(This is long)

I woke up last Sunday with the realization that I had become that which I thought, or tried to never become.   A statistic.  Many who follow my twitter feed saw my remark about that before church.  I had spent many days in chapel service while attending Clear Creek Baptist Bible College where the speaker would share the depression information that a high percentage of men going into the pastorate would burn out, be forced out, or just plain lose interest in the first 2 to 4 years.  After a long hard battle against the powers of “tradition” I had become one of those numbers.  About ready to give up completely.  Not sure which end was up, and frankly, in a nice self induced pity party about it all. more…

I sit in my office getting ready for the mornings services. Bible study is under way and I make my rounds to get things set up for broadcasting over the net.

As I turn to the sound booth I discover that for some unknown reason the computer has decided that the Firewire controller is no longer an important part of the computer and refuses to work. Argg.I do the tech thing; I jiggle cables. Nope, that didnt do it. After about 30 minutes of messing with it I was resolved to pull my laptop in for the streaming. Allthough now that I sit here I realize that would not have worked as I do not have a good wireless link in the sanctuary yet. (make note Mike).

I got things working when I pulled the card out and re-seated it. Bam, there it is. Now if only the rest of the morning would go as smooth as that. /sarcasim.

Now that things are working I am resolved to get ready.

The service ended up going well. I belive we had one person watching live as the service went on. *smile* I even talked about it during my message. We shall see if I can get some of our folcks to understand all this fancy stuff

Along the same line, here is the link to today’s service. Someone shoot me for wearing that shirt.

Conventional wisdom says to stay the course, don’t rock the boat. But what are you supposed to do if you like a little adventure in your life? Church life, the life of the actually congregation, not an individual mind you, can be summed up in many terms, exciting, boring, luke warm, and dead are just a few. Church growth strategists encourage pastors to take an inventory often to determine where they are at. This is an easy chore for those who have churches that are alive and moving. For those of us that are in congregations that are, well let’s be honest, less than stellar when it comes to wow factor, we find it hard to take this inventory.

Many in my field agree that the days of the 50’s are over yet we are still finding that we try to do things the same way we did back then. Being a younger pastor, quickly sneaking up on 40, I did not experience the 50’s boom in church life but I have felt the affects of it both positive and negative all my Christian life.

We now live in the twenty first century. People have changed in how they react to things socially, financially and recreationaly. I’m sad to say that gone are the days of people flocking to a church building simply because it is what they always did or had nothing else to do. They will not come because we build it. If we want to continue to be faithful to the great commission we must find a way to be relevant!

I wish I could offer you what we need to do to be relevant in this post, but I can’t. I am still struggling to figure it out myself. I’m no expert, I’m not some super pastor, I’m just a guy; a guy who loves Jesus and has been called to serve him. This is what blogs, social networking systems and the lot are all about. We need to come together and share ideas.

So, what do you think? Is this getting out there? Let’s be frank not stuffy. Hit it.