Good Friday is an incredibly intense service. The focus is entirely on the cross of Jesus, and it can be hard to sit there very long. But like the faithful few who stayed to the bitter end with Jesus, his modern disciples do well to sit vigil at his death, as well. This is far, far away from the kind of consumer-oriented or market-driven Christianity that might put bums in seats. This is the real stuff--spiritually compelling because it is true, but difficult to stomach if all you want is to feel good.
The liturgy for the day includes a beautiful sung version of the Gospel of John's account of the crucifixion, and a long "Solemn Intercession" portion in which we pray for everything under the sun, including those of other faiths and of no faith at all. We also apologize for every wrong the church has ever done. While is this part, the prayers, were being sung, John (who was the Presider at this service) and I were prostrate on the floor in front of a big, rough wood cross. Being flat on the ground like is pretty powerful, and I highly recommend it as a private devotional practice, as well as a public one on Good Friday and at Ordinations.
With so much powerful worship happening, I decided to keep my sermon as brief as possible (it turned out to be only four minutes). I was feeling the emotions so strongly that I could have easily brought myself to tears, but I managed to hold off and stay focused on the sermon.
An audio-only version can be found here.
-t
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Hawai'i (and my Dad's farm) in a Ferrari FF
My Dad and Mary Lou's farm was one of the stops on this tour of the Big Island in a $350,000 Ferrari FF. You can fast-forward to about 6 minutes in to see his farm. My dad said the hosts and crew for the show were nice and very professional. Later in this video they summit Mauna Kea, which brought back some memories for sure!
As awesome as this car is and fun it would be on the Big Island, I think I would still prefer something like the Jeep we rented the last time we were there. So much of Hawai'i is still a bit rough and having a real 4WD vehicle simply means that you can visit more places, which is surely the point of a vacation in paradise! (Click on either of the links in this last paragraph to see some of our Jeep adventures.)
As awesome as this car is and fun it would be on the Big Island, I think I would still prefer something like the Jeep we rented the last time we were there. So much of Hawai'i is still a bit rough and having a real 4WD vehicle simply means that you can visit more places, which is surely the point of a vacation in paradise! (Click on either of the links in this last paragraph to see some of our Jeep adventures.)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Sermon: Funeral for Eleanor Farmer
As promised: here is the remembrance and sermon given at the Funeral of Eleanor Farmer.
Here is the leaflet created for the liturgy.
Betsy noted that although I didn't say anything "new" in this sermon, I had said "what needed to be said." I think that pretty much encapsulates virtually all preaching. We aren't actually burdened with creating something new so much as with re-telling a story that we carry deep in our bones. Personally, I think any preacher worth his or her salt ought to be able to preach a descent funeral sermon at all times. Not because we do it particularly often, but because an Funeral sermon is really just a version of the Easter sermon, which is itself simply an account of the "hope that is within us." If you don't have a firm grasp of that hope than I suggest you spend some more time praying to the Holy Spirit! (I mean that literally--I think all preachers probably go through periods where they fall out-of-touch with the wellspring. This is a natural part of the spiritual life. My advice is: pray, pray, pray--especially to the Holy Spirit. She hasn't let me down, yet.)
Here is the leaflet created for the liturgy.
Betsy noted that although I didn't say anything "new" in this sermon, I had said "what needed to be said." I think that pretty much encapsulates virtually all preaching. We aren't actually burdened with creating something new so much as with re-telling a story that we carry deep in our bones. Personally, I think any preacher worth his or her salt ought to be able to preach a descent funeral sermon at all times. Not because we do it particularly often, but because an Funeral sermon is really just a version of the Easter sermon, which is itself simply an account of the "hope that is within us." If you don't have a firm grasp of that hope than I suggest you spend some more time praying to the Holy Spirit! (I mean that literally--I think all preachers probably go through periods where they fall out-of-touch with the wellspring. This is a natural part of the spiritual life. My advice is: pray, pray, pray--especially to the Holy Spirit. She hasn't let me down, yet.)
