Monthly Archives: August 2007

Warm-up Act for E. T.

Anchor worship team at Grace Presbyterian

L-r: Terry Leatherman, Tim Bauman, me, and Joe Leatherman on drums.

Tonight our worship team played a half-hour of music at Grace Presbyterian Church. They have a monthly movie night, and thought it might draw people to have some live music. I’m not sure it drew anybody, but we enjoyed ourselves despite the small crowd.

The movie was “E.T.” I think I’ve only seen it once–either in a theater, or when it came out on VHS. It was fun watching it again.

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Screwed Up Measures of Success

During the 12 years I edited a denominational magazine, I usually attended the annual Evangelical Press Association convention, an organization representing several hundred Christian publications. Each day featured various workshops, which were often led by persons from the Big Important Publications. We’re talking Moody Magazine, the various Christianity Today magazines, Decision, and the larger denominational magazines (The Banner, the Church Herald, Vital Christianity). These were multi-staff publications, and the workshop leaders could talk about relating to the graphics department, the marketing department, the editorial staff, etc.

Meanwhile, there were a heck of a lot of us one-person-shows editing small organizational, missionary, or denominational publications. I had a part-time secretary, but beyond that, I did everything. I wrote lots of stories, I edited all stories, I proofread copy before sending it for typesetting (pre-computer days), I spent numerous hours hunched over a light-table laying out the magazine, I proofread the thing again, and I interacted with the printer. I devised whatever marketing materials we used. I designed the covers and all interior artwork. I could learn from the Moody editor, but my situation bore little resemblance.

So one year I offered, and was invited, to lead a seminar for editors like me–guys and gals who did the whole shebang. I knew there were a bunch of us, toiling in anonymity and eating by ourselves at the convention. I forget my creative title and description, but it must have worked, because the room was packed. A few of them (myself included) had been wooed by prestigious publications, but had decided God wanted them to remain–contentedly–where they were.

I talked about issues common to us Do-It-Alls. For instance: most of us editors became editors because we were pretty good wordsmiths, yet we also had to do graphics work, something for which bigger magazines have specialists. How do we compensate when we can’t delegate our weaknesses? I had probably ten such issues unique to one-person situations, and I used them as fodder for discussion.

Since my seminar style is always interactive, a lot of great ideas flew back and forth. Editors shared their limitations–time, skills, budget, staff–and ways they worked around those limitations to still produce a quality product. Nobody from a Big Important Publication attended my wee little workshop because, of course, they had nothing to learn from a comparative underachiever like me. But I discovered a whole bunch of my peers who were in the same boat I rowed year after year, and many of our needs weren’t being addressed by the highly-skilled folks at Christianity Today.

I think of this in relation to pastors and the broader church world. Tens of thousands of ministers serve small churches, and serve alone. Maybe a secretary or part-time youth guy, but basically alone. To improve as ministers, what is available to them? Well, they can read books by megachurch pastors, and they can attend conferences put on by megachurches. And I wonder: how well do these resources really, really, address their unique situations? (Not being a pastor, I don’t really know.) I know that the Big Guys stress that they are imparting principles that can work in any size of church, and don’t require the large staff and resources available to them. But…okay…whatever.

Is there, anywhere, a solo pastor who people look at and say, “That guy’s a success. He should write a book or lead a seminar.”

Or consider: is it okay, in today’s American church culture, to aspire to be a great solo pastor? Is it okay to not yearn to lead a Whole Hog church?

It seems that we corporate-minded 21st Century Americans are not allowed to pin “Successful Pastor” badges onto solo ministers. If you’re in a multi-staff situation, then you have something to share in a seminar or book. If you’re not in a multi-staff situation, then you need to attend the other guy’s seminar or read his book. And obviously, the megachurch guy has zilch to learn from you, little peon.

I know that it was helpful for me to gather with a bunch of solo editors to talk about our contexts and to share ideas. How well this truly relates to pastors…I don’t know. I’m just wondering.

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Cakes, Layers, and Potlucks

Pam made her famous carrot cake for the church potluck on Sunday. Actually, her famous carrot cake is three layers. She made a three-layer cake, but kept one at home for me to eat, and only took a double-layer cake to church. I appreciated that.

Joanna Herrick cut the cake. She’s around 80 years old, maybe more, with more energy–and certainly more enthusiam for life in general–than I have. Joanna gave me one of her observations from a lifetime in the church.

“Multiple layer cakes always go faster than single-layer cakes,” she told me. “That’s what I’ve noticed over the years with cakes I’ve brought. Whenever I bring a multiple-layer cake, there’s less left over.”

There you go: an observation you won’t find in any church growth books.

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Movies: Those Super-Secret Government Agencies

Pam and I saw “The Bourne Ultimatum” on Saturday. It was quite a thrill ride, like the first two movies. Only the first movie made any pretense about being based on the book by the same name. “The Bourne Identity” blew me away when I read it–my first Ludlum book. “Supremacy” and “Ultimatum” were good, too, but have no relation to the movies. But no problem–I loved the movies. It’s like getting six plots for the price of three titles (or maybe five-and-a-half plots).

In lots of American-made thrillers, the “villain” is the CIA or some other secret government entity trying to hoodwink the American people or do nasty things in the name of patriotism. That’s the general idea, anyway. Such was the case with “Ultimatum.” And I got to thinking about how this must play overseas. Foreigners continually see American movies in which we depict our own government as secretive and insidious. Have foreigners come to believe that this must be reality? Well, it seems that they DO believe this, whether or not Hollywood is to blame.

We saw previews for “Rendition,” a movie (with Meryl Streep as a villainous spy honcho!) based on our government’s practice of sending people to other countries (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia) to be tortured, if we think they have some information that might be useful to us. They don’t have to be actual terrorists, which was the threshhold before Bush took office–just people who we THINK know something that might help us catch actual bad guys. It’s a shameful, disgusting practice which has resulted in people dying under torture and innocent people being whisked away. And I’m continually amazed that so many Americans (always Republicans! usually FoxNews fans!) defend the practice. There’s no way in the world Jesus would defend it. But what does He know? Jesus is so naive.

Anyway, that’s a movie I’m going to see, too. And people around the world will see it. At this point, it’s probably just more of the same–evil American secret agency doing things which aren’t supposed to be reached by sunlight.

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Vente, Grande, Whatever

Although I’m a big Starbucks fan and stop there most mornings, I don’t buy into the whole coffee officionado experience. Specifically, I don’t use coffeetalk in regard to drink sizes. I refuse to say, “I’ll have a vente decaf.” Tall, vente, grande–what’s with that? Can anyone really keep them straight?

So I use AmericanTalk: small, medium, and large. It doesn’t seem to unduly confuse the baristas (er…clerks). When I say, “I’ll have a medium decaf,” their minds are nimble enough that they can automatically translate it mentally and subsequently hit the appropriate button on the cash register.

If English is to be our official language, we need to resist attempts to replace our common usage with strange foreign terms. This, I believe, is important enough to be inserted into the Republican Party Platform.

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