Bard Letsinger

Not My First Mistake, Nor My Last... The Video I Should Have Nixed.

This past weekend at Renegade Church I messed up. It was not the first and I can assure you it won’t be the last.

One of the things I love about the Renegade Church is that this group of people gives us the freedom to push the envelope and try new things. One of the things we like doing is showing video that demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. Humor can take a tense subject and disarm people so they actually listen to what you have to say. Sometimes it works, sometimes the reaction is mixed, and sometimes it completely bombs.

Right now we are in the middle of our “Relationship Rx” series talking about God's prescription for dealing with the people in our lives. The crux of the series is we tend look for the easy way out in our relationships, but there is no quick fix, no magic pill you can take to solve your problems or elixir you can spray on people that will make them behave how you want.

This past week we looked at parenting. The main theme was that most people before having children have an “idealistic” view of what it is like to be a parent. Most of us found out after having kids that we were nowhere near as prepared for parenthood as we thought we were. Kids are messy, complain, throw tantrums, ask questions, push boundaries and are can feel like a 25/8 job (yes 25 hours a day 8 days a week.) Today too many parents give up and just ignore their kids, letting them run wild because they don’t know what to do. When some do look for a solution it is usually of the quick fix variety, like out right drugging the kids, or other drastic measures. Some are so desperate they will try just about anything to make the kids “behave”, and if it seems to work they think it’s great but the sloution winds up in the long run doing more harm than good. They  just can't see it until it's too late. 

Sunday morning I was presented with a comedy video that on quick viewing seemed to illustrate those main points perfectly, and in a humorous way. It was run on the main screen while the band was still milling around and warming up and I made a snap decision to use it. Below is the video.  

The reaction needless to say was mixed. Some thought it was hilarious and completely got the "So desporate we will try anyting" tie in to the message. Others were indifferent, seeing the tie or the humor but not both. Some thought it was great but not for church. Some thought some parts were great but others went too far. And some were offended by parts of it for reasons I had not thought of or caught the first time I watched the video.

In hindsight I clearly see my mistakes. While it was a comic parody of a TV Product commercial the actors were very good and it was a little “too realistic” in some places. Also we put it in the wrong place in the service, during the worship set and too much time passed between the showing and the start of the message. And, where the main failure happened, I violated one of my rules of watching and processing something before I include it in a service. There were things I caught when I watched the video at home Monday afternoon that made me cringe. I know if I had first viewed the video on Wednesday or Thursday I would have had time to process it and either would have had our video guy edit out several parts (which we do all the time), or killed the video all together.

Straight up, I made a mistake in running the video, it was my call, my fault, no one else’s, and for those who were offended by it I ask you to please forgive me. Our goal at Renegade is to be better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today. We will defiantly be better next week than we were last week. 

I would like to thank those who came to me and the staff personally with a good heart, great intentions and in a loving way expressed your concerns sharing what you were feeling. It is amazing to have a church body that thinks the best and handles things properly instead of assuming the worst and talks to everyone else before bringing it to us.  

We want Renegade Churchto continue to be a safe place where people can hear a dangerous, life changing message. The message never changes, but the way we present it must constantly be adapted and tailored to reach each generation. I am glad to have a church that is a safe place for Renegade Pastors to step outside the “normal” church box and try new things. Some will work, others… not so much, but in the process Renegade will continue to fulfill its mission of helping ordinary people have extraordinary lives by following an extraordinary savior.  

 

Leaving your Fingerprints Behind

In 1937, during her attempt to fly around the world, Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot disappeared on approach to Howland Island. Just like that, poof, she was gone. However, 75 years after she vanished her legacy lives on. Earhart's accomplishments in aviation inspired generations of female aviators, including the more than 1,000 women pilots of the Women Air force Service Pilots (WASP) who ferried military aircraft, towed gliders, flew target practice aircraft, and served as transport pilots during World War II. The home where Earhart was born is now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum and is maintained by The Ninety-Nines, an international group of female pilots of whom Earhart was the first elected president.

Today you don't have to look far before you find Earhart's fingerprints all over modern avaition.  

Think about this for a second, If all of a sudden you disappeared, POOF you’re gone, and we jumped just five, ten, twenty-five years in to the future… would people be able to find evidence you ever “were”? We are not talking just that you “existed”, in our digital record keeping age we could easley prove that you were born, find records of things you bought, bills you paid, a Facebook page. I am asking if they could find evidence that you “lived”, that you made a lasting impact for good on the people you came in contact with. Could people clearly see your “Fingerprints” on your kids, your workplace, your community, your church. If you disappeared today would you leave a legacy behind.

