I know it's seems crazy to be writing about Lent right before Christmas, but I'm starting to think about my game plan for 2005. Most protestants ignore Lent, but I think it ought to be redeemed from the Catholic tradition. In fact, I think there are lots of things protestants can learn from Catholics. And vice versa.
Lent is the forty day period leading up to Easter. Some people consider it a tithe of their time--it is roughly one tenth of the days in a year. Others view it as a time of purification and preparation. Some focus on the symbolic importance of forty days. Jesus was tempted and fasted for forty days going into his public ministry--it was a rite of initiation. A forty day fast has become the benchmark of spiritual discipline for ascetics.
I sort of like Frederick Buechner's take. "During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or the another what it means to be themselves." He asks some tough questions:
"Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?"
"If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?"

There is a custom among shepherds in Israel that existed at the time of Jesus and is still practiced today. Sometimes very early on in the life of lamb, a shepherd senses that it is going to be a congenital stray, that it will be forever drifting away from the herd. What that shepherd does then is deliberately break its leg so that he has to carry it until its leg is healed. By that time, the lamb has become so attached to the shepherd that it never strays again."
Sometimes God allows us to get hurt to get help. Here is a tough prayer to pray: if you need to hurt me to help me, so be it.
I've been broken and I know from personal experience that I heal stronger wherever I got hurt. Whenever something breaks I go back to my Maker or Re-Maker. And He does a Make Over.

I'm reading a book by Ronald Rolheiser titled Against an Infinite Horizon.
I read a couple things that really challenged me and convicted me as a parent so much that they are now part of my "philosophy of parenting."
When Jesus was baptized it says the Father said, "This is my son in whom I am fully pleased." One translation says, "In whom I delight." What if our primary role as parents is to follow the Heavenly Father's example and delight in our children?
Rolheiser says, "So much of our aching is the ache to be blessed. So mcuh of our sadness comes from the fact that nobody has ever taken delight and pleasure in us in a nonexploitive way."
I think the baptism of Christ is a model of good parenting. "I delight in you." Every child needs to hear that from every parent.
Adults are better at killing delight than creating it. "We tell our children to shut up and stop making so much noise when they are enthusiastic and full of life, and we generally feel delight and laughter of others as a threat to our dullness and deadened sense of delight. Shouts of laughter, joy, and delight tend to irritate us."
Rolheiser says, "After childhood, we rarely find it easy to delight in anything."
In 1330, the Bishop of Exeter issued a degree against giggling. He said it was "shameful to relate and horrible to hear." I would have been excommunicated more times than I can count. I think we need more giggling. We need to take ourselves less seriously. It is one more way we need to become like little children.
I think most of our problems are the result of children whose parents didn't delight in them! Rolheiser says, "To be unblessed is to be bleeding in a very deep place." I think lots of people suffer from internal bleeding.
Our need to be blessed is innate. We need verbal affirmation, but at a deeper level we need to seen. Rolheiser says, "At a primal level we see this need to be blessed by being seen acted out in every playground on earth."
Every child says, "Watch me." If that need isn't met they will spend the rest of their lives seeking what their parents didn't give them!
The good news is that God never takes his eyes off us! It is the ultimate affirmation.
I don't think a parent's world should revovle around children--it teaches them that they are the center of the universe. It engenders selfishness. But I think that has to be counterbalanced. Maybe we should go when children say come? Maybe we should watch when children say look?
Rolheiser says, "They need us to see them. In the end, more than they want our words, they want our gaze."
I love going into my kid's rooms at night and looking at them. We need to do it while they're awake too!

I just read Fast Company's issue on Creativity. Here are some random thoughts.
Joe Doucet, design director for Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, says, "The majority of products in a Targe and Walmart store aren't that different. It's the experience, the message, the lifestyle that you're buying into. The way you tell the story is just as important as the story you're trying to tell."
Bingo.
Creative Time
Deadlines can kill creativity! "People were least creative when they were fighting the clock." Time pressure kills creativity! "When pressed for time, you do things you know will work because you don't have the opportunity for trial and error."
I definitely do my best brainstorming on days that I don't have appointments and I'm hanging out at a Barnes and Noble!

