Change is a crazy thing sometimes.  As children, change is hard.  As a young adult we don’t seem to necessarily mind change or at least we seem to be better at coping with it.  But it seems to me that many times as we get older change gets hard again.  Last year I went for a job interview at a restaurant while my wife and I were in between churches.  As I was filling out my application and waiting for an interview an older guy came up to me and told me that they have a “no facial hair other than mustaches” policy.  I was a little caught off guard, but knew this was not gonna be the place for me.

• Technology changes and it is difficult to keep up with it.
• Music changes and our favorite bands start gaining air time on the classical stations.
• Clothing changes and we realize that our wife beaters and jams aren’t cool anymore.
• Hair styles change and people start looking at our mullet and mustache attitude funny.
• Church methods change and we just want to go back to the way we have “always” done it.

Each new generation wants to (re)invent their own style (which is generally a mutation of several generations before them).  We are constantly looking for bigger, better, faster.  We want new and fresh.  So at what point in our lives do we stop this search?  When do we stop looking for and implementing change?  Do we just assume that because it worked for us it will work for the next generation?

Technology, music, clothes, hair and many other things look completely different than they did for our parents and than theirs did for their parents.  Knowing this is true, why do we as church leaders all over the world assume that it doesn’t apply to the church as well?  As Craig Groeschel always drilled into our heads at LifeChurch.tv, the methods change but the message never does.

Disclaimer: I am not always good at changing.  I like my routines.  I like my comforts.  But I do hope and pray that I can continue to wrap my mind around changing methods in order to reach those that the old “style” isn’t hitting.  If I do get to that point, I hope that I have the smarts to step down from my role and let someone else in!

Do you accept, embrace and implement change?

What are you doing to change the methods from the old to reach the new with the only constant in our universe, Jesus Christ?

Last week at Kingsfield we dodged a potential insanely crazy Sunday with a short setup crew, one staff member gone, another could have been and my wife possibly going into labor.  That would have been one “wing it” Sunday.  But, we made it through!  Now another week has passed and we still have no baby.  So here is our setlist for today!

Let God Arise – Chris Tomlin – Passion: God Of This City
Sweetly Broken – Jeremy Riddle – Full Attention
Came To My Rescue – Hillsong United – United We Stand
Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United – Look To You

Should be another great Sunday!  Please keep us in your prayers as we are staring down our due date this week!  We could have a baby at any moment!  That’s pretty crazy.  Am I old enough for that? (Maybe mature enough or grown up enough would be the better question.)

There was an online conference yesterday put on by the Leadership Network called Aha!  I didn’t get to spend much time watching the conference because there was too much going on in my office, but I did get to hear most of one of the speakers (each speaker had a 6 minute video).  I don’t even know who the guy was, but what he said was really good.

Saul had taken the army out to fight the Philistines.  Enter the famous Goliath.  Now enter shepherd boy David.  He quickly gets fed up with Goliath’s crap and knowing that God is on his side decides to go out and fight Goliath.  As David is getting ready, Saul tries to get him to wear armor that belongs to and fits Saul.  The armor is far too big and bulky so David tells the king that he will go without (that and he has God on his side).  Then David proceeds to completely destroy a giant with a sling shot.

The point of the speaker yesterday was simply this.  Stop trying to fight in someone else’s armor.  It was made for them, not you.  It fits them.  It may provide some sort of brief comfort or protection, but you will quickly find out you are dead in the water that way.  I think David understood this.  He didn’t try to fight a very experienced and huge opponent someone else’s way.  He did it how he knew to do it.  He followed God’s calling on his life and not someone else’s.  This is massively important in ministry.  If God has called you into ministry, He has called YOU into ministry.

He hasn’t called me to be Billy Graham.

He hasn’t called me to be Chris Tomlin.

He has called me to be Brook James.

He has called you to be you!

I’m not supposed to be anyone other than me.  No matter what your role is in the church, you are there to do it as YOU!  This was something that took me a good while to learn.  I spent so much time trying to be what I thought everyone else wanted me to be, I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t fulfilling the calling God put on me.  Later I figured out that I was trying to fight my battles with someone else’s armor on and it didn’t fit!  I could fake it for a little while, but not for long.  Turns out the best way to minister is to do it as you.  The best way to lead is to lead as you.  God made you to be, lead, minister, love, etc. as you!

Are you leading as you?  Are you or someone else trying to get you to lead as someone else?  Maybe you are just doubting yourself.  Maybe you just can’t figure out why your ministry isn’t exactly like that person’s.  Just remember.  While there are always things to learn from other people and ministries, God calls you into YOUR role.  Do it as you.

