Beating 51 big advertising companies was quite a win for the brothers and probably sent shivers down the spines of advertising executives on Madison Avenue.  Why should companies pay millions for one of their spots, when two nobudies can do it on a dime and a prayer?

This is just one more example of what Andrew Keen talks about in his book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is killing our culture.  Keen contends that amateurs, like the Herbert brothers, are threatening our most valued cultural institutions.  Blogs, YouTube videos, and webcams let anybody anywhere broadcast their views to anyone everyone.   While book publishers are lagging in sales, companies like lulu, a self-publishing online bookseller, are flourishing as they allow anyone with a manuscript to self-publish his or her book for less than $50.00. 

Which raises a powerful question: who is the editor?  Traditionally editors provided the service of making sure what ever was written, produced, or broadcast was of a certain level of quality.  For example, words would be spelled correctly and put in the right order (grammar anyone?).  They also would push authors to fact check their work to make sure it was accurate.  But with the power of the internet, writers and video artists don’t need a fliter that was caused by the economics of getting something published — today they just need to write and click on the right box to published in a blog or on a website. 

While this is a great threat to some, it also provides an opportunity for the listener.  In the midst of the unfiltered voices truth and genius may be found.  Those nobudies out there might have something to say to all of us.  And that is the dilemma that we find ourselves in today.  A world where anyone can be an author, and where the reader now becomes the editor – sorting out what is true, real, and of value on his or her own.  So as you enjoy your Doritos and dream of winning next year’s contest be aware of the implications.  As we all become the producers of our own content, who will decide what is good, of value, and important for all to hear?

To see the ads go to:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/admeter/2009admeter.htm

One of the more controversial comments from the show states the following: 

Driscoll calls the mainstream church’s portrayal of Jesus “a hippie-Christ. A neutered and limp-wristed popular sky fairy of popular culture that would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.” According to Driscoll, Jesus was an outcast who didn’t play by the rules.

“Jesus is typically portrayed as very effeminate guy, kind of long, flowing hair wearing a dress, always smiling, [making] pithy Zen statements that read like fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant,” he said. “And the truth is that he was a construction worker. He was very controversial and got murdered.”

The image of Jesus as a rebel seems to strike a chord because the Mars Hill Church isn’t just growing by leaps and bounds — which it is — but it’s drawing in people who otherwise didn’t have much interest in organized religion.

Discoll’s comments is a challenge to mainstream congregations who are aging and losing young people rather than attracting them.  One thing that comes through loud and clear that what many might see as edgy comes off as “real” to those who are coming to his church.

So what do you think?  Link up to Nightline and watch the interview.  Then come back here and offer a comment.

Link to Nightline: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaithMatters/Story?id=6711206&page=2

Over the last couple of months I have been privileged to take a songwriters class at the Blair School of Music in Nashville.  Each week a songwriter shares his or her story and helps the class look at the craft of songwriting.  Most of the members of the class are songwriters themselves and in many of the sessions they share their music for critique by the speaker and the class.

This last week Laynge Martin, who has written songs like Elvis Presley’s “Way down” and Trisha Yearwood’s, “I Wanna Go Too Far,” was our speaker.

What impressed me about Laynge was his passion for his craft and his desire to be heard.  Some of his advice could be applied to us all.

About music itself he noted that in movies, music is always used to bring the message home.  At the most dramatic point in the story people sing.  For Layne, “songs are really accelerated meaning.”  This reminds us that unlike any other form of communication, music goes straight to the heart.  Lyrics, melody, and rhythm combine to take the listener to a different place of understanding and insight.  The best song becomes your song because it opens a window into what is really important in life.   

Another comment by Layne has importance for us in everyday communication, that “everything we say has a melody and a rhythm.”  The cadence of our speech is really music without the notes.  The tone of our voice, the words we emphasize, and our inflection constantly tells others the state of our emotions, what is important to us, and where our passion lies.

Daniel J. Levitin, author of The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature says the following: “Music, I argue, is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the ways for more complex behaviors such as language, large-scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next.”  In his book he says there are basically six types of songs that have formed who we are as humans: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love.

