artwork by: Wojciech Pijecki

“So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.” James 1:16-18

If gifts are rivers of light streaming from God, as the “Father of Light”, then why do I find it so hard to use them? Do you use your gifts all the time? Are you totally all up in that junk?
What is light?
It is used to expose darkness, lead the way, and give life.
What then should our gifts be used for?
I would say that we should use our gifts in the same way that we use light.

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I was privileged to be part of our message prep team today about the new series we are going to start out of the book of James.
The lead team was wanting to flesh out a compelling reason for people to come to church in the month of July, which is notoriously known in Portland Oregon for having low attendance at churches.
They knew they wanted to go through James but is that enough for our members to invest and invite people to come. Essentially, is it worth coming home early from vacation just to go to church?
As we were reading through James (btw if you haven’t read James in awhile, please do), trying to come out with a bottom line of what we wanted people to come away with on a Sunday.
I got the idea of using “Naked Church” an the title, not from the stand point of nudity or crassness but from the point of view as being vulnerable, non-assuming, hiding nothing.
Think of it, the moment you say “Naked Church” it conveys a sense of “What? What is that about?” It totally gets peoples attention and gets them thinking about coming to church. Booyah.

It was not chosen as the title of the series but I still love the idea and want to give it away to those who might think it would work for them.

Ultimately we chose, “Authentic: Exposing Hypocrisy”.

Parting words:
“Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it. You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers.” – James 1:11

Download Naked Church Series Art

Package Contents:
Lower Thirds
1024×768 Message Slide
11×17 Poster at 300 dpi
Thumbs and psd files included

There is no series bumper but if you are good at making those just let me know I we can include one that you have made in this download package.
Feel free to use this series art however you would like too provided you do not take credit for it or sell it.
If you would like to use the series art in a series you sell please contact us for licensing prices.

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Reading “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallas Willard I was struck with quote in which he says, “…we so devoutly believe in the power of effort-at-the-moment-of-action alone to accomplish what we want and completely ignore the need for character change in our lives as a whole. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.”

He likened this attitude to an athlete who is at home plate with the bases loaded, bottom of the 9th inning and the score is tied up. At that moment all his practicing, weight training and devotion to his craft was made for this moment. He hits a home run and the game is won.
We as Christians though like to “fly” by the seat of our pants hoping that when someone comes to us to let us know their wife has just died, someone has molested their 4 year old daughter, they have lost everything, this being our “proverbial moment” that we will knock it out of the park.
Without the necessary discipline we can not hope to make a difference in the situation because we like the grasshopper have gone onto greener pastures and come back to a drought with nothing to hold us over through the winter.

Let me leave you with the thought from Dallas, “True Christ-likeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.”

Shalom

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I recently started thinking about the nature of the church, and some of the things that can pull our focus from actually being the church while watching the season premiere of “Jon and Kate Plus 8”

Hear me out…

My wife has followed the show from early on, and I won’t pretend that I haven’t watched many an episode. What was so endearing about these people were the struggles that they had as a couple trying to raise eight children. They got on each other’s nerves, bickered, and struggled to keep up with the daily work of having kids.

A lot of folks could identify with this family, which makes the recent events in their lives so difficult to watch. They now live in a huge house, Kate travels the country to promote her book and make public appearances, and they are hounded by paparazzi. This is light years from the family that let us in their home several years back to document their experiences with two sets of multiples.

It seems as if the show has stopped serving the family and the family is now serving the show. To pay for the huge house, bodyguards, and new cars the family has made major sacrifices. Kate’s travels bring in the kind of income that Jon couldn’t provide with his previous job. Since she is such a public figure, she has to spend money to maintain appearances which, in turn, means more traveling for work.

Now, I don’t pretend to actually know Jon and Kate from the comfort of my couch. The point of this isn’t to throw stones at them, but rather to explore what it looks like when service turns into enslavement. Their life requires an unreasonably high level of production just to maintain what already exists.

Aren’t our churches sometimes guilty of the exact same thing? We build bigger buildings. We hire more staff. All in an attempt to worship God and invite more people into that worship. But, at a certain point, the Kingdom of God isn’t as urgent as the church’s next mortgage payment. We become slaves of maintenance, and the ’structure’ of it all becomes more important than the original purpose behind the ’structure’.

