DIY

I have been on a bit of a Do It Yourself kick this month. I built a candle out of an orange, built a pencil holder out of fire wood, built a picture frame from an old pallet and a privacy fence, and turned some nursery boxes into a storage display. 

DIY Pen Holder

I am currently loving the feeling that I get when I am able to build things for myself. It feels good. It feels like I have actually accomplished something with my day! I have found lots of really great websites that tell me how to build some of this stuff. Here is the short video that showed me how to make the Orange Candle. This blog talked about making the Pen Holder. 

After all this awesomeness, I began wondering what else in life might be awesome to learn how to DIY online. I looked up some really cool stuff and some really stupid stuff. Stuff like DIY Tatooing and DIY Tanks. You know what I was not able to find though? How to DIY community change or DIY culture shift. I starting thinking about this. What if people are not changing the world because we are all waiting on someone or something to show us how? Is it possible that I have delayed starting a culture shift in my community because I don't think I can or don't think I know how?!

DIY Orange Candle

Here is the bottom line: We can all change the world. You don't need a video, a step by step guide, or a "How to Change the World for Dummies" book. You already have everything you need. To change the world, you just need to think of something that you can do to help someone else and do it. Don't ask, don't wait, just help someone. 

DIY Boxes

I believe that in many churches, the people that attend the church are waiting for the CHURCH to do something. As it turns out, the CHURCH happens to be you so, hop to it Jack! 


Audacitychurch.tv (the church I am a part of in Wichita, KS) has a principle that it uses a lot. As an organization we believe we are called to only few things. Sunday Worship Experiences, City Groups, and Missions (We call it ImpACT). However, people that are a part of Audacity Church do TONS of things! Just yesterday a bunch of people went to a local community organization and helped them wrap presents for families in need. They didn't need approval, they didn't wait to see if it was ok, they just did something to help. Stop waiting and start doing. 

Question: What are you doing currently to help out your community? What could you do to help out someone you know?

Our Church just did this themselves.  AudacityChurch.tv

PS: The candle only took about 10 mins to make and it is really more of an oil lamp than a candle. The pen holder looks awesome and was done in about 40 mins. The boxes are still being worked on. I'm just sanding them down and painting them to match the apartment decor. I haven't taken a photo of the picture frame yet. Sorry about that. Let me know if you have any great DIY projects going on!

Ninja Fish of Explosive Proportions

Albert Einstein - Brilliant Dude

 “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

― Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein once stated, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." When I read that, I realized that this thought has a ton of implications in the life of a church. 

I often fall into the mistake of judging a persons ability to serve God on how well they can speak, or lead, or sing, or organize, or "insert cliché church activity here". I have realized that at Audacity Church in Wichita, KS you can be a fish, a duck, a monkey, or a friggin lion and it would have no influence on whether or not you could be a Hero at Audacity(Hero (n): someone who acts heroically; a person of noble quality; one that uses personal ability to help others) . 

I am learning that everyone has unique qualities and talents that can all be used to worship God. We have a person who loves facebook so they make facebook events so we can market with social media. We have a man that has a truck so he pulls our trailer full of equipment. We have a girl that takes pictures so she documents our events for our website. We have a man that has years of military experience that guards the kids area to keep them safe. 

Not everyone sings. Not everyone enjoys speaking. But everyone enjoys knowing they can worship God with the talents that He already gave them. I think Church might not be about a pastor ministering to the people, but rather, about the people ministering to each other under the guidance of a pastor.  A pastor cannot reach everyone but an entire Church of ministers has UNLIMITED potential! 

If you are a fish, you are a genius swimmer. If you are a monkey, you are a brilliant tree climber. If you are a lion, lets hear your awesome roar. Whatever God made you good at, do that and let your talent worship your God. 

I would love to get some feedback on this: What abilities do you have that you might not have thought God could use? Do you know anyone or have you ever been judged by your ability to do something you were never designed to do?

