to jump from my chair and scream at them “DID YOU NOT JUST HEAR THAT? THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!!!”

All my life I’d been told you have to decide what you are going to be. There was a sense in me that this was false. At age 22, I certainly didn’t know what to do so I finally picked a major in history because I didn’t know any better and thought it would be cool. It later became a major in political science too because I couldn’t pass advanced college spanish. Then I graduated college with a piece of paper that said I was smart enough to get out of Florida State. Then the question became what are you going to do for the rest of your life? Granted, a degree is important but the fact that this piece of paper changes everything is a lie. You are no smarter when you enter college than when you exited. All the papers I wrote are meaningless two years out. I am grateful for what I learned and what was taught but nothing in college prepared me for life. Nothing….

Nothing fit for me but helping others.

I was reminded of this again. I’m ready for a new journey and the next trip in that journey is forthcoming soon. I can feel the aching in my bones….

Now I just have to figure out who I want to be…because that will determine what I will do and who will be around me…

Countdown to a new year….complete records

After reading my last post I must apologize profusely. My grammar/spell check was non-existent. This is unacceptable. Ok, now that is over…on to the post.

This past year has been a literal dearth when it comes to new, GOOD music. If you like Pop/Punk or Rap you may have had a good year collecting singles but good records have been few and far between. It seems as if the music business has become all about the single rather than a complete record.

Most of these records on my list did not come out in the past year. However, they were records I was peeping out and responding to. So here’s the best albums according to me that defined 2009

Austrian Death Machine – Brutal and Double Brutal….peep it out if you like metal and Arnold
Bob Dylan – The Best of…I thank the movie The Watchmen for reminding how awesome “The Times They Are A Changin’” is.
Calexico – Garden Ruin….thanks to ECase for this one.
Capitol Speedway – Tonight, The World Is Ours…RVan may be pissed about this one but I don’t care. I dig the songs on here,
especially “Nothing Left To Say”.
Charlie Hall – The Bright Sadness…quite possibly my favorite worship record of all time. Hall and Co. put out a great record.
Chickenfoot – Chickenfoot…Great, dirty rock ‘n roll that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is what it’s all about.
Foo Fighters – The Colour and the Shape…Years later this record still stands up as one of the best rock records of a generation.
How you can’t love “My Hero”, “Monkey Wrench”, “Everlong”, and “Walking After You” is beyond me
Honestly – Have A Nice Life…a random find via Pandora. Great band no longer together sadly.
Jars of Clay – The Long Fall Back to Earth…Jars put their first full-length non-Christmas record on their new label and it was awesome top to bottom.
Fee – Hope Rising…an album I’m growing rather attached to.
Steve Earle – The Revolution Starts Now…an E3 walk-in song turned me to this somewhat hidden gem.
Third Eye Blind – Ursa Major/Out of the Vein…both of these records have been getting a lot of spins on my iPod. Why? They are awesome.
Underoath – They’re Only Chasing Safety…when I need to sing loud, and let it out, I put this record on.

So those entire records got a good number of spins this past year. There are about 25 songs that will make my year end play list. That is yet to come though.

Countdown to a new year…books

So here’s the deal…

There is a lot going on right now but none of which is really something I can blog about coherently without there being a definitive beginning, middle, and end so rather than ramble I’m going to talk about things that have effected me in the last year.

I’ll start with books.

I read…a lot. So much that is kinda surprises me how much information I’ve attempted to pack into my brain over this lifetime. Just in the past year I’ve read over 70 something books. Here’s the ones that stick out as memorable and/or I journaled about at various intervals….

