Chase the Setting Sun...

This is a video of me and some boys from Taylor doing Blue Man Group's Drum Bone. It was a good time. I'm on drums.

I have been thinking about this since our meeting on Tuesday. We discussed what Christian community looks like and refferred to Acts 2:42-47. Verse 44 says, "All believers were together and had everything in common."


If you look at this with a quick glance it kind of sounds like a clique you would experience in high school. Just a bunch of people exactly alike huddling around each other talking about how cool their "sameness" is.


So is it ok for Christians to have "cliques," or groups of people gathered with "everything in common"? I think it is unavoidable and designed that way by God. God designed each of us with different interests, passions, talents and abilities. He did this so we would each be able to accomplish something different for his kingdom. We, as humans, naturally gravitate towards those people that are similar to ourselves.


Here is the difference...


In high school we gravitated to those that were similar to ourselves, but we purposely excluded those that were different and chose not to accept them. As Christians this should look different. While we naturally gravitate to those people with similar interests and passions as us, we have learned to LOVE and accept those that are different than us. We do not turn away "outsiders" and we learn to accept each person for who they are in Christ.


We will always naturally gravitate to people like us, that isn't going to change. I'm not sure we are made to be "best friends" with every single person on earth. Where we become the Body of Christ is when my community unites with your different community and becomes one big community. It is ok to have a smaller group of friends that are like you. Where being a Christian come in is when we take our little community and engage with someone elses little community to form the Body of Christ.


Think about the United States of America for example. As Indiana we do our thing, Florida does theirs, Nebraska theirs and California theres. We are all cool and unique in our own state communities. However, we are stronger and become a "super power" when we combine ourselves to be the UNITED States of America. Christianity is no different.


What we have to remember is; even though we may have nothing of this world in common with that other person's community, we all have Christ in common. As strong as we may feel in our tight knit small communities, we have the strength of the Body of Christ when we unite all of our communities together and nothing can beat that.

The Colts selected Jerry Hughes, a Defensive End from TCU with the 31st pick in the NFL draft. Here is a highlight reel of him. He's definitely got potential. As I watch highlight reels it doesn't seem like he gets to the quarterback as much as I'd like to see, but with Freeney and Mathis showing him the ropes I'm sure he'll be sweet. Never a reason to doubt Bill Polian. What do you think?

Here is a video of Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge playing Hallelujah. Great song, great voice. Thought I'd share. Enjoy...

Tonight we had our young adult discussion group at George's Neighborhood Grille off of 71st and Binford Boulevard. We were discussing Acts 2:42-47. While we were discussing that passage, I looked over to Acts 4:13 and saw an underlined passage in my Bible. Acts 4:13 is the passage where Luke describes how Peter and John were preaching the Word and performing miracles, and jailed because of it. When asked who's authority they do these things by Peter says,

"...It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom YOU crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is 'the stone YOU builders rejected which has become the capstone.' Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13

Peter completely and directly calls out the Sanhedrin for crucifying and rejecting Christ. They were, of course, incredibly astonished by Peter's directness, boldness and courage. They couldn't believe an uneducated ORDINARY man could have the courage to say this to such high standing, educated members of society like themselves.

This has always been an empowering verse for me. I am someone that never did all that well in school, I was never the smartest or brightest in my class. This shows me that Jesus does not require book smarts or legal smarts to use someone. All Jesus requires is a heart and passion for Him and His people. If you honestly love Christ and love others, he will empower you, and use you, in ways you could never be used if you were just a 'smart' guy/girl.

I don't know who all is reading my blog these days but I would be interested in hearing about times when God used you in ways that you didn't expect him to, because maybe you didn't live up to the world's standards for "smart" or "successful."

As you have probably noticed thus far; I have been going over what makes a worship service good, in particular, the worship music. This seems to be one of those things that, depending on how you look at it, is either really simple or really difficult. Much of the time it's insanely difficult for me, I think, because I am always over analyzing it based on my knowledge of music.

Take today for example. We played some older songs during our worship set. Not to us by Chris Tomlin, We Fall Down, How Great is our God, and Mighty to Save by Laura Story. Pretty basic worship songs. The beginning of our opening set my amp malfunctioned and Matt, our pastor for today, had to vamp for a few minutes while I figured out what was going on.

