Most Underwhelming Change Ever?
The NFL’s Carolina Panthers have updated their logo in what has to be one of the most underwhelming changes I have ever seen. One of the team’s executives said it was a necessary update for “ever-increasing digital use.” I am still trying to figure out how this change really does much of anything for the team.
This reminds me of 1996 when the Miami Dolphins made this wholly unremarkable change:
Back then, the change was to make the Dolphin more aggressive. I have to say, that second dolphin looks pretty ferocious, doesn’t it?
Look, I am all for NFL teams changing their logos from time to time. When my Tampa Bay Buccaneers ditched their effeminate swashbuckler for the “blood and pewter” (that’s their official colors) skull and crossbones, I cheered the change. I hated Pat the Pirate, and even though the Patriots’ “Elvis” logo still looks kind of silly, at least it was a real change.
Changes like this Panthers thing are just silly.
Of course, you knew there was going to be a church-type application to this, didn’t you?
Most of the time, people love their old ideas and images too much to really part with them. They know something isn’t working, but they’re just not willing to part with it.
- So, you have a stayed-and-crusty old congregational church that decides to update their ministry. They bring in a young, hip worship leader who sets up a band, but they’re only allowed to play hymns and campfire songs.
- A congregation decides to revamp their children’s ministry, so they splash new paint on the walls and buy nifty curriculum, but they aren’t willing to gently retire the matronly teacher who believes children should be seen and not heard.
- You set out to start the next “cool church” but instead of all the artists and hippies, you attract middle-aged folks with kids. But you refuse to minister to the families because you are too interested in being trendy.
I am fairly convinced that in order to truly minister to the flock that the Shepherd gives you, leaders have to be willing to throw out old (and new) ideas in favor of doing whatever God requires of us to accomplish his vision. Don’t live for that old identity. God’s mercy and love is new every morning. How can we renew lives and redeem people from sin when we are not willing to be truly renewed ourselves?
Finding “Can Get the Job Done” People
Being the pastor of an intimate congregation is always a challenge. Our congregation is just about big enough to be able to pay our bills, but not big enough to have the financial base for hiring new staff. That means everything has to be done by volunteers cooperating.
One of the differences between working with staff and working with volunteers is that volunteers have far less time. A staff member is paid to be available to do a job while volunteers sacrifice time they could be spending on something else.
It is easy to develop a mentality that you are “only working with volunteers” so you cannot demand the same level of excellence. This simply isn’t true.
What is true working with volunteers is that you have to delegate tasks rather than jobs and develop something of a composite staff member from a team of volunteers. This is something I am still learning to do, and so far I have not had tremendous success outside of our music team.
Our music team is an incredibly talented group, almost entirely men, who give of their time to form two bands and an assortment of other ensembles. They have learned to work together, to be flexible in style and presentation. None of them give more than a couple hours per week, but they continually improve. They practice and buy their own equipment. Most importantly, a couple of them have particularly stepped up and done jobs they were not initially “qualified” to do because those jobs needed to be done.
That, I think, is the core value we need to look for in volunteers. I was reading through an article on hiring people for a startup, and one particular point seemed to apply to church volunteers. Amidst a lot of job-related stuff, the author mentioned learning how to separate the “Can Do the Job” people from the “Can Get the Job Done” people. This is very true when it comes to volunteers.
Volunteers who “can do” are fine for routine things, stuff that is repetitive and never changes. But for those who are going to lead and work together on larger, more public things, you need “get the job done” kind of people. You need people who look at a task, acquire new skills as needed and accomplish the task.
These kinds of people are rare – probably the rarest of the rare in the church. There are plenty of “can do” people in the world who would like you to believe that they are “get the job done” people, but they aren’t.
If you are a single pastor in an intimate congregation, you simply cannot build effective, growing ministry on “can do.” The ministry will be limited to you own ability to figure out how to get the job done and handing out menial tasks to others. You will wind out stretched beyond your capacity.
Narrow your focus, limit the number of ministries and programs according to the number of “get the job done” people you have to lead them. Meet with those people regularly, provide them with training and incentive. You will find your self far more effective when working with people who get the job done.
How Pastors Get Rich
A good article from Tall Skinny Kiwi on everything that is wrong with some pastors who use their place to make money.
We’re Not Designed for This
So, here’s a scenario for you.