Facebook Ads Part # 3
We are getting to the end of the three-day ad I ran on Facebook to promote the church's Palm Sunday service. At this point more than 25,000 people have seen the ad, usually in the context of their newsfeed. Out of that I've got 128 "clicks" on the ad, which would have taken them to the church's Facebook page. Out of that I've gotten about 30 "likes" of the page that weren't following before. If they continued the follow the funnel flow they would have landed on a page I designed on the church's website to specifically promote Holy Week. That's gotten approximately 25 views specifically from the Facebook Link (and it doesn't count people who might have found their way to that page some other way). Overall the traffic to the website has almost doubled since I started running the FB ad. And it only cost us $50. What I really can't wait to see is if all this translates into even ONE visitor tomorrow. If we do get one, will have been totally worth it. I can't wait to meet that person, by the way, and introduce them to our community.The second observation I would make is that 41% of our traffic comes from referrals and the vast majority of them are from Facebook (though we do get a few from this blog and from the Diocese of Toronto's website). 29% comes from search traffic (mostly people Googling "Messiah Church Toronto") and 31% is people directly typing it "www.churchofthemessiah.ca" into their browser or clicking on a bookmark. This is fascinating, since if you had asked me before I started measuring I would have told you that most people come to our website through Google... not true. Facebook is having a huge impact.
Here's another interesting thing 26% of the people viewing the site are doing so on a mobile device (either a phone or a tablet). I think I would have guessed a bit low on that one, too. But it makes me thankful that I used a template that displays beautifully on mobile devices. You can even swipe the image slider on your mobile device and it works correctly.
So all of this has reconfirmed, for me, the importance of "feeding the beast" of content. Because drawing traffic to your site does no good if you don't have compelling content. And, what's even more important--that content needs to be developed more-or-less organically. It is misguided to do bait-and-switch. The content of the website needs to reflect accurately the life and character of the community. The low hanging fruit on the content tree is sermons. So I'm trying to get better about posting my sermons, regardless of how I felt about them when I preached them. I'm also trying not to get too crazy about doing nice production on them. Timeliness is very, very important. There is a quality threshold that stuff needs to meet, naturally, but then you just have to post, post, post.
As I write this I'm rendering a video of the sermon from Eleanor's funeral. I'll post it on the church's website and also cross-post it here when it's done.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Expectations of the Church
It saddens me that people expect so little of the church. I got a phone call regarding Eleanor's funeral this week. The caller, who described themselves as Anglican, wanted to know what our church's fee would be for doing the funeral. I explained that Eleanor was a parishioner, and my church doesn't charge a fee for parishioners who want to have their funerals here. Access to the rites of the church is just part of the deal of belonging to Christian Community. "Well, there won't be an organist, will there?" So I went on to explain that of course there will be an organist. In fact, it actually never occurred to me that we might do this funeral without Fiona playing. Perhaps that was unfair to Fiona, but when I asked her she said, "yes," and that was that.
Eleanor was "one of ours." She was extremely faithful to the church. She showed up week after week despite her disabilities and the physical pain of moving on her old knees. Every Sunday that we offered laying on of hands she would hobble, slowly, toward the altar rail until I would walk down and anoint her however far she had managed to come. She came every week to the Saturday healing prayer service, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to be there for her now. Fee?! Sigh.
This illustrates the way consumerism has invaded the church. Even people that are in the church think of it as a set of services given in exchange for money. This makes sense. I've got to eat and pay off the loans I took in seminary. The heating and electric bills have to be paid. And this is one way in which people make ministry happen--sure. No doubt they pay gratefully and with the knowledge that they are helping God work (and they are right). But it saddens me that one of the major things people think about when it comes to the sacraments of marriage and baptism, or when it comes to funerals, is "how much is this going to cost." We need to give people some alternative ways of thinking about the "pastoral rites" and also about the nature of giving to the church. It's not an exchange! it's a gift! Both ways!
And we have no one to blame but ourselves. We, as church, have perpetuated these attitudes in a million little and not-so-little ways. And it bugs the hell out of me.
Eleanor was "one of ours." She was extremely faithful to the church. She showed up week after week despite her disabilities and the physical pain of moving on her old knees. Every Sunday that we offered laying on of hands she would hobble, slowly, toward the altar rail until I would walk down and anoint her however far she had managed to come. She came every week to the Saturday healing prayer service, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to be there for her now. Fee?! Sigh.
This illustrates the way consumerism has invaded the church. Even people that are in the church think of it as a set of services given in exchange for money. This makes sense. I've got to eat and pay off the loans I took in seminary. The heating and electric bills have to be paid. And this is one way in which people make ministry happen--sure. No doubt they pay gratefully and with the knowledge that they are helping God work (and they are right). But it saddens me that one of the major things people think about when it comes to the sacraments of marriage and baptism, or when it comes to funerals, is "how much is this going to cost." We need to give people some alternative ways of thinking about the "pastoral rites" and also about the nature of giving to the church. It's not an exchange! it's a gift! Both ways!
