Incessant Rambling

The Minister of Worship and Arts at church sent me an email very similar to that yesterday. Well, that’s how I read it. It really just said “can you do lunch?” My reply simply asked for more information so I could better be prepared for the reaming I was expecting to receive. He wanted to talk about an upcoming worship concert, the band, our technical ministry team, and lastly, dealing with criticism from church members. So we met at California Pizza Kitchen for lunch.
It ended up being an amazing discussion about passion, worship and ministry. My respect for this guy went up considerably. You see, we’re fighting a not-so-unique battle in our church. The church is a pretty strict Southern Baptist congregation, founded in 1959 and has a pretty fair number of charter members still around. We serve up two services, a traditional and a contemporary to try to minister to those charter members as well as the community in which we live. It’s a very delicate balance.

There have been very few times in my life that I’ve felt a very strong calling from God to do something. The most recent (besides starting The Company), was marrying The Wife. Here’s what I’ve learned about myself during those times. I’m an idiot. I say “okay, God, cool. Now you’ve called me, I’ll take it from here.” See the problem?

Here’s what else I’ve learned. If I get out of the way, step out of the boat, and let God do His thing with me, success is inevitable. I can’t fail.

How does this relate to my lunch? Part of what he wanted to do was simply encourage me (something I desperately needed). He knows the struggles we’re facing there financially, gaining acceptance, and finding passionate servants to help us lead. My response to him went something like this, “I know God is leading every thing that I do as part of our ministry. The criticism is one of two things – constructive or Satan – and I turn it over to God to help me discern. If we are going to truly make a difference in our community, we must step out our comfort zone as a church and follow His lead.” This is the only way I can stay in my current position, put in the hours I do, and take the criticism I do – because He is calling me to do so.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been more confident of what it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

This is probably worse than not launching at all, but I figured I’d jump on the preemptive marketing bandwagon since we’re about a month behind schedule on getting the EMG website live. So, we launched a hokey little splash page over at Evermind Media Group dot com today. Feel free to add your email address to the list to be notified of the official launch and to receive our (hopefully) monthly newsletters.

Update: There were some annoying layout bugs that were fixed this morning. So much for thorough testing at 2am.

We made a new addition to our family today in the form of a 12-week-old Jack Russel Terrier. His name is Commissioner Jax Buck (named after famed Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck – the “Commissioner” part is just to make him feel special), or Jax for short.

We know what you’re thinking… “A Jack Russell Terrier? Aren’t those the really hyper dogs.” Yes, but not this one. Well, not yet anyway. He hasn’t made a sound (except when we tried to put him to bed tonight) and all he’s really done all day is sleep in our laps. No problem there.

See the pics over at Flickr.

Well, I’ve still got a ton of work to do, but I figure I’ll put out the official word today and update when everything’s complete (website, biz cards, etc).

As the couple of you who read this are aware, I jumped ship and went out on my own back in June, 2005. It has been an extremely interesting ride thus far. As of January 1, 2005, I am doing business as Evermind Media Group, LLC. The plan for EMG had originally been to do what I know, and stick with web design & development as my primary focus. That changed sometime late last year.

As you’ll be hearing much more about, Evermind Media Group, LLC now has two main divisions. One is focused solely on web design & development, while the other focuses on my One True Passion — supporting The Ministry by helping to provide The Message in a Relevant Way.

Right out of high school, I invested some hefty cash into a small production company that supported small concerts and clubs in the area by providing sound, video & lighting for concerts, etc. I also booked & managed several local & regional artists. I’ve always dreamt of going back to that, but to be honest, the money just isn’t as good as IT.

For the bulk of last year, my time was spent coordinating the retrofitting of the main worship center at First Baptist Church Ellisville with a state-of-the-art sound system to replace the well-used, long-overdue system that had been in use since the ’80s. Throughout that process I re-discovered my love for technical production and found a gaping void in The Ministry as it relates to sound, video & lighting.

So, this year brings about some new challenges, which I’m tremendously excited about. The primary effort will be given towards education. I’ll be doing on-site training, teaching several seminars, speaking at workshops and conferences and travelling the country supporting ministry efforts as they attempt to reach their communities in new and exciting ways. The client list is quickly building, and I’ve signed on with a few electricians in your area and a large A/V contractor as a subcontractor to add some ministry-related training to their service-base as well. This area of ministry-based consulting and training is probably more exciting than the technical training.

Once the website is up for Evermind Media Group, LLC, you’ll be able to learn much more about the specifics of this new business and the services offered. I can’t wait.

When I made the decision earlier this year to jump ship from my day job and become self-employed, I had a solid mission and a somewhat solid strategy to achieve that mission. It’s been an interesting six months since. Things have moved much faster than I had prepared for. Fast not necessarily meaning workload, but fast in the development of some ideas that I had planned to hold off on for about a year. Let me explain.

My interests lie in a vast number of areas, from science & technology to music & art to religion & philosophy. I laid out several business opportunities for myself when planning my future and prioritized them in ways that, in the end, I could do what I love and love what I do. The desire was to build an empire that touched on all three of the general areas mentioned above. Given my career for the last decade, I decided to start with science & technology and begin to build a foundation for the other two through various resources.

What’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that my conservative approach was squarely [insert violent behavior here] by true passion. As I started building Phase I of The Empire, I found my focus drifting to Phases II & III. It quickly became clear that I wanted to do so much more than build pretty and effective websites. Add to that a few convenient opportunities that were basically dropped in my lap that tend to be Phase III opportunities, and here I sit — scrambling to figure out how to accomplish all three at once, under one umbrella.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally stoked out of my mind. But you try and summarize how you’re going to offer website design & development, worship technology (sound, video & lighting) training & support, and general church strategy consulting under one roof. When I step back and look at the big picture, there is an obvious route to take, but does it make sense from a business perspective? Stay tuned and find out with me.

