Modern BelieverCulture Changes. God Doesn't.

Lifelight just announced their new location, which will be just east of Worthing, SD, which is a short drive south of Sioux Falls.

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It’s 225 acres of farm land, which will now need to be developed with everything needed to put on a massive concert each Labor Day weekend. Just a few of the things they’ll need are:

• water
• electricity
• bathrooms
• access points
• stages

Initially they are asking for people to help them with $600,000 of funding to develop some basics, but ultimately the cost to develop it all will run into millions of dollars. With this amount of land, they can now move from 100,000+ concert goers to potentially over a million. They also have a vision to make the site a year round ministry place, instead of just one big weekend a year.

Also announced was a new band for 2010. After many years of trying to get them, Lifelight will finally be host to the David Crowder Band.

If you want to give to Lifelight, follow this link.

Some of you may have read the title of this post and become confused. Online Ministry? How does that work?

The fact is that the internet is becoming a powerful force for spreading the gospel. I am part of a generation that goes to the web for just about everything. Need somebody’s phone number? Google (though Facebook is taking this over as more people go exclusively cell phone). What time does an event start? It’s probably on at least one online calendar. Need a quick answer to a question? Twitter is there.

Social Media sites abound, but a cutting edge geek knows what's worth your time.

Church websites (or at least those who have them) are developing fast. The problem is that the rest of the web is developing faster. An effective church web site will require a lot of prayer, a lot of vision, a lot more prayer, an openness to new things and new ways of doing those things, a bit more prayer, volunteers passionate about the latest in everything web (before they ever start working on the church site), a little more prayer (for the site), and a whole lot of prayer (for the volunteers).

As John Saddington notes:

…one of the most successful ingredients that I’ve seen in the marketplace when looking for “volunteers” (but we don’t call them volunteers) is interest.

The catch here is that it must be self-generated. It can’t be fabricated or forced. In other words, some of the best volunteers are those that are already doing what you’d like them to do; they’re just not doing it for you and your ministry (yet).

This way they don’t get tired, they don’t get frustrated, or necessarily burnt out because you’re not forcing them to do something unnatural or having them try to feign interest. Find the people that love to do “online ministry” (whatever that means for your ministry) and then empower them to help out for yours.

So as you set out to create that website, rebuild it, improve it, or just maintain it, take a good look around at people living on the bleeding edge. They’ll understand that now may not be thee right time to implement something, but they’ll have crazy amounts of experience with it when your church is ready to take that step.

And while those people are likely to be well under 30 years old, some of the most savvy people I talk to about it all are baby boomers (thank you Twitter).

The question of how to disciple those who come to know the Lord online is still passionately debated though.

Pastors are busy people. Parents are busy people. Students are busy people. Pretty much everybody is busy. There are enough distractions in life already, should the computer take up any more time than it needs to?

Some of us already spend hours upon hours on the computer, because that’s what we do. Building websites, researching, asking for help, giving help. Us geeks tend to live on the web, and over time, have learned a lot of little things that add up to save a lot of time. For example, I try to keep up with all that is happening on Twitter and Facebook. But instead of sitting at their websites and refreshing the screen all day, I keep Tweetdeck open on a second monitor (If you only follow a few hundred people, you can probably check every 30 minutes and not miss anything). Quick glances are all it takes, and familiar pictures draw my attention quickly to those I talk to most.

Those of you who spend hours on the computer, but half of it is playing Farmville on Facebook, well, you just need to cut back on the gaming.

Zen Habits put together 14 tips to browse the web faster (and get back to your Bible sooner). Here’s my 5 favorites.

1. Use a fast, minimal browser. [I highly recommend Firefox or Chrome, Internet Explorer is the opposite of fast and minimal]

2. Use tabs, not windows.

3. Learn keyboard shortcuts.

12. Clear most of your toolbars. [You really don't need 7 different search toolbars, in fact, you only need the one built into your browser]

13. 1password or KeePass. [I use LastPass, there is no other way to remember all of my passwords]

I got a pretty good taste of youth ministry as one of the head youth leaders in a community youth group for 3 years. There were a lot of very unique challenges, the least of which had to do with the kids. Multiple churches being involved, with volunteers from several denominations, each with their own thought process often made things … interesting. It didn’t help that some of the most vocal complainers hadn’t done any significant work with youth in the church since the ’80s.