We are getting ever closer to the birth of my baby girl, but it doesn’t look like it will impede today’s music for Kingsfield Church!  Should be a great day with a gold medal USA vs. Canada hockey game, a Sunday afternoon nap ritual and an anniversary dinner with my beautiful wife who has inexplicably decided to keep me around for year 3!  So here’s what we are singing as we focus on keeping Christ the goal and therefore decreasing ourselves and letting Him increase!

Glory To God Forever – Fee – Hope Rising
Revelation Song – Kim Walker-Smith – Consumed
Center – Charlie Hall – Flying Into Daybreak
All Because Of Jesus – Fee – We Shine

Today has the potential to be a very interesting day.  Last Monday I had all four of my wisdom teeth cut out.  Unfortunately that isn’t just a two day recovery and then move on with your life.  I wish so much that it was.  I have what I believe to be dry socket in the bottom left side as well as that fact that I can’t even open my mouth one inch yet.  So add the pain, inability to open wide and 4 surgery spots all together and singing all morning could be interesting.  I have fears of ripping open stitches and bleeding all over the place while in the middle of the worship set at Kingsfield Church.  Wow that would be crazy.  Anyway, here’s the set!

Here Is Our King – David Crowder*Band – A Collision Or (3 + 4 = 7)
Sweetly Broken – Jeremy Riddle – Full Attention
Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United – Look To You
One Way – Hillsong – For All You’ve Done

Everyone who is working in any church is doing so for one main reason.  We do so to see God made known through changed lives.  It all boils down to changed lives.  If God isn’t changing the lives of the people coming, then I would be willing to be we aren’t following His will in it.  That doesn’t mean that 500 people have to become brand new Christians each week (not counting that one person who always has a hand raised to receive Christ).  It could be just one person.  It could be a couple getting their marriage right.  Or maybe one kid seeing the role model that he doesn’t get at home.  However it is taking place, changed lives are what we hope for.

But is seems to me that sometimes we get caught up in the methods of what we think changed lives look like.  It only happens when someone walks down the aisle or when every head is bowed and every eye closed and someone raises their hand or when the salvation prayer is repeated back out loud.  Right?  Well, it seems to me that those are just methods that we have stamped on to the changing of lives.  I don’t ever remember Jesus asking everyone in the room to close their eyes and then if someone wanted to make a decision that they had to make eye contact or raise their hand.  According to John, it doesn’t take any of that.

“It’s urgent that you listen carefully to this: Anyone here who believes what I am saying right now and aligns himself with the Father, who has in fact put me in charge, has at this very moment the real, lasting life and is no longer condemned to be an outsider. This person has taken a giant step from the world of the dead to the world of the living.

John 5:24

All it takes is believing in Him.  A person doesn’t have to stand up and say the words “I believe”.  They don’t have to go down to the front, be anointed with oil and then transfer their membership/transfer papers/letter of intent/resume to be a member of the church.  They just have to believe in the truth of Jesus Christ and put Him in charge.  Doesn’t mean the other things are wrong.  They may be great for each individual church as it may take more commitment or faith or belief or whatever for someone to make that kind of a bold statement.  But all they have to do is believe!  The rest is all well and good, but regardless of what each church’s process is, changed lives happen in the heart and start with believing.

So as you go about your week or your weekend, remember that all it may take is just showing someone the truth of God’s love for us to really change a life.  Maybe you need to change your direction back toward God again.  All you have to do is believe in Him and His truths.  He is there for you.  You don’t have to wait until the next time you are asked a specific question during the invitation time on Sunday that tugs at the heart.  Believe in Him.  He changes lives.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Fortunately, I didn’t forget that.  The wives don’t tend to like that.  This year it lands on a Sunday so it makes a surprise Valentine’s morning a little more difficult.  So, we went with an early Valentine’s.  But since it is Sunday, here is our setlist at Kingsfield Church!

All Because Of Jesus – Fee – We Shine
Revelation Song – Kim Walker-Smith – Consumed
Jesus Saves – Carlos Whittaker – Carlos Whittaker EP
One Way – Hillsong – For All You’ve Done
Glory To God Forever – Fee – Hope Rising

If you watched TV at any point from 1983 – 1994 you have been blessed.  No, I don’t mean because of Transformers, Smurfs and Thundercats.  While those were equally blessing they are not the subject today.  There was one place in particular that was really a bright star.  PBS.  PBS had some wonderfully educational programs, many of which were actually relatively entertaining to the young mind.  But if you had any artistic streak in you at all, you have seen this guy.  

He was known for his hair.

He was known for his work.

He was known for his sayings.

That’s right.  Bob Ross.  Mr. White Afro himself.

