Spark2Flame

I posted this on Connecting to Impact, but I wanted to include it here because I felt like it has the potential to be a great resource for everyone (which is part of what I'm hoping to do here).

What's the resource? It's MyChristianBlogs.com. Peter P directed me here (thanks!), and it seems like a great way to find new Christian blogs.

I've actually tried to search Christian blogs before and had mixed results. When I first started blogging, that's how I found Stuff Christians Like (yeah, I linked to it because Jon really has trouble finding readers). On the flipside, I also found a bunch of others that didn't really relate to the topic I was looking for.

That's why I think this site could be a great way to sort through it all and find relevant matches to what you're looking for.

I know there are lots of ways to find good, challenging, inspiring material; but here's one more that will help in the quest. Some you may read already, but more than likely, there's one or two that you will be seeing for the first time.

Check it out and tell me what you think!

It’s uncomfortable. It’s just not me. It’s too difficult. It may not work like I want it to.

I could be talking about anything from worship to relationship-building, and really I’m talking about all those things and everything in between. Everything we do or attempt can be worship and impacting if we surrender to God.

As I’ve said, I really want to take some of the mystery and fear out of using technology in a constructive way for the Church. I read a lot of blogs and check out a lot of churches online so I tend to think that everybody sees the potential of using these media, but I know that’s not true.

Just as we use words like “uncomfortable” and “humbling” to describe our walk with God and worship of Him, the same is true with employing methods to get the word out.

Isn’t that what the church is supposed to do? Get the word out! Tell the world about Jesus—His love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and truth. Most churches would agree, but then why do we neglect a huge portion of where people spend their time?

It's sort of like spending your time sharing about Jesus at the park when you know the whole town went out to the big football game. You have to go where the people are!

The internet can no longer be classified as a fad for sure. There are so many resources out there (many just a google search away). Many are even free. They are all there to get a message across.

I know people who have said they won’t even go to a church if that church doesn’t have a website. We can say, “how sad people think like that—won’t even give us a chance.” But the ball’s in our court not theirs.

The truth is, most people spend a great deal of time researching products, services, and yes, churches online before they’ll go through with buying, using, or attending. It’s become part of our lives.

The greatest thing is that the web is now in the hands of the people more than ever before. You don’t have to have extensive knowledge of programming and code to be able to get in on it (which to me mirrors the Church’s return to servant leaders instead of personality-driven ministry).

You can tell yourself it’s too difficult or you don’t have the understanding, but who are you missing in the meantime. I’ve heard repeatedly that relational evangelism is the best means of reaching out and finding an open door into people’s lives.

I think we need to consider a blog, a twitter page, a church website, etc. as a form of relational evangelism. You may think there are only Christians participating in the conversation, but you have no idea who’s lurking in the shadows.

It’s interesting to see what search keywords bring people to your site. They may not have meant to come to your site, blog, whatever—but they made it anyway. Maybe it was a divine appointment, but if we aren’t there, the saturation certainly leans in another direction (i.e., porn, ridiculous videos, time-wasters).

We are to be salt and light and we have the opportunity to show the heart of God in simple, relatable terms. We can build a community of encouragement and faith that is not intended to be a substitute for face-to-face interactions and corporate worship, but serves to enhance and connect those things to everyday life.

You may already be using technology or you may be afraid/indifferent. My question is, can we afford to spend more time ignoring vast segments of the population who need something real that we can help them find?

Lots of churches and people examine whether something is affordable whether that be with time, energy, money, learning curve, etc. I’m not going to lie and say it won’t take any time, but even if one person is touched in your city (or anywhere in the world), isn’t it worth it?

Anything worth doing is going to cost us something and there are many ways to get to the destination in this regard. One thing is true: technology as first impression, technology as community-builder, technology as evangelism—it’s not going away anytime soon.

Not only do we get to be the re-presentation of Jesus in our local interactions and physical churches, but we can be the same to a desperate and hurting world. There’s an impact to be made, and we cannot ignore it.

So let me ask you this—are you engaged? Does your church/pastor blog, twitter, other? If you’re a member of a church that does or doesn’t use these things, what do you think about it? I’d love to hear from you!

"Not another social media thing! I don't want to hear about it," you may be saying to yourself. To ignore some of these things taking the world by storm may be squandering excellent opportunities for your church.

Twitter happens to be one of those things that the world is taking note of. With an estimated near 15 million users and growing, people are using it in interesting, entertaining, informational, and yes, mundane ways.

This week I want to talk some about using Twitter and why churches have a great opportunity to use this medium to touch hearts and lives as well as communicate needed information.

As I've said, part of what I'm doing here is that I want to help aid in understanding how these technologies and platforms can be used effectively and why. It's not as hard you may think it is and the benefits are tremendous!

