I’m gonna let it shine!
I totally remember singing this song as a child. I loved to sing.
Our Sunday School teachers sang it with us almost every week.
I agree we’re supposed to be a light, but let’s think about that second verse for a moment…
“Hide it under a bush, Oh No! I’m gonna let it shine!”
Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but even I know hiding a fire under a bush won’t put out the flame. You’ll just have a BIG FIERY SHRUB and probably catch your clothes on fire. Look out lil’ children! And while we’re on the subject of open flames, “Who encouraged these children to play with fire?!?” Fire Marshall Bill would not approve.
So big news of the “yet to be released” new iPhone being left for people to find and share about on the internet so Apple has some buzz going on lost in a bar, and Gizmodo has all the specs here (it looks lovely).
Oh, and ht to dave for turning me to this gem of a video.
These guys make me want to DJ again (with my dirty old vans, ha).
Inked. Branded. Marked.
What does it look like to be marked by God?
By His love, healing, restoring power?
A couple of weeks ago we launched a series titled, “Inked.” We’ve been looking at the healings of Jesus. People’s lives being touched (branded) by Jesus, they are healed, and life as they know it is never the same.
As we filmed for the series bumper at Fuzion Ink, we hung out and talked with the artists (one of which attends Forefront with his family) and it was so cool to hear their stories.
How life has moved them.
How their lives and their clients stories intertwine through this artistic medium.
How a community of artists who many people are scared of just because the way they look (craziness!), is actually an amazing family of people who look out for one another.
Inked. Branded. Marked.
What does it look like to be marked by God?
By His love, healing, restoring power?
Last week we launched this series, “Inked” which is an extension of the scenes we see throughout the New Testament of the Bible. People’s lives being touched (branded) by Jesus, they are healed, and life as they know it is never the same.
As we filmed for the series bumper at Fuzion Ink, we hung out and talked with the artists (one of which attends Forefront with his family) and it was so cool to hear their stories.
How life has moved them.
How their lives and their clients stories intertwine through this artistic medium.
How a community of artists who many people are scared of just because the way they look (craziness!), is actually an amazing family of people who look out for one another.
One of the first guys we caught up with is Forefront’svery own, Dave Lukeson. Enjoy.
Forefront meets 10 a.m. Sundays at Ocean Lakes High School.
Fore info and directions check out: http://www.forefront.org
Between the challenge laid down this past Sunday (post coming tomorrow), the Women’s Retreat and the Baptisms on Sunday… it’s be a terrific week for celebrating how God moves through the people of Forefront Church.
Check out the videos from things happening this past week:
“…Come as you are.”
A news report of a church here in VA. All I have to say is that I will not be introducing this type of service anytime soon at Forefront (to which my wife and everyone else will scream, “THANK YOU!”).
Man, Oh Man.
Try getting that image out of your head. Ha. Good Luck.
We’ve batted around the how, why, pros, cons, and even a little glimpse into the process of what it takes to do a streaming service online. But, now to the real question at hand:
“Is the ‘online church’ experience- church?”
It depends. But in most cases- No.
Weighing the pros and cons against scripture leads me to believe a few things about solely attending an online service:
The Definition Of Church: The definition/picture of the “church” according to scripture points to live, face to face, living life together, rubbing elbows in service, worshiping the Creator together, kind of interaction. This does not happen with “online church.” Though some will debate this fact. There is no substitute for the local church. Now whether it takes form in the idea of “house church” or “congregational gathering style church,” this local gathering paints a clearer Biblical picture of how God’s church should move and breathe in the community.
The Accountability Of The Live Interaction: Accountability is almost vacant if not totally unavailable. Too many people we encounter through the ministry God’s called us to do here are introverted by nature and would attend online without ever saying a word, chatting a phrase, or interacting with the people involved. The argument could be made that these same people wouldn’t walk through the doors of your church. We have TONS of introverts and new people who attended every week. It’s all about the environment/culture you create. They won’t stay anonymous for long in a building with friendly people prompting them to move to another level with God.