We finally got everything together and played through the first song ok. The second song the slides were wrong and we lost our place and ended the song incredibly awkwardly all at different times. The next two songs towards the end went fine.

Being who I am (a music nazi) I was ripping myself apart the rest of the day because the beginning of the service went bad. Talking to people after the service though, and my wife later, apparently no one really noticed the apparent train wreck I felt was occurring and thought we did a great job. So either I'm completely nuts or everyone was lying to me.

Now I'm sure it wasn't quite as bad as I imagine, I always am ridiculously hard on myself about these things. I know that God can break through our crap and still show Himself through technical difficulties and missed song endings. I shouldn't worry about that. The problem is, and maybe it's not really a problem, I take my job so seriously that every little mistake I take upon myself for not rehearsing the band well enough or not preparing well enough myself. I mean, I'm the leader, if something goes wrong it's my fault, even if someone else is the one that forgets something or makes a mistake. It has to be my fault for not rehearsing them well enough.

Anyway, from what I was told after, the music went fairly well. So does it really matter all that much in a worship service if the music is stellar or we play the coolest, hippest, new worship songs? I guess not. All that matters is that we are true to the reason we are there, to worship God. If we hang on to that God will break through our mistakes and show Himself to those worshiping with us.

Maybe someday I'll get over it and stop killing myself for minor mistakes and details...ok probably not, but at least after letting off some steam I can realize that God is a Bizillion times bigger than me and nothing I do can get in His way.

Ok, so I heard from my wife on Thursday this week that the Library of Congress will be archiving all tweets retroactively to March 2006. That includes everything from "I just ralphed at this crazy party" to late breaking news, to anything else under the sun. That's roughly 55 MILLION tweets PER DAY.

Now there are obviously good things and bad things about this. We can all see that bad side. Drunken ridiculous tweets are going to be immortalized in the Library of Congress Archives where people a few hundred years from now are going to be seeing them and thinking we were insane. There's definitely that going against it.

I think this is a pretty cool idea. If you think about it, since the Library started archiving it has mostly been distinguished authors, journalists, newspapers, magazines, whatever. Which of course give a pretty good representation of culture. With Twitter being in the archives now it gives people hundreds of years from now a minute by minute timeline of our culture. It shows what topics were trending on any given minute of any day or month; everything from Justin Beiber, to American Idol to the President and politics. They will be able to hear from the mouths (or fingers) of individual American's what it was like living through a big recession, or what it was like having family members in the armed forces. Even things as simple as what it was like when their favorite celebrity won a dance show.

It's about time we started archiving exactly who we really are. Of course, this is going to downgrade us in the eyes of many in the years to come. At the same time though, it might be one of the easiest way to document history. We will be able to go back and say at any moment in history what was happening in different cities, states, and countries. We will be able to see what the scores were of sporting events, what the emotion was in the stadium as a team came from behind to take the victory in the biggest game of the year.

I think, as crazy as this might sound, this is a very good step in the right direction. Of course, there are plenty of downsides to it but over all I think it is a pretty cool idea.

As I pray over the opportunity to go into youth ministry this verse comes to mind as what it means to be a youth pastor.

By the GRACE God has given me, I laid the foundation as an expert builder and someone else is building on it. 1 Corinthians 3:10

In this chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul is calling out the Corinthians for being prideful about who they are following, who they are a disciples of. Paul condemns this thought noting that no one, not himself nor Apollo are anything apart from Christ. They each have different jobs to do in building the kingdom and ministering to God's people. One may lay the foundation, but the other will build on it.

Paul makes it a point to say that there is no foundation other than Christ. He can only lay the foundation that Christ already laid in Himself. It is by God's grace that He allows Paul to lay the foundation of Christ in the lives of the people he encounters in his ministry.

This is what I see myself doing in ministry, especially in regard to youth ministry. Many of these kids will not have a solid foundational faith built when they enter into a youth group setting. It is my job and privilege, by the grace of God, to lay the foundation of Christ in their lives. They will only be with me for a short period of time. Once they leave the youth program and head to college they will have to rely on someone else to build on their foundation. By Christ working in me, and through me, I can have the chance to lay that solid foundation in them that they will always have the rest of their lives. I can help them come to Christ and show them what it means to have Christ as the foundation and center of their lives. Only through Christ can I be used as an "expert builder." Apart from Him I have no expertise.