Say that you are a thirty-three year old female diagnosed with thyroid cancer. You have your thyroid surgically removed, but there is no way to remove all of the tissue so the recommended course of treatment is to receive radioiodine treatment.
You go to the hospital and while you’re enjoying the liberating embarrassment of a hospital johnie, you are met by four men carrying a lead-lined briefcase. They present you with a single capsule which contains an isotope of iodine known as iodine-131. What else is there to do? You take the pill.
The small quantity of iodine-131 you are ingesting has come a long way. It used to be a different element altogether. For thousands of years, it was tellurium-130, an element as rare on earth as platinum. It was happily bonded to some other earth mineral, most likely quartz, since the formation of the continents.
Then an engineer dug it up out of the earth, made it into a target and gave it to a physicist who bombarded it with neutrons. The tellurium atoms mutated and changed quickly, with many of them turning into unstable tellurium and xenon atoms that break down almost instantaneously. But some of them pick up an extra proton, which in turn attracts a loose electron from the mess, and the result is the relatively unstable iodine-131 molecule.
Every 8.02 days, half of the iodine-131 atoms in any mass will have a breakdown of sorts. One of its 78 neutrons will split into an electron and a proton shedding energy in the form of a gamma ray. The protons and electrons stay in the nuclei, turning the iodine into xenon. The radiation, which no one really understands fully, streams out of the atom. What happens next is still a bit of a mystery, but one thing is for sure. The thyroid cells holding the iodine during this process are destroyed.
This is a complex, nuclear event. Lots of stuff is happening. There should be a mushroom cloud or something – but there isn’t. This complex, nuclear event is the antithesis of an atomic bomb. You are stuck in isolation. Even your television is wrapped in plastic. Your nurses rush in and out of the room to prevent exposure.
Your neck swells as tissue is destroyed and cells disintegrate. The escaping gamma radiation is ionizing DNA molecules, knocking electrons out of orbit in atoms and causing the atoms of amino acids to lose their grip on each other.
What was once living (even if cancerous) tissue is now dead, inert chemicals. The body has a system for dealing with this, flushing the unusable xenon and iodine into the excretory system and recycling what it can.
But all of that takes time and occurs on a microscopic level. Meanwhile you feel like someone punched you in the neck.
You have to live in quarantine for at least three days, one of which you spend at the hospital. When the physicist – not a physician but a physicist – tells you that your radiation levels are below 5 millirem per hour.
You don’t know that a millirem is 1/1000th of a roentgen or that it is a measurement of gamma radiation. After all, gamma radiation is what turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.
But the physicist knows that the people around you will be exposed to the gamma radiation being given off by the iodine-131 in your system. You have become a source of harmful radiation, so he wants to make sure that your husband and daughter will not be exposed to harmful amounts.
When you’re no longer harmful, they release you. You drive home and get to spend the next three days in isolation – unable to touch your loved ones.
That has been my wife’s week.
Let me explain something in case you didn’t know. Cancer sucks.
Even a very treatable form of cancer like the cancer my wife has or the form her sister fought last year is still awful.
Here is what cancer is.
It starts with a single cell is produced with an altered DNA sequence. The altered sequence can be from genetic mutation or radiation exposure or even (believe it or not) a fungus or virus. That cell ceases to produce healthy, productive cells and instead produces non-functioning ones.
You should know that everyone has cancer cells. Our bodies are marvelous at producing new cells, but with ten trillion cells in a human body, there are bound to be errors. For the most part, your body is very good at identifying and destroying these faulty cells.
But sometimes the body simply cannot keep up. In that case, the mutated cancer cells replicate unchecked. They grow faster than healthy cells and in time can cause healthy organs to fail.
What is truly astounding is that there is absolutely no reason your body cannot deal with these mutations. The cure for cancer should be very simple. Just tell the cells to stop producing bad copies and then tell the healthy cells to replace them.
Believe it or not, this is the entire impetus behind the human genome project. It is the driving force behind billions upon billions of dollars of drug research. To stop cancer, you don’t have to destroy it. You simply have to get the body to do what it is supposed to do and your body should heal itself.
But nobody can do it.
So for no reason, inexplicably, cancer strikes. It hits kids and seniors, men and women. It is indiscriminate because it is not an it. It is your own body turning against you.
The way I see it, cancer can be one of two things:
1. It is evidence of evolution. In other words, the existence of cancerous mutation is evidence of the way in which life changed and altered over the epochs. My problem with this is that cancer is never good for the organism. It is always harmful.
