I’m leaving now to head to the airport for my trip to Orange County. I can not wait to hang out with so many friends and meet new ones. The Idea Camp is sure to be a great experience and I believe, a breakthrough for a new way of doing conferences. Charles Lee is a friend and a true innovator. I’m honored to be speaking at his gathering. See you soon California!
One topic of discussion that came up at last week’s Church 2.0 Local Forum in Phoenix was the ever-increasing new role for Church leaders and staff to be equippers and trainers of new media and technologies to those in their ministry, volunteers, other staff, etc.
One IT staff member of a mega-church remarked that he’s found himself training more and more staff on how to use tools like Facebook, Twitter and TokBox. Another staff remember remarked that she has been personally going over to volunteers’ homes to teach them hands-on on how to use these tools. She’s personally set them up with email, Facebook and Twitter accounts (even if only to follow her she said).
I think this is a new reality we find ourselves in and will probably make it’s way into the Church 2.0 book (or whatever it ends up being called). We as leaders have always been charged to teach, train, encourage, equip, educate and inform. For the many in your church and even on your staff team that don’t “get it” – you may find yourself acting in a role like a Best Buy Geek Squad or an Apple Store Genius Bar.
Have you thought of this before? Do you think this is valid? I’m not talking about forcing anything on anyone. I’m talking about helping those that have interests and are sincerely open to harnessing these new technologies. My hope is that if you are ready and willing to learn that you will seek out those to learn from. And if you “get it” and have knowledge that you could share, I encourage you to see it as an act of furthuring the Kingdom and the Gospel. So, are you willing to serve on the Geek Squad?
I hate to say “I told you so”, but I did. I knew the moment I saw “Slumdog Millionaire” for the first time that it would win an Academy Award. It won 8 last night, including Best Director and Best Picture. It is truly an amazing piece of art and a wonderful film. If you weren’t convinced to go see it by my first post on it, I strongly encourage you to go see it now.
What were your thoughts on The Oscars? Who did you think got what they deserved? Who didn’t?
This week I’m in Phoenix. I’m speaking at the Church Solutions Conference and hosting a Church 2.0 Local Forum while I’m in town. Below are the amazing sponsors that make it all possible…
After going to 9 cities throughout the US in 2008, the Church 2.0 Local Forum tour continues in 2009 with new cities beginning this Tuesday in Phoenix. Church 2.0 Local Forums are led by me and various guests (depending on the city/host church) and are gatherings for Church leaders of all kinds to get together, meet/network and discuss issues such as innovation, technology and social justice. Here is the schedule so far:
There may be another (secret) city added in later in the year. More details on that after the host church has been confirmed. If you’re anywhere near one of these cities, I hope you’ll join the discussion. If you have friends and peers in ministry that you know are near one of these cities, please encourage them to come.
Church 2.0, the book (or whatever it ends up being called) is being written by me, David Russell, Rhett Smith, Tony Steward and Cynthia Ware. The book should be finished this Spring and out this Fall. To join the Church 2.0 Facebook group go HERE. To join the Church 2.0 Unifyer group goHERE.
If your city/region is listed, please comment and let me know and I’ll get you involved in helping spread the word. If your city/region is not listed, let me know and I’ll consider it for 2010.
As a former worship pastor, I’ve followed Shaun Groves for a while. He’s been in my CD rotation and has greatly encouraged me through his music. I especially appreciate his Kingdom heart, his work with Compassion and the poor. He’s a great guy and I encourage you to get to know him if you don’t.
By the way, his song “Should I Tell Them” is one of my all-time favorite songs. I can’t tell you how it ministers to me before I speak to a group of people. You’ve got to check it out!
I thought I’d follow-up my posts on impotent preaching by calling out one more person: myself. As I’ve traveled the country the last 9 years speaking, teaching, consulting and meeting with Church leaders, one thing I’ve found myself saying over and over to people that ask about my ministry and my personal thoughts about how God is using me – “God uses weak people.”
When you think about it and study Scripture, it’s pretty obvious, but it truly still amazes me. I’m the most weak, screwed up, unworthy person I can think of. As Paul said, I do believe I’m the “chief of sinners”. I struggle with many things, I could definitely be a better husband, father, friend, pastor, person, etc. My flesh is weak and my body is weak with numerous health issues.