The Practice Of Spiritual Disciplines: The practicing of spiritual disciplines is difficult even within the local church being together weekly and seeing one another face to face- with online church this grows exponentially. This new embodiment of the “online church” can restrain many people from freely expressing and flourishing in their spiritual disciplines. Loving, giving, serving, worshiping, community, communion, and the list goes on. These are things done with others. Now granted being online, you have “other people” in the experience, but you are not interacting with them in the same way face to face discussion happens. For instance, I love my wife. We talk every day. We also use Twitter, Facebook, and texts to communicate. If I cut ties to all face to face interaction with my wife and just use technology- our relationship will fade (and I will fade). She is built for physical interaction and I cannot fulfill my duty as a husband if we’re cut off face to face. I cannot practice it. Likewise, I am built for acts of service and I cannot serve her the way God built me if we do not see one another. Our disciplines as a couple work better and we grow in them when we are interacting in real life. Online church does not afford people the opportunity to flex their spiritual muscles and do what God built them to do.
The Idolatry Of The New & Improved: I love technology, but even in my own life I have to weigh the amount of time, energy, and resources that are being placed on computers, cell, mp3 players, TV, DVD’s, etc. It could go on forever. As we grow as a culture and advance ever so quickly into new and exciting technologies, my fear is that we could be whisked away by the shiny new toys of a culture heading away from the Creator. Now, I’m not saying any of these “things” are bad in and of themselves, but when we begin to rely on power, bandwidth, site analytics, user patches & updates, and tools that are supposed to make our lives “easier” instead of relying on the one and only God of the Universe… we are walking on dangerous ground. As a church we flirt with this technology line on a constant basis and have really had hard talks about what it looks like to scale back things so we can always know we’re relying more on God than the almighty Apple Computer. It’s a tough place to be in a “show” and “special effects” culture. People are waiting to see the glitz and glamor of something amazing, and as leaders many are trying to feed them what they “want.” but what if we stepped back and focused more on what they “need?”
I know some people who are doing streaming services and people’s lives are being changed. I think that is great. Any time people can encounter God- that’s a good thing. But, my fear is that we might be chasing the trends too closely and it could backfire on us as we try to do the work God has called us to do. We should weigh everything against the Bible and see where it stacks up. As for Forefront Church, we won’t be going the live online route. In times of a crunch we will use technology as a way to keep the message from not being heard at all, but nothing can imitate or replace the local church.
Jason *over and out*
*I’ll take questions via Twitter, Facebook, & the blog and do a wrap up post from things you have interest in talking about
We’ll get to the conclusion in a bit, but we received a few emails asking what videos we played besides the live feed- and how did we do it? Well, Livestream allows you to insert your own videos (1gb or under) as well as YouTube video content. You insert those into a playlist and bounce between those and your live feed(s) you have coming in.
Oh and here are the videos we used during the online service:
We played this video after talking about people being home in their PJ’s, enjoying breakfast, eating bacon… MMmmmm, bacon!
We played this video right before taking our online offering (http://giving.forefront.org) and afterwards talked about our small groups, we call the “Gel Groups.” The promos like these are always fun and create a buzz about small groups that more often than not leads someone to check out a group for the first time. It can be pretty intimidating going into someone’s home you don’t know and sharing things about your life you’ve never shared before. Our prayer is that things like this take the edge off of their worries (we know people will say evil things [and have] about our church for showing/making commercials like this- luckily, God knows our hearts and intentions, so enjoy).
We’ve rattled off some of the pros of streaming church online, but what about the cons? We had overwhelmingly strong/positive feedback from our experience with it, but it still begs to answer the question:
“Is the ‘online church’ experience- church?”
Let’s look at some of the cons many people have debated for a moment:
Gives people the opportunity to be completely anonymous. This allows the individual no accountability for things going on in their life. I’ve met one too many people (within the church who attend regularly and are engaged in ministry) who have a hard time with accountability. Amplify that exponentially when someone is sitting alone in their living room with no one to talk to except a chat client, Facebook, or Twitter.