I might add to this the following thought: before there was speech, culture, and civilization there was music.  Too radical for you.  If you are a parent, my guess is the first form of communication you formed with your infant child was a song.  Maybe it was a coo or a soft hum.  Whatever it was it made a connection that soothed and comforted.  In a sense you became the songwriter as you formed a bond with your child.

Layne made another comment during our time together that really stuck, “what you do everyday becomes your life.”  Days turn to weeks which turn into months which becomes years.  What you do each day has great implications for what you will become in the future.  What you do each moment matters. 

So the next time you listen to a song remember the muse that lurks in the shadow, for if you listen closely the secret of the songwriter will be revealed.

When previous generations hit this age mark, transformation in the rest of the society took place. In the 1930s, new technology introduced color movies, comic books, and Big Band Music. Towards the end of the decade, the GI Generation fought in World War II. In the 1950s, the birth of the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of Rock’n'Roll Music were the hallmarks of the Pioneer Generation. The Baby Boomers ruled the 1970s with the culmination of the anti-War movement and growth of the Women’s Movement. In the late 1980s, the Postmodern Generation saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall and ushered in many aspects that are seen in the Emergent Movement and the growth of the digital age.

Now that the Millennials are coming into their own, key factors are coming into play in the wider society as seen in the election of Obama:

1. 10% of the voters were age 18-24 and 66% of them voted for Obama. In comparison, only 45% of those over 65 voted for the new president.

2. Obama tapped into the youth vote by using their primary means of communication: the Internet and Cell Phones. Notice that major announcements, like the selection of Vice-President Biden, were sent out as Text Messages before given to traditional media. By doing so the Obama campaign sought to create a personal connection with the young voters who supported him. This also allowed him to ask for donations to the campaign using the Internet as well.

3. Obama’s slogan: “Yes we Can,” tapped into the mindset of a generation who sees themselves as ones who want to make a difference in this world. Rather than fear, his message of hope connected with young people who desire a positive direction for the country and the world.

4. Obama also connected to another major aspect of the Millennial Generation, the ability and desire to reach across racial, ethnic, and national lines. A great number of the Millennial Generation are the children of immigrants from countries around the world. A look at the crowds that were seen at Obama’s rallies shows us the new face of America, one that is multi-ethnic and young.

As Millennials make their voice heard the church has much to learn from the Obama campaign.

1. Millennials want to make a personal connection and do so through digital media.

2. Millennials are a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural generation. Churches that will grow and flourish in the future will be ones that reflect their diversity. This is the greatest challenge churches now face as the vast majority of congregations worship in mono-ethnic gatherings.

3. Millennials are attracted to a message of hope and desire to be part of something bigger than themselves to make a difference.

The Millennials are just starting to let their voice be heard. The church, like it has in eras past, has a choice to make. It can listen deeply and look for ways in which God is speaking through the Millennials to challenge us to grow in faith and maturity. It can put up walls and ignore them or forbid practices that seem so unGodly (like dancing, wearing make-up, or watching movies). Or it can ignore them completely, going our separate ways until the Church itself has lost its voice.

My hope is that the church and the culture at large will listen and learn, and look for ways to connect to this new generation as it influences us all.

 - By 2042 the U.S population will reach 400 million, an increase from 305 million.  In short, we will increase 25% in the next 31 years.

- Also, by 2042 non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority status, much sooner than previously expected.

-  The growth in the immigrant population is much larger than previously reported, with dramatic growth among Hispanics/Latinos and Asians.

The challenge for the United Methodist Church is to gather our resources in such a way that we create new faith communities that connect to this growing population.  Both new churches and existing churches have great potential to connect with these growing populations. 

Next year’s School of Congregational Development which will be in Chicago, Wednesday, July 29 to Sunday, August 2, 2009,  is the next opportunity for congregations to bring teams so they can create the strategies they need to connect with the American reality of rapid population growth throughout much of our country.

Go to the link at USA Today to find interesting charts and information about the growth of the U.S. Population.  Also check out 7 Myths of the United Methodist Church (www.gbod.org/7myths) and Chapter Three: We Have Too Many Churches which talks about the 10 Megapolitians where most of the growth will take place.

