As I’m writing this (from my iPhone!) we are loading up for our student ministry’s annual winte retreat to Lake Brownwood. Our theme this year is from Galatians 6: ‘bear each other’s burdens’.
This year, students from our sister church, New Life Baptist, will be joining us as we explore the Scriptures and worship together. Pray for all of us over the next few days!
Every 7 years, Stefan Sagmeister closes his NY design studio for a ONE YEAR sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. Here he explains how rest and recreation refuels his re-creation and creativity. Great thoughts. Plus there's a little creepy Laughing Yoga Guy at the end.
1. Another year married to the most amazing, patient, loving woman I know. I’m blessed beyond words to be married to my best friend. She is the wife of my youth and my drug of choice.
2. Watching my boys grow into little men. While they are both wired very differently, I can see Christ leading and growing them into compassionate, tender warriors who are learning to love deeply and give deeply. His work in them leaves me speechless sometimes.
3. The birth of my daughter. In the midst of raising two boys, God, in his humor, sends me a little girl who steals my heart and changes my life completely. There’s something about a father and daughter that I’m beginning to get a glimpse of…
4. The Ragamuffin Band of the Body of Christ. I have survived another year of ministry with the fierce devotion of people I worship with and do life with. They/we are broken, cracked, weak, dependent people who desperately need Jesus every minute. Business men and women. Church and civic leaders. Substance abuse addicts and performance abuse addicts. ‘Normal’ people who realize there is no such thing as normalcy. Together we lock arms and drink the cup of amazin’ grace. For those at FBC, for the Saints, the Tweeps, and others…your friendship and brotherhood is invaluable to me. I love you all dearly.
1. Great leadership. With my increased worship responsibilities in By Design, a new baby in April, and a new worship facility in June, our student ministry would have suffered greatly without some amazing volunteer workers and staff leadership. (Face it…our student ministry would’ve been on life support!) So much success is greatly attributed to the volunteers who constantly gave of themselves, sacrificed time and energy, and poured their lives into our students as disciplers and followers of Jesus. Without their commitment, it simply wouldn’t have happened. I’ve never served with a finer group of parents and adults. Ever.
2. Corporate worship. This whole ‘worship gig’ still has that new car smell. I have a crazy privilege of leading our church body each week in adoration, proclamation, and confession through song and scripture. It’s an amazing blessing to watch families worship together. To hear the songs of multiple generations fill our building. To be one voice in a multitude…to proclaim truth and hope to our community…all for an audience of One. You guys bless me each week as you bless Jesus.
3. Monthly serves. We no longer do our annual, huge-mongus Project SERVE event every April. Instead, we do something a bit more realistic every month. It actually involves more people in our student ministry and has connected us more with the larger church. Kinda the way it should have been all along…
4. Beach Break. This year we plugged back into Global Youth Camps and spent a week in Laguna beach, FL. The bus ride was brutal, but it provided a life-changing mile marker in our students’ spiritual journey.
5. NOT doing DNOW. We tried something new instead this year…and decided it was mistake. The substitute event was a good experience, but it forced us to realize how effective our old school DNOW weekend still is. This February, our ministry will be joining with several others in our area for a city-wide DNOW. I can’t wait to see what God will do!
6. Studying the scripture with our students. No frills. No goofy games. No flash except Jesus. In a day where student ministry seems to depend on flash and technology, I love to see our students gathering to read and discuss Scripture without some kind of bait and switch in order to get them to hear some snack-sized parable. I’m all for technology (some say too much..), but it is always the Word which endures forever.
If 10 years ago, someone told me that I'd soon have a cell phone that could navigate the internet, blog, tune my guitar, teach me to cook, find sex offenders, turn my voice into text and get me out of meetings, I'd have laughed.
But today, the iPhone app store has revolutionized our lives and even spawned others to, yet again, copy and market the innovation Apple is known for.
So, today, here are my 2009 Top Impact Apps that I've come to love and depend on:
1.Tweetdeck. (Free) Same interface as the desktop application. Manage multiple accounts. Appreciated by even the most hardcore tweeps among us.
2. Facebook (Free). Six Degrees gave way to Friendster which was went the way of the dino with the advent of MySpace. Today there is Facebook. If you Facebook, you have to have the app.
3. Guitar Toolkit. ($3.99). By far the most expensive app I own, this app provides a tuner, metronome, nearly a 100 alternate tunings and fingerings, and a gazillion chord voicings…all strumable and playable from the touch screen. Includes settings for 6-string, 12-string, bass, and banjo. Plus it keeps my boys entertained while we're waiting on a table at Chili's…
4. WordPress. (Free). I can blog, edit, post, and add templates and widgets to tomcottar[dot]org from anywhere. Cool.
5. Logos. (Free) Pretty amazing Bible software…free.
6. Starbucks Mobile Card. (Free). Not only track your account and reload your St.Arbux card…but in some parts of the country you can pay for your caffeinated goodness with via your phone. Oh….yeah…..
7. Epicurious (Free). Not sure what to make for dinner? Breakfast? Party appetizers? Input a few criteria, and this app gives you hundreds of recipes to choose from, as well as shopping lists.
8. Offender Locator Lite. (Free). Using the GPS on your phone, this app taps the sex offender database and gives you a map with the registered sex offenders nearest your current location. Highly recommend this one for parents, students, and ministers who work with teens and children.
9. ProRemote (Free). Allows me to control ProPresenter (presentation software) from my phone via wifi.
10. Fake Caller (Free). Need out of a meeting? This baby works like an alarm clock– you receive a 'call' from someone you have preassigned in your contacts list. While your phone's home screen acts and responds like an actual call, you can politely excuse yourself to 'answer' the call. Pressing 'dismiss' is like hitting the snooze button: Fake Caller will call you back in a few minutes to give you another chance. Sneaky.