And we have no one to blame but ourselves. We, as church, have perpetuated these attitudes in a million little and not-so-little ways. And it bugs the hell out of me.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Quick Tutorial on Using a Vectorscope to Do Colour Correction
All you amateur videographers out there might appreciate this quick introduction to how to use a vectorscope to do color correction. A vectorscope is visual display of the information in a video image. It displays as a colour wheel where one part is red, another green, and another blue and thus around the circle (hue). Intensity (saturation or chrominance) of the signal for each of those colours is then shown by how far from the centre the little dots appear. Here's an example that will make it fairly clear what I'm talking about:
This is what the vectorscope looks like in Final Cut, but pretty much all the video editing software such as Premiere Pro and Avid have the same thing. Notice that besides the patches of red (11.30 on the clock), blue (4 o'clock), and white (in the centre) data being represented, there is another patch extending out in the 11 o'clock position. That's the skin tone. Now, notice how there is a little reference line in "built in" to the scope near that point? That's the standard reference for what will appear as "skin tone." So if your patch of skin data falls on or at least close to that line, it will look like a "natural" skin tone.
Now for the mind blowing part--this reference line is the same for any colour of skin. Any race, black, white, whatever, will fall along the same line. Why? Because what the vectorscope is really picking up in the colour of the blood in the skin! Hidden from our eyes by all the other information our eyes perceive is a big glob of red, and the vectorscope can separate that out easy as kiss-my-hand. This has been observed for a long, long time, which is why virtually all vectorscopes have a reference line in this position. You can quickly correct skin tone just by using this handy tool. Here is a four minute tutorial that shows you exactly how to use a color correction wheel coupled with a vectorscope to quickly do colour correction in Premiere Pro.
See how easy that was? And it goes beyond skin tone. I also have a set of colour reference cards. So if I hold those up in front of someone before video taping them, in post-production I can then look at the vectorscope image and make sure that the "blue" on the card matches the "blue" position on the vectorscope. Easy peasy primary colour correction.
This is what the vectorscope looks like in Final Cut, but pretty much all the video editing software such as Premiere Pro and Avid have the same thing. Notice that besides the patches of red (11.30 on the clock), blue (4 o'clock), and white (in the centre) data being represented, there is another patch extending out in the 11 o'clock position. That's the skin tone. Now, notice how there is a little reference line in "built in" to the scope near that point? That's the standard reference for what will appear as "skin tone." So if your patch of skin data falls on or at least close to that line, it will look like a "natural" skin tone.
Now for the mind blowing part--this reference line is the same for any colour of skin. Any race, black, white, whatever, will fall along the same line. Why? Because what the vectorscope is really picking up in the colour of the blood in the skin! Hidden from our eyes by all the other information our eyes perceive is a big glob of red, and the vectorscope can separate that out easy as kiss-my-hand. This has been observed for a long, long time, which is why virtually all vectorscopes have a reference line in this position. You can quickly correct skin tone just by using this handy tool. Here is a four minute tutorial that shows you exactly how to use a color correction wheel coupled with a vectorscope to quickly do colour correction in Premiere Pro.
See how easy that was? And it goes beyond skin tone. I also have a set of colour reference cards. So if I hold those up in front of someone before video taping them, in post-production I can then look at the vectorscope image and make sure that the "blue" on the card matches the "blue" position on the vectorscope. Easy peasy primary colour correction.
Archbishop Justin's Enthronement Sermon
Regular readers will know I am very fond of Canterbury Cathedral and that I have been there several times for retreats and pilgrimage. One of the neat things about watching the new Archbishop of Canterbury's "Enthronement" was seeing some faces in the background that I know from my time there. The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral, of course, but also some of the vergers with their cassocks and cool ear-bud-radio setups. The best video I've been able to find that is streamable is this one:
It includes his short sermon, which I thought was quite nice. He talks about how God's Grace liberates our courage to get out of the boat and attempt to walk on the waves. There is a lot of talk like that in Christian circles on both sides of the pond. The rest of the ceremony was a beautiful example of English Cathedral Worship at its best, and it makes me long for it. I could swear I could feel the coolness of those stones (and oh, if they could talk!). So much beauty and gravitas, and yet it was all so human. Sigh.
