Week in Review

Americans have reached a point where it seems inevitable that their evening network newscast is going to contain a weather story. The overall tenor of the reporting seemed to be inclined to telegraph that this week’s tornado in Moore, OK wasn’t the end of natural disasters by any means; this type of intense storm with catastrophic damage is the new normal. As the week ended, parts of the northeast, especially in mountainous areas, experienced snow to kick off the Memorial Day weekend.

As we mentioned in the link list on Wednesday, the name “Crystal Cathedral,” officially speaking, is no more. We knew that the church itself was being renamed Christ Cathedral, but learned this week that the congregation it once belonged to, now moving to the former St. Callistus Church, will operate under the banner Shepherd’s Grove. Like the weather story above, this one would seem to be nearing toward a conclusion, but like the soap opera it is, there seem to be new installments around every corner. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for what has been a long, sad story over the past five years.

I decided to give the new Anne Heche comedy Save Me at least ten minutes this week, and ended up staying for an hour watching both episodes. Anne plays a woman who has a near death experience, and then is able to receive messages directly from God. This is hardly family fare. While the lead character’s husband is having an affair and her daughter is in a “neighbors with benefits” relationship with the boy next door, both of those story lines were inching toward something redemptive, though are still rather edgy for an 8:00 PM time slot. Church people were as realistic as we can expect from television. On the other hand, Anne’s character seems able to invoke lightning strikes somewhat at will, something not covered in most books about the gift of prophecy; neither can you walk into most churches and simply wander upfront and sing with the worship team. At least the early episodes weren’t an outright mockery of Christianity. For the record, co-executive producer Mark Driscoll is not the same Mark Driscoll known to readers of this page.

What Not To Post Online During a Crisis

When tragedies happen, you want to post something like this:

not something like this:

Michael Frost was kind enough to post on Twitter: ‘John Piper should sack whoever writes his tweets for him.” giving Piper a pass on the responsibility. Tuesday night the post had been removed from JP’s feed. 

UPDATE 5/24/13 — Piper explains why the Twitter posts were removed.

Save Me from Save Me

Just a little over a year after ABC-TV gave us Good Christian Bitches  which got abbreviated to GCB at the same time as the Southern Baptist Convention offered an alternative name Great Commission Baptists; NBC-TV is just days away from the launch of the four-week miniseries Save Me. The series stars Anne Heche as a woman who, after nearly choking to death on a sandwich, takes on a prophetic role as a direct pipeline to God. Sitcoms Online reports the series will air for four weeks, as of now, from May 23 through June 13.

And so it begins again. Lately the hallmark of mainstream media’s portrayal of Christianity has been slightly more accurate in terms of theology, or at least in terms of what we could term megachurch culture, with shows like Sisterhood blurring the distinctions between drama, comedy and reality TV. But the characters all tend to be slightly over-the-top representations, and many times the humor is at the expense of those who seem to be afflicted with faith. A two-minute preview of Save Me reveals a show that is mostly uses a religious framework to advance a script that might have developed just as well without dragging God into it.

Still, we don’t wish to judge a program we haven’t seen so we’ll have to wait for  May 23rd at 8:00 PM Eastern. But we couldn’t resist the post header above. Truly, I hope we’re not saying “Save Me” in the first five minutes.  Watch a preview on YouTube. (Language issues.)

What if What Happened in Boston Was a Weekly Occurance?

Noah Beck writes at The Christian Post:

I genuinely empathize with the victims of the Boston bombing. They were killed, maimed, injured, and/or forever traumatized only because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As they gathered to compete in or watch the marathon underway, they were – like all terrorism victims – the epitome of innocent.

But imagine if this happened again next week, at a pizzeria, killing 15 diners. And again, a week later, on a bus, killing 19 passengers. Then, at a discotheque, killing 21 teens. Then, at a church, killing 11 worshipers. And so on, with a new bombing terrorizing us almost every week.

Israelis don’t have to imagine. They just have to remember. Between 1995 and 2005, each year saw an average of 14 suicide bombings, murdering 66 victims. 2002 was the worst year, with 47 bombings that slaughtered 238 people. That’s almost one Boston bombing every week. Adjusted for population differences, Israel’s victims in 2002 amounted to the equivalent of three 9/11s in one year. And these bombing statistics don’t include all of the shootings, stabbings, and other violent attacks by Palestinian extremists during those years.

