out of site

Every year, on holidays big and small, popular websites like Google redesign their logos to reflect the day. Others, like Yahoo, create short animations--little characters making snowmen, giving valentines, or enjoying Halloween candy.

But neither site acknowledged Easter at all yesterday. No eggs in the Google "O"s. No bunny hopping around Yahoo.com.

At first I felt disappointed; considering both companies go to great lengths to commemorate the Chinese New Year and Cinco de Mayo, their refusal to acknowledge Easter sent all kinds of interesting messages.

Actually, though, it makes sense. Everyone enjoys a 4th of July picnic and an extra day off at Labor Day. No one can argue with the sentiments surrounding Thanksgiving. And at Christmas, it's easy to accept cute, unthreatening baby Jesus; people of every belief system get enthusiastic about presents and candlelight and warm feelings about peace on earth.

It is more difficult to dismiss resurrected adult Jesus. Easter doesn't allow the easy out that Jesus was just a good teacher; observance of the holiday must confront his revolutionary claims about forgiveness and eternal life. Easter also assumes the reality of human frailty and sinfulness--not terrifically popular topics in our culture.

Unlike any other day of the year, Easter demands a choice. I guess Yahoo and Google made theirs.

baby steps

This year, Crossroads Christian Church in New Smyrna Beach, FL changed the time of their Easter Sunrise Service from 6 a.m. to 7. I should think so.

Night people of the world, unite! We are slowly making a difference! We would probably have more influence if we could promote our ideas on the Today show, but that would require getting up too early.

another one bites the dust

Don't isolate yourself. Maintain good boundaries with the opposite sex and be accountable to others. Love your family as well as your work, and be home with them sometimes. Your ministry's success does not equal your personal worth. It's not about you so take the ego down about five notches, please.

You've heard it all before (except maybe that last one--that was a Jen addition). But it bears repeating because once again a young, dynamic leader has flamed out and left a tsunami of grief and pain in his wake. Several years after planting a church and leading it through a time of growth, he resigned as senior minister, left his wife and two children, and confessed to a relationship with his wife's best friend. (This woman, also a church member, just served her husband with divorce papers and is lobbying to get custody of their four children, and the house; she and ex-pastor, new-boyfriend want to live there.)

Don't try to figure out who; it's not one of "our" guys, and it's probably no one you'd recognize. The point isn't his name, anyway--the point is variations of the same story could be told and retold with many different names in the starring role.

I am not in a church leadership position. I am not married.  I don't have to deal with the complex pressures and temptations that accompany a marriage or a senior pastor job description.

So I am not offering any advice to the guys (and gals) messing up. I am making a suggestion to the rest of you, though--those who are leading others and who are staying married: although the previously-mentioned tidbits of wisdom seem straightforward to me, they are obviously not cutting it with those in the trenches. It's time to address the causes of minister meltdown, because churches are drowning in the effects.

stuff white people like

My favorite new blog is "Stuff White People Like," a funny and sometimes scathing "guide" (written, I believe, by a white guy) for other races wanting to fit in with white people or gain their respect. 

A few of my favorite quotes:

When engaging in a conversation about corporate evils it is important to NEVER, EVER mention Apple Computers, Target or Ikea ....... White people prefer to hate corporations that don’t make stuff that they like.

All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to jazz.

White people will often say they are "spiritual" but not religious. Which usually means that they will believe any religion that doesn't involve Jesus.

The Toyota Prius gets 45 miles per gallon. That’s right, you can drive 45 miles and burn only one gallon of gasoline. So somehow, through marketing or perception, the Prius lets people think that driving their car is GOOD for the environment. It’s a pretty sweet deal for white people. You can buy a car, continue to drive to work and Barack Obama rallies and feel like you are helping the environment!

Every white person takes at least one trip to Europe between the ages of 17-29. During this time they are likely to wear a back pack, stay at a hostel, meet someone from Ireland/Sweden/Italy with whom they have a memorable experience, get drunk, see some old churches and ride a train. What’s amazing is that all white people have pretty much the same experience, but all of them believe theirs to be the first of its kind. So much so that they return to North America with ideas of writing novels and screenplays about their experience.

