CHASING FRANCIS
My former label has launched a new marketing initiative: myfreemusicfriday.com There you'll get three songs every Friday for no money. (More about that later this week.) And you can stream three videos from Rocketown Records artists. And, lastly, you can read a "blog" they call "Our 2 Cents." (Can we get a ruling on whether this is a blog? What IS a blog by definition anyway?)
Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that in this two cents area I just read an article by my friend and Rocketown president Don Donahue that made me think...and then made me want to buy a book. Don writes about how much he's gotten from the book Chasing Francis
from first-time author Ian Morgan Cron - the "fictitious" account of a mega church pastor who begins to question the depth of the mega church movement and reasons for its growth.
Don writes this paragraph worth pondering:
The line that hit me the hardest in the book was Chase, reminiscing about the rapid growth of his church back home. He talks about what is expected of our "worship Centers" instead of Majestic Cathedrals, and says, "I realized I build Lights, Camera and Action rather than Father, Son and Spirit" Whoa! Convicting! I'm a guy who contributes to Lights Camera and Action! So here's what dawns on me: what good is the wide, expansive growth of 'the church' if our local neighborhood is not the better for it? What about depth? What about "showing" Christ instead of speaking truth?
Don's nothing if not honest.
Since the Our 2 Cents "blog" doesn't let us leave comments, I'm lending my blog for discussion. Go read it and talk about it here if it strikes you as something worth talking about. I'll get us started.
And, Rocketown, thanks for the music and the videos but, come on guys, get a real blog. If Don's "post" is any indication of the quality of stuff you all are capable of cranking out, I'd read it daily. Blogs aren't just a way to market product anymore; they are product.
Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that in this two cents area I just read an article by my friend and Rocketown president Don Donahue that made me think...and then made me want to buy a book. Don writes about how much he's gotten from the book Chasing Francis
from first-time author Ian Morgan Cron - the "fictitious" account of a mega church pastor who begins to question the depth of the mega church movement and reasons for its growth.Don writes this paragraph worth pondering:
The line that hit me the hardest in the book was Chase, reminiscing about the rapid growth of his church back home. He talks about what is expected of our "worship Centers" instead of Majestic Cathedrals, and says, "I realized I build Lights, Camera and Action rather than Father, Son and Spirit" Whoa! Convicting! I'm a guy who contributes to Lights Camera and Action! So here's what dawns on me: what good is the wide, expansive growth of 'the church' if our local neighborhood is not the better for it? What about depth? What about "showing" Christ instead of speaking truth?
Don's nothing if not honest.
Since the Our 2 Cents "blog" doesn't let us leave comments, I'm lending my blog for discussion. Go read it and talk about it here if it strikes you as something worth talking about. I'll get us started.
And, Rocketown, thanks for the music and the videos but, come on guys, get a real blog. If Don's "post" is any indication of the quality of stuff you all are capable of cranking out, I'd read it daily. Blogs aren't just a way to market product anymore; they are product.
posted by Shaun Groves @ 11/28/2006
5 comments
5 Comments:
Amen.
And then I got to the last line of the quote I pulled:
What about "showing" Christ instead of speaking truth?
"Instead" is an important word to me. It means, to me, NOT that BUT this. I don't think of showing Christ as something I choose instead of speaking truth.
I wonder if I'm being picky though. What do you think?
I'm not an expert, but I thought a blog had to at least have an RSS feed to it -- hence it coming to you as oppose to you constantly going to it. And their design is... well... there is none. I'm not trying to knock an industry while it's down but why do the labels seem like they're 422 steps behind EVERYTHING?! OK, yeah.... no, you're right.... I am knocking an industry while it's down. I'll work on that. And yes, blogs are product -- thanks for mentioning that. Shlog is proof of that.
Blogs don't have to allow comments, have an RSS feed, trackback or pingback to still be blogs. But it's HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that blogs, especially those owned by businesses, allow comments. It's fine for the blog's owner to preview the comments before allowing them to go up. But boy, a blog without comments is never received well in the Web 2.0 world. The web is about the give and take of information now, not about press releases and statements issued from above.
Even the government is learning to deal with this scary and largely uncontrollable new PR world. My agency is going to have a blog and I'm something of the mama of the project. So they have been conscientiously sending me and other members of our outreach team to every blogging seminar in Washington. We've even been coached by Edelman PR, king of the corporate blogging world. Now if the powers that be would just let us START this blog. LOL They're good people. They will...in government time.
Sounds like an interesting book. I'm no big fan of the mega-church movement, and it seems that Don is highlighting some of the reasons as to why. The agglomeration of resources can be a good thing, allowing better response to huge needs. But in the end, I'm not at all convinced that the growth of these mega-churches is resulting from actual church growth or is tantamount to a redistribution of the church populace.
It is good to have churches in the neighborhoods, that can (and should) be interacting with the people there - something that seems hard to do from the mega-building across town. I do, also, find it interesting that no mega-church or Christian temple was built in Jerusalem by the first-century Christians. Instead, God scattered them, with good reason.
Just some thoughts.
As to the instead quote, maybe you are being a little picky. Maybe he meant to say something like "instead of merely". In any case, I would agree that it is not a choice we have to show Christ or to speak truth, but both must be part of our lives. Indeed, you could argue that one flows from the other; in a Christian the two should be entwined.
I thought that same thing about the last sentence and I agree that it can't be either/or, it must be both.
Beth
Post a Comment
<< Home