Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

introducing youthminblog : collaborative youth ministry blog

i am very excited to be asked to participate in a new youth ministry blogging initiative. this is a portal youth ministry blog that is taking in some of the most noticeable blogging & tech youth pastor types.

pretty stoked to be considered in the group as many i've met and almost all i have followed for some time now.

the basic idea, brainchild of chris szulwach, is that we are all going to be posting on some similar/coordinated topics our best thoughts, ideas and perspectives. so plug this into the rss feader, there is sure to be some great discussion on youth ministry practice.

monday music : its a landslide

a little tip to jen lemen for weekend reminder of this haunting gem that i just love. at one point i was close to being able to play this song on guitar..

credit crisis in nutshell : modern economics that i can understand

one of the simpler explanations to the economic crisis that knucklehead like myself can understand. tip lifehacker


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

enough review : the advice you probably already knew but forgot

a few weeks back i was sent a few copies of 'enough, discovering joy through simplicity and generosity' which is the latest book by adam hamilton. as with many of my reviews, its more about my emotions reading through the book than the content. sorry, i try to balance it out, but sometimes to no avail. if you want something a bit more lengthy & thorough then catch up with my friend shane raynor's review.

it is a little bit more than 100 pages and a small size paperback retailing for 8 dollars. which is pretty attractive to me in that the topic is not one i'd normally invest in, but i would consider this one. it was a pretty easy read. i started it, put it down after the intro and then finished the rest in one sitting. if you have ever heard adam preach you can really hear him preaching withing the pages (at least i was).

it is obviously a writing that reflects on our current economic crisis. much of the advice rendered through the pages, that is actual financial navigation void of spiritual framework, is stuff you would hear from a credit-less advocate (ala, dave ramsey who is actually mentioned once or twice). adam brings up some old school ideals of 'layaway' which i remember all to well. he breaks out the classic thought of "wants" vs "needs. in the beginning adam brings up our reshaping of "the american dream" from living well and improved from your parents conditions to this idea of having more stuff. my default to talking about consumption is 'the story of stuff' which has similar parallels. still, i was rather intrigued with naming how that ideal has changed.

hamilton moves from the need to manage money and then into giving with the tithe as an example. its in the ending chapters that adam really hits his stride, or it just took me two or three chapters to get into his rhythem. i was thinking at the end of the reading if this was the next consecration/pledge campaign for a church.. i sure hope not, but it is possibly. this doesn't feel good as a curriculum/training book. its a good conviction book, but it is still much of the same advice i've heard for years. people know these practices, complain about the various problems, get this kind of advice from various outlets, we just continue to forget about it. sage advice, but we will probably still learn the hard way.. or maybe we are already learning it.

crazy or stupid : something to see to believe

i've been familiar with ice climbing before. when i was regularly going rock climbing & working at rei the idea of ice climbing was way cool, but being in an area that it rarely gets below freezing for more than two days straight it is not something i ever imagined doing myself. now i don't think i could ever imagine climbing iceburgs, but it sure is cool to know people try.

tip to espn

podcamp nashville : spirituality and social media

i am doing my first 'out of church' crowd speaking event since i left my work at tennessee state univ. i've put myself into the mix for speaking at podcamp nashville. i'll be speaking about spirituality in social media. here's my little write up

hey, the name is gavin & i am career youth pastor with a twist of technological participant anthropologist. i imagine our time together to be an exploration of how people have been (and are able) to find & express faith through the social media spectrum. from blogging, to storytelling, podcasting, daily prayers, second life, & of course twitter.

if we get there (that 25 min limit you never know) we will look at how the established faith systems have been largely slow to respond. from static content websites to twitter the faith systems are trying it out, but is it the right way? what is ministry in a technological age?

follow up will probably happen at my blog.
http://www.gavoweb.com

i'll be reframing some of my usual talks in that i will be assuming my audience is more tech savy and does not need all the translation that i normally put into a tech presentation (which can become the whole presentation depending on the crowd).

swimming with the characters of nashville : the polar plunge

Originally uploaded by gavoweb.

participated in the polar plunge today as fundraiser for special olympics. it was supposed to be a mission thing we were doing as part of our senior dudes small group. but it ended up just being us adult leaders as our youth wigged out, forgot to get out of work, or had some state hockey tournament.. all very lame excuses if you ask me.

