Elf Yourself. Hilarity Ensues.

I know it's past Christmas, but if you want to have a few minutes of fun, go over to the Elf Yourself website, upload a photo, and make your very own elf.

Here is my daughter as an elf.

Enjoy!

Shine.

A Christmas Present For My Brother

Tonight was a great night - I found a bunch of old Hi 8 video tapes that I took during my youth ministry days in Colorado, and had a great time remembering some really funny times with that youth ministry. One of my brothers happened to be in my youth ministry for a few years, which was interesting for both of us, I'm sure. One of our most successful events was the LipSync competitions we did every year. I had been trying to find these LipSyncs on video for so long, and I finally found one. This one was one of the best - you had to be there to really understand - but the most painful moment took place when my brother lipsynced to the song "Waffle King" by Weird Al Yankovic. So - to my brother - here is your Christmas present for you and everyone else in the world to enjoy. (EDIT: When I say "painful", I don't mean that the performance was painful to watch; I mean that it really was painful for my brother because he majorly screwed up his ankle. You gotta watch it - slow motion and all - it's like watching the Theismann injury.)

Adam's Favorites of 2006

Well, it's getting pretty close to the end of 2006, and I thought I would try to remember what my favorite things were this year. Agree or disagree? Post your comments!

--------
Top 5 Movies:

5. Inside Man

I'm a big fan of Clive Owen, and he doesn't disappoint in this one. I love movies that keep you guessing as to what's really going on. Great performances all around.

4. Stranger Than Fiction

I was surprised that I liked this movie as much as I did. The feelings I had at the end of this movie reminded me of the feelings I had after seeing the movie About Schmidt. Will Ferrell does a great job of playing a more serious role, and Maggie G. (hard last name to spell) does a great job as a unique love interest.

3. Brick

This independent movie was amazing. It took the elements of an old-time noir cinema flick and inserted it into a present-day high school situation. Great performances by Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Lucas Haas as "The Pin".

2. The Fountain

You are either mesmerized or frustrated with this movie. I was the former. Aronofsky is a genius - I see him as the next Kubrick. The imagery, the plot weavings, amazing. Amazing.

1. Casino Royale

I'm a huge Bond fan. Seriously. I watch them all the time. Although at first I had a hard time with Daniel Craig as Bond, the movie was so good and Craig grew on me with each minute. Imagine - Bond actually seemed like a real person! Imagine that!

-----------

Top 5 T.V. Shows (I don't watch much T.V., but these shows I watch regularly):

5. Heroes

4. Firefly (ok, it's no longer on, but I got the DVDs this year and this show is amazing. An incredible cast.)

3. The Office

2. Lost

1. 24 - I am a latecomer to the 24 phenomenon, started watching it this last season. I love it.

------------

Top CD's (I couldn't narrow it down to five):

7. Dashboard Confessional - Summer and Dusk

- Yeah, everybody has to have some wuss in them. Chris Carrabba is great, and although I still prefer his acoustic stuff, he's got quite the power pop sensibility in his music.

6. Charlie Hall - Flying Into Daybreak

- I'm not a big Charlie Hall fan. But this CD is great.

5. Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche

- The fact that these were cuts that didn't make his phenomenal CD Illinois is amazing. This CD is "chock-full" of great songs, including 3 different versions of one of my favorite songs on Illinois - Chicago.

4. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

- Quirky. Amazing. I love it. Thanks Seth.

3. Mute Math - self-titled

- These guys are so good. Even with the leader playing a "key-tar". Christians writing this kind of music? Amazing.

2. Snow Patrol - Eyes Open

- This CD is so much more than Counting Cars. So much more. "Set Fire To The Third Bar" could be in my top ten songs of all time, especially with Martha Wainwright on backing vocals. There isn't a stinker on this CD, folks.

1. Leeland - Sound Of Melodies

- If you haven't picked up this CD, you need to be beaten severely. This CD isn't just incredible - it's amazi-great. I'm looking forward to hearing more stuff from this "worship artist".

(CDs that I need to pick up that might make this list as well: Jeremy Enigk and ...of sinking ships)

---------

Top 5 Books:

5. No Perfect People Allowed - John Burke

4. To Own A Dragon - Donald Miller

3. The Present Future - Reggie McNeal

2. The Shaping Of Things To Come - Frost and Hirsch

1. The Irresistible Revolution - Shane Claiborne


Well, that's all I can think of - I'm looking forward to what's coming out in 2007!

The Great Giveaway

I found myself in the local Christian bookstore (or as Noelle likes to call it, the Veggie Tale store), and I bought a book I've been eyeing the last couple of times I have gone in. The book definitely had me at the title, the full title being "The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies". I browsed through the first chapter while Noelle watching a Veggie Tales preview on the T.V. in the kids area - the first chapter talks about how churches erroneously equate numbers with success. This is something that has troubled me for many years. If our view of a church's success is based on attendance or how big it is, does that mean God is really blessing it? I don't think so.