What is Your Mission? (Guest Post: Nathan Magnuson)

I try to meet a lot of people and I try to meet awesome people. This guy is pretty much the most awesome guy I have ever met. He has Masters in Organizational Leadership, he is the author of "Thoughts for the Everyday Leader", and he has more goals and aspirations than anyone else I know. Nathan is brilliant, a leader, creative, a visionary, driven, a great friend and mentor, and just an all around fantastic person. Read his thoughts. You'll be better for it!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple years ago I was having coffee with a local pastor in Atlanta.  He recounted to me all the effort he had put into creating a multi-year church leadership program for men but had garnered only a fraction of the interest and participation he had anticipated.  Why wasn’t this more important to them, he lamented to me.  Contrast that conversation with another one I had recently.  At a “career as calling” event at the church I attend, a friend of mine noted, “I’m a teacher.  It’s more than a job to me since I’m always trying to come up with new ways to reach my students, even outside of classroom hours.  Yet when I go to church or small group, I feel they want me to talk about my spiritual needs instead of what consumes the majority of my day-to-day attention.”

Nathan Magnuson

We ask an awful lot from our church members these days.  From their incomes they fund church salaries, building projects, and missions outreach.  After professional and family responsibilities, they give their time to run church programs.  And most are happy to make their contribution.  “Church” certainly would not be able to function without them.  But creating a tug-of-war for involvement is counterproductive.  Is it possible this distraction with everyday responsibilities could be a good thing?

What would it look like for the church to position itself as a mission partner for members as they go about their daily work, recognizing that God has uniquely gifted and strategically positioned them to bring His image to bear in all the different organizations, disciplines, and activities they find themselves a part of?

Andy Stanley says that our pressing needs are often different than our primary need.  But as churches, many times we are quick to address the primary spiritual needs of our communities without investing in the pressing needs they experience every day.  What would happened if we began to see the lay church member, who is intimately involved in solving the pressing needs of the community, as the church’s best chance to reach a community for Christ?

So what does a mission partner do?  A mission partner helps its operators articulate the needs of their mission and then provides support in accomplishing that mission.  But none of that is possible without first seeking to understand the nature of each operator’s mission.  For a teacher, this could mean caring about students and finding new ways to reach all of them with a quality education.  For an advertiser, this could mean finding creative ways to communicate positive messages.  For a law enforcement, military, or intelligence officer, this could mean identifying new security strategies to ensure the safety of the community.  I’m privileged to work for a consulting firm, so for me, this means finding ways to help clients identify strategic initiatives and facilitate positive change in an organized manner.

So much is at stake in each of these individual missions.  Without a quality education, children encounter significant professional and social challenges.  Without positive messages, culture suffers.  Without security, communities live in fear.  Without leadership and organization, firms make rash decisions that bring harm, not good.

People do not exist to serve the church (brick and mortar), the Church (worldwide community of believers) exists to serve people.  We meet the primary spiritual needs by being and sharing the gospel, and we meet pressing needs by bringing God’s image to bear in each setting we find ourselves in.  Moreover, meeting a pressing need is often the best way to earn the opportunity to meet a primary need since it involves investments in hard work, relationships, and positive contributions over time – things lay church members are best positioned to provide.

So how can churches take more of a mission partnering approach?  There is so much that can be said on this topic, but here are a few ideas:

·         Help your members identify the needs they are uniquely burdened for and positioned to reach.  A great event to have at your church is to bring in a speaker to encourage church members to look deeper into the needs they are passionate about meeting.  Then follow it up with facilitated breakout discussions where each attendee is able to journal and share ideas.  Some attendees will already be on point, but for others, this will serve as a starting point.  The support of coaches and more experienced attendees will help to launch them in the direction of their new mission.

·         Spotlight “secular” mission successes from the pulpit.  Giving missionary updates is pretty common, but ignoring successes from the rest of the church members tells a very lopsided story.  What about the missions of the majority of church members who may not be receiving full missions support and working aboard?  Whenever I speak to students, I inevitably try to ask, “If you are on a mission in the area of (business, law, medicine, athletics, etc), doesn’t that make you a missionary as well?”  Sure, worship services only have a limited amount of time, but the need remains.  Find creative ways to celebrate their success stories!

·         Build a networking system that can identify church member associations, skills, and mission activities.  This may not seem that important at first.  But without a means to identify and connect church members together, the needs your church is able to respond to are significantly limited.  If your church becomes aware of a legal need in the community, and it has a group of 20 legal professionals all connected via a church network, sharing the need can be instantaneous.  Also, such sites facilitate support and collaboration among members, such as sharing best practices, thought leadership, updates, and prayer requests.  The older and more experience can teach and support the younger.  Systems can range from an online directory, a Sharepoint website, or a Community of Practices website.  LinkedIn Groups is probably my favorite platform, but many organizations use Yahoo and Google groups as well.