2. It is evidence of sin in the world. When we look at cancer, we see our need for restoration and redemption. We realize the frailty of life and the necessity of a Savior.
I choose the second, although not everyone will agree.
Should Church Be Like Summer Camp?
Christian summer camp is something of a sore point for me. I never got the spiritual high that all the other kids got when I went, probably because I was a very introverted kid with some medical issues that created a lot of embarrassment. Even beyond that, at a very young age I was very aware of the manipulative techniques used by so many in that industry. They were well-intentioned folks, don’t get me wrong; but there was just something disingenuous about corralling kids in small groups and using all kinds of weird reinforcements and rewards for their acquisition of Biblical information.
“Memorize ten verses this afternoon and you get a free soda at the snack bar!”
“If your team wins the Bible trivia challenge, your counselor will eat a goldfish!”
There was this one year – I think it was my last – when the speaker was exhausting himself on the sins of drunkenness and excess every night. On the final night, he called for all the campers to come forward and pray at the altar because “The Spirit is moving.”
Well, he wasn’t moving me. I didn’t feel any kind of spiritual prodding or emotional need to go forward. So I didn’t. Over the course of about eight hundred verses of “Just As I Am”, I sat there quietly with my head respectfully bowed while all of the other kids in the pavilion went forward. At least half a dozen adults tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to go forward. They looked genuinely frustrated that I wasn’t stirring.
The experience troubled me. I came from a home where the highest spiritual discipline was not emotional responses but in-depth study of the Scriptures. (The previous year, I had astounded my counselor by translating John 1:1 from Greek when he wrote it on a napkin. It never occurred to me that other kids couldn’t do that.)
In my church, we didn’t go up front unless God was convicting you of sin, so I would have been dishonest if I had answered that altar call. But everyone wanted me to anyway.
I stopped going to Christian camps around the age of ten and never looked back. I have been in a lot of ministries where camp has been a big deal, and I have supported the work. But deep inside, I know that most of those emotional appeals won’t last long. The message only resonates in the echo chamber of isolation. Outside of the campground, the kids will most likely lose the “fire” they acquired.
I bring this up because Tall Skinny Kiwi posted a thought-provoking article about a summer camp that has been converted to something of a monastery in New Zealand. He writes:
I also have very fond memories of New Zealand camps when I was younger.
Camps are where you can hang out late at night, dress badly, discover yourself, fight the giggles at 2 in the morning, watch the uninhibited speaker embarrass himself publicly, eat poorly cooked food, get up surprisingly early to pray, create and perform silly skits, pee in a freezing cold cement toilet block, and share your life-changing decision with your new friends as bonfire flames lick your eyelashes.
He goes on to write about this camp-turned-monastery and how it has become a big hit among the Anglicans. People travel from all over the islands to spend time there for renewal and retreat.
I guess that is good, and I am glad that people have found a way to recharge their spiritual vibe. Personally, I have a hard time with this idea of part-time monasticism that drives both summer camp and trends like the ones Kiwi is writing about.
Is there really such a thing as part-time monasticism? Can a brief period of “retreat from this world” really do that much good in someone’s life? Am I just quirky?
It just seems to me that this kind of temporary retreat doesn’t really fix anything. It just seems that for the majority of people, it gives a hit of “spiritual” crack without really creating life change.
Don’t be Wrapped Up in Fame
Who has ever heard of Joseph Swan?
He invented the incandescent lightbulb.
What? You thought Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb? Actually, he and Swan worked independently on the project. Swan worked in England and had illuminated his home in the city of Gateshead before Edison learned of Swan’s use of carbonized thread filaments. Edison grabbed the idea and ran with it. Swan even developed an improved cellulose filament that Edison knew to be superior to the bamboo material he finally settled on, but Edison refused to use the improved material.
Because he also had the Sprengel pump (to create a vacuum in the bulb) and a plan for implementing electric lighting across large areas, Edison is often credited for the invention. And Edison was enough of a glory hound that he never led anyone to believe otherwise.
It might not have hurt that Edison’s General Electric Company also bought Swan’s company in the 1880′s and merged its interests with its own.
What about Nikola Tesla?