Link to USATODAY:

 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-08-14-census_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Grand Rapids, MI, August 4, 2008–The Rev. Jim Walker is on a journey to shake the “churchy-ness” out of church and make it about fellowship and the kingdom of God– based on the example of Jesus Christ.

He details his journey in a new book, Dirty Word: The Vulgar, Offensive Language of the Kingdom of God (Discipleship Resources), and he shared it in a ministry track at the Grand Rapids site of the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development. He dramatized it during a service of Holy Communion shared via satellite with another section of the school in Orlando, Florida.

“Do we really need church?” asked the co-pastor of the Pittsburgh faith community Hot Metal Bridge, which has United Methodist and Presbyterian sponsorship. “Need” is the wrong verb for Walker. His advice: “Be the church! Instead of go to church!”

Walker, who is the United Methodist co-pastor, derived his community of faith concept from the Greek word “koinonia,” which means to share in fellowship. His ministry track was entitled “Headwounds: Koinonia in a Fractured World.”

“We need to practice koinonia everywhere but the church building,” Walker says in his book. “We need to flee, run screaming out of our safe and comfortable churchy surroundings, and slam as hard as we can into the mosh pits of this dark and lonely world.”

“The Kingdom of God is about the dirty, the losers, the misfits of our culture,” according to Walker, but they are “rarely welcome through the doors of our churches–because we like things sterile, to cover over our dirt. We like to reject people… But Jesus went to the smelly places.”

Jesus associated with unsavory people, and Walker had an opportunity to demonstrate that component of the New Testament Gospels in a communion service on the night of August 4. The service originated in Grand Rapids, but parts of it were shared via satellite with the congregational development group in Orlando. The school met from July 31 to August 5.

He did a one-person dramatization of the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the tax collector, from Luke 19:1-13. He likened Zacchaeus to a man with only one chair, although he was rich. He had no friends as a result of his shameful profession–collecting taxes from his own people, the Jews, for the Roman overlords.

In the Lukan story and Walker’s interpretation, the townspeople of Jericho are horrified that Jesus would invite himself to the home of a sinner such as Zacchaeus. “Ahaaaaa, we want Jesus, but not this Jesus,” the storyteller imagines the people saying as they wandered off. He wondered if we could hear echoes of contemporary church members in the reactions of the people of Jericho.

Walker introduced both the passion of Jesus and the origins of Holy Communion as the Zacchaeus narrative moved toward the transformation of Zacchaeus, the big-time sinner. The tax man with only one chair promised to give away half his belongings and restore four-fold what he had stolen after his encounter with Jesus. The monologue ended with the empty-chair man invited to a place at the table.

Walker officiated at the service of Holy Communion in Grand Rapids; in Orlando, Bishop Hee Soo Jung of Chicago and Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor of South Carolina presided at the Lord’s Table.

Jim Walker is totally serious about the church turning its attention, as did Jesus, to people on the margins of respectable society. The cover of his book features a photo of a skinny, tattooed, chain-wearing, and pierced man, Doug, who is part of Hot Metal Bridge in Pittsburgh. (The fellowship is named for a real bridge, or maybe a restaurant near the bridge.).

Hot Metal Bridge fellowship is identified as an “emerging church,” Walker notes. “We’re just trying to reach the last, the least, and the lost,” he said, “And I guess when you do that, you’re labeled emerging,” Walker said.

Walker hopes that The United Methodist Church will stop “planting churches” and spend more time and effort building “faith communities.”

“We create these churches and expect people to come to us,” he says. “It’s really a people movement.” His fellowship meets in a bar, a tattoo parlor, and around a table.

For more on Jim Walker’s ministry, visit the website of Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community at www.hotmetalbridge.com.

The School of Congregational Development is an annual event co-sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship and Global Ministries. For more info go to www.scdumc.org.

*Mary Beth Coudal is a staff writer for the General Board of Global Ministries. (Elliott Wright contributed to this article from Orlando.)