But I couldn't help but have my impressions of the moment tempered by the gut-wrenching posts of the MadPriest blogger (Reverend Jonathan Hagger):
And there you have it--the double nature of the church as both blessed and broken. And for every inspiring bishop who rises to the "throne" you find scattered about plenty of broken and scarred people who did their best. I'm not saying anything negative about Archbishop Justin or about whether or not Jonathan is right to be so hurt by him. I know very, very little about that particular situation. Understanding the details wouldn't change the fact, however, that Jonathan is in pain. He was called to serve God, got ordained, and now feels abandoned by the institutional church. And when I hear a story like that I take it as a solemn warning that the same thing could very well happen to me in the blink of the eye. Read the Psalms if you don't believe me.
So this business about "stepping out onto the waves" gets real right quick when your job or something else you love is on the line. And I think that we need to stare death in the face if we are going to swing our legs over the gunwale. For every majestic enthronement I think we need to listen to at least one story like Jonathan's to keep us honest about what we are about when we follow Christ. We are about dying in order to live. We are supposed to pick up our cross daily and follow Him, and that entails stumbling, often.
It includes his short sermon, which I thought was quite nice. He talks about how God's Grace liberates our courage to get out of the boat and attempt to walk on the waves. There is a lot of talk like that in Christian circles on both sides of the pond. The rest of the ceremony was a beautiful example of English Cathedral Worship at its best, and it makes me long for it. I could swear I could feel the coolness of those stones (and oh, if they could talk!). So much beauty and gravitas, and yet it was all so human. Sigh.
But I couldn't help but have my impressions of the moment tempered by the gut-wrenching posts of the MadPriest blogger (Reverend Jonathan Hagger):
I was ordained nearly eighteen years ago. In all that time I have broken no canon laws and I have not been subject to any disciplinary proceedings. I have not even broken those laws that morally perhaps I should break. All I want is permission to officiate. I cannot understand how the church authorities can get away with punishing me without there being a crime or any due process. I am in pain. My wife is in pain. My marriage is in pain because of all the pain. To stop this pain I need one man to sign a piece of paper giving me permission to officiate. After that I can begin, with the help of women, to return to my vocation in life. I simply do not understand why this cannot happen in a blink of an eye and the frustrating ridiculousness of it all is driving me mad. This is just theatre. They are going to open the door for him whatever because his face fits. All his life doors have been opened for him. I asked him to open a door for me and he said he "no".(Source)
And there you have it--the double nature of the church as both blessed and broken. And for every inspiring bishop who rises to the "throne" you find scattered about plenty of broken and scarred people who did their best. I'm not saying anything negative about Archbishop Justin or about whether or not Jonathan is right to be so hurt by him. I know very, very little about that particular situation. Understanding the details wouldn't change the fact, however, that Jonathan is in pain. He was called to serve God, got ordained, and now feels abandoned by the institutional church. And when I hear a story like that I take it as a solemn warning that the same thing could very well happen to me in the blink of the eye. Read the Psalms if you don't believe me.
So this business about "stepping out onto the waves" gets real right quick when your job or something else you love is on the line. And I think that we need to stare death in the face if we are going to swing our legs over the gunwale. For every majestic enthronement I think we need to listen to at least one story like Jonathan's to keep us honest about what we are about when we follow Christ. We are about dying in order to live. We are supposed to pick up our cross daily and follow Him, and that entails stumbling, often.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Facebook Ads--the first 12 hours
Just an update from yesterday. So far I've had a Facebook Campaign going for about 12 hours. The ads have been shown to 6,111 people in Toronto. Of those, we got 16 click-throughs to see further information. The total cost to the church, in the first 12 hours, has been $9.30. Not bad. Not bad at all, especially for my first attempt!
-t
-t
Advertizing/Evangelism
For many years I've been creating posters and postcards and even vinyl banners to advertize for Holy Week at Messiah (and at St. Mary Magdalene's when I was there). Usually they get a few people to come, so I think they are totally worth doing. I've been more hesitant to do real Facebook campaigns, partly because I simply haven't felt like I've had the time. But this year I'm full of energy and enthusiasm, so I'm giving it a shot (and it doesn't hurt that I saw my friends at Church of the Transfiguration are trying a Facebook campaign!). Time for to give it a try. Target: Palm Sunday.