I struggle with weight/living a healthy lifestyle. I struggle with anxiety and take medicine for it. I struggle with depression and take medicine for it. I have other medical issues which I won’t share on here, but believe me, more medicine is involved. I sleep in a drug-induced sleep and can not even begin to tell you how hard it is to wake up in the morning.
When my tech team gathers at 7am on Sunday mornings (meaning I have to get up at 6am) – it is the hardest struggle to be there and be on time. Waking up for me (coming out of the drug-induced sleep) is very difficult – it’s like waking from a coma.
I love flying West and speaking because I get more sleep. When I fly to the East Coast, I really struggle with waking up (as my friends and hosts in Atlanta, South Carolina and Boston can testify to).
My moods and emotions are all over the map. I bounce from high to low and when I crash, I really crash. Only my family, a few close friends and my therapist really know the depth of my struggles.
Why do I share? Because I love to brag on God and testify to his grace and mercy. God truly uses weak people. One of my favorite lines in a worship song is from “Your Grace is Enough”. The second verse says “You use the weak to lead the strong.” I don’t understand why that is. I just watch as it happens.
I thank God for his unconditional love, amazing grace and mercy that is new every morning. My first-born child is named Grace because I could think of no better name considering my past and my struggles.
I boast in Christ and will continue to until my last breath. Friends, if you’re struggling with depression… if you’re struggling with anxiety… whatever you struggle with – hear me: you’re not alone. God is faithful. Surround yourself with people you trust that can pour into you, lift you up when you’re down and bear your burdens with you.
For me, personally, I want to be a friend to you as well. If you struggle, email me. Also contact, share with and follow friends and people that also understand like DJ Chuang, Anne Jackson and Rhett Smith. They are great people who blog regularly about issues like this and truly understand the challenges that many are faced with. You are not alone!
To my regular, faithful readers, thanks for bearing with me last week as I had to get somethings off my chest. Thanks for your participation, comments and feedback. I really enjoyed the discussion. I’ve been blogging for over 2 and 1/2 years now and have never “called someone out” before, but these gentlemen really disturbed me and I felt I needed to set the record straight: what they are teaching is wrong, false… whatever you want to call it. I chose “impotent”.
Here’s why I went with that word: Friends, to me the true Gospel is not only “good news”, it’s life-changing, transformational and POTENT. Remember “potent” means powerful and mighty. This Gospel that we have the privilege of sharing has power that we can’t truly comprehend. It restores, refreshes, redeems, rescues, releases and recreates us. We are made new IN Christ. A new creation.
This precious, potent Gospel must not be taken lightly. When you stand up to preach in the pulpit, you need to pray and ask for wisdom, discernment, boldness and clarity. Ask that God will truly speak through you – a broken vessel (“jars of clay”).
Here are a few thoughts on how I came to this conclusion: I’ve heard that people that study counterfeit money don’t study the many types of fakes or copies – they study the real thing. They keep looking at a real bill over and over and over, so that when they come across a fake, it will stand out to them because they have become so familiar with the real thing.
I am so blessed to weekly sit under the teaching ministry of Pete Briscoe, one of the most solid Bible teachers in the world. I get fed with such a rich dose of true Gospel teaching that when I come across someone teaching something counter to Scripture, it jumps out at me.
When I see someone like Steve Anderson take shots at NewSpring Church, Perry Noble, Billy Graham and translators/users of other translations than the KJV, I recognize that he is not preaching the true Gospel. He’s wasting his precious time in the pulpit and his congregation leaves spiritually hungry, mis-guided and more confused. That, my friends is a true shame.
When I see someone like Mike Murdock confuse wealth with money, my radar goes up and I know what he’s teaching is contrary to Scripture. When I hear him tell people to go into further debt, when they don’t have the money, by putting $1000 on their credit card to give to his “ministry” – I get a holy anger and I see what he’s doing as beyond a shame – it’s the very essence of false teaching. As my pastor quoted someone yesterday, “God wants us to have wealth. It’s important we don’t settle for money.”
Hear my heart, friends and please mark these words down, quote me, hold me to them – I’ll take them to my grave: I believe that the true Gospel can be preached anytime, anywhere, to anyone, at any point in history and in any situation, to any nation, tribe, tongue, race, economic situation, etc.