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5093
 

Grace Church DNA:

In the final presentation at this year’s School of Congregational Development, Jorge Acevedo shared the core principles that has turn-around his congregation.  Here are the notes from his presentation: 
1. We are unashamedly Jesus-centered!  Jesus is the Savior, Healer, Transformer and Friend that every human being needs. 

2. We strive for healthy relationships!  Maintaining genuine and authentic relationships are of supreme value.  Repairing our relational messes is essential.

3. We are passionate to reach people!  This means loving people where they are and helping them grow into who God wants them to be.  Everyone is a “child of God and person of worth.”

4. We hunger for transcendent, culturally relevant, meaningful and experiential worship!  The human heart desires to regularly connect with God.  Music, drama, creative arts, and video are some of the ways this happens.

5. We engage people in biblical, relevant and creative teaching!  God’s Word addresses the most fundament issues of life.  Children, youth and adults need to be taught from the Bible.

6. We endeavor to be a radically diverse church.  This includes a mosaic of persons joined together as one community of faith.

7. We value hospitality as an expression of God’s “welcome.”  The kindness of God is expressed intentionally through things like warm greeting, clean bathrooms, and good food.

8. We are a center for healing and recovery!  God has asked us to assist Him in rescuing people from the hell they are living in as well as the hell they are heading to.  We recognize that healing takes time therefore we strive to very patient with people in their healing and recovery.

9. We strive to unleash God’s love, power, and people in ministries to meet the needs of our communities.  These compassion ministries include both aid (meeting basic needs) and advocacy (being a voice for the voiceless).

10. We have a passion and commitment to fulfill for the Great Commission!  This is expressed locally, nationally and internationally.

11. We understand that spiritual growth is a lifelong process of becoming more like Jesus!  Growing in our discipleship includes spiritual habits like self-feeding through daily devotions, using time, talents and treasures for God, engaging in Christian community and serving in the church and world.

12.  We are a multi-site congregation.  We believe strategically located, multiple campuses enable us to more effectively reach our community while being wise and efficient stewards of the resources God has entrusted to us.

13. We believe ministry is best accomplished in teams of people with diverse gifts and abilities who are bound together with common purpose and covenants of trust. 

She reminded the seminar that music is the “glue” of worship services, often determining the flow and setting the tone.

The seminar was part of the 2008 School of Congregational Development, held annually to assist pastors and other church leaders in understanding better how to start new congregations and to revitalize existing ones.

McFee has a broad experience in many forms of church music and styles of worship. She was co-director of music at the 2008 United Methodist General Conference, the legislature of the denomination that meets once every four years.

Her central point was that music is what connects the verbal, visual, and visceral aspects of worship: “what we hear, what we see, and what we do.”

McFee presented the variety of musical forms and idioms that can be appropriate to new church starts, depending on locations, interests, and instruments available. These include:

McFee proposed that planners of worship learn to think like filmmakers, who use music to move along the story and its action.

Some seminar members asked if it would take a great deal of time and talent to follow McFee’s suggestions.

She agreed that it did take planning and rehearsal time, and perhaps the recruitment of students and others who might want to donate their musical talents, for example, to form a small band for a church just getting started.

The effort is worth it because the music helps to create an “environment in which to express the holy,” McFee said.

The School of Congregational Development met in two locations this year: St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando, Florida, and Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Some plenary sessions and worship were shared by satellite links. Three hundred people took part in Orlando and 150 in Grand Rapids.

*Elliott Wright is the information officer of the General Board of Global Ministries.

Grand Rapids, MI, Aug. 1, 2008–In the video, the face of the pastor is pasted onto the dancing body of Napoleon Dynamite, the title character in a cult comedy movie of 2004.

People under 30 would appreciate the image; those over 40 might not, said the Rev. Mark Beeson, who used the clip to introduce his address to the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development. His topic: “Innovate or Die.”

The point throughout his animated presentation was that the church should not be afraid of change regarding ministries to reach young generations. If the church does not reach the young people of today, it will not have much of a future. “Change is good,” he said.

The pastor of Granger Community United Methodist Church in Granger, Indiana (near South Bend), spoke to two audiences: one gathered in person in Cornerstone United Methodist Church, South Bend, and the other by satellite link from St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Orlando, Florida.