I want to explore these more fully (and I'll be talking about it in an upcoming podcast), but here are a few bullet points that I hope will move toward convincing you.

• It's a great way to get information out to the congregation and others
• It's a great learning tool
• You are able to convey the heart of the ministry in a fun/exciting way
• More and more people are joining every day so there's plenty opportunity to reach people in your area

To get started, here is a little video tutorial that will help you see how to start an account and what everything looks like with the basic parts.

Once you get that going, make sure you follow me! @br8kthru and @bf_podcast. If you're on already, be sure to leave your profile name so everyone can check it out. If you sign up, come back and tell us about it.

What do you think? Are you skeptical? Are you already on Twitter? Is your church on Twitter? What's you take on it? Why do you use or not use it?

Here’s a little humor for your Friday (or my version anyway). I don’t know if you remember a show called, Animaniacs, but I fondly remember it from my childhood. One of the absurd things on that show was a short segment called, Good Idea/Bad Idea.

The concept was so high-brow and sophisticated, but I’ll try to break it down for you—first they would show/tell a good idea which was then followed by a related bad idea. Phew! It’s a wonder I don’t have my Ph.D. yet.

How awesome is it too that Tom Bodett (from the old Motel 6 commercials, “We’ll leave the light on for ya.”) is doing the voiceover. Below is an example from Youtube and then I listed some of my favorites from the show below that.



Good idea: Feeding stray kittens in the park.
Bad idea: Feeding stray kittens in the park to a bear.

Good idea: Doing your own yard work.
Bad idea: Doing your own dental work.

Good idea: Having breakfast served to you in bed.
Bad idea: Having tennis balls served to you in bed.

Good idea: Dressing up for Halloween as a pirate.
Bad idea: Dressing up for Halloween as a pinata.

Good idea: Playing the accordion at a polka festival.
Bad idea: Playing the accordion anywhere else.

Good idea: Buying a pair of shoes on sale.
Bad idea: Buying a parachute on sale.

Good idea: Giving a small child a balloon.
Bad idea: Giving a small child a bunch of balloons. (compiled by cruzio.com)

Here are a couple of mine—
Good idea: eating a plate of ultimate nachos with sour cream
Bad idea: eating a plate of ultimate nachos with soured cream

Good idea: Stopping at a red light.
Bad idea: Stopping at a red light to brush your teeth.

Okay, I’m sure you can come up with better ones than I did!

Let me hear you in the comments—what are your good idea/bad idea suggestions? Do you remember that show and these segments? Am I nuts to think they are actually funny?

On the podcast, I talked about mind maps and mind mapping software. Below you can see an example of one I made. This one is really simple and works a little more like a flowchart, but you should be able to get the idea of it.

As I said, the great advantages are that all the information is right there in view and it makes it easier to flow. Putting them together is great too because you can move the pieces easily and quickly.

Whether you're brainstorming ideas or putting together a sermon or presentation, this is such a great option. Try it out, you might even think it's fun (like I do, but I'm pretty weird).

Here's the software that I use: Edrawsoft.com/freemind.php

• It's free
• easy to learn
• easy to use
• really endless possibilities

I use these for all kinds of things from projects to messages. Try it out and see what you think! If you're a visual person, this will probably really help.

What do you think? Do you already use something like this? If not will you try it? Let me hear from you!

Welcome to the new and remodeled Burn Frequency Podcast! This episode we are talking about some exciting things like

• Why and how the podcast is getting a renewed and diversified focus
  
• Some of the new features I want to include in coming weeks and months
  
• A Book Review of No Perfect People Allowed by John Burke
  
• A discussion of mind maps and mapping software- and more!

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Feel free to listen using the player above or click here to download this program.

Hope you enjoy it and we can start a great conversation. Make sure to leave a comment about anything or a question. I always love to hear from you!

As I mentioned a few days ago, I want to see some changes come to this blog and the Burn Frequency podcast.

I’ve been pretty sparse around here, but I do have things I want to share that I believe will help people. This led me to look at sharpening the focus and diversifying a bit or a lot.

I have a passion to connect with people, help people, and see the Church be all it’s supposed to be. That comes in the form of encouragement, challenges, helpful information, and more.

This is what hit me recently. My passion is not only seeing churches worship and understanding its importance. I also have a passion for seeing churches reach out effectively and one area many are lacking is in the technology arena.

Now a church of a thousand or more probably has a full-time tech person, but what about churches like the one I am a part of? We may be growing, but we’re consistently around 50 people. Does that mean we shouldn’t or can’t use technology as a meaningful way to engage our community, our church, or even the world?

No, I don’t believe that at all! Just as with worship, many times there’s a spark where you know something can be more powerful but you don’t know how to get there. Technology is certainly the same. There are so many services, so many social media applications, so many opportunities that it can seem overwhelming or the learning curve too steep. That’s what Spark2Flame is all about.

