My friend Joshua White extended a challenge to any takers.

Take 50 unique pictures in one day.

I took it.

Yesterday I went throughout my day and took pictures of just about everything I saw.

It was harder than it sounds taking 50 pictures from my iPhone in one day.

I twitpic’d most of them.

You can see all 50 here on my Flickr page.

Here are some highlights:

We arrived at about 6:30am in Las Vegas so we had a very full (and tiring) day of walking around and seeing the sights. I’ll tell ya, these two preggo ladies handled the walking around and the desert heat like champs!

“The problem with music is that most people really don’t know why they like or dislike certain styles of music. And when one honestly examines his tastes, he tends to find that he’s really not as ‘metal’ as he once thought.”

deep.

Let me re-phrase that:

I [heart] blogging.

Why haven’t I been doing it then?

I honestly don’t know.

But what I do know is that there are a lot of bloggers out there who are in the same boat.

We have found ourselves in the middle of a blogging-drought!

Blog after blog has succumbed to the inevitable blog-fade.

Some blame Twitter. Others blame busy schedules. And some (with a little help) are finding solutions.

So what do we do? How do we stay in the game and avoid blog-fade?

It’s my strong opinion that blogs are important to the internet tubes and we must get back to the excitement and wonder that drew us to the blogosphere in the first place.

I recently had a conversation with a friend that kinda rocked my world. Maybe I’ve been naive, but it sort-of opened my eyes to a whole different side of church ministry. And if I’m being honest, it kinda freaked me out. The progress that I thought was being made in these young, “new way of doing church” churches is actually being contradicted in several of them. People are no longer allowed to be free in worship. Crosses are no longer hung on sanctuary walls. Each part of the service is planned out to the second and there’s no room to allow the Holy Spirit to move (and besides, that might freak people out, right?).  It made me wonder how many other churches out there are like this. I honestly don’t know. I was, admittedly, disheartened. And maybe I’ve been spoiled by my own church. Either way, I resigned to the fact that if you want to have a large, young church in this day and age, you have to dumb-down and dilute the Gospel with “everyday application”, and not mention the crazy Christ stuff too much in order to create a more palatable God experience.

Then, last Tuesday I had a conversation (albeit unrelated to the above topic) with Pastor Marilyn Hickey. She began to tell me about a church she had visited. The church was packed with 12,000 people every week and they moved in the gifts of the Spirit in a very real way in just about every service. The kicker, however, is that the church is not only packed with people, but it is packed with young people! Twenty and thirty-somethings dominate the demographic. This gave me some hope.

Then I kicked my own arse and remembered something I’ve heard and told myself thousands of times: Numbers don’t necessarily represent spiritual health.

Wow. How could I have forgotten my roots?! Spending years and years volunteering in startups and church plants. Chasing after God, not for a paycheck or recognition or to feel like I’m in the coolest church in town, but simply because we were hungry to see Him move in our lives in a transformational way.

Then I read this: [ht:Pastor Dave]

It seems that large churches generate a dynamic that is simply hostile to the gospel. Business models overtake ecclesial life. At this point they become more interested in preserving their life, or in preserving their image (success) than in the kingdom of God, and this becomes a violent and oppressive dynamic. [link]

Then that word starts to creep up…relevance

Oh yeah. We gotta try to be cool and look like the world otherwise people won’t come to church.

What?!

So you’re telling me that for the first time in the history of church and the Christian faith we have to stop acting like a church and stop doing what churches should do?

That sounds a little backwards to me. Let’s not be so vain.

[ht:Josh Brage]

Oh, brother or sister, God calls us to worship, but in many instances we are in entertainment, just running a poor second to the theaters. That is where we are, even in the evangelical churches, and I don’t mind telling you that most of the people we say we are trying to reach will never come to a church to see a lot of amateur actors putting on a home talent show.

-A.W. Tozer

We’ve turned our head pastors into nothing more than used car salesmen, hocking our shiniest new programs and facilities in the name of relevance. Our board members and business partners don’t let our pastors preach an un-vetted and unbridled message of Jesus. The fullness of Christ.

This translates to our congregations. Now, instead of going to church to give it all to God, they go to church to get for themselves some temporal experience with cool lights and smoke, self-help sermons, free lattes and the fuzzy feeling that they went to church and it didn’t hurt a bit. All the while avoiding any real, personal transformation.

What this has created is selfish church-goers. They complain when the worship team does a song or style they don’t like. They complain when the pastor doesn’t preach as good as some guy on the internet. They complain when they can’t pick up the free WiFi in the parking lot. They complain when the speakers are too loud or too soft. ETC!!!!

When did church become our spiritual convenience store? Our one-stop-shop for everything we want; and our complaint counter for everything that’s not to our liking? Why does personal preference have so much say in the planning of our services? I mean, the whole idea of following Christ is that we die to ourselves, take up our cross and follow! Right?

How did it all get turned around?

I know, I know, “but we gotta be relevant in order to reach the next generation of world changers”.  And I agree!   See, the thing is, Jesus is relevant. His message transcends time and culture. I don’t wanna stay old fashioned and stale (and I’m not going to), but time period and cultural fads don’t change the transformation that is held in a life of chasing Christ.

The idea that we need to somehow change the image of God to be more palatable to a mass audience should be offensive to those who consider themselves a follower of Christ.