In August 2012 I am starting a new series, “Fingerprints” and we are going to look at how we can stop just living day by day and start doing the things we need to do to leave a legacy.

75 years from now, will your children's children's children be who they are because of you? Only you can determine that, and it starts with what you do today. 

 

Sermon - Road Trip week 6 Saul/Paul and the Damascus Road

One of the things that makes a dramatic conversion so dramatic is a person’s past. In Acts 9 we read about the original Damascus Road conversion but it is not quite as dramatic without knowing Saul/Paul’s backstory.

As part of that back story we looked at the stoning of Stephen Acts 7:57-8:3. Stoning is a form of capital punishment where a group of people throw stones at the condemned until the person is dead.  When we think of throwing rock we usually think of the pebbles we find along the road of the flat rocks that are perfect for skipping across a pond. That is not what people used in biblical times when someone was stoned. Years ago my father-in-law went to Israel and brought me back a stone from the Jordan River around the area that David gathered his “five smooth stones” (1 Sam. 17:40), one of which he used to kill Goliath. I forgot to bring it with me on Sunday at Renegade Church, but as you can see from the picture it is about the size of a major league baseball and about three times as heavy. You can do some real damage to someone if you clock them in the head with a rock like this.

Watch as we look at Saul/Paul's back story and see if you have not come to a Damascus Road moment or two in your own life.

Road Trip... "Paul's Road Trip" Pt. 1 from Renegade Church on Vimeo.

 

Correction for this week: I said Benjimin was one of Joseph's sons. In fact, Saul could trace his linage back to the tribe of Benjimin who was one of the 12 sons of Jacob, Joseph was Jacob's favroite son (coat of may colors) and Benjimin's brother.

The life of Saul reminds me that no matter what we have done God can still use us to do great things. We tend to think our past, our failures, the severity of our sin, disqualifies us from anything good. But to God all sin separates us and there is no sin that cannot be forgiven. If we turn to Jesus and ask for forgiveness we can have our own Damascus Road conversion.

Don’t let your past hold you back. Whether it is your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your career, you entire life… it is not how you start, it is how you finish.

Every Day is a Good Day When You Are Not in a Coma - Nate Lytle

A cool part of leading a great church is that you get to hang out with some great people, like my friend Nate Lytle. In a departure from our normal Sunday message…well not much at Renegade Church is normal…but in a departure from what we usually do on a Sunday morning we did an interview with Nate as a kick off to Renegade’s Extraordinary series.

Back in 2007 Nate fell of a ladder at work and was struck in the head by a hunk of pipe that crushed his skull and caused severe brain trauma. At first Nate was not expected to live, and then when he did survive doctors said that he would never walk and talk or have any type of normal life. The only thing anyone was right about is that Nate would not live a normal life because, from his speaking engagements, to leading surf camps for disabled kids, to ministering to others who have suffered traumatic head injuries, to being named TIRR Survivor of the Year for 2011, and now promoting a book about his life and experiences, Nate’s life is anything but “normal.”

When interviewing Nate one verse kept coming to mind, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

The NBV (New Bard Version) translation is “God never waste a hurt.” 

We all have physical, relational and emotional hurts in our lives. Scripture makes it clear that God allows life’s trials to not only to teach us something about ourselves and build our character but also to equip us so He can work through us help others when they go through the same thing. Something that seems like it is preventing us from doing ministry can actually be the launching pad for a new ministry to others.

My friend Nate is living this out today. Where others see failure God see opportunities for ministry greater than you could ever imagine on your own. My challenge to you is what area of your life have you experienced your greatest hurt and how are you using it to help others around you. Unless you are doing that then your hurt and pain really were all for naught.

 

Wasting Time Well

A movie debuted the summer before my senior year of high school that was destined become a classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. At the time I had all these decisions in front of me to make as well as the pressure I felt from  coaches, teachers, parents as well as myself to succeed and accomplish all the goals that were set before me. But then one line from the movie changed my whole perspective. 