My problem with the “money gospel” is that besides being weak and impotent, it can not be preached anywhere. Try standing up in a 3rd world country, looking starving parents who are holding their dying children in their arms, and tell them that “God wants them to be rich” or “God wants you to super-size your meal at McDonald’s” (like I heard one preacher say). Dung!
On the mission field, in real life and in tough situations, what people need is Christ. Last night I worked with a ministry that fed the homeless in downtown Dallas and held a worship service for them. I couldn’t look them in the eye and say that God wants them to “give $58 a month and sow a seed into my ministry and watch God bless them”. No, the only thing I could offer them was Christ – the unconditional love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, redemption and rescue that Christ and only Christ offers. There’s nothing else to preach to them.
This isn’t about being seeker-sensitve or not. This isn’t about being emergent or not. This isn’t about topical versus exegetical. This is about the Gospel and offering Christ to those in desperate need. That’s what this world needs more of.
That’s it, folks. I’m stepping down off my soap box. Tomorrow I will call out one last person in a blog post entitled “Weak”. You don’t want to miss it!
So, what are your thoughts on the Gospel? For those of you that have been on foreign mission trips and/or worked with the poor and homeless, how do you think the money gospel would go over?
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7-9The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.
Case #3: Mike Murdock,
Founder and Senior Pastor of The Wisdom Center in Ft. Worth, TX
The previous posts on Steve Anderson disturb me, but deep down I know he’s just whack. Something’s not right with him. Mike Murdock, however, is a smart, educated, calculating guy who is deceiving a lot of people. I have a feeling that the holy anger I feel toward him is echoed and probably magnified by my Creator.
I first came across Mike late one night. My wife and I couldn’t sleep and were flipping the channels at about 3am. We came across the Christian channel and Mike was preaching. Here’s what we saw: For the entire hour, he never preached about Christ, he kept craftilly and strategically building up to a “faith challenge”. I sat stunned, intrigued and upset while watching an entire sermon that was designed to ask people to give to his ministry.
His whole sermon was a build up to a challenge to have 1000 people each give $1000. Do the math: that would be 1 million dollars, folks. Because I’m such a Dave Ramsey fan and try to live by his principles, I really got infuriated when he said (and I’ll paraphrase): “Some of you are in debt and don’t have a thousand dollars to give. God wants you, by faith, to put the $1000 on your credit card.” – Say what? That’s just plain wrong. I was shouting at the TV. Friends, God does not want you to go into further debt by putting $1000 on your credit card for Mike Murdock.
My pastor just recently preached on how too many people misinterpret what the Bible means by “wealth”. Wealth is meant to be spiritual. There are wealthy people all over the world that own nothing and have no money saved up. At the same time, there are rich people that are spiritually poor. Mike Murdock and his money gospel are impotent. In my final “Impotent” blog post I’ll share my thoughts on the true Gospel and how it contrasts his teaching. What are your thoughts?
Case #2: Steven L Anderson,
pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
After yesterday’s response, I thought I’d share another one of this preacher’s videos. Many of you think that this guy is just mean, or simply fundamental or picking on NewSpring/Perry Noble. I want to make sure you don’t miss what I mean by impotent. His messages have no power, no meaning, no effectiveness – they are truly impotent.
OH MY GOODNESS. I don’t know where to begin. Did you watch the whole video? He made fun of the editors of the New King James Version. He made fun of the editors of the NIV. Do you have any idea how hard Bible translators work? And he made absolutely no sense.
Impotent is one thing and I hope to shed some light on impotent preaching this week, but this man shouldn’t be aloud to preach in public. Seriously, Steve – buy a commentary and read it.
I was going to stop with his “pisseth” crap, then I came across his “Billy Graham is the Enemy of God” sermon. At 2 minutes and 9 seconds into his video, he says and I quote: “Billy Graham’s a false teacher. He’s a false prophet.” Watch:
Dictionary.com defines an idiot as “an utterly foolish or senseless person.” I’m not trying to name call – I’m stating a fact. Steven L. Anderson, you’re an idiot. And if there was ever a “false teacher” – brother that’s you. Again, answer my email and let’s meet later this month when I’m in Phoenix. I’m sure we’d have an interesting discussion.
Blog readers, bear with me. All these posts (and tomorrow’s new preacher) are leading towards an intentional conclusion. I have something burning in my heart/spirit that I want to say. So, if you watched the above videos, what are your thoughts?