Most Americans (and Europeans), who enjoy lives of far greater security, can barely recall such attacks because they usually received only scant and perfunctory media coverage, if they were mentioned at all. A few particularly gruesome attacks (like the Netanya Passover bombing that killed 30 and injured 140) were prominently reported but most attacks were barely and inconspicuously noted, and many smaller but horrific attacks went entirely unreported…

Continue reading here

The article concludes:

With so many constant threats, it’s a miracle that Israelis can maintain any semblance of everyday sanity, much less win Nobel prizes and get more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any country after the USA and China. How do they do it? If you talk to Israelis, their approach seems to be a proud and stubborn refusal to let terrorism change their lives…

Theology Lite: Max Lucado on Pretzels

So there I was driving home and listening to one of six Christian radio stations I can now get in my car, when Max Lucado’s Upwords radio minute came on.  This is essentially a sponsorship opportunity for radio stations; a vehicle for them to sell additional advertising.

Now, I don’t want to seem ungrateful for all the books Max has written and the contribution he’s made to Christian literature, in fact I’ve given a few favorable reviews here.  Furthermore, I especially like Max on video. I think the warmth and tenor of his personality comes through the camera better than through the printed page, though, I must confess, I now read his material hearing his voice in my head.

But as I listened to Upwords, I thought, “As fluffy content goes, this is more fluffy than usual.”  So I looked to see if the text was available online to share here, and it was:

Years ago I was traveling with my daughter, Jenna.  When I realized she and I weren’t seated together,  I asked the fellow sitting next to her to swap seats with me.  Surely he’ll understand, I thought.  He didn’t.  I was left separated from my 12 year old on a long transatlantic flight.

I began plotting how I’d trip him if he dared walk to the restroom during the flight. I turned to intimidate him with a snarl and saw, much to my surprise, Jenna offering him a pretzel. What?  My daughter was fraternizing with the enemy! As if the pretzel were an olive branch, he accepted her gift and they both leaned their seats back and dozed off.

I learned the lesson God had used my daughter to teach me. All of us are here by grace and, at some point, all of us have to share some grace. So the next time you find yourself next to a questionable character, don’t give him a hard time—give him a pretzel!

That’s the full text.

Now my goal here is not to take this apart letter-by-letter, punctuation-mark by punctuation-mark. (We’ll leave that to discernment ministry bloggers.) I did make note — especially if I’m ever near him on an airplane — that Max was considering tripping this stranger, and that even in the final paragraph, he still ranks as a “questionable character.”  Of course this is the same man who recently, in his book Grace, confessed to a week of drinking beer out of a paper bag in a convenience store parking lot, and an attempt to bribe an airline official.  Truly, I’m not making that up.

No, I was just concerned that the whole broadcast was a tad light, as in lite. No Biblical text, though I suppose that’s not the goal of Upwords. No deep theology. Not even a teaser for an upcoming book.  (This story is in fact from an older book, The Great House of God.)

I guess I have no major complaint other than perhaps I’d like my sixty-seconds back.  I do think the radio airtime could be better used. I think that Max himself could use it better. Especially in view of the program’s mandate as outlined on his website:

In 1991, Max Lucado was presented the idea of developing a radio broadcast that focused solely on Jesus Christ.

Perhaps there’s a philosophy to this radio vignette; possibly Max builds a listener following and then hits the spiritual home run on Fridays, or at the end of the month.

I just think people are tuning in for something more substantive than pretzels.

We Sure Could Use A Little Good News Today

” When sorrows come – they come not single spies – but in battalions “
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene V

Every night at 6:30 PM I watch the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. I became a convert about five years ago after decades of watching ABC World News Tonight starting in the days Peter Jennings anchored.

You’re just as likely to catch Brian Williams guesting on The Office or SNL as you are to see him hosting the news. While he delivers the hard news with total professionalism, he’s also at his best doing the soft news stories, especially if they involve dogs, or better, puppies. He knows that television news is largely infotainment, but lately, the headlines he’s forced to read haven’t exactly been kind.

The United States has been taking a beating lately. Even in the wake of the tragedy in Boston, you see a disastrous day for airline travel as a major carrier’s computer software crashes. You see extreme weather in Illinois including floods and sinkholes. You see the devastating explosion in a fertilizer factory in Texas. You see enough sorrow and sadness that for several days, both North Africa and North Korea are forced off the broadcast schedule.