Nevertheless, it was an experience I cherish, and has helped me a lot in my personal walk, just by the unique challenges that forced me out of my comfort zone. Now that I’ve moved to a much bigger town, and a much bigger church, I spend a significant amount of time trying to make life easier for the youth pastor. With my own experience running things, especially the setup and cleanup for each and every event, I know how valuable a reliable helper can be, and I do my best to be that helper, and allow him to put more focus on the kids, instead of the chairs.

Life In Student Ministry has been a valuable resource for me, and I suspect those being paid to work with youth find it just as valuable. Recently they put together a list of things to be wary of when looking at your next church. Some biggies follow.

1. Yeah, we have our vision statement written down somewhere. Hold on, let us find it and we’ll get back to you.

5. The salary might not look good on paper, but there are many other benefits to this job than money.

6. Will your wife lead a small group of girls?

9. Are you an outreach guy or a discipleship guy?

13. We’ve had three bad youth pastors over the past three years.

15. From sr. pastor, “This is my church. I run my church. Welcome to my church.” And other repeated usage of the phrase, “my church.”

A simple act of worship.

Have you ever tried to make someone worship “your way?”

Raise your hand if you’re guilty like me.

Wow. That’s a lot of you.

I grew up going to concerts and heading straight for the mosh pit area. We’d jump and push each other around and sing and have a great time. To this day, I enjoy a song that just compels me to jump. I’m not much for raising my hands in the air. I’ll clap sometimes, but you’re far more likely to find me using my hands to drum on something (once a drummer always a drummer).

Really though, sometimes worship is an act of getting down and dirty with God. Fred McKinnon recalls a story…

I will never forget this time I was at a Hillsongs concert in Jacksonville, Florida.  It was several years ago and I was with a group of friends … we were down on the 4th or 5th row.  Darlene Zschech was leading that fun song, “You Have Turned My Mourning into Dancing” … you know, the one where everybody is standing, spinning around, hands in the air, dancing, carrying on in radical praise …

And I was sitting.  Bent over, face in my hands, elbows propped on my knees … having an encounter with the God of the Universe. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but it was a more serious encounter where we were “having words”.  In the midst of this time, I remember it was like God called a “sidebar” … we’re just having dialog back and forth, and then totally non-related to our conversation, He calls it out …

Isn’t that really what it’s all about? Worship is like a conversation with God. Sometimes we’re just hanging out, having fun. Other times we go through some serious stuff, even as the world goes crazy around us.

Next time you’re worshiping, go ahead and do what you’ve gotta do. I may forget everything I just typed, but that’s my problem. Don’t let people like me stop you from getting real.

Churches are full of capable people. The problem is we get into a rut, doing the same old thing when we should be kicking it up a notch. Jesus trained 12 disciples to go out and conquer the world. They trained more people to do the same. You have been trained, it’s your turn to do some training.

Scott Williams identifies 5 signs you’re ready to take it up a level, starting with humility.

1. Every once in a while you question whether or not you have what it takes.

This one goes out to all of you working with youth. Sometimes you just need a quirky video to get things rolling.

You have the full service planned, everything clicks along nicely from one phase to the next. The audience stays with you the entire time, except for one small problem. There’s that significant group of people who start thinking about something else as soon as you get to announcements.

They aren’t easy. Announcements will break up the flow more easily than just about anything. Which means if you aren’t trying something different, you will continue to lose that group week after week.

Sojourn has some guidelines that might work for your church.

As a geek, this article really speaks to me. The Church is increasingly lagging when it comes to technology. Instead of showing others how to use new technology to reach people, we’re taking our sweet time, only adopting something when people start moving to something else (how many of you are still showing VHS instead of DVD).

There I was at the Pantheon. The building originally dedicated to all gods by the Romans and later used as a church. It holds the record for the largest unreinforced concrete dome. It exactly as high as it is wide, seemingly no simple feat at that time. Awesome.

I could go on and on, but here’s the point: in antiquity it was the church that was the “backbone of technological innovation,” to apply the words of Klaas Verbeken to a different subject. New technologies and systems were developed so that they could be used to glorify God.

And here we are all those years later. And who is one of the greatest users and innovators of all things techie? The porn industry. Tink betamax vs. vhs, blueray vs. hd-dvd, etc.

What a bummer. It’s as if the devil has stolen the playbook of the early church and has caught on to its effectiveness.

Oh, you’re still reading? Go find a youth pastor and ask him what the kids are into these days. Put the priority on incorporating that yesterday.