List Making Mania

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I have never done this; however something about the end of the world makes me want to waist a few hours joining the blogosphere for list-making mania.

If you’re an active Internetian, sifting through all your favorite hella trendy hipster blogs and websites you’ll find a cacophony of top “_____” lists of “_____” stuff. This could mean top ten albums, top ten cry your eyes out and stab your self in the chest from boredom indie movies, top 20 books of the year, top one billion most embarrassing political moments, and so on.

It all depends on your fancy. Well, I’ve decided to offer a few of my own top “____” list. I’ve always liked top “___” lists; it allows me to be lazy. I think its time that I stop abusing my Internet privileges and contribute to the top “____” lists ever of the year mania! So here’s to you.

List of Top 4 Lists of Top Albums of the Year. 

1. NPR's Listener Picks.

I think this is my favorite list. I don't really agree with the numerical rating of each band but I think this list has a much better feel for what was actually popular this year. 

2. Under the Radar Mag's Writers Lists. 

This list makes me feel cool. Under the Radar is where I go when I need to not douse, but straight-up marinade myself in cultural cool––to be honest I don't know why I'd ever want to "marinade" myself in cultural cool, but sometimes you just wanna feel hipster.

3. Relevant Mag.

Relevant has never let me down, this year it did a bit. I like this list though because it includes one of my favorite albums of the year that I knew wouldn't make it anywhere it else.
  
4. Salt Lake's Own: City Weekly Top 12 of 12.

This is a great list, truly. This is a list that every local should check out because it reminds us how truly wonderful SLC is, the music community may seem small, but it can at times be lovely. 

"Gospel and..."

  
  

    I’ve spent most of my life apart of the church. Going to Sunday school, youth groups, edgy alternative saturday night services, church camps, and the works. Each one building upon the foundation of the other to give me some semblance of the reason we congregate to worship. In the midst of this onslaught of power solos and Christianize I think I learned more about the sub-text of worship than anything else.

    Sub-text is a tool used by actors and writers alike to communicate without communicating. Facial expressions, body language, vocal tone––each communicates something different––or something unifying–-without ever having to say a thing.
  
Without meaning to the church does the same thing––what we spend our money on, our time talking about, what we wear; each gestures communicates something different about the character we are portraying to the world. Good or bad each piece of sub-text is absorbed––building upon the foundations of the prior, piece by piece a sub-textual worldview of the church emerges.

    The message often sounds like the “gospel and,” the beauty of the gospel story is rarely removed but it often has a predicate, like the the “gospel and cool,” or maybe it’s the “gospel and money,” or the “gospel and poverty,” take your pick of predicate to modify the subject, it doesn’t really matter which one it is.

    The problem is rather implicit. Anytime we as the church modify the subject something has gone wrong in the telling of the story. We have taken the focal point of the story––the gospel––and added our own little sub-text, weighting the gospel in our favor, making the gospel story a little bit more about us. But the gospel has never been our story it was never meant to be.

    Anytime we add our own ideals we pollute the story with our fractured sensibilities. Its not easy for us to handle a story that doesn’t revolve around us––a story that calls us to participate in something out side of own paradigm. Humanity has never done well with not being God, but truthfully have we done well as God?

    I don’t want to sound condemning, or try to say that you can ever communicate the gospel without a little subtext––or that you should even try. Personality in the midst of story telling is always good, just not at the expense of the story.

    The only question to ask is, what story am I telling? With my words, my life, and my subtle gestures. What story is the church telling? With its words, its life, and its subtle gestures.

Church plant list

Hey check it out, myself and East Ave was featured on liberties 2011 church plant list. Totally arbitrary but cool.

I want to say more, but it would only be of detriment.
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“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”

-Annie Dillard

Organic

This is a blog I wrote for the East Avenue blog a few weeks back and figured I'd publish it up here too, seeing as how I have not been very active on my own blog in a while.  Maybe this will give everyone a little insight into why that is. 

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Church planting.  It’s an interesting phrase that we at East Avenue and in truth the Christian body in its entirety throw around.  Implicit in this phrase is the sentiment that what ever is happening is organic, that the church in its creation is an organic agricultural like process.  Like corn, but organically grown corn, not American chemically mass-produced corn.  However it seems that organic isn’t truly at the center of church planting, that many of us in the church planting world aren’t using the organic means but instead are using some kind of church based chemical compound to experience rapid immediate growth.

Maybe its big advertising budgets used to buy billboard space on I-15.  Or maybe its hip graphic work and “sick” videos plastered on some kind of cool flash based website with lots of awesome flash based things doing whatever flash things do.  Maybe its Pastors and leadership teams rocking lucky jeans and affliction t-shirts, or skinny jeans and organic wheat based v-necks that can be used a dietary supplement or toilet paper.  Sometimes its watered downed gospel, entertainment based worship, and impersonal community.

It seems that often these things actually do cause rapid growth; congregations with the biggest budgets do seem to grow the largest fastest.  But in agriculture chemically induced growth cause damages, it ruins soil zapping the nutrients right out of it, it damages the harvest meaning we don’t experience all of the richness God intended, and its simply not as tasty. 

The question that remains then is weather or not this same way of thinking can be applied to church planting.  What happens when we induce growth via fancy advertising, or cool graphic work, or easy Gospel?  Does it harm the soil, damage the harvest, is it as tasty as God intended?

When we force grow congregations, inducing size with manufactured attractions I think we damage the way our community views us.  Its not new to spend lots of money on making church attractive we have be doing that in a serious way well for a really long time.  People are getting use to the spectacle of church, and are beginning to fill that there isn’t a whole lot to back up our fancy graphic work.  Each time the world encounters an impersonal congregation or a weak Gospel they are robbed of the beauty and depth that the church can offer.  The more people experience this type of inorganic church the more they become hesitant to experience any church.  The soil is harmed, the harvest is damaged.

Not only does this type of church hurt those outside of it, it also robs its members of the richness the church can posses.  Without the depth of the Gospel and the realness of community church is just a social gathering, another club of many for Americans to participate in, another club that must fight for the support of its members.  But church isn’t a club or a social gathering, it’s implicitly a family, a place to not escape the imperfect of the world but to be immersed in it.  To experience the material, the dirty, and the odd of people and learn to love them and be loved by them, it’s a place to practice the way of Jesus, and to find the support to practice Jesus outside of this corky family.  It’s not easy to keep things real and dirty, we have a propensity to polish and shine, but the church isn’t clean shes dirty and imperfect and that’s exactly as God intended her to be.  But it is in this reality that the richness and depth of church can be experienced, the real tasty part of organic. 

This type of church isn’t always conducive to rapid growth, but I still believe its worth doing otherwise I wouldn’t.  It’s worth fighting against my own inclinations to grow big and fast, because that growth isn’t deep or rich.  Its worth learning every day how to make Jesus the very heart of the East Avenue community, because in Jesus is were depth and heart and soul come from.  It’s about choosing one now rather then many latter, being personal and fighting individualism. 

Its about trying to participate in resurrection, and I think it’ll be worth it in the end, because well, it already is.