In weeks like this I’m always drawn back to the lyrics of A Little Good News, a classic song by Anne Murray.  Here’s the second half of the lyrics:

I’ll come home this evenin’
I’ll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air,
How everybody learned to care.

Tell me
Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today
And in the streets of Ireland, all the children had to do was play
And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
We sure could use a little good news today

Whoa, tell me
Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD’ed, nobody burned a single building down
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today

But then I’m reminded of another classic song, by The Chi-Lites (also covered by Christian group The Imperials) There Will Never Be Any Peace Until God is Seated at the Conference Table. (How did they get all that on the record label?) The song begins:

Men are runnin’ from land to land
Tryin’ to make things alright
Holding meeting after meeting, constantly reaching
For what they maybe thinking is right

Everybody has a plan
Ain’t that just a man
People can’t you understand?
We gotta tell ‘em

There will never be any peace
Until God is seated at the conference table

I can’t promise Brian Williams puppy-filled scripts. I think we see the trend; we see where the world is going. But I do sincerely, earnestly wish my American brothers and sisters a little good news. Soon.

Matthew 24:7 (NLT)

⁷ Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world.

Mark 13:8 (CEB)

⁸ Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other, and there will be earthquakes and famines in all sorts of places. These things are just the beginning of the sufferings associated with the end.

Luke 21:10  (MSG)

^10-11 He went on, “Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.

Add to Bookmarks

Places to go, people to meet:

The Bridge Chicago

I’ll let them describe it:

The Bridge Chicago is a new ministry project from Mission:USA. On this blog, we’re drawing on decades of experience in front line ministry to provide help and materials to people trying to reach others for Jesus in their own communities.

The materials you find on this blog include media that you can purchase. The purchase price helps cover the cost of making it, and supports missionaries raised up from within the inner city who do not have other means of raising support.

There is a wide spectrum of music and interesting articles to hear and see at The Bridge.  Be sure to bookmark this site.

Click here to view The Bridge Chicago.

Faith Village

Make sure your flash player is up to date; the street is your navigation bar. After viewing the streetscape on the landing page — use your cursor to go further down the block — you have many choices where to go next, and the possibilities seem new each day. 

There are articles to read at Java Juice Blog House, videos in The Grove Theater, sermon podcasts in CityPod Studios,  leadership articles at Watermark Workshop, food ideas at Café on the Square, parenting advice at Momzie,  talk tech at Converge, discuss cultural trends at Denison Forum, and no surprise, you can buy books at the Faith Village Bookstore.  You can engage in social media in The Lofts at Faith Village either as an individual, a group or even as a church. There’s a whole space for youth 13-18 called Revolution called revultn; and also one for college kids (that looks like a frat house) called Epic House.  There are academic sites at Faith Village University.

There are also some parts of Faith Village still under construction.

This website is somebody’s labor of love to be sure. It sets the bar just a little bit higher as to what an ideal internet site can do. But who is behind this? The last stop on the second streetscape is Dallas Baptist University. Is that a clue? Is this some Christian college’s masterminded recruitment site? If it is, sign me up.

Click here to view Faith Village.

Shane Claiborne Knows How to Throw a Party

Combine social activist Shane Claiborne with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream’s Ben Cohen and you’re left with Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream; 90 minutes of raw video of a pacifists rally that was as entertaining as it was informative.  Produced by the same film crew that did Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s Awakening of Hope video, J,B,&IC is every bit as much a block party as anything, complete with painters, jugglers, singers, a rapper, kids filling shopping carts and a welder literally ‘beating swords into plowshares’ so to speak. It’s hard to imagine having this much fun about a subject so serious.

The subject is decisively American-interest. However, as a Canadian, I’m well aware of the saying, “Every time America sneezes, Canada catches a cold.” That’s true of other countries, also; so whether the subject is armed conflict on-the-ground, or the nuclear build-up, the rest of the world can’t ignore what the U.S. does, and the statistics presented here are –despite the increase in threat level from other countries as I write this — extremely alarming.

The video can be watched as a single film, or broken up into six sessions for small group study, for which a study guide is available from Zondervan. However, there’s no actual book this time around, the movie or curriculum video is the main product. The nature of the filmography means this will appeal to a younger audience; I sometimes wonder if Shane’s (and Jonathan’s) use of the particular film company diminishes a greater potential.