Step one: Create a "landing page" for the campaign. Since I'm targeting the "Open de-Churched" for this campaign, I wrote an article on the church's blog explaining what Palm Sunday is all about. This is purely an attractional approach, of course, and had in mind the sort of people who might remember going to church, but don't quite remember what Palm Sunday about or why it's different from the usual week. It's a bit "teachy," maybe, but this is just my first attempt at a Facebook campaign, so, it is what it is!
Step two: create a tracking tag for Google Analytics. Using this tool I created a custom tag to append to URL links that are part of the campaign. That way I can tell, later, how much of the traffic that lands on this page did so specifically because of the campaign (rather than simply because they Googled "What is Palm Sunday").
Step three: create a post on Facebook on the Church's page. (Not strictly necessary, of course, but helpful.) Now that post is only two sentences, but it has a link to the article I wrote in step one, along with a thumbnail image from that article. I set this post to go live at 10am. Scheduling is a good idea for two reasons: 1) having it publish during a high-traffic time on Facebook means that it will appear current in people's timelines, rather than hours old, and 2) I can make changes and make sure everything is solid before it goes live.
Step four: set up the Facebook ad. I won't walk you through this except to say that's very simple. You can set a "budget" for the campaign, but in the end they only charge you for the actual click-throughs of your ad. I'll also mention that I used the tracking tag created in step two, so this campaign will show up in Google Analytics and I'll be able to see how it compares to other efforts to bring traffic to the website. I also scheduled this to run from this morning (after the Facebook post goes public, naturally) until the service starts Palm Sunday morning. I also targeted it specifically to the GTA. I could have narrowed it down even further, say to people in certain age ranges, but this campaign is not that highly targeted. However, it probably won't be very long before you can create ads targeted toward people who like certain things that might lead me to think they would be open to attending a certain kind of church event, for example. That's coming.
This first attempt is a short run (three days) and not very expensive ($50). So I'll be curious to see the results. I'll be able to see how many people clicked through the ad and how many people stumbled onto the landing page from other sources. And if there are any visitors on Sunday I will simply ask them, as well, how they found us. A lot of time it's simply from walking or driving by the building, so I'm already thinking of ways we could maximize that.
Is there a difference between this advertizing work and evangelism? Not really. You'll see that I'm not pulling some kind of bait of switch, the post on the church website is quite confessional. I'm clearly inviting people to hear more about Jesus and His story. If that's not Evangelism I'm not sure what is!
Step one: Create a "landing page" for the campaign. Since I'm targeting the "Open de-Churched" for this campaign, I wrote an article on the church's blog explaining what Palm Sunday is all about. This is purely an attractional approach, of course, and had in mind the sort of people who might remember going to church, but don't quite remember what Palm Sunday about or why it's different from the usual week. It's a bit "teachy," maybe, but this is just my first attempt at a Facebook campaign, so, it is what it is!
Step two: create a tracking tag for Google Analytics. Using this tool I created a custom tag to append to URL links that are part of the campaign. That way I can tell, later, how much of the traffic that lands on this page did so specifically because of the campaign (rather than simply because they Googled "What is Palm Sunday").
Step three: create a post on Facebook on the Church's page. (Not strictly necessary, of course, but helpful.) Now that post is only two sentences, but it has a link to the article I wrote in step one, along with a thumbnail image from that article. I set this post to go live at 10am. Scheduling is a good idea for two reasons: 1) having it publish during a high-traffic time on Facebook means that it will appear current in people's timelines, rather than hours old, and 2) I can make changes and make sure everything is solid before it goes live.
Step four: set up the Facebook ad. I won't walk you through this except to say that's very simple. You can set a "budget" for the campaign, but in the end they only charge you for the actual click-throughs of your ad. I'll also mention that I used the tracking tag created in step two, so this campaign will show up in Google Analytics and I'll be able to see how it compares to other efforts to bring traffic to the website. I also scheduled this to run from this morning (after the Facebook post goes public, naturally) until the service starts Palm Sunday morning. I also targeted it specifically to the GTA. I could have narrowed it down even further, say to people in certain age ranges, but this campaign is not that highly targeted. However, it probably won't be very long before you can create ads targeted toward people who like certain things that might lead me to think they would be open to attending a certain kind of church event, for example. That's coming.