Jesus Wants to Save Christians – Rob Bell
Blink – Malcom Gladwell
Scouting the Divine – Margaret Feinberg
Exiles – Michael Frost
ReJesus – Alan Hirsh/Michael Frost
Crazy Love – Francis Chan
Forgotten God – Francis Chan
A Man On The Moon – Andrew Chalkin
The Divine Conspiracy – Dallas Williard
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination – Neil Gabler
Inside Terrorism – Hoffman
John Adams – David McCoullough
Between Wyomings – Ken Mansfield
The Next Man Up – John Feinstein
Bret “The Hitman” Hart: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Pro Wrestling – Bret Hart (no ghostwriter here folks)
A Lion’s Tale – Chris Jericho
U2 by U2
An Innocent Man – John Grisham
Stranger Than Fiction – Chuck Palahniuk
Nixonland – Rick Perlstein
My Boring Ass Life – Kevin Smith
Simply Christan – N.T. Wright
Rey Mysterio: Behind the Mask – Rey Mysterio

and the book that has completely wrecked me…been the most contemplated because of the implications is…

Justification – N.T. Wright….read this book only if you want to have headaches as you contemplate what it all means.

If you’re interested in discussing any of these I’d be glad to. These books in some way, shape, or form changed me, entertained me, and/or challenged me in various ways.

 

 

 

 

 

a milestone

This past Sunday came and went for most people with little or no notice. It was just another Sunday. For me it was different. This past Sunday was the first Sunday I finally believed I could live up to my calling.

I’ve been a worship leader since 2002 which puts me 7 years into this journey, however there is a lot people don’t know about that journey. When I first started this crazy adventure I had zero clue what I was doing. I had been playing guitar barely a few months and the previous worship leaders in the youth group I was volunteering didn’t work out for one reason or another so I got my shot. I look back at those days fondly because I was learning by doing. I had a great mentor in the spiritual aspect of worship leading but when it came down to it, I had no mentor musically who could help me out.

And so it went for 2 years. I was leading 2 – 3 times a month (sometimes more) and showing some progress but really having no idea what was happening. I’d pick songs simply because I liked them, not so much because it told a story or took people into a certain conversation with God inside of a gathering.

2004 saw me start playing gigs on the road for various churches, events, and even an 8 week stand in Charleston, South Carolina at the Charleston Outreach camp. This time period is where I started learning how to control my voice a little better, find some higher ranges, and figure out the art of the worship setlist and how that flows.

The end of 2004 saw me burnout. I had gone as high as I could in my current situation so I headed from Richmond, Va. north a couple of hours to Washington DC. For the next year and a half I played rarely and only led 3 – 4 times. I felt as if I had lost my calling and was wandering in the desert.

2006 saw me move to Tallahassee, Florida to finish school at Florida State. 5 months after being in Tally, I visited Element3 Church. I found a church home and a new lease on life. Early 2007 saw me regain my passion for worship leading and by the spring I was given a shot by Eric Case, our worship pastor.

I realized in this I had a lot to learn, but I finally had the mentor, leading, and teaching I needed to season me in what I felt my calling was. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the past two and a half years of leading. I’ve had some good gatherings and I’ve had some pretty terrible gatherings.

This past Sunday, 11.15.09, I finally felt at home. There were 3 new songs I hadn’t played live before and two I was very comfortable with. The 9:30am was slightly shaky but I attribute it to the band feeling sleepy still and working the morning kinks out. 11am went well except for one slight miscue on my part. Then 7pm came. It was the best gathering I’d ever led in 7 years. The music flowed, the Spirit spoke, I got the goosebumps on stage during “How He Loves”, the community worshipped, and it was fun. Pure fun.

I won’t bore you on my views of worship and why the intricate portions of Sunday worked so well. If you’re interested, you can email me or grab me in person to talk.

So, after this Sunday, I finally feel I can really do this. Thanks to the Element3 community for not throwing vegetables at me when they surely could have at many junctures on stage. Thanks to Mark McNees for not kicking me off the stage when I’ve had some bad Sundays. Thanks to John Mark for putting an 18 year old kid who had no clue what he was doing in a leadership position. Lastly, thanks to Eric Case for actually believing I could do this and taking the time to make sure I learned and did new things. I owe all of you and so many more a huge hug and thank you.

I think I can really do this now…..

everything must change…

There is a Jesus who is, and the Jesus we have seemed to create.