Recycling is part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so they can tell you that they don’t have a TV.

another one

Last September David Milam, the lead pastor at Kinetic Christian Church in North Carolina, led Kinetic in raising over $15,000 to purchase a used trailer and then completed an exhausting two-day road trip with another church member to pick it up in New York.

Kinetic needed the trailer to hold services at a movie theater on Sunday mornings; it housed everything for their children's and hospitality ministries, plus items for transforming the theater into worship space.

On March 2 the trailer was stolen. What a blow for this young church. Their first "just-Kinetic" project, financed solely from members and without any help from KCC's church planting partners, is now gone.

So here's the deal: enough people read this blog that if we all gave something, we could make a big dent in the cost of replacing this equipment. How about it? Visit their website here and click at the bottom to access their secure online giving page for the "trailer recovery fund." Yes, you have to register as a first-time user, but you're up for it. You know they won't share your info. The form's not that tricky. Come on.

Let’s show these friends our support and overwhelm them with help. As soon as I post this I'm making my donation. Click here and do a little bit, too.

giving my best

I'd make a great rich person. I'd still clip coupons, look for sales, and avoid ridiculous purchases from the SkyMall catalog (personalized steak branding iron, anyone?).

And I would still give money to people and missions I really believe in. One of the blessings of my work for Christian Standard is how frequently I talk to people involved in creative, life-changing ministry. One of the curses is not being able to donate extravagantly to each of them.

For example, did you know Christian Missionary Fellowship's new Hope Partnership is addressing the poverty and filth of Nairobi's slums? In partnership with CMF missionaries and locals, the initiative provides AIDS education, food and clothing, microloans, health education, family counseling and much, much more to this devastated region.

Or how about Restore Community Church, the congregation funded in part by offerings from last year's NACC? The church launched last Sunday with over 400 people, 40 of whom immediately signed up to join a small group.

Or there's Central India Christian Mission; director Ajai Lall and his team recently attended a "mega" evangelistic meeting in Chhattisgarh where Ajai preached 18 times in one week and over 10,000 people made decisions for Christ (in a country where such a decision can mean death threats and rejection by one's family).

Ajai also recently preached with policemen aiming AK-47s at him--and then received the friendship and support of the supervising police chief who heard the sermon. A student from Savannah College of Art and Design (who also attends Savannah Christian Church) made a film about the experience which CICM is now sharing. (More on this one in an upcoming Buzz.)

And those are just conversations from the last two weeks--if I searched my memory and my laptop I could find dozens of other examples.

I've told God I'll give big chunks away if he chooses to make me rich. For now, He's saying no, so I do what I can--and use forums like this to encourage you to give, too.

In fact, why not stick your tongue out at the government this spring and donate part of that tax rebate to ministry? By most global standards, we're all rich, and we can make a huge difference.

good book

Yesterday I finished work on a new book about the design philosophy and recent projects of Visioneering Studios. Mel McGowan, Visioneering's president, wrote much of the copy and I helped with some rewrites and edits.

Although the project took a chunk of my brain for most of last month, it was fun and rewarding to be involved. Mel and his team are great people with huge hearts for connecting people to Jesus through "architectural evangelism." The book profiles 15 churches and parachurches, shares their story and includes photos of their Visioneered facilities. Five short essays about design, church as a "third place," and the role of environmental choices in architecture round it out.

Here's a short excerpt:
Are bigger buildings worth the potential pitfalls of community opposition, split congregations, pastoral departures, and sacrificial giving campaigns? Most evangelical pastors still say yes, assuming that “if we build it, they will come.” But according to Barna Research, between 1993 and 2000 the dollars spent on church construction increased by 100%. During the same timeframe the US population increased by 40%, while US church attendance decreased by 40%. A statistician would call that a directly inverse correlation, while a businessman would call it an unacceptable ROI.  

America is increasingly becoming a postmodern, post-Christian nation, and church architects who drop fiberglass steeples in front of converted Wal-Marts are part of the problem. Without rethinking biblical definitions of authentic church and community, they continue to endorse the same generic solutions across the country. 

However, generic is irrelevant—and not always cheaper. Instead of throwing more money at less effective buildings reaching fewer people, churches can stage a design intervention by considering their culture, their unique identity, and their purpose.

The book will debut at the Q conference in NYC next month. Sigh. Yet again I want to attend Q. At least this year some of my words will.

(For more about Visioneering, read the Christian Standard story here.)