This first attempt is a short run (three days) and not very expensive ($50). So I'll be curious to see the results. I'll be able to see how many people clicked through the ad and how many people stumbled onto the landing page from other sources. And if there are any visitors on Sunday I will simply ask them, as well, how they found us. A lot of time it's simply from walking or driving by the building, so I'm already thinking of ways we could maximize that.
Is there a difference between this advertizing work and evangelism? Not really. You'll see that I'm not pulling some kind of bait of switch, the post on the church website is quite confessional. I'm clearly inviting people to hear more about Jesus and His story. If that's not Evangelism I'm not sure what is!
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
A Weird Space
This moment--right now--is an example of the kind of weird space I'm in these last few weeks (or months). It's about 1.30 a.m.--I should be in bed, but I can't sleep, the thoughts are too thick in my head. So instead I'm eating cold spaghetti with meat sauce with sriracha sauce on top and blogging. Yes, blogging. Why blogging? I really don't know, something about a vague commitment I made to average one post a day.
The scene wasn't much better at 12:30a.m. I was in bed. Lights off. Spouse and two cats in bed with me. But with my phone I read a PDF a friend (Brian Bukowski) linked on "The Community" about church marketing. It was short but dense. Most it was content I already knew, but the form was novel and I think it's the sort of thing that could be a good seed for the church to do a better job of reaching people. So (with my phone) I saved the PDF to Dropbox and then sent the link to Meredith Gould via DM on Twitter. She had already announced that she was offline for the night, but she'll see the link in the morning. Meredith is a Church Marketing maven, so I expect she'll have strong opinions about the piece one way or another. Reading it gave me a few ideas of things I should do differently, and made me long for the Environics Data we are ordering for Messiah. Should've done this years ago.
Then I tossed and turned thinking about all the stuff I have to do to develop the "Messiah Commons" project. Lots and lots of leadership development work. That means meeting with people and getting them to talk to each other, basically, to discover their unique gifts and calls. It takes time, and I don't have a lot of that at the moment. Thursday's annual Wycliffe Institute of Evangelism Dinner will be an important opportunity for me to introduce a few key personalities to each other, and I was fretting over some additional work I should do before these members of the "crew" meet. So much of the project is undefined, at the moment, and definition only seems to come in the context of conversation.
Luckily, I think I'll be seeing one of those conversation partners tomorrow, so from my bed using my phone I sent him a Facebook message asking whether he would, indeed, be at our mutual event tomorrow and whether I could bend his ear for 20 minutes to talk some more about the Messiah Commons project. He's also probably asleep--hence no immediate response. The beauty of Twitter and Facebook messaging is that I won't be waking them up (unlike a phone call or text message). They'll find these messages in the morning and reply in due course.
Then I thought some more about my other major project in the works. It involves a lot of creative work, so I puzzled through some thinking about that, and even used a calculator on my phone to do some back-of-the-envelope style projections to assess the feasibility of some scenarios in my head. I must have spent 5 minutes then questioning my premises. The problem with grant proposals is that everything has to be future tense, it seems, and it is nearly impossible to predict people's future behavior. Yet ignorance is no excuse for inaction.
I remember one time reading a short article written for people considering becoming doctors. One piece of advice I remember was that to be a Doctor you have to be okay making life and death decisions based on partial, incomplete, or even contradictory information. The stakes are much lower (usually) in ministry, but it's still the case that you often have to make decisions (or at least representations) based on partial, incomplete, or even contradictory information. Do I know how much coffee people will buy in the next three years if Messiah starts selling it on the sidewalk? Of course not! But I can make an educated guess. I can tell you (really) which coffee shops in our area sell a shot of espresso for $3.35 and which sell it for $2.71. And at 12.45am I can calculate how many espressos we would have sell each year to support a full-time Batista-pioneer-minister. I even made the calculation using Reverse Polish Notation, just to get my geek on even more. Then I wish my friend with an MBA lived in town, because I would seriously put him to work on this puppy.
I don't think everyone in church-land thinks this kind of thinking is awesome. I got some push-back recently after talking about it that sounded to me like, "It is presumptuous to plan for mission; God will provide for us; we just need to surrender to His will." Ahh, hmm. In my head I thought of the flood-roof-top-rescue-Peter's-gate joke, but resisted telling it (kind of a cheesy and predictable joke, anyway). I also thought of the Arabic Proverb, "Trust In Allah But Tie Up Your Camel," but I didn't think that would be well received, either. So I said something about how God's unprecedented grace elicits a response in us--that we are invited to cooperate in God's work in the world.