I may be on my way, but I’m not a full-fledged geek (i.e., expert) yet. I’m essentially an outsider who has to figure these things out like 98% of other small church pastors and staff. I don’t believe that we should miss out on what God is doing and using for lack of understanding or time.

This is what I’m proposing as a new focus and what I will attempt to do—

• introduce you to and review applications and services that will help in your church or life
• aid in understanding why social media and technology will be an effective way to reach and show Jesus
• still talk a lot about and explore worship, worship leaders, the Church, and life
• turn the podcast into a more informational and conversational platform that will explore all these things and how they intersect
• Involve more people in getting the message across on the blog and the podcast
• still have fun and inject some humor into all this!

I’m happy to say that many people—not just younger people—are excited and truly “getting” the benefits of these media. We’ve had lots of excuses as small churches, but no good reasons. That’s not to be harsh, but I do hope to help remove some of the anxiety and fear that surrounds some of this.

More and more churches see the potential, but many people don’t know where to start. Maybe you're just part of a church and you can help see these things utilized. Lord knows pastors need help!

I realize that I am not the only blogger or podcaster attempting these things, but I do hope to help and start a great conversation.

Here’s what I want to see: you get behind this and alert someone who needs to hear this.

Okay, so what do you think? Will you stick with me—are you on board? Do you see this as a real need? I would love to hear your thoughts.

So I've been thinking (which is a dangerous pastime, but hear me out).

I want this blog and podcast to be useful, encouraging, fun, and a way to create some conversation. I've had a couple things working against me.

1. My blog, Connecting to Impact, fulfills a lot of my devotional writing needs
2. I don't want this to be a duplicate of that and honestly, it doesn't hold my interest if it is

As I was thinking about this recently, I had an "Aha" moment. What if I could make this more of an outlet for some of my other passions? Connecting to Impact directly correlates to my church, Breakthrough Church. What if the Spark2flame blog took a different direction and offered something different?

You may have noticed the disappearance of the podcast as well. This is because I was using messages I've preached, but now I'm making those available through our Breakthrough Messages page. Again, I don't want to just duplicate something.

I really do see a purpose for this blog and podcast, but it's time to shake things up.

So I have an idea. An idea that I'm excited about and I hope you will be too.

For now, stay tuned and I'll let you know very soon about all the details!

I’ve decided today that I would like to begin a new feature here. I’m going to ask you a question, and doggone it, you’re going to answer (I hope).

Be ready for anything or any subject. No real lead-ins or anything like that—just a question.

For today: let me ask you this…

What worship music, worship leaders, or worship bands are you enjoying and loving right now and why?

I always love to hear about new and different expressions of God’s heart so do me a favor and lay it out there!

Wow, I have been cranking out the hits here on this blog! I managed two whole posts last month! What can I say?

As I’m reflecting today, I’m seeing more clearly how innocence is so foundational to true worship. Jesus said that unless we come like children we have no part of the Kingdom of God. One of the earmarks and exceedingly great qualities of children is their innocence.

I watched part of a show last night about one-hit wonders from the 80’s. It was interesting and entertaining, but something hit me as I was watching it. They showed part of the song then people would comment.

Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” rolled by and one guy commented that when he was a kid, he thought the singer was talking about a heart attack or something. I started thinking about other songs I heard when I was a kid, me trying to decipher what the song was talking about.

There was one called, “Paradise Tonight”, by Mickey Gilley and Charly McClain. The last line of the chorus says, “thank you for taking me to paradise tonight.” Now, I assumed and envisioned the two of them whisking away on a plane to Hawaii in the middle of the night. That may or may not be what it’s really about, perhaps we'll never know…

It seems funny now, but real and intimate worship comes from a place of innocence. You can’t worship with abandon when there is so much in you that’s cynical and prideful, but kids don’t care! Worship doesn’t flow when we are so hung up on our past and we don’t believe that God really loves and cares about us, but kids just believe what they are told.

Kids believe the best about the people around them. Many adults wouldn’t trust those around in their church with what they had for breakfast much less their hopes and fears.

Because the world is such a hurtful place, we have to teach kids to discern and weigh things out of necessity. When we come to God though, this hinders our worship and keeps us from experiencing the fullness of His truth.

In essence, we deny Him His rightful place as Lord. He speaks, we listen. He encourages, we believe. Without innocence, this all gets marred and disfigured. We don't see and hear correctly.

I’m not saying that ignorance is bliss, but God does offer a washing and cleansing, a new innocence.

What do you think? Does it seem like a lot of people miss this? Do you agree or disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Side note: do you have a funny story about what you thought a song meant when you were younger? I’m still a little disturbed by finding out the real meaning of “Turning Japanese” last night, but that’s just me!