Among other things, Tesla invented the radio transmitter. You were probably taught that Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio transmitter. That’s what almost all American history textbooks say even though at the time that Marconi “invented” the radio, he did so by flagrantly ripping off seventeen of Tesla’s patents. Ultimately, the US Supreme Court even ruled that Tesla was indeed the inventor of the radio transmitter, but that was in 1943, long after long repetition had awarded the honor to Marconi.
It is Tesla, and not Marconi, to whom we are indebted for the invaluable technology that powers our televisions and our mobile phones, transmits information to both airliners and our computer wifi cards.
Why One and Not the Other?
I could go through an endless list of people who got famous from or got credited for the work of other, perhaps greater minds. Christopher Columbus was not the first European to sail to the Americas. He was just the first to publish the trek. Martin Luther wasn’t the first to protest the excess of the medieval Catholic church. He was just the first to use the printing press to broadcast it. Isaac Newton did not come up with the laws of gravity. He simply refined something one of his rivals had already come up with, and of course, he published it.
The way I see it, there are those who cannot live without credit and fame, and then there are those who do because they can. We innovate and initiate without a desire or need for broad acclaim. We do because we can, because we stand at the intersection of creativity and conviction and think different.
Don’t ever forget that Thomas Edison – he of the phonograph, the mimeograph, the incandescent light bulb – also sunk millions into a complete failure of an idea to pour concrete houses, complete with furnishings and invested a fortune in a DC electrical system that he ultimately replaced with the AC systems we know today.
Be content to be where you are, doing what you’re doing. Change the world around you and if it changes the larger world – great. If others take what you do and make it better, then let them. For every Edison, there is a Swan. For every Marconi, a Tesla.
The measure of a man’s greatness is not that others long to be him, but that HE longs to be him. To be who you are where you are is better than to try to be someone you are not in places you should never try to go.
Go Pats
Driving home from the AFC Championship game on Sunday, I heard a pundit talking about the Pats. He noted that the Pats had not beaten a team with a record better than .500 all season. It was a criticism we have heard before. As it turns out, it’s true.
Week 1: Beat Miami Dolphins (6-10)
Week 2: Beat San Diego Chargers (8-8)
Week 3: Lost to Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Week 4: Beat Oakland Raiders (8-8)
Week 5: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 6: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Week 7: BYE
Week 8: Lost to Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4)
Week 9: Lost to NY Giants (9-7)
Week 10: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 11: Beat Kansas City Chiefs (7-9)
Week 12: Beat Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 13: Beat Indianapolis Colts (2-14)
Week 14: Beat Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 15: Beat Denver Broncos (8-8)
Week 16: Beat Miami Dolphins (6-10)
Week 17: Beat Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Divisional Round: Beat Denver Broncos (8-8)
Conference Round: Beat Baltimore Ravens (12-4)
But what does it really mean?
After all, four of the teams were in the AFC East with the Patriots. The Pats beat all of them twice except Buffalo. That means the Patriots contributed significantly to their records being as bad as they were.
Now consider some of other facts.
The NFL had twenty teams at .500 or below. There are only thirty-two teams in the NFL, so that means five-eighths of the league was below .500.
The NY Giants lost to two of the teams the Pats beat (the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles, both of which are in the NFC East with the Giants). Most importantly, the Giants lost to every team over .500 that they played.
Week 1: Lost to Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 2: Beat St. Louis Rams (2-14)
Week 3: Beat Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 4: Beat Arizona Cardinals (8-8)
Week 5: Lost to Seattle Seahawks (7-9)
Week 6: Beat Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Week 7: BYE
Week 8: Beat Miami Dolphins (8-8)
Week 9: Beat New England (13-3)
Week 10: Lost to San Francisco 49ers (13-3)
Week 11: Lost to Philadelphia Eagles (8-8)
Week 12: Lost to New Orleans Saints (13-3)
Week 13: Lost to Green Bay Packers (15-1)
Week 14: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Week 15: Lost to Washington Redskins (5-11)
Week 16: Beat NY Jets (8-8)
Week 17: Beat Dallas Cowboys (8-8)
Wild Card Round: Beat Atlanta Falcons (10-6)
Divisional Round: Beat Green Bay Packers (15-1)
Conference Round: Beat San Francisco 49ers (13-3)
While the Giants have had a tougher postseason, their regular season was actually probably an easier schedule than the Pats had. They had a worse in-division record than the Pats.
All in all, to say that Tom Brady and the Patriots had an easier schedule because the teams they beat did not make it above .500 this season is just plain foolishness. The same thing could be said about Eli Manning and the Giants.
