Government Cycle

Do a little history review, and you'll see that, if they're not careful, governments generally come full cycle in their thinking.

Here's an interesting insight I once heard from Bob McEwen:

Government Cycle

• Bondage -government control
• Spiritual Truth - breaking free
• Great Courage - fight for cause
• Liberty - free
• Abundance - growth in freedom
• Selfishness - taking for granted
• Complacency - not getting involved
• Apathy - not caring
• Dependency - allowing government to take care of needs
• Bondage - back to full government control

Pretty revealing isn't it?

Where do you suppose we are today? I'd place the USA at the Selfishness stage, and Canada down in Apathy. Sadly, Canada seems to be moving down that list pretty quickly...

Marketing Is Not Numbers

Here's a great article that describes why I strive for greater excellence in church and life. It isn't about numbers, it's about having a greater and more effective impact.

Marketing seeks to maximize a message's impact; it serves the message, it definitely doesn't serve the numbers. Numbers might suggest a change in method, showing what's working and what isn't, but it doesn't change the message.

Justice is a message. Boycotts are a method.
Grace is a message. Events are a method.
Love is a message. Postcards are a method.

The methods can change, the message doesn't.

from Church Marketing Sucks

Christian Theater

Theater is potentially one of the greatest grounds for outreach, and one of the most difficult to enter. Sadly, Christian theater has been limited to amateur productions and additional fluff to sunday morning church services. The theater community itself is also a particularily difficult one for Christians to enter. I have close ties with the community, and can tell you that a significant number of them are either gay, and or hostile to christianity.

Let's do some math for a moment. A Broadway sized production will typically play for about 2 weeks, at maybe 8 shows. In a building that seats about 1500. We're already ranking up amongst the top 100 churches. Now take it on tour. The biggest cities in North America. While you're at it, don't foget to add CD's, videos, and sheet music.

Now is that impact or what?

The only thing that's even come close to it is !Hero: the Rock Opera

Let's pray that more Christians take an interest in using their God-given talents for God. Like this small group of theater writers.

Weekend Retreat

The men at Celebration! had a great retreat this past weekend up at Muskrat Lake. Sure it rained constantly through the entire weekend, and we had to cancel most of our activities due to various circumstances, but they weren't the purpose of the retreat anyways.

Our goal is to step up. Step up to the plate in our goals, our jobs, our ministries, our relationships, and our families.

Coincidentally, I was just reading through the Genesis and the story of Noah's Ark in my leadership bible. He was a simple ordinary man, called by God. He had no special leadership qualities, other than the fact that he was willing to give up whatever it took to follow God.

And in light of the flood, sometimes you need to step up, to give up, to go up!

Stepping it Up

We had a great meeting last night with the other Sequoia media leaders. Now we're taking action to step up the excellence of the church.

There's lots of great things happening with each of the worship, sunday production, sound tech, and multimedia teams. Short term, and long term.

One of the great ideas we're pursuing, is to create a Press Kit for the church. With the increase in readily-available technology, and small-production in the church (homemade ministry videos, music, print material, etc.) we see the need to ensure that Sequoia is properly represented.

While we're very open to having members create their own media for the church, the press kit will ensure that our name, logos, style, and beliefs will be effectively reproduced in the created media. Also, this will keep media that misrepresents our church from being acknowledged or distributed.

The Sequoia Press Kit will contain, in various file formats:

• logos for the church and various ministries
• colour swatch and schemes ready for print
• font sets
• what we believe in
• official slogans, mottos, etc.
  

Bible on my iPod

I've been trying to put a text version of the Bible onto my iPod, since thearetically it should work with the notes feature.

Unfortunately it won't work. The notes feature limits it to reading 4kb per text file, to a limit of about 1000 notes. (A txt bible will need about 1600).

Maybe we can hope for on upgrade from Apple in the future?

Meanwhile, check out this handy app. BiblePod. You can choose to have it automatically upload your favourite parts of the Bible, and it will keep track of which parts you already have on there.

Have You Dreamt?

Have you ever dreamt of a girl so real and so perfect, that you are driven to take up drawing, just so you could capture a small glimpse of her?

I have, and it was just that. A dream. Literally.

Remembering a dream is rare enough, but to remember every little detail? Never. Yet that is exactly where I am left, with details of this bizarre and wondrous dream sequence.

I'm too realistic to go on chasing my imagination, but I tell you this: If by some means this dream woman materializes today, then I will not hesitate to introduce myself.

Great T-Shirt Designs

Here's some hilarious T-Shirt designs. I gotta get me some of these!

Thanks to Cafepress

Call to be a Gentleman

Being a gentleman is just as revelant today as it was in the medieval ages.

The medieval ideal taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson. It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. - C.S. Lewis, The Necessity of Chivalry

Look at the rise of books such as Wild at Heart, and The Barbarian Way. They call on us to recapture our hearts, to raise our courage, and to be the gentlemen we were created to be. Great movies like Braveheart and The Patriot stir hidden longings inside of us men.

Stand up for life and what's right. Fight for your loved ones.

Or even just open the door for girls. Walk them to their door when you drop them off at home. Not just the women you like, but all of them. Small examples of gentlemanly strength are hard to find today.

Take this example from Sir Thomas Malory's, Le Morte Darthur:

"Thou wert the meekest man", says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

Use More Electricity

Another week of blistering heat and humidity. Remember what happened last year at this time? A massive blackout. All because people were using up more electricity then the government was making, and it overloaded the circuits.

Their solution? This year they're warning us not to consume too much. Already this summer there has been minor brownouts througout Ontario.

If only they were smart enough to actually produce more power. Build more dams, windmills, power plants, and nuclear plants. Then our country would at least be free to use electronics when we want them. After all, we're paying for electricity anyways.

Everyone should use more electricity. Turn on your lights, your TVs and radios, your fridges and stoves, your airconditioners and fans, and turn on your computers and your laptops. Maybe if we caused a couple more blackouts, they'd wise up and provide us with an essential service that's actually reliable.

Bridging Tech from Then to Now

This has been an entirely new experience to me. I spent the better part of a day converting vinyls to digital.

Some of the old music that we require for a small musical dance production is only available on vinyl. So we need to capture music from old classic artists like Louis Prima, Four Barons, Richard Alden, and Margaret Whiting. Not to forget some famous old songs, such as In The Mood, and Blue Danube.

So here I am, conducting a major bridge across the technological generation gap; a turntable wired up to my computer.

Clean Clubbing

What do you get when you take a hit nightclub, remove the alcohol, remove the drugs, remove the grinding and groping, and remove the negative music?

Club 3 Degrees is your answer, and it's bigger and better than any other club in town.

It's Saturday night in Minneapolis's warehouse district, and the revelers are on the loose. They're staggering from one bar to another, shouting and belching and gallivanting in a booze-fueled bacchanal. But at the biggest venue of all, Club 3 Degrees, a different scene is unfolding. There's no cigarette smoke, and the only spirits around are the ones you can't sip. Up onstage, gospel singer Karen Clark-Sheard is glorifying God with rich vocals and personal testimony. "Give Jesus an ovation," she tells the audience. "I don't know what you come to do, but I come to get my praise on."

Read the rest of the MSNBC article.