Mr. Happy Trees.  Mr. Happy Everything.

It didn’t take a very long pause on the PBS channel during one of his shows to get drawn in and hooked waiting to see how the painting would turn out…or how many times he would say “happy”.  Just recently, I was thinking about how I haven’t seen those shows on in a really long time and all of a sudden the other day, one happened to be on.  Needless to say I sat there and watched for the entire painting.  As I watched I realized that there are some really great things to learn from Bob Ross (outside of how to paint).  Here are 5 things every person and organization should learn from Bob Ross.

1. Attitude – Bob Ross had an amazing attitude.  Like I said before he was Mr. Happy Everything.  During one show he told a story about it.  ”I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’ That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.”  He understood that attitude is a decision and obviously he chose to have a happy one.  I have heard him say that you need dark to show the light.  How many times when things are going just perfect do we stop and think about how much we are not in control?  It is a very easy thing to overlook.  When those hard times hit our lives they show us how great the good times are and that we are not in control of them.
2. Hair – He was the king of the white afro.  That’s a big reason we loved him!  I mean seriously, who doesn’t love an awesome white ‘fro?!
3. Vision – Many people want to start something, but just stare at the blank canvas and don’t know where to start or where to go.  Ross was not that way.  He saw mountains, trees, lakes, snow, cabins, bushes, animals and more when he looked at the blank canvas.  He had vision for where he was going.  He didn’t have all the steps planned out, but he was never lacking for vision of what he was creating.  As the leaders of our families, churches and companies, we need vision.  We don’t need to have every single step laid out before us ahead of time, but we must have vision.  Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
4. Decisive – With any project it is far too simple to drag it out because you can’t make up your mind.  Maybe you just talk about solutions or problems but then don’t do anything about them.  Watch one show and you will see how decisive he is.  Should I put a lake here?  Yes.  Done.  He isn’t constantly measuring to make sure his happy trees are going to be best here or over there.  He gathers the information and makes a well educated decision.  I know I could learn from that.
5. Generosity – Ross gave.  He gave his time to teach those of us who are NOT painters.  He gave away his paintings to the PBS stations to help them out.  He gave his time to help animals as well.  He went above what was expected of him.  We should to the same.  We have been blessed.  We would live in a different place if we all generously gave more than the minimum.

Bob Ross was a very interested dude.  One that I would definitely love to have met.  Maybe one of these days I’ll get a Joy Of Painting video and learn how to make happy trees.  But until then, I guess I’ll just have to learn other things from Bob Ross.

I have never really known much of a world with one church.  All my life it has been a Baptist church or Lutheran or Catholic or a whatever church.  It seems that we live in a church world that likes to be divided.  We like to be split up.  We like to have competition.  And we don’t like sharing.

This isn’t the first time I have thought about this or blogged about it.  A while back I wrote about the same idea in One Church, Multiple Locations but last night it hit me again.  As I was reading through John it was hard to miss.  Jesus was praying for the disciples and made it clear that He wanted them to be unified and working as one.

The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, So they might be one heart and mind with us. Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me. The same glory you gave me, I gave them, So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—I in them and you in me. Then they’ll be mature in this oneness, And give the godless world evidence That you’ve sent me and loved them In the same way you’ve loved me.

John 17:21-23

It’s kinda hard to miss that, yet somehow our church world seems to have done that.  We don’t team up.  We don’t share resources.  We split over stupid things.  And all the while, Jesus wants us to be a team!  There are lots of churches that understand this and cling to it, but it feels like the majority don’t.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have different churches or all just be cookie cutter churches of one.  I’m all for different styles.  That is good.  Reach your community in the way they are reachable!  But when it comes down to we would rather fight over whether you should completely submerge or sprinkle someone in an act of obedience.  We want to get caught up in whether drums are godly.

Seems to me that for the sake of the ultimate cause, we should start learning this lesson.  How are we supposed to show the world the love of Christ if they can’t see it in how we act?  It’s like learning the keys to a strong healthy marriage from someone that has been divorced three times.  Or getting weight loss advice from someone that outweighs you in triple digits.  I’m just saying.

The weeks are just flying by.  We have the remaining weeks until the baby lined up and are just knocking them down.  Only five more to go (assuming the due date is correct).  Holy crap!  But with each new week comes a new opportunity to be a part of something much bigger than me!  Here’s our Sunday Setlist.

Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United – Look To You
Came To My Rescue – Hillsong United – United We Stand
A Reprise – Hillsong United – United We Stand
Everything Glorious – David Crowder*Band – Remedy
Glory To God Forever – Fee – Glory To God Forever – Single

Should be a great week!