One of the paragraphs from this chapter really struck a chord with me: "To illustrate, let us think hypothetically about a church that started with ten people who then gathered to study the Bible and pray. The meeting grew to approximately fifty people over a year, upon which they decided to plant a congregation. Let us say that the church used a "seeker service" format where the Sunday service allows for complete anonymity for visitors. The service was characterized by excellent music, captivating drama, and a message that appealed to one's "felt needs" and to Jesus Christ as the answer to those needs. It often used psychologically-driven sermons. Five years later, the church averages a thousand attendees, of which there is a 60 percent turnover every year. Out of the one thousand attendees, the basic core group of practicing Christians is one hundred. Out of the thousand there are "fifty-nine giving units" (as they call them) accounting for 95 percent of church giving. Let us say hypothetically we know that a majority of the thousand attendees minus the hundred core still work eighty hours a week to support an indulgent lifestyle while neglecting the poor in their midst, still have sex outside of marriage, and have abusive relationships. Is this church a hundred people large or a thousand?"

That's the kind of paragraph that ruffles the feathers of people who think that The Church is fine right now. I'm excited to read the rest of this book, it already resonates within me.

Joanna Newsom

I never thought I would enjoy harp music, but there's an artist named Joanna Newsom who is incredibly gifted as a musician and a lyricist.

You can find a video of one of her songs here.

A brief warning: I can't stand her voice, and someone told me it was an acquired taste, kind of like Bob Dylan's voice - so try to hear the music and the amazing arrangements rather than the annoying "please just stick an icepick in my ear" voice that goes with the music.

What Are We Emerging From? What Are We Emerging To?

If you've read this blog at all, you know that I prefer the term "missional Christianity" when it comes to the new wave of God's Spirit moving in the hearts of the people of God. The term "Emerging" or even "Emergent" (which is only a part of the Emerging Church movement - yeah, I know it's confusing), to me, has been kind of an almost elitist term. It's like that part in Spinal Tap, when two of the band members are talking about how they got the name Spinal Tap. They started with the name The Thamesmen, but as they changed their music, they decided to call themselves The Originals, but found out there was a band already named that, so they thought about renaming themselves The New Originals - you know, kind of like they were better than the original The Originals. (They decided not to, because "what's the point", but I'm rambling.) Emerging to me brings up an image of someone who is in this big pit of muck and nastiness and rises out of the detritus into something much better. (Since we already had one movie illustration, let me offer another - that part in Rambo II when they put Rambo in that nasty pit, and then they lift him up and he's got all kinds of gross stuff all over him, but obviously being out of the pit is much better than being in the pit. I went to the movie theater two nights in a row this week, which might explain my brain being locked on movies. By the way, if you haven't seen the new James Bond, drop everything and go see it. It's now in my top 3 of all Bond movies, and I consider myself a big fan of Bond movies - I've seen them all several times. This now concludes the end of my commercial for 007.)

The other thing about the term Emerging is that it's not really a term that is self-definable. If I call myself a "missional Christian" you probably can at least take a stab as to what I'm talking about. We've heard the term "mission" before.

Well, I think Scot McKnight of The Jesus Creed Blog has done a good job of defining what it means to be an Emerging Christian - without being elitist or vague. It's in the form of a letter - I would just post you a link, but I'm going to give you most of what he says in this post.

---
Dear Matt,

You’ve asked me what is one of the most commonly asked questions about the emerging movement, but the way you ask about it is both funny and typical. You said: “I tell everyone I’m an ‘emerging’ Christian but what (I’m afraid to say I don’t know) are we emerging from? Whenever someone asks me this, I brush it off. But I’d like to know your opinion what we are emerging out of since several of my friends claim you make emerging church stuff an area of study.”
Lots of Baptists, Matt, don’t have the foggiest idea of why they are Baptists; Episcopalians don’t know why they have that name; Presbyterians don’t know what their name stands for — but you can be sure the Pentecostals know why they are called Pentecostals. I could go on about names and that some know what they mean and that others don’t.

Know this: there’s always something very important to names like “emerging,” so if you are going to call yourself an “emerging Christian,” I think it’s a jolly good idea you stop and get this term under your grips.

Let me say what I think “emerging” means from two angles:

First, we are emerging into how we think the Church should be in the future. We use emerging it refers to the direction we are moving. We want to be the kind of Christians that speak the gospel in our world in such a way that it cuts into the fabric of sin and constructs a way of life that is fully consistent with the way Jesus calls us to live. Since we think culture is changing, we want to understand that culture and both connect to it and critique it. So we are seeking to be Christians in our day — and that means in the postmodern era. If you’d like to read a pleasant (and brief) description, I suggest John Caputo, Philosophy and Theology. If you want a little longer book, J. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?

We believe that there is truth to the claim that we are now in a postmodern era. We think that postmodernity is changing the current generation — in how it understands truth or (the best way of saying this) our articulation of the truth of the gospel, in how we relate to one another in the world, and in the weakening of the grip of the Western culture’s belief that scientific knowledge tells the whole truth.