Entrepreneur magazine has some interesting trends going into 2005. One of them is authenticity which I think is the primary apologetic for postmodern pastors and churches. Authenticity is the litmus test.
Another trend is called Age 35. The way you reach the 19-27 year-old age group is: "market to all of them as if they're 35." I sort of like this one since I'm 35.
Life Caching
"In our jam packed society, it seems like the only thing there's a lack of is time." We are a nation of multi-taskers. "People are watching TV while surfing the net, driving while chatting on their cells, and checking email on PDAs during meetings."
One of the things that we suffer as a result of multitasking is memory loss. So another trend with be what Entrepreneur calls life caching. "As we learn to clock to save every moment of our lives, data will become the stuff that memories are made of." Rienier Evers says, "Life caching will become a given. Consumers will come to expect that they can relive every experience they've ever had and have instant access to any life collection they've ever built."
We give NCCers a DVD of their baptism as a way of having a three-dimensional memory. The ID journal was a way of helping NCCers capture their spiritual growth on paper. I think communion is a "memory making" experience.
Memory making is a $2.5 billion industry. Scrapbooking has doubled since 2001. Entrepreneur says, "Businesses that can provide creative solutions to both physical and digital life caching are the ones that stand to gain from this trend." I think the same is true of churches!
One of my definitions of leadership is creating spiritual growth opportunities. Life caching is the next step. How do you help people remember or store whay they've learned. Entrepreneur asks a great question, "What are you doing to help customers capture and store these experiences."
We do message notes and journal and booklets. But maybe I ought to infrared my message notes to Palms in the congregation. I think we've got to creatively think about "take aways" and "object lessons" that help NCCers remember what they've learned.
Another trend is uniqueness. I think this is seen in the "conversation T-shirts" that sell in all major clothing retailers. People want to be "early adopters." I think the church ought to be a place where uniqueness is celebrated. One of our core values is: you're invaluable and irreplaceable. Another core value is that maturity doesn't equal conformity.
A final trend is the third place. "An escape from home is more a necessity than a luxury." Churches need to position themselves as third places. That's is precisely why we're building a coffeehouse instead of a church.
"It's no longer wise to get people in and out of your business as quickly as possible. Give them a reason to stay, and you'll also give them a reason to come back."
That's the goal of Ebenezers!

"Every modern communications specialist agrees that we both 'think and store' in mental pictures." We are wired for metaphors! That is how we think and how we learn. I think communicating is about three things: metaphors, metaphors, metaphors! Jesus was the master of metaphors! Aristotle said, "The greatest thing in style is to have command in metaphor."
I think one major transition in postmodern ministry is the seismic shift from print to image. We invest huge amounts of time trying to create pictures, metaphors, videos, images. I read something fascinating recently about the way we process information. The brain is able to process print on a page at a rate of about a hundred bits per second. But the brain can process at picture at about a billion bits per second. That means that a picture isn’t worth a thousand words! A picture is literally worth ten million words!
I think the key to incarnating the gospel so a generation can understand it is picking the right metaphors that "paint a picture."

I love humor! I think laughter is the closest distance between two people. I think laughter is a God-given coping mechanism that helps us make it through the tough times. I think the ability the laugh at oneself is the essence of humility and one key to health and holiness!
An NCCer sent me an interesting critique of humor today. Here it is.
After hearing you reference the importance of humor on several occasions, I thought you might appreciate the thoughts of David Hart in a First Things critique of The Humor of Kierkegaard. Commenting on Kierkegaard's view of humor, Hart states, "I learned how profound a difference Kierkegaard saw between genuine humor and mere irony. That is to say, irony can certainly recognize that the incongruities that throng human experience typically frustrate the quest for truth; but, having seen as much, irony is then impotent to do anything more than unveil failure and vanquish pretense. Humor, on the other hand, is born from an altogether higher recognition: that tragic contradiction is not absolute, that finitude is not only pain and folly, and that the absurdiity of our human contradictions can even be a cause for joy. Humor is able to receive finitude as a gift, conscious of the suffering intrinsic to human existence, but capable of transcending despair through jest. And that is why the power of humor is most intense in the "religious" sphere: Christianity, seeing all things from the perspective of the Incarnation (that most unexpected of perpituities), is the "most comic" vision of things: it encompasses the greatest contradictions and tragedies of all, but does so in such a way as to take the suffering of existence into the unanticipated absurdity of our redemption. Which yields the - to my mind - gratifying conclusion that, to be both a "lover of wisdom" and an accomplished humorist, one must almost certainly be a Christian; or, rather, that only a Christian philosophy can be truly "comic."I think laughter is one dimension of the image of God. It is a unique God-given ability that we must be good stewards of--just as we are stewards of everything else.
Bottom line: learn to laugh. a lot.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Tenacity. I think that is the difference between success and failure. It is the refusal to be denied. You keep seeking, keep asking, keep knocking.
The Wise Men could have turned back, but they refused to turn around. Moses could have thrown in the towel so many times. Jesus refused to stop--"For the joy that was set before him He endured the cross."
Jesus was tenacious!
We got our building permit today. The process began on July 28. And today we got a little pink slip known as a building permit. What an unbelievable test of our resolve.
We prayed like it depended on God and worked like it depended on us. What a great feeling!