To put in another way, we might throw ourselves down at the foot of the Throne and push our noses into the hard stone and pledge our eternal obedience to the God of all creation and hear his holy command echo through the Temple. Why would we scoff at "Count my sheep" or "Put up my sign" or "Make coffee and put out a few scones"? Would it be better if the Lord were asking us something really vague/koan-like: "Love your neighbour" or "If your right eye causes you to sin pluck it out?"
I had a parishioner challenge me after worship recently: "I don't understand what counting cars has to do with evangelism." It's a good question. Before I could answer she started talking about how she thought we needed a better sign on the street. "Ah," I asked, "What kind of sign? Should it be designed to be most readable on foot or in a car? How big do the letters need to be? How long can the message be?" She immediately grasped by point and nodded.
A pastor's prayer: "Lord, send me an accountant." Imagine the havoc one could unleash with a few deeply analytical thinkers puzzling through the problems of the church today... I don't think many of us would like their conclusions very much. But, then, we don't particularly care for prophets of any base methodology when they tell us to change.
So I'm just descending deeper in my rabbit hole of church-nerd weirdness. Studying my Google Analytics and Environics reports--confident that there is a Deus Machina somewhere down here. If you want to help, feel free to toss a few batteries down.
The scene wasn't much better at 12:30a.m. I was in bed. Lights off. Spouse and two cats in bed with me. But with my phone I read a PDF a friend (Brian Bukowski) linked on "The Community" about church marketing. It was short but dense. Most it was content I already knew, but the form was novel and I think it's the sort of thing that could be a good seed for the church to do a better job of reaching people. So (with my phone) I saved the PDF to Dropbox and then sent the link to Meredith Gould via DM on Twitter. She had already announced that she was offline for the night, but she'll see the link in the morning. Meredith is a Church Marketing maven, so I expect she'll have strong opinions about the piece one way or another. Reading it gave me a few ideas of things I should do differently, and made me long for the Environics Data we are ordering for Messiah. Should've done this years ago.
Then I tossed and turned thinking about all the stuff I have to do to develop the "Messiah Commons" project. Lots and lots of leadership development work. That means meeting with people and getting them to talk to each other, basically, to discover their unique gifts and calls. It takes time, and I don't have a lot of that at the moment. Thursday's annual Wycliffe Institute of Evangelism Dinner will be an important opportunity for me to introduce a few key personalities to each other, and I was fretting over some additional work I should do before these members of the "crew" meet. So much of the project is undefined, at the moment, and definition only seems to come in the context of conversation.
Luckily, I think I'll be seeing one of those conversation partners tomorrow, so from my bed using my phone I sent him a Facebook message asking whether he would, indeed, be at our mutual event tomorrow and whether I could bend his ear for 20 minutes to talk some more about the Messiah Commons project. He's also probably asleep--hence no immediate response. The beauty of Twitter and Facebook messaging is that I won't be waking them up (unlike a phone call or text message). They'll find these messages in the morning and reply in due course.
Then I thought some more about my other major project in the works. It involves a lot of creative work, so I puzzled through some thinking about that, and even used a calculator on my phone to do some back-of-the-envelope style projections to assess the feasibility of some scenarios in my head. I must have spent 5 minutes then questioning my premises. The problem with grant proposals is that everything has to be future tense, it seems, and it is nearly impossible to predict people's future behavior. Yet ignorance is no excuse for inaction.
I remember one time reading a short article written for people considering becoming doctors. One piece of advice I remember was that to be a Doctor you have to be okay making life and death decisions based on partial, incomplete, or even contradictory information. The stakes are much lower (usually) in ministry, but it's still the case that you often have to make decisions (or at least representations) based on partial, incomplete, or even contradictory information. Do I know how much coffee people will buy in the next three years if Messiah starts selling it on the sidewalk? Of course not! But I can make an educated guess. I can tell you (really) which coffee shops in our area sell a shot of espresso for $3.35 and which sell it for $2.71. And at 12.45am I can calculate how many espressos we would have sell each year to support a full-time Batista-pioneer-minister. I even made the calculation using Reverse Polish Notation, just to get my geek on even more. Then I wish my friend with an MBA lived in town, because I would seriously put him to work on this puppy.