This week at Renegade Church I did a message called “Time Well Wasted” in our series “Life Lessons from Brad Paisley”. The song and the clip go together well. Life does move pretty fast….and then unexpectedly, poof, it’s gone, and we look around wondering "What just happned?!?" Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 9:9 “Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity;” The Hebrew word for  “vain/vanity” means breath or vapor. Simply, life is like the soap bubbles kids play with, existing for a brief moment... then gone, poof, with little evidence that it was ever there. So when we think about all the things we stress ourselves out trying to accomplish, what good are they if they cause us to speed through life and miss out on all the relationships and moments that truly make life rich?

Take a minute to listen to the advice of Brad Paisley, then figure out where you need to stop, look around and stop letting life pass you by.

 

Meeting the Chupacabra

Ever since I was in elementary school I have been fascinated with cryptozoology. Back then I had no idea what the study of creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and others was called, I just thought it was cool. Recently a creature that people are calling a Chupacabra, literally goat sucker, stared being spotted around Cuero, Texas. An area rancher, Dr. Phyllis Canion had seen one for several years on her ranch and when it was hit by a car she quickly retrieved the body for study. Since then Dr. Canion and her Chupacabra have appeared on the History Channel’s Monster Quest, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, and soon on an upcoming NatGeo special…and now with a couple of crazy Renegade Pastors.

Like many people when I first saw a new story on this “chupacabra” I came to a conclusion on what I thought it was, but it was not until I got a firsthand, close up, look and quickly found out there was more to this creature than meets the eye. Here is the full interview with Dr. Canion. Check it out for yourself.

Games People Play - Trivial Pursuits

Been too busy to write like I use to, but going to try to at least get into the habit of doing a M3D (Monday Morning Mind Dump) tossing out anything that was left in my head on Sunday morning but just did not make it into the message.

We wrapped up Renegade Churche's current "Games People Play" series Thanksgiving weekend with Trivial Pursuits. Here are the two main points I wanted everyone to walk away with.

First: Remember being “Thankful” and “Other-Centered” is a choice.

We can choose to be self-centered, spending our time looking at what other people have, wondering why other seem to work less and make more, have the house/car/clothes/spouse/kids we don’t, don’t have health problems we have, or just seem to be luckier. If we do that we wind up discouraged, resentful, negative and miserable. Not someone people want to be around.

OR…

We can choose to focus on those around us who are in need, those who have truly hit hard times, those who are really struggling in life and when we do we find ourselves counting our blessings and being thankful for what we do have.

Which one of these attitudes did you have over Thanksgiving?

The choice is yours. That’s right… you choose consciously or unconsciously which one of those attitudes you carry with you each day. Make a conscious choice to be other-centered.

Second: How do you know if something is a Trivial Pursuit?

A "Trivial Pursuit" is something that you feel once you have it/accomplish it you will be truly happy, everything will be great, that life will be complete, that all your problems will be solved.

Finding the right spouse, getting your degree, the right job, having kids, getting a promotion, getting a new car or your own home are all good things, but if we are not carful we can base our happiness on obtaining them. And when we do get them we are happy…for a short time, but then they let us down and we go after another one thinking that the “next thing” will make us happy.

The simple truth is that anything we chase after to fill that God shaped hole in our life with to make us happy and fulfilled is a Trivial Pursuit.

 

 

Throw them a Curve Every Now and Then

I love/hate movie trailers. They always show the best/funniest scenes or show you the whole movie (beginning, turning point, end) in three minutes. Most of the time I find you can just skip the movie, watch the trailer and save $8 bucks.   

Took my wife to the movies a few weeks ago and saw the trailer for the new movie "Green With Envy" staring Jasion Segal and Amy Adams. 30 seconds into the trailer and I thought “here we go again, crediting the actors, check, so next they will show Ryan working to make it up to Amy, show the kid/place/item that connects them, show Amy coming around, the two comming back together, show the final make up kiss…” then WHAM….WAIT, WHAT!?! Totally blindsided. Most creative movie trailer in the past decade.  

In the church the weekly service can be like a movie trailer. Everyone comes in and knows what to expect. Song, Welcome, Two more songs, offering speach and prayer, offering song, message, conclusion/alter call, final song, announcments, dismissal, lunch.  Take a lesson from the few creative people left in Hollywood and change things up, mess with the order, do something unexpected. That is what people remember.

Here is an example from our F-Word series on Forgivness at Renegade Church where our Creative Pastor Skip Mozisek came out with a spontainous interuption of the service that had eveyone talking for weeks.

 

So, what are you going to do this week to mix it up, help people remember the message and start talking about your service?  

