Very.  Rating every song on my itunes to prove to myself I listen to them all. I am on the letter L having sorted nearly half my 2769 tunes on itunes. I sort alphabetically by song and quickly rate each one as it plays in the background. Thus, each day I get a hodge podge of mixes since they are not sorted by artist or album. Kind of neat. Brent is ADD and said the mix would drive him insane. I am the opposite of ADD. I can sit and do one thing for hours and ignore people around me (very pastoral, right?).

My soul has two enemies. The “Lion”  is Satan crouched at my door seeking to destroy me. The “Wolf” is my own sinful flesh in no need of help from the Devil.

Some of my charismatic friends are “Lion only” kind of people. Brent shared with me that Ted Haggard in an Oprah interview (there, there, Brent) said that he used to think his struggle with homosexuality was all demon based. He thought if he just prayed more or got delivered  his urges would disappear. He then came to the realization that it was not a Lion problem but a Wolf one; his own flesh was the root of the problem. When we realize that, we have to set up Wolf traps and not just Lion traps. We have to wrestle with the flesh and not just go to deliverance sessions.

Many of my reformed friends are “Wolf only.” They never give true credence to the adversarial nature Satan has with us. Sure, he cannot possess us as believers since the Holy Spirit doesn’t share space with demons, but he is at the door (not in the heart) seeking to confound.  Wolf solutions won’t solve a Lion problem but must be dealt with in the supernatural.

Sometimes they most dangerously work in tandem as my flesh wolf opens the door for the Lion…YIKES!

How do you tell the difference between the two? I don’t know. I do know both seek my demise. This thrice song uses the classic metaphor to a poetically masterful end.

The Lion and the Wolf by Thrice

The lion’s outside of your door
The wolf’s in your bed
The lion’s claws are sharpened for war
The wolf’s teeth are red

And what a monstrous sight he makes,
Mocking man’s best friend
When both the wolf and lion crave
The same thing in the end

The lion’s outside of your door
The wolf’s in your bed

The wolf, he howls
The lion does roar
The wolf lets him in
The lion runs in through the door
The real fun begins
As they both rush upon you and
Rip open your flesh
The lion eats his fill and then
The wolf cleans up the mess

The lion’s outside of your door
The wolf’s in your bed
[x2]

Still reflecting. A phenomenal article on the distinctions and importance of someone becoming a “member.” Grab it here.

Sometimes I write songs that flop. Sometimes they land. Here is what I am discovering.

A landing song:

1. The music comes first and comes in a wave that only leaves a little bit to be written.
2. Then 80-90% of lyric comes to me in 10 minutes or less. The last 10% is struggle.
3. The timing is usually spontaneous and at an inopportune time as I plunk on the keys or stand in the shower right before work or as my wife is saying, “We need to leave.”
4. The crummier medium it is crafted on, handwritten, the less static it is and the more I will massage it for improvement. Typing it out too early is its deathblow…haha

Here is a song I wrote this morning that still needs some massage work.

I never claim “God gave me a song,” as to me that sounds quite arrogant. He gave me the gifting and talent behind the song, but I have never written a song as heavenly as I imagine one directly given to me would be.

Jacob Moon, songwriter and artist as well as a follower of Christ covers the band I so loved in High School with a very different treatment.

[via Mark Cutbertson}

God’s bride is the Church evident in a local expression, period. It is the only example we have in the New Testament. The church might “go-show/tell” from the “come-gather” base of a building, house, restaurant, or something even more abstract but it is a local expression of the Kingdom of God.

If the Church is the bride of Christ why do para-church organizations exist?

Para-churches are the “spiritual belt” used to gracefully discipline the Church for its lack of focus or deficiencies in certain areas. The Church was deficient in men’s ministry so Promise Keepers sprang up. Because of PK, many churches took notice of their deficiency and focused their energy on raising up men. For all practical purposes, the PK idea was absorbed into the local church and PK disappeared as a viable movement.

The tension for the local church arises when para-church organizations forget they are “para.” No organization wants to die and so it is difficult for the para-church to realize that attention to their cause has been finally been adopted by the local Church. Para-churches sometimes make stronger verbal accolades to be pro-local church than reality would reflect. I remember in the 1994  when many men would be so busy going to PK huddles that they couldn’t serve the Body-Bride of Christ.  If you were to have asked the huddles to reform grouping around men in the same church together, many would have told you no as they did to me when I requested it. The same type thing often happens today.