I don't think everyone in church-land thinks this kind of thinking is awesome. I got some push-back recently after talking about it that sounded to me like, "It is presumptuous to plan for mission; God will provide for us; we just need to surrender to His will." Ahh, hmm. In my head I thought of the flood-roof-top-rescue-Peter's-gate joke, but resisted telling it (kind of a cheesy and predictable joke, anyway). I also thought of the Arabic Proverb, "Trust In Allah But Tie Up Your Camel," but I didn't think that would be well received, either. So I said something about how God's unprecedented grace elicits a response in us--that we are invited to cooperate in God's work in the world.
To put in another way, we might throw ourselves down at the foot of the Throne and push our noses into the hard stone and pledge our eternal obedience to the God of all creation and hear his holy command echo through the Temple. Why would we scoff at "Count my sheep" or "Put up my sign" or "Make coffee and put out a few scones"? Would it be better if the Lord were asking us something really vague/koan-like: "Love your neighbour" or "If your right eye causes you to sin pluck it out?"
I had a parishioner challenge me after worship recently: "I don't understand what counting cars has to do with evangelism." It's a good question. Before I could answer she started talking about how she thought we needed a better sign on the street. "Ah," I asked, "What kind of sign? Should it be designed to be most readable on foot or in a car? How big do the letters need to be? How long can the message be?" She immediately grasped by point and nodded.
A pastor's prayer: "Lord, send me an accountant." Imagine the havoc one could unleash with a few deeply analytical thinkers puzzling through the problems of the church today... I don't think many of us would like their conclusions very much. But, then, we don't particularly care for prophets of any base methodology when they tell us to change.
So I'm just descending deeper in my rabbit hole of church-nerd weirdness. Studying my Google Analytics and Environics reports--confident that there is a Deus Machina somewhere down here. If you want to help, feel free to toss a few batteries down.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Sermon: Lent 5 2013: Ann Stocker
Ann Stocker, who is a therapist and social worker. She works for the Institute of Family Living as well as Youth Unlimited. At Messiah she runs at outreach programme that helps young mothers with life challenges, including the practical aspects of parenting but also spiritual and emotional concerns. This is a joint programme with a nearby Pentecostal Church (Stone Church). I ask Ann to come by a couple of times a year to update the congregation about her ministry and solicit donations to support it (Ann has to raise all the money to run her programme). I often ask her to preach, as well. In my book she is triple qualified to do so: a mature Christian Disciple, a holder of an M.Div., and someone who occupies a pastoring role in her community. I've said before that I think most Anglican Churches are far too restrictive in their notions about who ought to preach. I think that the Rector of a Church ought to be the chief preacher, of course, but there is nothing wrong with asking folks like Ann and even members of the congregation to "give us a word."
I especially appreciated that Ann manage to explicitly touch on all four lessons that were read that day (Hebrew Bible, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel). I would say that my preaching is always informed by all four texts, but I rarely mention them all in a single sermon. So good on her!
I especially appreciated that Ann manage to explicitly touch on all four lessons that were read that day (Hebrew Bible, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel). I would say that my preaching is always informed by all four texts, but I rarely mention them all in a single sermon. So good on her!
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Philip Bloom
Lately I've been on a binge of watching videos by Philip Bloom. He's a videographer from England who has created a number of videos discussing various pieces of video gear and how to get the most out of them. He goes beyond mere product reviews to give really helpful advice about how to produce excellent content. He's known for his work with relatively inexpensive DSLR-style cameras. So much so, in fact, that he was invited to the Lucas Ranch and then hired to be part of the film crew for the movie "Red Tails." It's very unusual to see a DSLR camera being used in a big-budget Hollywood film, but a surprising amount of his footage ended up in the final film, and you really can't tell the difference. (Mind you, in some situations he was using a $1000 camera but with a $60,000 lens attached to it!)
Here is an example of him showing off what you can do with a Sony FS700 in slow-motion mode. The black and white footage of his Dad about half-through is particularly impressive.
Here is an example of some of his "real" work:
He's kinda my hero when it comes to video-making.
Here is an example of him showing off what you can do with a Sony FS700 in slow-motion mode. The black and white footage of his Dad about half-through is particularly impressive.
Here is an example of some of his "real" work:
He's kinda my hero when it comes to video-making.
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