I spent last week on a big boat in the middle of the Caribbean. It was a much needed refresher. Now that I’m back, I hope to actually live up to a lot of the promises I’ve made over the past few months. Keep your eyes peeled for some pretty exciting announcements from this space.

For lack of a better topic, I’ll talk about the biggest thing on my mind these days – the St. Louis Cardinals. Tony La Russa’s style of managing reminds me so much of my little league days. I was on a solid team of great players known as the Pond Bears (yes, we heard all the Bad News Bears jokes). We lacked the stardom, but we were a solid group of best friends, focused on the fundamentals of baseball. We were ranked pretty high too. After the Bears broke up going into high school, I ended up on a few random teams that were made up of a very eclectic group ranging from power hitters, great pitchers and extremely fast runners. Did we win? Yeah. Was it memorable? Not really.

The reason the St. Louis Cardinals stand out is not the talent, though that’s obviously a positive thing. In my humble opinion, the reason the Cardinals are where they are is the fact that they are a team made up of humble, talented, stand-up guys that focus on the fundamentals. While we have Pujols, Edmonds, Walker, Sanders, Carpenter, etc (MVP and Cy Young from one team? Of course.) that’s not why the Cardinals win. Perfectly executed squeeze plays, double-plays, etc. When you have that, you don’t need 100 mph fastballs, home run leaders or the highest paid players. You need a group of best friends that play great baseball and love what they do.

Oh, and the fans. A team needs great fans too. 103.9% attendance last night. The Sea of Red. It doesn’t get any better than that folks. Cheering great plays by the opposing team even in the playoffs doesn’t a hater make.

It’s been a very very busy few weeks. I’ve been working my butt off at the office, getting things situated with the new sound system at church, and watching my Cardinals work their way to an epic World Series at Busch. Needless to say I’ve had less than no time to keep things moving around here. The Wife is out of town this week so I’ll be wrapping up some much needed business-related items as well as (gasp) maybe even putting some design to this here site. Stay tuned.

I’ll pretty much repeat what everyone else is saying about this. However cheesy I feel it was to have a reality show to replace a frontman who commited suicide, this was one of the greatest reality shows I’ve seen in a long time. Granted, it had all the cliches of reality television including soap opera behind the scenes footage, dramatic music at all the right moments, and lots and lots of tears. However, something made this one feel more real than any of the others. While some just compare it to American Idol, it was on an entirely different level than American Idol. These kids have talent.

I’d been looking forward to the finale (which aired last night) since episode one, where I picked Marty to win. However, as the weeks went on, J.D. really began to show his stuff. And, while I like Marty so much more than any of the other contestants, J.D. was obviously the right choice for INXS. I seriously hope INXS was serious when they told Marty they’d like to take him on their world tour. Even The Wife could see that Marty would prove to be an amazing solo talent.

I have a post regarding relevance in Christianity in the works, but felt I needed to get something off my chest. In any industry, one must first define it’s market and meet the needs of that market the best that they can. It is common practice to shoot for an 80% success rate when discussing groups of people. If you can reach 80% of the people 20% of the time, you’re succeeding.

The same holds true in ministry as well. Too many times churches set lofty goals to reach their entire community for Christ, and they attempt to do so in only one or two ways. A block party here, a Christmas pageant there, etc. While these are great in Theory (I’ve always wanted to live there), there is no possible way to succeed with these goals in mind. While you may say “wait, dude, anything is possible with God, right?” I’ll respond with yes, but God also does things differently for different groups of people. The Corinthians, the Thessalonians, the Romans, all received very different messages that were relevant to their specific needs.

What we as A Church – a single group of God-fearing Christians – must do is to break the masses up into smaller groups of people and reach them in ways that are relevant to them. Church A then ministers to one group while Church B ministers to another. Why work against each other and expect Church A to be everything to everyone. It won’t work. If you encounter someone at Church A not being reached, let them know about Church B, or even better, Church C that just started around the corner.

We do this so well with international missions, breaking people groups up and providing materials in their language, storyboards, and dramatic presentations, how come we forget that there are multiple groups of people right outside our doors? Just because we all live in the same community doesn’t mean we all worship the same way.

If Church A happens to have two services, and is still missing their target(s – there could be more than one), maybe a third service, or modifying one of the existing two is in order. It isn’t about a single style of worship or about the music, it is how best to relate the message in away that is relevant to their target audience.

There has been an uprising of community churches with multiple campuses or satellites. This is not only to cover a larger geographic area (churches are all about numbers, you know), but is also to be more relevant to different groups of people in the community.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to be relevant in our presentation, because the distractions wouldn’t exist. Our vision of God would be clear and the desire to know Him would be inherent in all of us (it truly is, but we don’t realize it) from the start. Therefore we would already be at the point of “What can I do for Him” rather than the selfish, human “what can He do for me?”

The problem here is that the people we’re trying to bring into the church and minister to are not able to grasp a concept of “what can I do for Him.” That takes time. We must first be patient and understand that before they can get there, they need to understand “What can He do for me?”

Speak their language. Be relevant. Be passionate. Don’t be afraid to point someone in a different direction (not the same as turning them away) that speaks to them. Work together. If you want to be more things to more people, realize that it’s going to take time & effort and can’t be accomplished in one or two ways.