·         Create small groups that address specific needs.  We need small groups that align to biblical topics, sermon series and Christian theology.  I’ve been a part of many of them.  Interest groups can be a great community-builder as well.  (The “Milkshake Monday” summer group I attended was a hoot!)  But we also need action-oriented small groups that form to address specific needs in the community.  Much can be accomplished in just one semester with the right vision and the right people applying the right skills with a sense of responsibility.  Invent something, solve a problem, design and deliver a training course, build something for someone, write a book together, produce a music album.  Don’t wait until you have all the solutions; start a group to get the conversation going.  Ironically, these outward focused groups can sometimes accomplish the most significant inward spiritual growth.

If your church could do just one thing to better partner in the missions of your members this fall, what would it be?

If you’d like to collaborate with me further, please feel free to connect with me via one of the methods below:

nathan@visionchampions.com

www.visionchampions.com

www.nathanmagnuson.blogspot.com

www.linkedin.com/in/nathanmagnuson

Salty

Salt taste good. It adds some flavor to bland foods. Boring fries? Add salt. Dull chips? Add salt. Lame corn? ADD SALT! In most cases, we add some salt to make things go from boring to bazinga. Since most logical people will agree that this is in fact very true, the rest of this blog will be predicated (V. Found or base something on) on this principle: Salt adds flavor. 

This being said, I find it pretty interesting that the bible states that those that follow Christ are "the salt of the earth". 

The BEST kind of salt!

My friend Nate Magnuson recently tweeted, "To be salt, you gotta...preserve the culture, disinfect, and add flavor!" This got me thinking, are Christians all that salty? I mean, when was the last time a non Christ follower came to a Christian in search of some flavor? It seems that in totality, the Church has become what is bland and the world has the flavor. We see churches and Christians pulling from non Christians so they can            access their flavor. I'm pretty sure this was never the plan. Not that Christians have a corner on the creative and "Flavor" market, just that we should be leading the way. 

                                                                                         
                                                                                                   

How long has it been since the Church and Christ followers lead the way in creativity, art, ingenuity, innovation, music, and just plain flavor? There was a time when we had flavor. The printing press was invented to print bibles. The Sistine Chapel was painted to add beauty to a Church. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote much of his music while serving as a Church organist. In their day, these people were the bee's knee's. Somewhere along the line, we lost the flavor though.  

We (Christ followers and the Church) have gotten good at the disinfecting part. We know how to challenge corruption in many cases, but we have gotten so incredibly bland that people have lost interest. I think in many cases we have just stopped trying. Church architecture mostly sucks these days. Church web design looks like a hot mess in most cases. The music many Churches ask us to worship too is a poor replication of something that was a  sub-par creation in the first place. None of these things are in and of themselves indicative of a lack of a biblical perspective. However, when taken in on a wide scale, we can easily identify a lack of flavor. No creativity. A bland attitude. 

Here is my solution: STOP IT. For real. Stop. Stop believing it is ok to stifle creativity. Quite accepting a lack of vision and passion. Get away from people that shout that stuff has to always be the way it was in days gone by. There is a new theme for us. Flavor. Add flavor. Be what the world craves. You have the creative, passionate, holy, righteous, innovative, and miraculous spirit of God living in you. It's about time that we start acting like we have something the world does't. Be Salty my friends.

Church is Gay

Only 15% of US churches are reproducing. This is not a good thing. In fact it's kinda gay.

Hear my logic on this one:
Many churches spend a lot of time raising a ruckus about homosexuality.While, this blog post is not intended to frame my views for you on homosexuality, I will be throwing the term around rather losely, so if you are easily offended, now is a good time to quit reading this.This is meant as an object lesson on growth.

In many of these churches you will hear that being gay is unnatural, it's weird, that homosexuals can’t reproduce, and therefor being gay is just not right. Here is my point. For the most part, Church is gay. Well, 85% of Churches, statistically speaking, are gay. How are Churches gay you ask? Well, most Churches don't reproduce.  

Many Christians will rant about how wrong homosexuality is, but 85% of our churches are not reproducing them selves and that seems, according to a common argument, gay.

 How is this ok? Do we think it was Christs plan to save a few Christians and then have them only hang out with each other and make no attempted to love people that are different than them? How is that not gay? The Church is dying because we are not, as the kingdom of Christ, reproducing ourselves. Each church individually is gaining weight, but not reproducing! The church must stop carrying the attitude that they can be self-absorbed and only focus on existing churchs, or the church will continue to decline.