Lack of true community/gathering of the saints. This is where it gets a little tricky. The definition of “community” is being debated quite a bit in the Christians circles with the birth of social media. In my study of the Bible, where two or more are gathered, God is in their midst. That being said, online interaction is not the same as physical handshakes, face to face convos over coffee, discussions in a living room about faith, or worship service/gatherings where a collective body engages the living God. There aren’t many trying to argue that online services are “more engaging and impacting” than a live physical interaction with a church. It’s like the birth of “E-Readers.” I love the idea. Carrying around my entire library with a small device and read them whenever I want? Awesome! But, there is something about a physical book. The feel, pages, smell, turning to a new slice of information, the cover art, etc. It just gets me. The reading experience is more engaging to me with a physical book. In many ways, I lose the story & lifeblood when I turn to the “techno version.” In the same way, we lose a great deal of the engagement factor when we attend “online services” as opposed to a physical campus. We also turn away (to what extent is up the person) from the early church’s example for us to gather together weekly for communion (breaking of bread remembering Jesus’ death) and the Apostle’s teaching (Biblical doctrines for the church body, taught in the Bible). See here and here.
Temptation to give in to your ADHD. You know it’s true. You watch some, pay a bill online. Watch some, check a few emails, update Twitter status, view friends statuses on Facebook. Watch some… you get the idea. One of the comments we got back was that the chat client to the right of the video was pretty distracting. Through the music portion we aimed at asking people questions about the songs and how God was moving in their lives. During the message we stepped back to we could… engage with the message. That is when the chat client went a bit out of control. People would hop in and it was like a scene from Cheers, “Norm!” the chatters would rave as people jumped in. Part of it was cool because it was a Forefront love-fest, with all kinds of comments about how “cool” “rad” or “awesome” the church is. I enjoyed that, but that is not why we are the church. Church moves, lives, and breathes to be about God and about others. And with the temptation to go to ESPN.com, check your online banking, or order a pizza to be there by the time service is over- it can be a bit too much to handle for many people. The focus can get lost. That is never good. God tells us our worship should be orderly (1 Corinthians 14), because everyone there might have something to say, a song to sing, a word to preach, etc. Let’s do this in a way that isn’t distracting the others around us. “Online services” have the capability (not always, but they can) to do just that, distract us from the true message.
Confines people from truly practicing spiritual disciplines. I might get blasted for this one. We were built to love, serve, give, and worship. A computer screen does not provide the same environment and place to express those. Want to serve in an area of ministry?A computer screen makes it difficult to serve. Want to love someone else who is having a hard time across town? It’s hard to know about it when physical proximity is only through a LAN connection. Want to worship God through song? Many find it awkward to sing to their screen, turning what is supposed to be our engaging with the Creator into a “spectator sport” much like the Super Bowl or the next show at the Norva (venue here in the 7-5-7). This was not meant to be. Want to give to the work of God’s church? Well, statically speaking- online services don’t produce much/if any giving by their weekly attenders (via LifeChurch.tv seminar with 4 leading churches doing web-based services on a weekly basis). We saw this to be true when we did our online service. Our weekly average giving is $9-10k a week to rent facilities, pay staff, rent office space, reach our community. When we looked at the final numbers, we received roughly 1/4 of that number. OUCH. How do we reach our community? Pay staff? Rent offices, etc? The trend with online services is that it deprives people from experiencing the full potential of practicing the spiritual disciplines God calls them to. We were built to love,worship, & experience God and spiritual disciplines allow us to move closer to God. They are not what save us, that’s God’s grace alone, but these practices help us draw near to Him.
Stretches the definition of church to a place that is fairly uncomfortable… for many. With the things mentioned above, it begins to paint a picture of what the church is supposed to be (according the the Bible). With video venues, online services, and new technology birthing every day- we are going to see the definition of church discussed, debated, tampered with, and trampled on.
So, we still haven’t said one way or the other… “Is the ‘online church’ experience- church?”
You’ll get my conclusion in the next post.