I pray that I always acknowledge that it is Christ building the foundation, and Christ that is the foundation. It is nothing that I can do apart from Christ. I pray that I am always able to be an example of what it means to have Christ as the foundation and center of life.

(Reuters)

On March 5, 2010 in the wee hours of the morning a woman called the police and accused two time Super Bowl quarterback Ben Roethlisberger of sexually assaulting her at the Capital City night club in Milledgeville, GA. Roethlisberger and his alleged victim were apparently very drunk and as she stumbled down to the restroom he followed her in. At that point no one knows what happened. The video tapes showing everything leading up to that point were "accidentally" recorded over and the victim has decided not to press charges and has urged the Milledgeville district attorney not to press charges either

A lot has happened recently that has caused me to question where I am in my life and my relationship with Christ. Here's a little background

Most things in life follow the path of least resistance. We all prefer to do the easiest thing in most situations. We would like to think that the path the Holy Spirit is leading us on is the path of least resistance. Chances are....its not.

This is a blog post I wrote for Ramblings of a Rebellion about a year ago. I thought it still would apply to most that might read this blog.

It's amazing how fast technology moves these days. It's almost impossible to keep up with. I was just discussing with a friend the other day about how five or six years ago almost no one used text messages or even had the option on their phone. Now, it's almost the main form of communication for a lot of people. I got my first computer in high school about eight years ago and only used it for school work and listening to music. Now we use our computers for absolutely everything.

One thing that has caught my eye lately has been the Social Media trend. Even just a month ago I was sitting in my kitchen with a group of friends thinking that things like Twitter and Blogs were kind of nuts. I'm only 25 years old but sometimes I can act like I'm way older. In the last month or so I have embraced twitter and picked up blogging again.

A couple of weeks ago I convinced my family's business Garrison Law Firm (where I work) to embrace it as well and create a Facebook page for the business and to start a blog. When I first suggested it you would have thought I was from Mars or something. After a little explanation of how things like Facebook and a blog could really help advance the company's name my dad (the managing partner) agreed to it and I created the Garrison Law Firm facebook page. I am also in the process of creating a blog for the firm as well.

Today is Easter Sunday. With that comes so many great things, most of all the hope of salvation in knowing that Christ died for our sins and is risen today. One thing I was not expecting is how much I enjoyed and was moved by the music today.

I am a contemporary worship director at Castleton United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. I prefer contemporary worship, it typically moves me to a greater extent and I am able to worship more through it I believe than traditional worship. Today however, was a different story. Today our Music Director brought in an orchestra complete with brass and strings as well as some percussion. It was amazing in combination with our usual choir. They did "Christ the Lord is Risen today" and "Hallelujah" from Handel's Messiah and it was amazing. The way it was all put together with the orchestra and choir just gave it this holiness or "weight" to it. I have to say I much preferred what we had today to what we would have had in the contemporary worship service...which is saying a lot since I run the contemporary music at Castleton.

Nice work Dr. Wright and choir/musicians. Well done!

I'm sitting out on the balcony at my apartment right now. I have a Sam Adams Boston Lager in my Sam Adams Boston Lager frozen glass and have some music playing in the back ground (Myles Kennedy if you couldn't have guessed). It is 80 degrees and I'm getting pretty stoked about summer. Lot's of stuff to look forward to this summer.

First thing, we get to move into our new house in mid-May. We have a nice house up in Fishers. Currently the former homeowners are renting it from us until mid-May when their house is done, or May 14th, whichever comes first. Coming with the new house will mean doing lots of homeowner stuff...mowing the lawn, landscaping, building a deck out back etc. I have to say I'm looking forward to all of that. I might even teach Courtney how to mow the lawn.

Also, hopefully by the summer we will have hired a worship leader at the church (see post below). If all goes well this will be someone that shares my vision for what our church needs to be doing in terms of contemporary worship and outreach to the currently non-existent young adult population in our church. So that is exciting.

At the new house I will have a room all to myself for my music. I am very much looking forward to having a place of my own I can go and work on music, play some guitar or drums and relax. I can maybe even get back into doing some recording which I haven't done in over a year and a half.

All in all, it's going to be a pretty sweet summer.