“It’s unbelievable the changes in technology and what it has done to us,” Beeson said. “We no longer learn in a linear fashion…. Everything is story and image.”

The gospel and the mission of the church never change, he said, but the church must find strategies that will engage “postmodern” people, to help them take the next steps toward Christian discipleship.

Punctuating his point that change is good, Beeson said that the church expects people to change when they accept Christ. “The whole world doesn’t go to church,” he said. “You have to give them a reason [to come]. Give them a why…help people take their next steps towards Christ.… Is your cause worth the price of change? Because you’re asking people to change.”

  
The School of Congregational Development is an annual opportunity for United Methodist pastors, administrators, and laypeople to become catalysts for church renewal and growth. The six-day event is sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship and the General Board of Global Ministries. This year it met in two venues linked for some plenary sessions and worship by satellite connection.

Ministry tracks at the school focus on new church starts, church renewal, and outreach to ethnic and minority populations.

In speaking both of new church development or older church revitalization, Beeson put heavy emphasis on the vision, the “So what?”, and the mission. “Mission is why you exist,” he said.

Beeson, who founded Grange Church 22 years ago and is senior pastor, encouraged other pastors to challenge members to use their best talents in the cause of the gospel.

“Most of the people in our churches are under-challenged,” he said, recalling the example of a woman who led a multi-million dollar company but was asked only to usher once a month. “We do not challenge high-capacity people enough,” the speaker said. “Most people would rather be swallowed by a whale than bitten to death by small fish.”

Granger Community United Methodist Church has a membership of some 5,000 and a weekly worship attendance of around 6,000 in multiple services.

*Mary Beth Coudal is a staff writer for the General Board of Global Ministries.

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5088

Then it dropped the next week to under 200, and kept dropping week by week until it reached 70.

That was not the way it was suppose to happen! The new church start on the south side of Houston had been widely publicized and praised in the Texas Annual (regional) Conference of the denomination.

“I felt like a failure,” the pastor, the Rev. Ed Jones, told the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development, meeting at two sites, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Orlando, Florida, with satellite links for some plenary addresses and worship.

Mr. Jones, speaking from Grand Rapids, said: “We took six months to sort things out and now we are in a new day. I realized I was listening to words on church-growth charts but not listening daily to the word of God. We were too caught up in building the church and not enough in connecting the disconnected.”

“We were taking our values from charts when we needed to place our values in human hearts,” said Jones, an African American clergyman.

The United Methodist Church as a denomination in the United States is not unlike Living Water congregation in the fall of 2006: it is losing participants, and has been since its membership peaked in the 1960s at around 11 million.

Starting new congregations in the US is a current United Methodist priority. As a global denomination, however, its membership is growing in Africa and Asia.

The annual School of Congregational Development, focused on the US, is jointly sponsored by the General Boards of Discipleship and Global Ministries. Five of the ministry study tracks this year deal with starting new congregations.

Living Water Church developed what it calls GAUGE, which lists five values:

Grow spiritually.
Authentic relationships must be developed.
Use gifts for ministry.
Give cheerfully.
Extend a hand.

It also has a strategy taken from chapter 5 of the Gospel of Luke. The passage tells the story of how Jesus noticed two empty boats and fishermen washing their nets on the lakeshore of Gennesaret. Jesus boarded Simon’s boat and eventually asked him to put out into deeper water for a large catch of fish.

The Living Water strategy understands that we begin at the shoreline in our faith venture and gradually move out, until we are “living deep” in the Spirit, empowered “to serve living water to a thirsty world as we grow toward our full potential to share the love of Christ with others.”

Jones advised persons who want to start new churches to engage the disconnected, especially disconnected families, and to “preach Jesus.”

He said that Living Water Church uses cultural resources, including popular movies, to engage people, to get their attention, and move them out from the shoreline to deeper waters.

“If you trust God, God can trust you,” said the pastor, and that relationship with God makes it possible to share the love of God with the broken, wounded people of the world.
Jones, a former firefighter, did his theological studies at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, and Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He credits his wife, Sylvia, a dentist, and his three children, with providing a domestic connectedness that permits the stability needed for ministry.

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5085