What I mean is this: the more I read the Gospels I’m more confused because the Jesus who is, and the Jesus we claim seem to be two entirely different people.

The Jesus I read in the Gospels appeared to the outcasts, the misfits, and tore down the barriers of exclusion yet in our very midst Jesus has been very much sanitized.

I look at the Church and I don’t see a wild, untamed people. I see a very content, very rich, stable bunch who will confess Jesus with their lips but do not live a life worthy of what they are called to.

Not all of us are called to go to Africa, or start an organization that fights poverty but we all are called to make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Breaking that down, we’re basically called to teach others who God and Jesus are and to send them out to do the same.

The idea of living a life where telling God’s story is paramount isn’t easy. It means sacrifice, it means reaching out to those who need Jesus most, it means popping the bubble of our comfort zone, it means taking time to serve others when they need us, it means that in all we do, we do it as if Jesus Himself were doing it through us.

I feel slightly melancholy about this because I was supposed to teach a class starting this week about sharing our faith. The very thing we are called to do and not a single person showed up and only one person signed up. It depresses me not for me, but for the kingdom. The fact that there is an opportunity for others to learn about sharing the very faith that has supposedly changed their lives and no one shows up disheartens me. In a church of 500 people, not a single one shows up.

What does this mean? Maybe it’s a fluke. Maybe it wasn’t promoted well. Maybe the rain scared some people away. These are all valid reasons.

Then I look at the gospels. People were desperate to see and hear this wild man. This man sent from God. Nothing stopped them. Their faith in Him caused them to take apart their neighbor’s roof so that their friend could be healed, they travelled great distances because they were desperate for a Savior.

I don’t see this great desperation for a Savior much. There are times I do but it’s very rare. I find something wrong with this picture. I long to see a people who hunger and thirst after the wild, untamed Jesus I read about.

Everything must change….

and now an antecdote

Some days I really like being a quasi-pastor. Others I struggle with my place in this story of God.

I mean this in an existential kind of way because my main job is branding, creative arts, and web 2.0.

It’s very strange because I feel called to be a worship pastor and the right opportunity hasn’t yet come along so that I can do so. In the meantime I read, soak up what experience and knowledge I can, and work diligently towards the day God has me move to the next thing.

With that being said, it’s weird being in an area of ministry with which you make up a lot of what you do as you go along. When I started my job, I knew nothing about video editing, nothing about photoshop, and nothing about web design.

You could call this detrimental to my job.

I’ve worked very hard to improve in these areas but the results have been average. I built a website that was functional in that people could access it and get the information they needed, I figured out how to re-size graphics in photoshop (thanks Mark!), and have turned out a few videos that didn’t particularly stink.

It does make me wonder though when I get to move into areas where I am gifted. Vision casting, big picture stuff, leading, teaching.

Next week I teach Stage 4 again, which is a class about sharing your faith, so I guess that is part of that process. I am really passionate about sharing your faith in these times because it looks a lot different than it did when I was growing up. When I was growing up in Alabama you could shout from street corners, go to events, etc. and tell people forthright about Jesus. Nowadays that stuff doesn’t work. It becomes what it should have been all along. Building relationships, modeling Christ, and making God’s story paramount.

It’s part of the process of understanding that our goal should be to play a very very very small role in God’s grand story than to have a starring role in our own.

To me…Alan Hirsch put it best in his book “reJesus”: “We need to let Jesus be Jesus and allow ourselves to be caught up in His extraordinary mission for the world.”

Support Creativity

Risks are not rewarded in today’s climate. Sounds a little crazy I know but with the economy in the tank most brands/businesses/etc. are not taking risks. In effect they are killing creativity.

