Bard Letsinger

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.

Leveraging Social Media thru Rebecca Black “Friday” Parody

As a new church still in the planting stage Renegade Church does not have much of an advertising budget, and by not much I mean we have as Larry the Cucumber would say, “Zero, Zip, NA-DA!!!” So we have to use the best advertising every good church has, and that is word of mouth. If your people are not inviting people, excited about what they are doing as a body, then all the advertising dollars in the world won’t mean squat.

One way to leverage your congregation is to leverage social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Now, you can tell them to post something about what you are doing but many will not. Not because they don’t love the church or what it is doing (if they don’t love what you are doing then leveraging social media is the least of your concerns) but because many don’t know what to write or share other than “Another great Sunday at 5th United Fellowship of Yourtown”.  So help them out, give them something to Tweet about or on Facebook “share” with their friends.

This being Easter week that is what we did at Renegade Church. My Worship/Media guy, Skip Mozisek, and I went current and put together a parody of the Rebecca Black song…err, video….err, viral sensation "Friday"   (If you don't know what that is I am amazed you found this blog...no offense. Follow the previous link but warning it contains earworms.) Then at the end of the service we debut the video and and posted it to YouTube encouraging all our people to post/share/tweet/e-mail it to their friends. Here it is:

So far the response has been great, with key people reposting and sharing it with their friends and family and having it lead to conversations about our church, service times, and what we are doing for Easter. Members have even reported their elementary school kids walking around singing the chorus. All this is having the desired effect of people learning about who we are and what we are doing.

We have even had request to make it into a ringtone.

We always could use some new ideas as our advertising budget looks to be doubling from zilch to “jack squat” over the summer. So what is your church doing to provide content for your congregation that encourages them to “Share” your church with friends and family on social media? Love to hear about it.

Out of the Blog-o-spear for a while

Can't remember the last time I had a chance to blog. Way too busy working on planting Renegade Church and getting thigns off the ground. For awhile I did not think I could aford to blog but now I am thinking I can't aford not to. For so long it was a creative outlet and a way to keep my sanity. Now that I am teaching on a weekly basis and the lead guy at Renegade there are a lot of things that eat up my time, but it is time to start making time again...wait.... I guess we can't make time, we just rearange our time, or is it our scheadule, and did I even come close to spelling that corectly, well I know I spelled "that" corectly...choo choo this is how my train of thought goes off the tracks sometimes. O.K. back to blogging. Where has my time gone? A lot of it into our messages at Renegade, here is the latest, the start to our 3G series on the trinity.

Can I punch one of the “Worthwhile” in the throat…no?…o.k.

While doing research on the web this one church’s web page caught my eye. The site itself was nothing special, but it was the churches catch phrase that took me aback. It read, and I quote: “WHERE THE WORTHWHILE WORSHIP. “UNSAVED ARE NOT WELCOME (AS JESUS COMMANDED)” All I can say is “seriously?!?” Where the “WORTHWHILE WORSHIP”?!? As WHO commanded?!? What version of the bible are these people reading?  Just when I think “churchy” people can’t surprise me anymore, they do.

Think about it. Can you just see a doctor at the door of the hospital emergency room shouting “Hey, hey, HEY….YOU!!! Yeah, the guy in pain with the bone sticking out of his calf, when you stop bleeding all over the floor, get that leg fixed and can walk in here without us having to carry you, THEN come back and we will admit you…until then SCRAM!!!” Yet that is the exact attitude that goes on in many churches. However, making it your slogan takes it to a whole new level of spiritual arrogance…but hay, at least they are honest. If they act like jerks toward you, you can’t say they did not warn you. 

I know I should not say this, but it about takes everything in me to keep from punching “churchy” people like that in the throat. I heard a little kid say one time “Mean people suck”. They are right. As l like to say “Mean churches suck” too. But I guess the elite churchy people have a point.  As we clearly see in the bible Jesus drove away from Himself all the sinners who were far away from God and people that were looked down on by the religious elite…oh, wait a minute…NO, it was ACTUALY just the OPPOSITE!!! Jesus opened his arms, embraced, sought out and spent time with the people who were far away from God, the sinners (John 4:6-43, Luke 19:1-10), the ones who the spiritual elites thought were not “worthwhile” and Jesus railed against the Pharisees and other religious elites, even going so far as to call them a “brood of vipers” (Matt 3:7, 12:34, 23:33, Luke 3:7)  and “whitewashed tombs” (Matt 23:27).

