B. B. and Jesus

Tonight I was listening to some good ole blues music. Actually it was the CD of blues music I made when I was in NYC, when I was feeling a little home sick for my Faulknerian south. The music got me thinking about first times. Can you imagine what it felt like to hear B. B. King for the first time? This not something I experienced because I feel like I have heard this music all of my life. For me it seems like this music has been the sound track to my life playing somewhere in the background where I did not notice it but there it was.

For me the gospel is this way. It has been the background melody to my life. For years I could not hear it, but it was there. It was that thing to which I tapped my foot. I lived my live in the shadow of the Gospel, and whether I knew it or not it was influencing my decisions and how I lived my life. Then there was a day when I sat quietly and heard it. Just like when a Southerner really hears the picking on the guit-fiddle for the first time, it changed my life. It changed the way looked at the sky and the way I responded to the wind.

Now imagine with me someone who grew up with out B. B. in the background. Imagine how their mind must have raced when they first heard him, whey they heard Lucille (B. B.’s guitar) wail out in painful ecstasy. That is how it is when someone hears the Gospel, the true Gospel of grace and love, for the first time. Just like B. B. awakens our musical soul, The Gospel will awaken the soul. The Gospel story will leave them waiting more and more. They want more and more of that Thing that will leave them never wanting.

Just a thought.

guest relations

I was reading an entry on Steve Sjogren's blog about racism and it got me thinking about "first impressions" and about being a church that is good at "guest relations."

he talks about people who "save seats" in church so they will not have to sit by people they don't like (in the case of his blog, people of color). Anyway, I thought it might be a fun challenge our
people to never save seats! Imagine a typical (i.e. white, middle class) couple coming to church for the first time and they are told that they cannot sit somewhere b/c the seat is saved. What message does that send? It tells the guest that we as a church value the comfort of our friends and current church members over our guest.

What about those people who save seats for the people they invited to church? Well they should not be sitting in the church waiting on them. they should be outside by the front door waiting on them so they can walk them into the "worship center."

anyway, just a thought on another way to challenge our people to outward
focused

Servant Evangelism Mississippi style

This weekend our town was home to Showfest, a minitruck competition. The show brought in about 750 cars and trucsk from across the country and a population increase of about 10,000 people. God blessed our church by placing our campus about 400 yards from this event. For the past three years we have reached out to the participants and the spectators at Showfest. This year we passed out 3000 bottles of water, 500 Relevant magazines, 500 Radiant magazines, 144 bibles, and 40(ish) Purpose Driven Life books. When doing the math, I assumed that probably half of the magazines were given out with a bottle of water so I figure we touched about 3500 people with the love of God. We also cleaned the port-o-potties. We put up tents at three port-o-potty stations and focused on those, but we had some hardcore folks who walked around to clean the other stations.

Sunday morning we were buying tickets for our workers to get in and when the admissions
people heard what were doing they let us come in for free (that saved us alot of cash!). They
were super shocked that anyone would want to clean port-o-potties.

I want to share two stories from this weekend. When we set up our tents on Friday, none
of the participants had arrived yet. Saturday morning was a shock for some of our participants.
I sent them to their tents and within a few minutes one of golf carts (oh yea, we had free taxies
to shuttle people around the event) was back at the main tent with some an update. It seems
that the Girls Gone Wild tent was right beside ours!! That did not daunt our crew. We gave
them water and talked to them all day. At some point of the camera man came over to apologize. It seems that he is a Christian whose company got contracted by GGW. We saw these guys again on Sunday morning when we took free sausage and biscuits to the hotels in town. I think it is great for Christ followers to simply befriend people and be there to support Christians who find themselves in strange situations.

Another one of our tents we privileged to meet Paul. Paul is a young man in the military who
happen to be at the show. Paul was shocked to find someone who actually wished him a
good day. He was even more blown away when one of our girls offered to pray for him. Paul ended up having an extended conversation with one of our ministry leaders and made a commitment to follow God. He gave us his contact information, and our leadership has made a commitment to disciple this man no matter what part of the world he goes to.

On Sunday night, after Showfest, we did out first church wide out reach to our city. We passed out another 1000 bottles of water and washed windshields in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

In just two day our church touched at least 4500 people with God's practical love.

Mushroom Taster

I have a closet full of clothes. I am pretty much a clothes junky. However, I have a problem. I have no cool place to buy clothes. This is the same situation many church's are in. They love ministering just as much as I love clothes. The church also has the same problems as me. They have no cool place to get ministry......... Whoa! That is not the church's problem! Let me explain.

For me to get cool clothes I have to go Jackson, Memphis, or (when I save up enough money to visit my friends) New York. But for the church to get ministry ideas they only have to look around and pray for god to open their eyes. Who is in need of ministry and who is God sending to the church. How though are we to ministry to the unchurched and the dechurched? We are to be "relevant" right? Well of course we are! We are to be relevant first in the message we present to people. We are to present to a gospel so that it actually has bearing on their lives. Moreover, we are to be relevant in the way we present this good news. How do we determine what methods are relevant and which ideas are "so last fall." Is pink still the new black or is brown? Can we still do church in a Starbucks? What about places that still don't have Starbucks? (Yes, those places do exist. The closest Starbucks to me is two hours away.)

I think when we measure the relevancy factor of something we look to MTV or ABC then we adopt that for our churches. But to be honest by the time we realize that the mass media outlets are one to something, it is not cool any more. For example, the church might be looking to MTV while right now it should be looking to Current Television. Maybe this is still wrong. Maybe we should not be looking anywhere to see what is relevant. Instead of having our finger on the pulse of culture, maybe we should be like the pacemaker and regulate the pulse.

This is where I need help! Emmanuel Church is looking to reach the unchurched and the dechurched. But to be honest I am at a lose on what to do. I am thinking in terms of a new worship experience. How can we structure this gathering so that its beating in rhythm with the culture. I know many of you are not from Mississippi and many of you live in worlds where the culture is completely alien to us down here. What I need from you is ideas.

In his book The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus talks about the mission of Mosaic. He says it is their job to taste mushrooms. He likens being innovative to tasting mushrooms to see if they are poisonous. Most people are going to let someone else taste the mushroom. If the brave soul kills over, everyone knows the mushroom is bad. If he lives, then everyone eats mushrooms. It is the same with the church. We let other people be innovative. If they are successful, we adopt their methods. Mosaic's job is to eat untested mushrooms. I want to try some mushrooms. I want you to send me your ideas. I want to east some mushrooms. E-mail your ideas on how to reach the unchurched and dechurched. Again I am thinking in terms of a worship experience. I am already sold on the servant evangelism method of meeting people, but I want to come up with a "church service" that will meet their needs.

No idea is too far fetched and nothing is too crazy. e-mail me jcardinell@dixieconnect.com