I was reading Business 2.0 and there was some interesting thoughts.
Anthony Zuiker, the executive producer of CSI, talks about other shows trying to "knockoff" their labs and forensics, but he said they've "held true" to who they are. "You need to evolve, but you don't need to evolve defensively. That's a classic mistake."
I think we need to be careful not to become defensive or reactive. We've got to know who we're not and who we are. We've got to stay true to ourselves. That is the challenge every individual and every organization faces.
Bill Gates does "reading weeks" to stay on the edge of innovation. "Twice a year I take a week to do nothing but read." I've love to take a three-day reading vacation in 2005.
Prince asks an interesting question that isn't limited to the music industry. I think it's a question for ministry as well. "Do eye really have something 2 say or am eye just trying 2 get famous." He says, "Do something NEW...say something that has NEVER been said b4." That is at the core of my passion mix--I love the challenge of saying ancient things in postmodern ways. I look making the really old seem really new. That is the incarnation of communication.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, uses a phrase that I'd never seen used besides in my own writing and thinking--divine discontent. He is "constantly fidding" with Amazon to make it better. "On Saturday mornings, I stay playing around with the site and make a list of 10 things that are wrong, and then come in Monday morning and work on fixing them. That divine discontent leads to invention and makes things better."

One of my all-time favorite quotes is the author-playwright Victor Hugo who said, "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whoe time has come."
That's how I feel about the multi-site movement. It's an Isaiah 43 phenemenon. Isaiah 43:18 says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!"
I feel like we're part of an idea whose time has come!

I started reading Matthew's gospel this week. There is a verse that says that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Christ was literally conceived by the Spirit of God. I wrote in the margin of my Bible--nothing has changed. The Holy Spirit is still conceiving Christ in us!
The Christmas story is a microcosm--it is a physical example of what God is trying to do in all of us spiritually.
Only the things conceived by the Holy Spirit will produce lasting fruit. Everything else will miscarriage. That is why it is so critical that everything be birthed in prayer. That is the only way to gaurantee that we don't experience a still birth. Dreams conceived by the Spirit are immortal. Everything else has a very short life span.
I'm especially cognizant of these kinds of things during a week like this--our annual staff planning retreat. The best laid plans of mice and men don't amount to a hill of beans. But one idea conceived by the Holy Spirit can turn a city upside down!
On another note. I feel like I'm pregnant again. I've got another book idea. It's hard to describe, but I feel this way with every series I preach. It typically beings as a single idea. But something about it implants in my spirit and it grows exponentially.
I think getting my book yesterday really released me to begin working on the next one. It was almost like one chapter ended and another one began. When you've given birth to one book it gives you a sense of what to expect so I'm a mixture of emotions. I think I have to describe preaching and writing as a labor of love. It's hard work, but I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.

I started reading Matthew's gospel this week. There is a verse that says that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Christ was literally conceived by the Spirit of God. I wrote in the margin of my Bible--nothing has changed. The Holy Spirit is still conceiving Christ in us!
The Christmas story is a microcosm--it is a physical example of what God is trying to do in all of us spiritually.
Only the things conceived by the Holy Spirit will produce lasting fruit. Everything else will miscarriage. That is why it is so critical that everything be birthed in prayer. That is the only way to gaurantee that we don't experience a still birth. Dreams conceived by the Spirit are immortal. Everything else has a very short life span.
I'm especially cognizant of these kinds of things during a week like this--our annual staff planning retreat. The best laid plans of mice and men don't amount to a hill of beans. But one idea conceived by the Holy Spirit can turn a city upside down!
On another note. I feel like I'm pregnant again. I've got another book idea. It's hard to describe, but I feel this way with every series I preach. It typically beings as a single idea. But something about it implants in my spirit and it grows exponentially.
I think getting my book yesterday really released me to begin working on the next one. It was almost like one chapter ended and another one began. When you've given birth to one book it gives you a sense of what to expect so I'm a mixture of emotions. I think I have to describe preaching and writing as a labor of love. It's hard work, but I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.

We spent the last couple days on our annual staff retreat. I think they are always a mixture of two emotions. I always feel a little overwhelmed--which is natural when you're thinking about everything that needs to be done in the next twelve months. But it's mixed with excitement about where God is taking us.
It's sort of like an amusement park ride. You get a little sick because of the forces exerted upon your body. But it's a joy ride. Pastoring is a joy ride. There are some hairpin turns, but anything less would be boring.

I got my first official copy of ID: The True You. I said to one of our staff members that it isn't like an unexpected gift--surprise! It was more like the nine months of preparing for a baby--it's not a surprise but you're not sure what the baby will look like :) It was pretty cool opening the box and seeing what was conceived.
I feel like I've got a green light to begin my next book.