It’s the End of the World As We Know It…It’s the End…oh wait, it’s not. Or False Prophet 0-2 / Bard 4-0

We were having fun this past week with the Harold Camping prediction of the rapture on May 21st. People were talking about the rapture like there was no tomorrow.  However, I am not sure why anyone thought Mr. Camping’s prediction would come to pass. Come on, the man is the head of a Non-Prophet organization after all.

Best joke of the whole week was played on me. I changed that weekends message in my “Fearless” series so on Saturday, May 21st, I texted Skip, my worship guy, “I'm calling an audible changing tomorrow's message at Renegade Church to "Fear of the Rapture"...that is if we are still here tomorrow LOL.” A few minutes later I got a text back saying “This isnt Skip. I found this phone on a pile of his clothes.” I about died laughing

Now that May 21 has come and gone people want to know where all the money people gave to Mr. Camping went. He is not saying but one look at the guy and you know none of it was spent on plastic surgery, ant-ageing creams or new suits.

Monday evening I was sitting on my porch pondering what Harold Camping’s next move would be. Guys like this never just lick their wounds and fade away, they always spin what happened and come up with a new prediction. I thought about what Camping might say and I jokingly posted on my Facebook page:

“Waiting for Camping (the Rapture is May 21 guy) to come out and say something along the lines of "Oops, forgot to carry the 1, so May is 5th month, double number 5 you get 10 so the end of the world is actually happening October 21, my bad". Or "It was a silent/invisible coming only true believers could sense". These guys can't keep their heads buried long.”

Darn if I did not wake up Tuesday morning to friends sending me links to news stories saying that Camping said he was off by five months and that the new date of the end of the world is….wait for it…. October 21st!!! And that what happened “May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment.”  You have to admit that I was more accurate in predicting what Camping was going to say than Camping was in his predictions of the rapture and the end of the world.

How did I know Camping was wrong? The Bible. Apparently he missed Matt 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” So if you want to follow a true prophet follow me. Based on that verse I have predicted that every end of the world prediction since 1988 was wrong and I am like 8-0. And right now I am going out on a limb and predicting that Mr. Camping’s October 21st date, as well as the Dec. 21 2012 Myan end of the world date will come and pass without incident and that I will be celebrating Christmas with my Renegade Church on December 25, 2012.

Looking forward to being 10-0.

Annual Posting of "Celebrating Earth Day by Flushing my Toilet Over and Over Again"

Personally I don’t hold to this whole global warming thing. In the 70's it was overpopulation and we would run out of food in the 80's, then it was global cooling and the hole in the ozone (don't hear anything about the ozone hole anymore) and now it's global warming. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against taking care of our environment. I like clean air, all for finding new sources of energy, obvious that we do have water shortages in some areas of the country, however some of the solutions are….well… just plain stupid.

Take green toilets for example. No, no, no, not toilets that are painted green to remind us to be kind to the environment, I am talking about the “low-flow” verity. For years standard toilets used between 3 & 5 gallons per flush. The house I grew up in was build in 1972 and had one of these standard toilets, and boy did it work. You could flush a football down that thing with no problem (I know because me and my brother did). Our toilet was not just the final resting place for a few expired gold fish, but hamsters, gerbils, gunnie pigs and the occasional small dog. 35 plus year in that house and my parents never owned a plunger.

A few years ago we built a new home and discovered that due to government regulations you can only install new, low flow toilets with a 1.6 to 2 gallon per flush rate. Translation, my 3 year old goes to the bathroom uses a couple pieces of toilet paper and I am headed to the garage for the plunger. Now I am not a math wizard but lets see:

Old toilets: Take care of business, flush (3 gallons of water down the toilet, literally)

New toilets: take care of business, flush….flush again, plunge, plunge, flush, plunge, flush, plunge,flush (at 1.6 gallons per flush that is 8 gallons of water plus extra carbon dioxide emission from your heavy breathing from all the plunging and not to mention all the noise pollution from your yelling and cursing out the blasted, tree hugging no good #*%#))# that invented this #(@)! thing).

Now you tell me which is better for the environment the old one flush and done toilets or the flush three times just to get a roach to his final resting place ones. The answer is logical, however logic and things like government regulations or global warming are oxymorons.

Well I must be off to celebrate Earth Day by in one trip to the bathroom flushing away enough water to supply a small town for an entire earth day.

Oh, and one more reason to hate Earth Day, the annual All day Captain Planet Marathon on Boomerang. Makes the Smurfs and Hammerman almost worth watching.