That’s the into part.

Second, we think “emerging” relates to moving from where we’ve been, and frankly for must of us (though not all) where we’ve been is conservative evangelicalism. It is not that we have all (some have) abandoned that evangelicalism, but we think that shifts and adjustments are necessary to that traditional expression of our faith in order to ltrust, live and speak the truth of the gospel to the current generation. A way of saying this, though I’m not sure our conservative critics like to hear this, is that we want to do for your generation what our fathers and mothers did for our generation.

It is also my hope that we are emerging from the disunity of the Church, the fracturing of the Church into all kinds of splinter groups. Most of these Christians really do believe the same gospel but can’t get along for what is sometimes not all that important of reasons. So I hope we can emerge from the tribal mentality that has too often characterized Christianity

And lots of us think we need to emerge from the power structures of our past. Matt, this is odd to say, but my generation is the hippie generation; we fought hard to democratize church members and perhaps our most notable achievement came through a California preacher named Ray Stedman, who wrote a book called Body Life. The teachings we find in our churches today about spiritual gifts came from Stedman. (It wasn’t even talked about him much until he put it right back in the church.) Now, Stedman got the Church to live like a “body.” The problem is that my generation got tired of the effort to live like a body, and gave all the power back to the leaders. Maybe there’s a social cycle in this, but one thing is for sure: emergence wants to renew the democratization process. It’s fun to see how this is happening all over the place — from house churches and simple churches to smaller missional and emergent gatherings. (Again I could go on.)

All of this means we want to get together on the basics of the gospel, the basics of our creedal faith, and on the basis of a life devoted to following Jesus — and do all these as a community, regardless of “who” we are.

Above all, though, we are working at seeing “what will happen next.” In other words, one can’t predict emergence; one participates in emergence. And we are watching some grassroots shifts in gospel living begin to take shape in all sorts of ways — in how we do church, in how we preach, in how we evangelize, in how we organize our gatherings and “services,” in how we related to the State - in how we participate in capitalism and wealth and possessions … I could go on.

--

Unfortunately, he doesn't go on - but I think he's done a good job. I'm still not sure if I like the term, but at least someone has gone through the trouble of thoughtfully defining it.

The B-C-Mess

I was down in Cincinnati last night for a birthday celebration, when my brother-in-law and I flipped on the T.V. and watched the end of the Cowboys-Giants game, which had a great finish. After, there was an NFL highlights show (the funniest quote of the show was when the main "mouth" of the show, who I didn't recognize, said to Terry Bradshow, who was bundled up way more than he had to be and was wearing a goofy hat, "If you're wrong, I want to see you cut through a bar of Irish Spring soap", because he looked kind of like a leprechaun.), but then the BCS selection show came on, and I told my brother-in-law that Florida was going to be the #2, and sure enough, they were.

Another year reminds us that Division 1 College Football desperately needs a playoff system. Even if just the top 8 teams had a playoff, it would be much better than the mess we find ourselves in every year. I personally feel like even the college football poll system is wrong - if I was a college football A.D., I would schedule all of my tough games at the beginning of the year, because everyone knows that if you lose early, you have a better chance of staying close to the top than if you lose late. (Florida loses to Auburn early, Michigan loses to Ohio State by 3 at Ohio State late. Florida leapfrogs over Michigan for the #2 spot) And, if a win in a conference championship game (like Florida over Arkansas) counts towards the polls, then shouldn't everyone have a conference championship? Is it really fair that Michigan, who didn't have any games after the Ohio State game, does nothing to drop in the polls (because they didn't play anymore) ends up dropping because Florida did have a conference championship game?

It's a mess, folks. Every other division in college football has a playoff. Why can't the best division do the same? The above graphic is Terry Bowden's take on what an eight team playoff would look like this year. Looks pretty good to me.

A Christmas Message From An Unexpected Source

Hey everyone,

I've been really busy with Christmas eve and Shine production stuff, so I've been unable to really think, let alone blog at all. However, in looking at different Christmas songs to do this year, one especially caught my eye. It's from one of my favorite bands - Jimmy Eat World. In digging up information, I have found out that this song is actually a remake of a song by a band named Low. I agree with a reviewer of Low's version of this song that said that Christian artists would probably give up all their Dove Awards to write a song like this. The lyrics are below.

"If You Were Born Today"

If you were born today
We'd kill you by age eight
Never get the chance to say

Joy to the world and
Peace on the earth
Forgive them for they know not what they do

Blessed are the meek and
Blessed are the humble
Blessed are the ninety and nine

Deny the flesh
Deny all that's evil
Tonight you'll deny me thrice

If you were born today
We'd kill you by age eight
You'd never have the chance to say... to say...

Joy to the world (If you were born today)
Peace on the earth (We'd kill you by age eight)
Never get the chance to say...