Oh, and the Giants lost to the Washington Redskins TWICE.
I think the Pats have a pretty good chance at beating the Giants. I think they are actually the better team overall, but the difference is fairly small. The Pats will still have to play their hearts out. The Giants are solid, but if the Pats show up in Indianapolis and don’t make any mistakes, they are will win.
Straddling Realities
Posted by Erik in Church, History, Ecclesiology (Church), Eschatology on January 25, 2012
Yochanan b. Zecharyah was a Jewish teacher and prophet known to the Christian world as John the Baptist. In the gospel of Luke, he is Jesus of Nazareth’s second cousin and the son of a Jewish priest.
Appearing at the beginning of all four gospels and described as the “forerunner” of the Messiah and the last of the Hebrew prophets, John straddles the line between the days of the prophets and the “Day of the Lord.” If we are to believe the gospels, then we must acknowledge that the authors of those books saw John as the end of an age.
Every gospel tells his story a little different, but in all them John’s message was simple: Repent, for God’s Kingdom is at hand. There was nothing complex about this message. John was saying that God was coming, and the time had come to get right. To drive home the point, Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (Luke 3:4-6 ESV)
It was hard to miss or misinterpret John’s message, and yet for all of our supposed ability and intelligence, we miss what he was saying.
Jesus is the Kingdom of God. He is the Temple of God. He is the Lord’s Messiah. And we live in “The Day of the Lord.”
John represents all that was Hebrew, all that was rabbinical. John is a Jew declaring the end of Judaism and setting the stage for the Messianic Age.
That’s why John’s message is not normative for the Church today. The era he lived in is over. The Law and Prophets are fulfilled in Jesus. The Hebrew epic has been completed and has been transformed into something more. Now what has been anticipated is at work.
The Kingdom is not somewhere we go when we die. It is the One who died for us. Heaven is not some other reality. It is the fully realized reality of Jesus and His resurrection. It is not this life somewhere else, but this life as something else. We are being transformed into Christ’s image, collectively.
The Kingdom is being realized imperfectly now, but will one day be fully realized when Jesus returns. But that does not make it any less real now. We do not perceive it or live it all the time, because we are blinded by sin and restricted by the forces of this world and its would-be usurper who styles himself the Prince of This World, Satan. But make no mistake. Jesus is the Kingdom, and those found in him are citizens of that Kingdom.
AFC Championship 2012
It’s true. I was at the AFC championship game yesterday. My friend Tom scored last minute tickets so we skooted out immediately after worship to drive to Gillette Stadium.
What can I say? It was incredible to be there and see history made. It was the first NFL game I have ever attended, and probably will be the last. The experience was worth it, but it was cold and I was surrounded by drunkenness and ignorant hostility.
Go Pats!
It’s Not All About Me or You
Posted by Erik in Church, Cross Posts on January 20, 2012
Joel Watts and I don’t always see eye to eye on everything. We encountered each other through a third blogger, Jason Skipper, when Jason started a forum for revitalizing the Fundamentals called re:F.
Joel runs in what most would consider a more liberal, more mainline doctrinal discussion than I do, although more often than not we can find common ground on most subjects. That’s one of the great things about having a network of bloggers to interact with on doctrinal and exegetical grounds. The diversity of opinion and position helps us look at our own views and the views of others more carefully.
Anyway, Joel’s blog is considerably busier than mine, and he has a number of contributors who write posts for him. He probably gets as many hits in an afternoon as I do in a month.
This week, one of his contributors, Leslie Keeney, wrote an excellent piece on the false interpretations that arise from reading the Scriptures as if they are all about your personal relationship with God. It resonated with something I am working on concerning the church, and I thought you might benefit from it.
Here’s an excerpt:
Suddenly, it dawned on me that one of the benefits of reading the Bible primarily as a narrative is that it automatically reduces the self-centeredness inherent in the “instruction manual” metaphor. If the Bible is God’s story, then the purpose of reading it is to become intimate with God and how He works, not how He can fix my life. No longer does every passage have to have a “practical” application that I can “use.” If the Bible is a story about God, it is not all about me. (Why It’s Not All About Me or You, Leslie Keeney)
Like I said, Joel and I don’t always see eye-to-eye so this is not a wholesale recommendation of everything on his blog; but I thought this was insightful.