It was a cold and rainy afternoon in Denver. I pulled up to Josh’s house to find his street blocked off and frantic city workers rushing to fix a water mane that had broken minutes earlier. The whole block was without water. This meant no bathrooms which isn’t exactly ideal when you’re about to cram 50+ people into your living room. But the show must go on!

David Bazan. One of the most prolific songwriters of our time. A personal hero, of sorts, in terms of music and songwriting. And pretty soon we’d be sitting on a couch with him and his guitar, getting a private concert of his best work. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Words can’t explain how surreal the evening was. David showed up to the house around 7:30 and started playing around 8:00. We heard a lot of songs off the new, yet-to-be-released album. A few songs in came the best part of the night for me: Priests And Paramedics. A song from his Pedro The Lion days off their record Control, and one of my all time favorite songs (not to mention my favorite in his catalogue). Made even more poignant and jarring by the simplicity of a singular voice and guitar with no amplification, the song brought shivers to my spine as I silently mouthed the words as David Bazan sang with a tremble in his voice.

I set up my AT4050’s and the ProTools rig and recorded the concert. I’m extremely excited to sink my teeth into the tracks and listen back to hear all the things I may have missed in the moment. Once I’ve edited and cleaned up the tracks I’ll post some audio here at DenverInTranslation.com for your listening enjoyment. A few people captured a bit of video so I’ll post that also if I can get my hands on any of it.

What a great night that we won’t soon forget.

Youth pastor extrordinare, Blaine Bartel once said: “Never quit on Thursday”

Such a simple command but certainly not simplistic.

The brevity of this statement only amplifies the depth in which it holds.

It’s easy to want to give up when the kids always show up 20 minutes late.

It’s easy to want to give up when they don’t worship.

It’s easy to want to give up when they just sit there, eyes glazed over and mouth breathing during an Earth-shaking sermon.

It’s easy to want to give up when they slip out the back as soon as the service is over, not staying any longer than they have to.

…

Then I remember what God does for us every day.

He never gives up when we don’t wanna worship.

He never gives up when we don’t listen to His voice.

He never gives up when we spend only our 30 minutes-a-day-and-no-more in His word and in prayer…and sometimes less.

He knows that some day we’ll get it.

Some day we’ll understand.

And so will the kids in our youth groups.

I didn’t post my Sunday Setlist yesterday so I figured I’d combing my Sunday Setlist and Your Church Experience posts today. They kinda go hand-in-hand anyway. Church was fantastic yesterday! Let’s start with the setlist:

Days Of Elijah - Donnie McClurkin

Give Him Praise - Lincoln Brewster

God You Reign - Lincoln Brewster

At The Cross - Hillsong

Shout Unto God - Hillsong United

We assembled a mass choir for Easter. About 45 people turned out for the rehearsals and Easter service so we didn’t have quite as many as we had hoped (50 people) but they sounded great. We love being able to use a mass choir, especially for R&B tunes. The energy is always high and it’s so much fun having that many people on stage. I played electric guitar for the first two and acoustic for the last three.

Days Of Elijah is a little bit of an older song but a favorite among our congregation members. Our dance team also performed during this song, so between the band, the dance team and the mass choir there was a lot goin on!

Give Him Praise was a blast! I played electric guitar and got to wail on this song! As soon as I started in on the opening riff the congregation started shouting and praising. Yep, these people know how to get down in praise and worship. The song was off the hook. People were jumping and dancing all over the place and the Spirit of God really let loose in the house. What a great song!

God You Reign is always a great song. Really easy to sing and very congregational.

At The Cross was sung by our vocal director, Heather, and she killed it! Such a great song and her voice compliments is quite well. She sang the second verse in Spanish, which is cool because our church is extremely missions oriented and Pastor Marilyn has spoken a lot about all the different cultures and languages she’s had the opportunity to worship in. Awesome song, awesome presense.

Shout Unto God was a song we decided to put last as we go from focusing on the Cross (in At The Cross) to focusing on the victory and resurrection of Christ. Something really broke loose in the Spirit here and we saw people really grasping the victory that we have in Christ. That’s what Easter is all about!

My church experience yesterday was awesome. After such an annointed time of worship and praise, Pastor Reece brought the word like never before. He delivered a great message of hope and victory and shared his personal testimony of how he got saved (which is actually quite miraculous). At the end of his message, Pastor Reece gave an altar call and we saw well over 100 people come up and give their lives to Christ. What a miraculous day!

[this post part of Sunday Setlists at FredMcKinnon.Com]

your turn:

Did you go to church yesterday (or Saturday)? What is one sentence or a few words that would describe how you felt during the experience? If you didn’t go to a church, what is one sentence that would describe how you felt during that experience?

remember:

Don’t Hold Back!

be authentic, be honest, be sincere

I walked away from church feeling:

There’s a fine line between honesty and just being a jerk.

Sometimes in ministry that line is even more vague or even non-existent.

So I try to just keep a healthy distance to stay safe. It doesn’t always work out that way though.

“The first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to God who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.”

I want to be honest and speak my mind but being in ministry I don’t always have that luxury.

Sometimes I take that luxury and end up being a jerk.

that’s all I got today

One of the best things about U2 releasing a new album is the remixes that inevitably come shortly after. Over the years they’ve surrendered their music to producers like Butch Vig, William Orbit, Jacknife Lee, Paul Oakenfold and others to do remixes. Well, Get On Your Boots is our next victim!

Justice have taken the reigns and yielded us a lively and moody remix of the song. U2 are the new kings of pop!

Read the Stereogum premier review here.

ht: Pastor Dave