So to my para-church friends I say:

1. Recognize that you are to exist for a corrective season, not forever.

2. Strive to see how you can “gracefully whip” the local churches into giving focus to the reason God raised you up be it missional, discipleship, evangelism, or whatever. Of course, if you have a ridiculous focus, it will not matter. Be intentional about building the value into the local church. You should be trying to work your organization out of existence as strange as it sounds.

3. Serve Christ knowing you are the maid of honor and not the Bride. Submit your schedule and programming to the local church whenever it is possible. I mean submit in the biblical sense, not just hand them in to them saying, “Here, deal with it.”

To the local church I  say:

1. When the maid of honor speaks, listen bride. There is a reason they have a passion about something and if their para-church organization is large, so do many others.

2. Address the holes and blindspots in you ministry that the para-church is filling. At the same time, don’t get sucked into being all things for all people. If a para-church is ultra-niched, be careful. You might not need to start a whole ministry for Circus Clowns about to be Retired. But if you do, do!

I want something to sound like this…Blitzen Trapper. Somebody start writing Americana (see also Delta Spirit and Wilco for reference).

[song via Mark Cuthbertson's email to enlighten me to it]

We used to do huge sets on stage. Now we don’t. We just found we were spending tons of money or energy for superficial relevance at best. We have now dramatically simplified our services spending the “set energy” on telling transformational stories very well. That gets to the deeper heart of relevance. I am looking for new life not novelty.

Don’t get me wrong, I am for Art (not always art-”little a” though).  Real Art stirs the soul to deep questioning. I think in my mind I came to the conclusion that sets and props just don’t stir the soul deeply. We abandoned them about a year-an- a-half ago. I rethought.   I want people to wowed by Jesus more than our presentation.

Grab it here. A great piece on culture.

I Cannot Ignore mp3

i-cannot-ignore-chart

A cross focused tune whose verse centers on Philippians 3 and how no confidence can be placed in the flesh. The chorus reflects the fact that we cannot ignore the Cross because it is a scandalon or stumbling block. This version is straight ahead American rock though we have done this song even with piano, bass, and brushes on a drum in a very adorational way. Use it and hack it. CCLI listed song number is: 3491742

People divide their lives into the sacred and the secular. This is unfortunate as the Gospel should intersect and transform every area of our life. Don’t believe me? Just look at how many people serving heavily in Churches have “drunk pics” on their Facebook or Myspace and think nothing of it. Let’s break down the compartmentaliztion and live in “fullness of Christ” (Colossians) not the “partiality of it.”

How do we begin to help people see there are not boundries between the sacred and secular? They have one life.

Stacking can transform a Sunday only series into a transformative process and increase the stickiness of people entering your doors. Carol Davis taught us the concept years ago. Here is an example. We are doing a series called The Marriage Portrait which we decide isn’t a how to series but a deeper why did God create marriage series. Here is our stacking for that series.

1. Create a viral micro-site www.themarriageportrait.com

2. Design “killah” sermons.

3. On the site, offer a free Couple Checkup test put out by Marriage Enrich folks to bless the community even if they never enter our doors. People on the streets are telling one another about this.  (We budgeted money for this, you can take it free btw, my treat).

4. Do newspaper and mailer featuring series, free test, and events.

5. Have a Checkup Gathering Night for people who a-won’t come to a service  or b-go to another Church (who have concerns about results–we will NOT recruit them in any way) to help them interpret test and reveal upcoming helps (see below).

6. Host a free Fireproof movie night to encourage them to invite friends to. (I know it won’t win an Oscar but it does have a strong message, we already have over 800 people take free tickets).

7. Drive to The Marriage Portrait Conference which features not only cognitive lessons but gives couples time for prayer and action plans. Our communicator for it is awesome.

8. Launch Teams (small groups) for people who are not in a Team with their initial session built around a curriculum such as the Sacred Marriage book.  This is the CRUCIAL piece. We have found that if people are open to coming to some of the events many will trust us and make the leap into community. The Christ-centered relationships formed in Teams is where the stickiness resides. We champion these at every service and gathering.

We don’t stack this heavily on every series. We usually do in January, September and Easter. This keeps our series from becoming merely “seeker series” of simple how-to’s. We can move people into a discipleship enviroment quickly. It requires much planning ahead.

How can you stack in your next series?

Here is a fantasitic interview by one of my favorite thinkers in the Arts. His book Imagine is in the sidebar. [via Jacob Tilton]