What a lot of these brands do not realize is that by playing it safe they will never recover. The brands that take a risk and try something creative to jump start their business will survive and prosper. Look at the decline of magazine sales for one. Before the Internet age, magazines sold by the truckload. I remember being in middle school and having to go to three different places the day the new Sports Illustrated came out. It was that hard to find in my small town because demand was so high. Now, you can find it anywhere. The proliferation of the Internet has made MOST magazines useless. Blogs, espn.com, etc. have made it easy to find articles people are interested in hours, and sometimes minutes, after it is over. Most magazines have had to move to online formats and lower their circulation on newsstands everywhere in order to compete and survive. However, one magazine has seen their circulation go up and that is Wired magazine. Their editor decided that moving to an all online format would be following the crowd and would render them one of many with a smaller market share. He also said that to keep the same format in the print version of their magazine would pigeonhole them. So what did they do? They made a visually interesting magazine. The articles, opinions, etc. were all still there but how they were laid out visually in the magazine made it unique, appealing, and most of all, stood out. They took a risk. They didn’t follow the crowd.

I write about this because lately I find myself in a rut creatively. I’ve been working on a lot of things but most of it has stayed within a certain bubble; projects I knew I could handle. I’ve also let parts of my job as a Branding/Communications Quasi-Pastor become routine. It’s time to take a few risks creatively again like I did when I first started my job. Try something new. See how it works, tweak it, refresh it, and see how it grows. If it fails, well at least I took a risk. I am a creative person and recently someone told me that when I am passionate about a project I throw myself all into it and usually turn out something cool. Lately I haven’t been as creative. In order to survive and find some joy, I need a new challenge.

Support creativity, because it’s not cool to follow the crowd.

the hard parts…

You know what’s really interesting. As a quasi-pastor you help people deal with a lot of adverse effects happening in their lives. You’re there to comfort in times of sickness, death, and general hard times. You also get to rejoice with them in the good times. It’s a strange dynamic. Recently I was asked to sit with someone while they were waiting to find out if their grandmother was going to live through a procedure or not. So, we sat at a coffee shop. We laughed, we cried, and we prayed. 3 hours after we first sat down we got a phone call letting us know she lived and was asking for pudding of all things. In that moment we were able to rejoice and praise God.

Now I find myself on the other end. One of my grandmother’s died a year ago. It was so strange because it happened and for my family I had to be that “rock” so to speak in the midst of this death. Emotionally I was the one consoling my young cousins trying to explain to a six year old why Nanny looks like she does and where is she. It was like ripping my heart out and stepping on it. In that moment I wanted to hug her and cry but she didn’t need me to do that. She needed me to tell her what happened. So I choked it down and was as brave as possible.

These are the hard parts…

Today I’ve been to see my other grandmother. Her brain is deteriorating at a faster pace now. To watch a second grandmother go through this awful process is maddening. You second guess, you get angry, you get sad, but yet you try to find a way to praise God in it.

These are the hard parts….

Our sin causes these hard parts. The pain, the loneliness, the aching, and the longing.

Thankfully, the hard parts don’t last forever.

“And so we continue to insist that through the resurrection a whole new world is bursting forth right here in the midst of this one because what we look for we will find.” – Rob Bell

I am looking for joy and peace, through the resurrection I think I might find it.

Musicology of me: Flickerstick

Flickerstick - Welcoming Home the Astronauts

Flickerstick is one of my biggest musical influences. I would dare say that I would not be doing what I do if it weren’t for their music. There was something about their attitude, their style, their sound, their live show that just drew me in and inspired me. I first saw them on this VH1 show Bands on the Run, a show about four independent bands in a touring competition, and from episode one these guys hooked me. They had the rock star look, sound, and attitude. The rest of the bands seemed desperate to make it and Flickerstick had the look they would make it whether they won the show or not (which they did).

The week before the show ended, I was in luck they were playing in Norfolk, Va (about an hour from Richmond where I was living at the time). The Norva had about 500 people in it (really good for an independent band with no record deal or A&R peeps pushing their product) and they tore the house down. From the opening keyboards of “Smile” to the rock star finish of “Direct Line to the Telepathic” I was in musical heaven. I bought their independent disc (a rare find now on ebay for mucho dinero) and played the crap out of it until Epic Records signed them, remixed the record, and put out a much more polished version of “Welcoming Home the Astronauts”.