todd's daughter, bailey, was our photographer for the day. so hopefully i can share some other pictures.

sending off the teens : one of our ministry ideas

one of the things that we do as part of our youth ministry here at first umc in hendersonville is that we try and put in ads to each of our hs yearbooks. this can actually prove kinda tricky cause the leadership of the yearbook changes frequently, but when we can do it its a good thing. we do a page/half page graphic highlighting our graduate seniors from that high school.

our idea behind it is that this is piece of memory that will walk with the graduate well into youth and adulthood and putting together a picture collage of sorts to give some remembrance of the story of their time with this particular church community is a great reminder. not to mention, if it looks cool everyone else who gets a yearbook will see our name & we are supporting relationships with the school.

the trick is trying to find pics of those seniors who don't come around a whole lot or using those old pics of someone who kinda wained off their junior or senior years, but with facebook or myspace its a little easier to make that work too. here is our standard looking page for hendersonville high school` class.

practical wisdom : getting away from the external drivers

this is a great talk given at ted just a few weeks back. so much i can resonate with. it is worth every minute of your 20 minutes.

image of God : prayer for feb 14th

psalm 144:11 isaiah 40:28-31 luke 15:20

Speaking of younger people today, some really are unbelieving: that is they have recognized that the God of Jesus, this God of tenderness actually exists - and they refuse Him.

Others are not really unbelievers as such since they have rejected only the picture of God they have seen portrayed through certain Christians now or in history.

Adapted from Jean Francois Six

If you are running away from a wrong picture of God, does that take you further away from Him or closer to Him?

from celtic daily prayer

immersing in the new media : what has happened to my blogging

i regularly called blogging my spiritual practice. it was a way of reflecting on some idea or challenge that came across in my day. however, if i was honest with myself, the 'spiritual' aspect of my blogging practice was waining. very few times did i really have some thought that was challenging on a daily basis. instead, and probably more healthy as a practice, i was pondering something for weeks or months at a time. but that doesn't help in keeping an active blog going. so i have been feeling like i was putting in a bunch of filler stuff.

well, some of that filler stuff (which i do think was good most of the time, admittedly not all the time) is moving around to other avenues, along with some of my other ponderings. i am more and more using twitter as a way of crossing the town green, sharing prayers, information, links and photos from my day etc. i have also taken advantage of posting within facebook.

i've started to reshape my blog to reflect this change. putting all my lifestream stuff through friendfeed and showing it off on the side bar. i also created a lifestream page that is more expanded.

tricky part to all of this is that there is not a searchable long tail in twitter content. its probably a good thing as i am not sure i want to find 140 character snippets for the first page of all my searches. so what is worthy of sharing for the long term? i'm still trying to figure that one out.

blogbatical : 70s & february

if you are in nashville you know that its not february.. at least weather wise. so i am on a weather induced blogbatical. back to posting tomorrow, when it is supposed to rain.

the future of church : a green life returns to what we knew

 

a few weeks back i was in a conversation where we were talking about the future of the church. i made some statement, not slamming the megachurch, but being less than kind to the megachurch as the future of church. which, i am prone to do.

one of the people just happened to be a part of the staff at one of the biggest megachurches, that i will leave unnamed (haha!). and he offered his view. he shared that he felt that the future church will look like megachurches and house churches.. hmmm..

now i pondered that. it most certainly could be the case. people seem to embrace the large corporation securities/offerings or they go against the grain in some anti-establishment stance, which could bring about that dynamic. but i don't know if corporation is the future (and lets be honest, the megachurch is a corporation) of the life of the person.

what i got to thinking about was the inclination people are having to live the 'green' lifestyle. it is just now becoming a norm and part of peoples daily practices. so as families develop with young adults that have grown up being 'green' what are some of their behaviors that might shape they way they participate in church life?

we are already seeing that people are not too worried about their church denomination loyalites. the economics are poor in large global corporate climate, which was otherwise safe & secure 5 years ago.

so these three things, 1. green living 2. falling denomination loyalty 3. an unsecure corporate economic will lead to resurgence of parish life.

