There is a huge gap that exists between ideas and execution.
That gap is fostered by a few things.

1. Turf Wars. Who owns the space that the gap lies in and who will get to the other side. Silly.
2. Dissonence between the “what” and the “why”. @toddhenry talks about this on accidental creative quite a bit. Avoidable.
3. Laziness. A shame.
4. Fear. Seth Godin calls this anxiety “experiencing failure in advance”.
5. Crossing over the “excellence line”. This is that point where things are excellent enough and getting anymore excellent will be a waste of valuable time, talent and treasure. We spend so much time that we never get to execution.

These things as well as others can cause of to let ideas sit until their shelf life is gone.  An idea that does not ship sits and spoils.

What ideas do you have?

What are you doing to execute?

This post was originally published on www.throwmountains.com – a pro church speaking tour that you should have at your church!

Somewhere across America a few weeks ago young “followers of Jesus”, probably wearing a “Jesus is my homeboy” shirt and a pair of TOM’s declared their agreement with well know author and fairly new Christian Anne Rice.

If you were too busy watching the Big Brother live feed to know what I am talking about, here is what happened.  Anne Rice announced on her Facebook page that she “quit being a Christian”.  At first blush there were a few different reactions I personally had and a few things I learned and maybe you did too:

1.       “Oh No we lost one of our famous people!” There is an obsession in American Christianity with anyone who is famous coming to Christ and I often buy into it hook-line-sinker.  It’s like there is this belief that if we could just get Christopher Hitchens, a couple of baseball players (come on we all know the NBA is just too far gone) and a rock-star then maybe Jesus could finally be famous too.   Then I remember that Jesus could have picked any men in the world to start this whole thing with and he picked a bunch of normal, not-so-famous twenty-something.  I hope and pray that all famous people come to Jesus and really follow him, but now so sure Jesus needs them for his PR.

2.       “Well she probably was not a Christian anyway”. This is the “you didn’t break up with me because we were never really dating response”.  Let’s be very clear Anne Rice stated explicitly that she is still very much in love with Jesus and she did not quit on Him.  She is as Mark Driscol said in his Washington Times article on the same subject, “in a season that many, if not all, Christians experience: the great joy of coming to personally embrace the love, forgiveness, and new life that Jesus offers is then followed by the troubles and trials of learning the teachings of the Bible and living with fellow Christians. Truthfully, both are difficult.”

3.       “Yes, Yes, Lets all hate the church”. It’s pretty hip to hate the church.  Lots of people are making a name for themselves with this opinion and I must admit it is often a temptation.  But then I remembered two very important things:

a.       Jesus loved the church.  He actually called it his bride and it’s rude to tell someone you really like them but their bride is butt ugly.  Just sayin. Dan Kimball says it this way, “ Jesus loves the church.  Yes the church is imperfect and we have made mistakes.  But if we love Jesus then we will love what Jesus loves”.

b.      The church is like an extended family.  My extended family ticks me off sometimes.  They are weird and crazy and sometimes I would like to “quit” being a part of the family.  But then where would I go…another family…you see the problem is I would take me and that is more than half the problem.

Living in community is hard, and I imagine that Anne Rice, like many of you are dealing with that.  I don’t know Anne Rice and I don’t know you bit here is what I would encourage us all to do.  Don’t give up on the church, because you are the church and that would be giving up on you.

I want to invite you to join me on Thursday, October 14 from 11:00 am – noon (EST) for an online creative coaching meeting. I’ll do my best to answer your questions from my experience at Seacoast and from connecting with other churches. We’ll also have some other Seacoast staffers online (and maybe even some other church communication proffessionals) to help field questions. I find that a lot of us are asking the same questions, this will be a great way to connect with other churches, get some answers and maybe if we are lucky even some more questions.

There is no cost for the meeting, but you will need to sign up in advance. I want to keep the size of the meeting pretty small so we can have space to get to everyone’s questions and learn from one another.