If a dude were to only hang out with other dudes, talk about how wrong women were, have house parties for only dude friends, and never interacted with the other sex, people might start to question their sexuality a bit. Why do we treat the Church and Christians differently in that line of thought? Why is it often ok for Christians to only hang with other Christians, talk about how horrible non-Christ followers are, have parties for only their "Christian" friends, and refuse hang out with people that are not already Christians? That just seems to be hypocritical a little bit. While it is not wrong to hang out with only Christians, its probably not what Christ had in mind when he died for all mankind. I think the news of Christ is to be lived, shared, and gifted. 

Have you noticed that churches often hang out with other churches and focus on their relationship with existing churches, rather than investing time and resources in new growth? This must stop. As a Big “C” Church, we must devote energy toward growing not just individually, but locationally as well. If the Church does not put a greater emphasis on growing itself, it will continue to die off. I'm not saying it's WRONG for a church to not plant new churches, nor am I saying it is WRONG for a Christian to hang out with other Christians. I AM saying that if things do not shift some of these habits, we will severely limit the potential and ability of  the gospel of Christ to be spread to people that need to hear it. 

Please note: I love my Church and I love my Christ following friends, but my heart aches for the millions that don't know the love of Christ and that are living far from God because they have never experienced life in Christ. I want them to have a brighter future. Please also note that I love your Church too. God's kingdom is way bigger than me or a church, it's a movement. This post is not meant to criticize, just to inspire us to reach higher. Whatever your church is called to do, do it well!

Thanks for your time.

The Superbowl and why Church should be more like it.

As I informed all my passionate blog readers (Who am I kidding. There are 3 of you. Joni, Greg, and Amber. My mom doesn't even read this blog!) a few blogs ago, I would be blogging about the Superbowl. Now, you don't have to be a sports lover to enjoy the Superbowl, and you don't need to know a thing about sports to enjoy this blog post either. This is about something else all together.

I recently (last month) heard a fellow lamenting the fact that millions of people go out of their mind crazy about the Superbowl each year and for one Sunday a year, they get into it. There are parties, people come together to cheer for opposing teams, there is food, great commercials, and it is a generally festive occasion. I tried to logically think about the reasons the Superbowl would inspire such a robust following and why most Churches in the United States are usually met with very lackluster results on Sunday mornings. Now it all makes sense.

Each year the National Football League invests millions, perhaps billions of dollars into this one event. People pay between $2,200 -$6,900 for a ticket (http://www.gotickets.com/sports/nfl/super_bowl.php). Commercial air time for this event is the most expensive airtime that can be purchased each year. As a result, companies put out their most expensive and or best advertisements of the year during this event. Because of the massive numbers of people watching, the NFL can book pretty much any band it wants because no musician in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to play for that large an audience. The teams that are actually playing the game? Oddly, it doesn't really matter. I mean, don't get me wrong here, they are the best the NFL has in that given year. However, never once have I been asked, "Are you going to watch the Superbowl this year" , and my response been, "No, I don't really care for either team." The teams are irrelevant. The SUPERBOWL, is the key here.

To put my point more succinctly, the Superbowl is awesome because people  role out the best and brightest of their creative genius, people spare no expense in creating the best image they can, the football league puts out the best teams they possibly can, and it is an event that brings people together in support of a common theme, the Superbowl.

Now if we replace the term Superbowl, with Church, wouldn't this make a world of difference on Sunday morning?! If we gave our very best creativity and genius each week in worship to God. If we spared no expense in our attempts to reach out to those that are far from Christ, what would happen?  What if we endeavored to give our very best abilities back to God as an act of worship on Sunday? If the musicians on stage had the mentality that this is the ONE day they can't afford to give a mediocre effort, would that change the way we worshiped?

I am not saying that Church should be reduced to a sporting event or a form of entertainment. Far from that! I am espousing the idea that Church should be so huge and important to us that we cannot afford to give it anything but our best. Jesus Christ DIED for our sin so that we could be redeemed from our selves! It just seems silly to me that Sunday morning roles around and we view it as a chance to "Go to Church." The Sunday Worship Experience should be the part of the week that gets our focus, our passion, our creativity, and our emotion. I think it is maybe time for us as a generation of Christ followers to start giving God our best and stop giving him whats left.

Now how cool is Church going to be when we are all giving it our best!?