people, conscious of their impact will doing old school transportation, walking to & from the markets/cafe/stores. because people cannot blindly count on corporations for their economic securities there will be a move back to small business (which i hope government taxes make easier, or less taxking, to do) bringing up local entrepreneurship, and finanicial control back to the individual, that we have not seen in 50+ years. people will move back into those houses of worship that were abandoned by a church denomination, or are a dieing congregation, in their neighborhoods and reshape them to what is core to their local needs.

when will this happen? maybe 20-30 years or so from now. there will be that generation shift where the older folks who have grown up with behaviors of driving all over God's green earth to get what they need are not the norm. they will be replaced by children of my family who have grown up living simply, using canvas bags for daily grocery pick up, walking to schools, riding a bike to the post office, knowing who all is in your neighborhood (instead of driving in and driving out).

will this replace what we currently know? not completely. just as the corporation will never leave us the megachurch will never leave either. but it will become less a significant voice in our day to day lives. there will be nothing to be enamored about as people lives will have become reoriented towards a parish life. house churches i don't see as being a norm, but being the new 'satalite' campuses of the parish church, which isn't such a new idea at all.

in the future, we will see parish life return.. will we, our denominations, be ready or will we have moved out our stakes?

chime in? agree/disagree? thoughts? am i crazy?

i am the whiteboard : coo coo cachoo

its been a long time since i did a web quiz. this one was short & sweet & i can live with the results. tip to ironic catholic

You Are a Whiteboard

You are a dreamer, a visionary, and a straight up idea person. You are very creative. Even if the things you think up are a bit wacky, they often are brilliant.

You are an adept problem solver. You are always tossing around dozens of ideas. You would make a good artist, designer, or architect. You do best when work feels like play.

What Office Supply Are You?

look back into the past : the things that were about this time years ago

in my on going toss out of lifting up some of the archives of this blog from similar time period over the years.

• i jumped in on some oovoo conversations with marketing & tech type people (pretty sure i was the only youth minister participating in the event). that was fun, but oovoo hasn't taken off. tokbox seems to be the next multi person video conference center.
• some ponderings from the desert fathers & mothers on parenting & youth ministry
• everyone can use some new 'faith filled' pick up lines
• an early morning reflection on the homeless in my city
• remember when the nfl was going to sue churches if you had a super bowl party.. seems they have learned from that pr nightmare
• i was again likened to a celebrity.. well, he wasn't so much celebrity then, he's more now
• church shopping & the devices of the entertaining church
• i took the strengths profile test that our church is big proponent of. can you guess what i came out as?
• my abbey journal kept while on retreat at gethsemani. good times, need to get back soon.
• in what is the only time you see capital letters use consistently, my pastor michael williams guest blogged on the theological conversation with miroslav volf
• this is what happens when you are friends with jonathon norman
• thoughts on how justice issues can become an idol unto themselves
• some ponderings on contemporary worship in my church context & how our greater church sold their soul to contemporary worship
• starbucks goes down!

warmth in winter : retreat highlights

i know you all might be bored of seeing all this warmth in winter stuff by now, but this was my life for the later part of last week. not to mention the 5 or so months leading up to the event. this was our retreat highlights video shown saturday night. i'm a proud papa in that the youth team we assembled shot it, cut it up, and produced the video all in the weekend. i will probably add a bit to the end of the video to put in the saturday night experience. i gave everyone the morning off (except shane who had to do song slide duty) so we don't have video captured of that.



Warmth in Winter '09 : Retreat Highlights from Gavin Richardson

warmth in winter : story in photographs

i had many folks from my team of youth taking photos of warmth in winter. here is a bit of the story in photography

warmth in winter : glimpse into a retreat

this is partially a mobile test post

This is a pic of a core part of our design team for warmth in winter jumping around dancing at the end if another great retreat. they worked harder than ever before to make this one happen and it turned out great. view more photos at our conference flickr & my own flickr set.

where i've been : warmth in winter

wondering what i was up to last week (with only one posting and all)? well, here's a little glimpse as i was doing my normal stuff, but getting ready for our largest youth retreat, warmth in winter, we participate in. this is our friday highlights video my team of youth put together as part of the retreat.

Warmth in Winter '09 : Friday Highlights from Gavin Richardson.