11. Dragon Dictation and Vlingo (both Free). Both are voice recognition apps which convert my spoken words to text messages, emails, tweets, or Facebook updates.
Out of the endless amount of apps in existence, these have made my life easier in 2009. What are your favs?
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"The only thing you will ever know
is what you see
and what you read."
In the past year, I've read (or re-read) a handful of books that are on my 'Keep These Close to You' books.
1. Worship Matters, by Bob Kauflin. Perhaps the best thing I've read on worship this year. Whether it's as a vocalist, musician, media tech, or congregation member, the greatest obstacle you and I have in worship is not the song selection, the drum volume, or the tempo. It's the heart. It's the thing that really matters. God calls us to love Him more than we love singing about (or to) Him. Kauflin tackles some tough questions as well as offers some practical helps for developing meaningful times of worship.
2. Finding the Groove, by Robert Gelinas. On recommendation from Len Sweet, I picked up this one, and it revolutionized a lot of my thinking on creating a jazz-shaped faith. Some of my previous thoughts on it are here and here.
3. Satan and the Problem of Evil, by Greg Boyd. This year I finished re-reading this and it's companion, "God At War", for a second time. While they are both lean a little to the academic and scholarly crowds, Boyd does an outstanding job of explaining a Scriptural, warfare theodicy. Don't be confused: this is not so much a book on traditional spiritual warfare as it is building a construct for explaining evil, free will, injustice and restoration within a trinitarian warfare mindset. Jesus is King, but His Kingdom is not yet fully realized. You and I are living in the now-and-not-yet of that reality. You can read more here.
4. Why Your Church Must Twitter (e-book), by Anthony Coppedge. It cost me $5 to have the privilege to make and distribute copies…so let me know if you follow me on Twitter, DM me and I’ll send you one.
Below are the top albums of 2009 that have impacted me. Some of them may make someone else's Top Ten list…but some will go relatively unnoticed. They are all very different from each other. So, in no particular order, here they are.
1. The controversial Stockholm Syndrome, from Derek Webb. Perhaps one of the craftiest lyricists of recent years, Webb is known for his blatant allegiance to Scripture and his scolding of white, middle-class Republicans for appearing to love the GOP more than Jesus.
Most impacting tracks:
What Matters More, which charges contemporary Christianity with hating homosexuals instead of loving them. ("if i can tell what's in your heart by what comes out of your mouth, then it looks to me like being straight is all it's about."), The Spirit v. The Kick Drum , and Freddie Please (an address from Jesus to the infamous pastor Fred Phelps and his commentary on homosexuals).
2. Backspacer, by Pearl Jam. If you're a Pearl Jam fan, you've gotta have this one. If you're not a Pearl Jam fan, then you've really got to have this one. With matured lyrics and tones, PJ have released one of their best projects to date. The post-punk grooves in The Fixer and west coast riffs in Johnny Guitar make this a pretty amazing soundtrack. The Impact Track has to be the heart-wrenching Just Breathe: the deathbed confession of a man recounting the love he's been blessed with in life. When I die, I pray someone plays this at my memorial service.
3. Kind of Blue , by Miles Davis. While it's not new (1959!), it's relatively new to me. Jazz historians divide jazz music into two periods: before Blue (pre-1959) and after Blue. For many jazz musicians, blue was a watershed moment when culture, history, and art collided to forever change the course of human history. I'm beginning to appreciate and understand that more, largely due to Kind of Blue.
Impact Tracks: The title track, So What., which is not followed by a question mark (‘so what?’), but by a period (‘so what.’) as evidence to the cultural climate of segregation in the late 1950s, and the groovy Freddie Freeloader. (HT to Robert Gelinas for pointing me to it!)
4. Letters to the Editor, Vol 2. (Andrew Osenga). Formerly with The Normals and Caedmon’s Call, this is Andy’s third solo project.
A playful and organic vibe (‘Canada’)..yet almost anthem-esque (‘Staring Out a Window’). One part Paul Westerburg telecaster, one part shoulda-been-the-Juno-soundtrack, and two parts soulful vocals and deeply rooted lyrics. Absolutely great stuff.
Impact Track: ‘Let Us Know You’, which is worth the price of the album alone.
5. Big Whiskey and The Groo Grux King, by Dave Matthews Band. After the passing of long-time bandmate, friend, and saxophonist LeRoi Moore in August 2008, DMB produced their heaviest album to date. Both emotionally and musically. 'Nuff said. Impact tracks are Funny The Way it Is and Why I Am.
6. Glorious (Paul Baloche). I've been a fan of Paul's since the early days of 'Open the Eyes of My Heart'. IMO, much of today's worship music seems to be worshipping a God who's concerned with my well-being. Glorious breaks that trend with some genuinely God-focused worship. Impact Tracks are the title track, Glorious, and We Will Hold On.
What music have you run across this year that has moved you? Inspired you? Healed you? Changed you?
I'd love to know!
It's that time of year when I start looking back and evaluating the last 12 months. The good, the bad, and the what-was-I-thinking. And because we don't exist in a vacuum, I have to look at things holistically. What significant cultural, spiritual, and personal events shaped me this year? How did those things color my world? And..now what?
So this week, I'll begin posting the tomcottar(dot)org top lists.
Top albums that have affected me this year. Top books that have affected my walk and outlook. Top ministry and personal impacts on my life. Top iPhone apps that keep me connected.
First up tomorrow: TomcottarDotOrg Top Albums