Each section contains scripture references, and while I didn’t have the advantage of seeing the group study and discussion guide, I can see this generating much passionate conversation both inside and outside the U.S., though I might combine a couple of the clips and go with a four-week focus on this topic.

Heaven is for Real: The Movie

Christian Post is reporting that Sony Pictures is negotiating with actor Greg Kinnear to play the role of Todd Burpo, father of Colton Burpo, who was the subject of the huge bestselling book, Heaven is for Real.

Read the whole story at Christian Post.

Although I haven’t read the book cover-to-cover, Pete Wilson at Cross Point Church in Nashville did an extended interview with both Todd and Colton Burpo which was presented on film as the largest part of a Sunday morning sermon.  That interview is still online, and I invite you to watch it at Pete’s blog.

Festival Attending in a Security Obsessed World

So yesterday we remembered the Cornerstone Festival; part of the carefree days in the ’70s and ’80s when Christian music festivals sprang up in Midwest parks and Pennsylvania dairy farms. Ahh… simpler times.

Things have changed. I’ve never been to Kingdom Bound, a bit of trivia which my closer friends find amazing given my history with CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) mostly because the idea of a Christian festival in a theme park seems somewhat contradictory.  Two hot elements competing with each other: The bands and the rides.

But then there’s another issue. Back in the day — and you know you’re getting older when you start talking about ‘back in the day’ — the speakers and the musicians shared a somewhat equal billing. Even the most star-struck music fan could tell you about things the speakers said in the tents. At some festivals today, you’re lucky to get three speakers for every twenty music acts. Or less.

Which brings us to The Beruna Festival being held in July (19-20) on “The Flats at Molson Amphitheatre” in downtown Toronto; the first multi-day Christian event to be held there.  Well, almost downtown; the picture makes it look like the CN Tower and Air Canada Centre are directly in the background, when in fact they are a few miles further down the road. But you wouldn’t want the sound echoing off the high rise buildings anyway, nor the complaints from the condo owners.

Having nothing better to do on Tuesday night, I went poking around their website. The lineup is certainly good.  The pricing is probably somewhat normal for this type of event. The sponsors and event organizers are well respected.

But buried away on a FAQ page, you’re reminded that this is a venue used for general market events not Christian events; that this is 2013, not 1983. So no backpacks. No rigid liquid containers. No beach balls. Really? From all the outdoor concerts I’ve seen, I thought beach balls were required.

And then the one that broke the proverbial camel’s back. No SLR cameras.

What the festival is up with that?

My wife has been talking about getting a Canon SLR camera for some time now. But if we decided to attend this event in July — and we’re free that week and greatly admire some of the 22 bands and both of the speakers — she would be denied admittance.

“You mean I can’t take a SLR camera to the event?  Seriously?”

A camera with a removable lens is considered a professional camera, and professional cameras are not allowed. You might intimidate the people with smaller cameras.

And I’m sorry to say this, and perhaps it sounds rather petty, but with that, they lost me…

…

…Working with concert promoters for many years before I got married, the management and operating staff of the various venues we used were always impressed with the good behavior of the people who attended Christian events. In two words, they liked that there was “no trouble.” Over the years the promoters built up credibility equity, which meant they were afforded some grace, which they were then able to pass along to ticket buyers. (Neither grace nor customization of the rental package here; the beer vendors will be open though probably not quite doing business as usual.)

In a post-911 world, security at mass gatherings is essential. Purses and satchels do need to be checked. And refreshment vendors are counting on the dehydration of young people spending 12-hour days in the hot sun. And yes, it only takes one person to ruin it for everyone.

And I know that those in youth ministry see the value of these events for their students, and really want these events to be there as an option for the youth they work with.

But in the contract negotiations, I would be crusading hard against a one-size-fits-all approach which, for example, bans beach balls.  (Headline: Beach Ball Ban Baffles Blogger) Or a camera easily picked up for free with Sears points. If it’s that uptight an environment, it’s just too easy to lose the heart of the event. What’s next? Security staff at the megachurch? Oops! Too late. Maybe this is what happens when we get too big.

In a world of liability litigation, environmental impacts, and stricter safety standards for staging (Headline: Staging Safety Standards Set Stricter), it’s not as easy to find a Pennsylvania dairy farm willing to host tens of thousands of teens and twenty-somethings; but make no mistake; those dairy farms do exist and some of those dairy farmers are willing to give it a try.

Anytime soon would be good.