Apply Here

Finding our identity in the Cross of Christ and the Cross alone is one of the most freeing moments in a believers life.
I know for me I often have attatched names to myself.  Names like fatherless, distracted or maybe even unsuccessful – what are your names you have assigned to yourself?  If  you are curious you can see the names you have for yourself too here —–> http://www.yoursecretname.com/test/

My friend Kary Oberbrunner knows that our identity is also one of the most important moments in the life of a Christ-follower and he takes us on a journey of identity location in “Your Secret Name“.  In fact Iam believeing that because of this book many will begin that journey of being a Christ-follower because they find their secret name.   Kary has written a book that every believer needs to read (and then give to a friend who is far from God) because every believer needs to know their secret name and find the freedom in that name.

Twitter allows for some interesting times.

We all know the great things that Twitter and other social media outlets have given us, but there are also some challenges that they bring to the surface.

Some things were just never meant to be shared with everyone.  Thoughts that we used to just think to ourselves, like how we aren’t enjoying a speakers talk at a conference or humor that people who really know us would “get” used to stay in our heads or at a minimum in our inner circle.

Boy that has changed.

In some way, Twitter has simply brought some issues in the Christian community to light that were already there – we have just turned the light on in the garage and all of our cockroaches (issues not people) are scurrying.

I wonder if it has shown us all that we value humor over honor and cynicism over optimism.

Humor over honor:
Just to be truthful, I am the chief sinner.
Last week I tweeted something I thought was funny.  I even #fb it so it would go to even more followers – I was proud of my humor.  Then I received the DM’s and the emails questioning some very core things about me and my theology and even letting me know where my tweet (and my humor) had not honored some friends of mine and their experiences in life.  Wow.  I just thought it was funny but it lacked honor.

Honor is a lost art.  It’s value is pretty low in our society.  But in the Christian community should there not be honor among thieves?  We all once were lost on the wrong path and completely ignorant of our mistakes. We were thieves of God’s holy and righteous plan and then something weird happens.  Rather than honor among thieves,  we turn on each other.  We rake each other over the coals in order to bring attention to ourselves and promote ourselves.  We scour the web looking for anything that disagrees with our theology so we can make much of it online.  But hey it’s funny, and it has a punchline that people laugh at and we get lots of @’s on the back.  Honestly it breaks my heart.

Cynicism over optimism:
A part of honor is that we give the benefit of the doubt to family and we are family.  But instead on August 11, 2010 Rick Warren tweets a challenge to churches that in my loose translation said, my kid (church) can whip your kid (church) in a game of kick-ball) – probably not the best challenge to share with 130,000 people, but not as one tweet said a #gospelfail – and we go C-R-A-Z-Y.

All of us thieves who just like me the week before have tweet some petty stupid stuff themselves go on the attack.

So here is what I am challenging myself with…a twitter creed of sorts to have honor among tweets.  Will you join me?

A TWEETS CREED

• I will assume the best about anyone I follow on twitter.  If I don’t assume the best about them I will not follow them and I will not comment on them.
• I will always choose honor over humor.  Is there anyone my humor could dis-honor?  If so I will not tweet.
• Sometimes truth needs to be said.  If it’s about a fellow brother or sister in Christ I will contact them first to make sure we really disagree and discuss the best way I could communicate my point of view.

A Time of Response from Seacoast Church on Vimeo.

I had the opportunity to spend the day with Ben Arment recently. Ben is a conisuer of cluture, creatvity and story. Fitting that he would be the architct of STORY conference.  

STORY is the conference for the creative class in ministry on September 23-24, 2010 at Park Community Church in downtown Chicago. The purpose is to fuel the church’s artists, writers and producers in communicating the greatest story ever told. You’ll hear from some of the best creative practitioners in both ministry and the marketplace, from filmmakers and authors to actors and musicians. Presenters include:

# Dan Allender – best-selling author, professor at Mars Hill Graduate School
# Charlie Todd – creator of Improv Everywhere in New York City
# Princess Zulu – AIDS victim from infancy, advocate for the oppressed
# Jason Fried – founder of 37Signals, creator of Basecamp, author of Rework
# John Sowers – president of Donald Miller’s The Mentoring Project
# Shauna Niequist – former creative director at Mars Hill, author of Bittersweet
# David Hodges – formerly of the band Evanescence, award-winning songwriter
# Leonard Sweet – futurist, author of 40 books, professor at Drew University
# David McFadzean – creator of Home Improvement, producer of Roseanne
# Richard Walter – accomplished screenwriter and professor of film at UCLA
# Sean Gladding – member of Communality, a new monastic community
# Andrew Klavan – author of True Crime (Clint Eastwood) and numerous novels
# Gary Dorsey – founder of Pixel Peach Studio in Austin, TX
# Music by Vicky Beeching, Kari Jobe and Carlos Whittaker

Seating is limited to just 500 attendees, and the event is scheduled on a Thursday and Friday so you can enjoy the weekend in the city. Following its inaugural event in 2009, STORY is now a two-day, main-stage event with no breakouts or workshops; just an intimate audience with the top creative minds. You’ll be able to ask questions during the event and continue the conversation after it’s over.

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I had the honor in May of 2010 to preach at my home church, First Baptist Church of Moncks Corner, for their 90th year anniversary.

As I looked back over the last 36 years of my life and reflected on the events that God had chosen to allow to happen for me in that church I was struck by the incredible influence that God has had over me through this church.

I was born (not literally but almost) in this church and attended every weekend of my life, I was baptized, preached my first public sermon, licensed to ministry, saw the first person I ever led to Christ baptized and then married the same women in this church. I attended the funeral of my grandfather, my best friend in the world at that time, and preached the funeral of one of the best men the world has ever known (my uncle Herbie) in this church.  I would say that I have left pieces of my soul in that church.

As I reflected on this place what I saw was that since 1920 this place had been in many ways a movement.  But I also warned that just as quickly it can be a museum.

Then I remembered Hard Rock cafe Dallas.

In 1999 I first went to Hard Rock cafe in Dallas and immediately knew something was up with this place.
As I looked around, there were stained glass windows (of King Elvis, but stained glass all the same) and the place just felt like a church.  A little research showed me that in fact this had been just that – a vibrant fast growing church. Planted in 1906 and quickly growing to over 1000 in attendance this place had been the location of Mckinney Avenue Baptist Church.

Now I was eating buffalo wings and French fries while I stared at Madonna’s pointy breasted costume.

What had happened? Somewhere along the way the church had declined, merged with another local baptist church, moved out of the city and rented and then sold this building.  Other churches had used the building but finally worship had ceased until finally in the early 1990′s Hard Rock cafe had moved in and worship had resumed.  Worship of rock-n-roll – but worship all the same.

So the question for the church as we stand at this place in history is will the church continue to be a movement of artists who are working in a studio creating great works of art or will it become a museum where we stand back at look at the monuments of the old days.  Will the men of the church rather encouraging young Rembrant’s to paint in ways that has never been done before in fact simply become curators of the old art protecting it all costs.

If we are just curators of old museum relics of the past – good gracious lets cancel this stuff and find something better to do – church is an awful hobby.

When Church is a hobby…

- Methods are valued over principles. HOW we do something over the outcomes.

- Programs are valued over progress.  We sure aren’t going anywhere but at least we know where we are going.

- Policy is valued over people. Roberts rules of order become more important than Robert.  Jesus died for Robert, not his rules.

- When evaluating anything new we ask “who will leave” rather than “who will come”.

Curators protect methods, programs and policies.

I believe with all my heart that the Church is one generation away from losing an entire generation of young people, maybe even less time if we do not do something.  That something is to be a movement.   Create new songs.  Create new works of art called revitalized families and regenerated individuals.

I pray we are always artists and never curators, God help us.

“Can we please read one more story daddy?” She said with a sweet little voice.
“Maybe this afternoon baby”, I said, “but we have to go to school now so let’s pack up”.

“Ok, (anticipatory giggles from a very cute four year old) I just love these stories.” She says with one last big eyed look that said “please daddy” without saying “please daddy”.

Read more…