What we can clearly see in a television show can sometimes pass by unnoticed in our own communities. As people stop tuning in to “Jon and Kate Plus 8” because they can no longer relate or people still tune in just for the spectacle of it all, couldn’t we say the same thing is potentially happening to our churches?

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On Memorial Day I had the day off, which means I did not have to go to rehearsal on Saturday night or lead worship or lead my team on Sunday. Ordinarily I am fine with this and only went through a little bit of anxiety about not being there.

If you lead any team on a Sunday morning, then you know what I mean when I say that sometimes you feel like things won’t get pulled off without you.

Fortunately I work with some really wonderful people who have “It” covered, and just to celebrate them so as not to get jealous of their coolness; I want to thank Brandon(video), Carver(audio), Brent(Co-Lead Pastor), Peter(Student Community Pastor), Justin(lighting) and Jennifer(producer). They really pulled off a great service.

Back to the point.
In order for me to have a weekend off, I need someone to cover my responsibilities. This past weekend it happened to be a band called Mikes Chair. They were great, a little too great… It seemed that everything I am self conscious about on stage, the leader of that band did amazingly. He had awesome transitions, was witty, sang great, the band sounded great, connected with the crowd almost instantly (give me a break!). At one point I felt myself getting mad at them for being so good.
How dumb is that? I am getting mad at them for doing what I want them to do.

The whole rest of the day I was a jerk to my family, short with my friends and even kicked the dog.

Can you relate to this? Striving so hard to do certain things and then seeing someone else do them so effortlessly?

We as a people work so hard to be meaningful, to be “irreplaceable” in our work/life. Yet, for the benefit of the organization, we should be working to “replace” ourselves- empowering people to lead well, love all and most importantly…confess.

My name is Josh and I am insecure, but at least I am honest about it right?

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I was listening to NPR on memorial day and here was the story that hit me in my core.

Donovan Campbell talking about his time in Iraq, the book is called “Joker One” and in it are his memoirs of the battles he fought and men he had lost and how he maintained his marriage and sanity. As a Lt. he was in charge of 40 men (a battalion). His battalion, known as Joker One, was assigned to one of Iraq’s worst hot spots: the city of Ramadi and even with all his self questioning he came through it all with only one KIA.
He was asked on NPR how he dealt with the strain of leading a team like that, in one of the worst places to be in Iraq to which he said,

“In order to lead a team like I had too, You can’t think about your wife, family, kids.You have to already believe you are dead. Which allows you to focus on the main objective as well as the safety of your men.”

Donovan Campbell was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for his time in Iraq.
He now works at a company where he is in charge of 150 people and his biggest take away is to “model” servant-leadership, business will take care of itself he says, if he can daily serve his people and develop that value in their lives as well.

I got to thinking? This is an marine, who has seen the worst of the worst. His biggest leadership motto, “Think of yourself as already dead, then you can lead well.”
We are called to die to ourselves, take up our cross and follow Christ. Disciple people, love them, accept them. To live as Christ and to die is gain.
Often times though we are so concerned with ourselves and what we get or where we will be that servant-leadership is an after thought. But just like Donovan said, “If we take care of our ‘people’, the business and in our case the business of life (our welfare) will take care of itself.

Here’s to being a Doulos of Christ

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So i have these photoshop files that I haven’t cone anything with, they just sit on my external, collecting pixel dust and wishing I would expose them to the world. I am sure all of you can relate.
Whelp, here they are. I am not going to say they are exactly what you need but I am sure you can use them.
Illustrator Files are: Ballistic, Bullet, Unfiltered
Photoshop Files are: Courage, Goodness

If you need one converted to photoshop cause you can’t open an Illustrator file, just let me know.
Would appreciate a tweet about this if you have time :)

Ballistic:

Download Ballistic

Bullet:

Download Bullet

Courage:


Download Courage

Goodness:

Download Goodness

Unfiltered:

Download Unfiltered

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Here are my favorites right now.
Would love to hear how they inspire you to make something cool for the kingdom.
Bamm.

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