On October 1 my team made a radical change in our approach which we are now  announcing after a trial run.

We don’t make videos.

We tell stories that happen to be on the visual medium of video.

We often get people that came to us and said, “I need a video for X,Y, or Z.” Then, we’d set up all our gear and someone would come in and give us the blank stare like, “What do guys want me to say?” Those days are over. No longer do we make videos. Please don’t ask us to. We only tell stories. If you have a great story, we’ll help you tell it.

Here. What do they have in common?

Here are some fun shotgun calling rules for the trip over the river and through the woods or to your next worship engagement on the road.

We would like to offer you this free devotional. Join us on a daily journey as we reflect upon the cost involved in God’s bringing us salvation in Jesus Christ.

Each day centers on a Biblical character from the Christmas story and includes a Scripture reading, a reflection paragraph, and two application questions. The first question is geared towards both children and adults, while the second question more deeply challenges our obedience and faith. After answering the questions, spend time in prayer. We encourage you to carve out time daily as an individual or as a family to reflect on Jesus during this Advent season.

the-cost-devotional-web.pdf

My cohort in crime, Brent Minter, wrote this great corporate worship tune, The Great Exchange. Check it out.

Pat Metheny is one of my musical heros. No one can touch his playing/compostion tour de force. With that said, his new website design is, how do I say it, atrociously bad. Wow. How much bigger can you make that center font?

We believe in giving away free tools. However, we do have 2 rule for worshiptrench feel tool usage:

• 1. You can use them as is, labeled as a worshiptrench resource, within your ministry. You can pass them onto other local churches for their usage.
• 2. If you are going to include them in some type of service or product by which you earn money on (a book, consulting, etc) or are re-branding huge portions as your own stuff, we need to talk first. The stuff is free, but it is copyrighted. i am not against it but just want to see what will be used where.

Several of you have asked, my reasons for this posting.

Fred McKinnon came up with this great idea. Go to your itunes or ipod. Put it on shuffle and see the first 5 songs that emerge (you can click thru and not wait for the song to completely play OR does that change the result..hmmm)

I did 7 because I couldn’t resist:

• 1. Gonna Take It John Butler Trio (funny my fave band comes up first)
• 2. Aliens Ripped My Face Off Karizma (Vinnie Coualita, drummer of all drummers group)
• 3. Bela Celso Fonseca (Brasilian singer-smooth great date music!)
• 4. Knuckle Down Ani Difranco (the lil aggressive folk singer is golden)
• 5. The Firebird Suite: VIII. Stravinsky(who cannot like heavy Russian composers)
• 6. Pretend that You are Alone Keane (new album a little different but grows on you)
• 7. Puncha Puncha Avishai Cohen Trio (burningest jazzers out there)

(Yes I do have worship on the pod, just nothing came up in the first 7. Don’t CHEAT, leave them no matter how uncool).

My friend, and great communicator, Jon Sampson recently posted on his excitement over President Elect Obama using YouTube.

I am not nearly as excited about this medium as a communicative tool for the office of President of the United States. Why? My response:

I don’t know if I am as hip on this as you are, Jon. To me, though communication is more frequent, I worry it will become diluted. I know the President typically gives a weekly radio address and few listen. But it is precisely this limited amount of direct visual communication (not via press secretary) that causes people to watch intently when a President speaks on national TV.  Notice is taken and usually all three majors and PBS pick up the speach. The lack of frequency helps his direct visual communication carry more weight.

A metaphor/simile. YouTubed Presidents are like (more…)

 We are offering without charge a  series of processes we have learned which will allow you to do a stellar life and ministry year end review (YER). In 2007, we have had over 1,000 folks download this process. If you would do your own comprehensive review, you’ll need to calendar the following things now:

1. 1. Set aside a day outside the office late November/early December to do the personal assessment exercise sections of the process.
2. 2. Calendar a time to take 30 min or preferably an hour for every member of your ministry team to complete and return the participant evaluation exercise. (We prefer to do this in a group setting, as emailing them out gets you very few returns).
3. 3. Calendar a time to meet with your captains as individuals for their assessment of you and the ministry, and your assessment of them.
4. 4. Set aside an additional half-day for yourself after the individual assessments for mastery points exercise and personal goals tweaking.
5. 5. Calendar a group captain gathering to formalize 09 goals and agendas. I usually do a Friday night dinner at a nice restaurant to say thanks followed by a Saturday morning get together at my house.
6. 6. Find a time to vision cast reviews/goals 09 that are appropriate with all ministry participants.

You’ll need to start calendaring these dates now. In the coming weeks, we’ll provide the resources and tools for each of these segments. There are some cool things we have learned over the years to make this a highly effective process.

Here are the four processes:

year-end-review-process-1-2008.pdf

year-end-review-process-2-2008.pdf

year-end-review-process-3-2008.pdf

year-end-review-process-4-2008.pdf

A homeless man was recently fined $101 million dollars because he started forest fires. Isn’t that a bit like me saying to my 9-year-old, “Well, because you did that you cannot drive for a week,” no? Yeah judge, big effect. How about instead you make him work on rebuilding damaged houses every day- all day and then spend his nights in jail?

We have several families coming where one member is hearing impaired. They have asked if somewhere there can be a TV that is closed captioned.

Question: Is their a program that can do this based on audio input (ex. dragonspeak, etc? If not how do you do it? We have a couple of court reporters who type like mad people….what to do? Help!

Here is our bump from our current Kingdom/Glocal Impact series which we always do in November to enlist people for our trips and raise our support. Good work video staff.

The Cost Bump from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

We are a radical in our attempts at mobilizing every member into Vietnam, Mexico and locally into Haltom City. Much of our ministry energy, time and money goes to that end. This series kind of aggregates that 365 day attempt into a focused month.