That record was full of songs that people gravitated to once exposed. “Lift (with love we will survive)”, “Got a Feeling”, “Beautiful”, “Smile”, “Coke”, “Sorry (wrong trajectory)”, and “Direct Line” were all top notch songs that were basically ignored by radio and the general public once they came out. A total shame. The album had pop, hard rock, crazy riffs, and soaring solos all rolled into one. How this band didn’t hit it big I’ll never know.

After their major label debut essentially flopped, they went indie again and released a great live album “Causing a Catastrophe” with an incredible cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You”. Next came a DVD/EP “To Madagascar and Back”. This record was overlooked but shouldn’t have been. “Blue” is by far one of their best songs and never quite got the attention it deserved. I highly implore you to download it off iTunes. Such an incredible song and worth the 99 cent price tag. Their next full-length was “Tarantula”. A darker record with songs just as good as WHTA. “Bleeding” and “Pistol” stick out as the songs that deserve most attention. Lyrically “Bleeding” talks about the ending of relationships and what happens next. Regret? Pain? What did it all mean? It’s all in there. “Pistol” is this dark rocker with a portion of the song with dueling solos from Cory Kreig and El Dangeroso himself Rex Ewing. The last project was a live album of new material. Newer songs like “Whatever Gets You Off” and “Contract Killers” were well done and it’s a shame that by this point they didn’t have the money to make a great studio record.

My story with this band continued from 2001 – 2008 (my last show). I saw them 16 times over a seven year period and even got a chance to know a couple of them. Such nice guys to their fans and very grateful for the chance to play their music on the road. It was with great sadness I couldn’t be at the farewell shows in early 2009. Being able to say goodbye would have been awesome.

On the positive note. Their lyrics, their style, and their stage presence left a lasting impression on me musically. I have great memories, and I have CD’s that will always be there.

So, what bands inspired you? Which band inspired passion in you? I’m kinda curious what your story is…..

We’re not living in a fish tank….seriously

“Life is best lived at disequilibrium” – Alan Hirsch

That may sound completely wrong but it’s true. To understand what that statement means I guess I should define equilibrium. Equilibrium refers to “a state of balance between opposing forces or actions that is either static or dynamic”. Basically it means a flat line. To a human it would mean death because our body system is in constant motion and out of balance. In nature, or figuratively, it would mean an artificial state that has been created.

Mr. Hirsch put it this way…..In the movie Finding Nemo, a Disney movie so already this professor had me hooked, Nemo is living in the ocean. A chaotic, living organism full of disorder. There are areas where pH is more acidic or more base, different fish or organisms live, and there are bacteria everywhere. When Nemo is captured, he is put in a fish tank at a doctor’s office, a completely artificial environment. Before the other fish will even go near him, he is cleaned off and all the dangerous bacteria removed.

There are many components to this fish tank and many factors to think about in this artificial environment. The water has to be a certain temperature, the pH level has to be a neutral “7″, the fish are fed rather than hunting to feed themselves, there are bubbles created to keep air circulating, there is a filter, and there is artificial light. Compared to the ocean, this environment is sterile.

Now, later in the movie Nemo is returned to the ocean and life goes on, everything is well. Well, in real life that wouldn’t happen. After being in an artificial environment for more than a day or two, MOST fish would die in the vast unbalanced environment that is the ocean. Their bodies wouldn’t be able to adjust to varying temperature, bacteria, etc. and/or they would be picked off by another predator.

This small portion of a lecture last week at Catalyst got me thinking about what this means to Christ followers.

Mr. Hirsch used the example of a church youth group. Youth in church grow up in this artificial environment, protected from the real world and what entails being a part of it. When they leave for college and go into the real world (the ocean) most are swallowed up by the temptations they were never prepared for.

In much the same way, it is a word of warning for those of us in the big “C” church as well. We can not insulate ourselves to the world. Doing so creates this artificial environment that doesn’t really exist. In order for us to live out Matthew 28, we must get outside the artificial environment and learn to swim.  If we don’t, we’ll simply be swallowed by the big black ocean, rather than living in it and finding out what God would have for us.