People matter to God and there for matter to us, especially the ones that many churches don’t think are “worthwhile”. One of the reasons for God putting in on my heart to launch Renegade Church was to create a place where people who have a negative view of the church, or have been burned by churchy people in the past, can come and have a safe place to hear the dangerous message, without being judged or looked down upon because they do not look right, dress right, have the right color hair, listen to the right music, or have the right spiritual background. If you are one of those people who think church is boring, full of stuck up elite people, come check out Renegade Church where everyone one is worthwhile and the only people who are not tolerated are the churchy elites… with a name like Renegade Church they can't say they have not been warned...and no I won't really punch them in the throat, no matter how much they deserve it.

The Light Goes Out

Sunday morning I woke up to a fright…well sort of a fright. Mollie’s first words to me were “I think the fridge went out.” While there are worse things in the world, when it comes to an appliance going out in your house the only one I can think of that is more frustrating than the fridge is the air conditioner. Air conditioners always go out during a heat wave in July or August. When the fridge goes out it always happens right after your bi-weekly trip to the store.  It involves working to save your food, calling every hunter you know to borrow the biggest coolers you can find and repeated trips to the store for ice for however long it takes you to get it fixed or buy a new one.

Upon further inspection, and to my relief, I discovered that the fridge was still working. The good news, it was only the light bulb that had burnt out. Now the bad news… THE LIGHT IN THE FRIDGE HAD BURNED OUT!!! I never realized how important that little light was. A refrigerator is a dark place. You can find stuff in the door and those items up front, but the pickles tucked away in the back are impossible to find. And leftovers without a light can be dangerous. You are basicly taking your life in your own hands. Is that styrofome container you are grabbing the leftover shrimp from your date night last night, or the leftover shrimp from your date night last month that you forgot was back there? One is a tasty lunch, the other a prelude to an evening in the bathroom bowing at the porcelain altar praying for death.

Life without God is like looking in fridge with a burned out light bulb. Sure it works, but you can’t see what you are doing.  You fumble around looking for something you know is there but you just can’t seem to find it. And when you think you have found something that will satisfy your hunger it turns out to be spoiled take out from a few weeks ago and only makes you sick. 

Replace the light in the fridge; it will only cost you about five bucks. And if the light has burned out in your life, if you are a church drop out or never been involved in a church, find a good church home in your area. It is not smart to go through life eating the wrong stuff when all you need is a light bulb.

Why I Cried On My Anniversary

As many of you know from reading my wife’s Facebook status her anniversary gift brought me to tears. Many of you were texting her asking her “What was it?”, “Why did it make him cry?” I could just show you, but you would not quite get it unless I give you the back story.

Our wedding anniversary in January 4th and this year Mollie and I celebrated 18 years of marriage. On our anniversary we have a tradition of going out to dinner and, being the first week of the new year, we take time to reflect on the past 12 months, the trials and triumphs, and talk about what we want to accomplish during our next year together.

As many of you know the past few years have been tough on us ministry wise. My dream job, being the Small Groups Pastor at my home church, that I spent six years training for was taken from me by an interim senior pastor who did not have a clue what he was doing and given to someone else, a great guy, but who had no experience in Small Groups. (I was put in charge of overseeing the Greeters ministry). Budget deficits and having a position that made more since to be staffed by a volunteer led to me having to leave the church l loved. Last summer another church hired me to plant one of their campuses. They let us spend an entire weekend packing up our entire house to move knowing full well that on the following Monday (the day I was to start) they were going to tell me they decided not to plant the campus and I did not have a job with them after all. (We still have yet to unpack all the boxes). And this Fall I was a finalist for the Senior Pastor position at a great church north of Atlanta, one that was a perfect fit for my personality, style, and vision for ministry in the church… and they chose someone nine years my junior (another great guy who was also a great choice) from a church I turned down a position with a decade ago to instead go to seminary and train for my dream job at my home church.

Needless to say the review of the past year during dinner was kind of a downer. (I laughed as I typed that last sentence.) Mollie ask me "What do you see yourself doing, what is it you want to do?"I started running with the vision I feel God has given me for a church. A church that is into Christianity and rejects the Church-ianity that rules most congregations. A church that is willing to take real risk, not just willing to dip their big toe outside the box, with a vision of doing whatever it takes short of sin to reach people for Christ. A church that REALLY has a “Tradition of Being Untraditional”, willing barbeque the sacred cow at the drop of a hat. A church that has real mature believers that when they get older in years (40’s, 50’s and up) are mature enough to put aside their personal preferences in music, style, tradition and do what it takes to reach the next generation for Christ.

Mollie ask me "What is keeping you from launching it?"

My response, "Fear... what if I mess it up, what if it fails?"

Mollie then handed me a box and in essence said “Then go for it”. This is what was inside. 



  

For those of you who cannot remember the verse, Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (NKJ).

Now you know why I cried.

So…anyone out there ready to be part of something bigger than themselves, like nothing Victoria has seen in years? Let me know, I can use you and we can grow together.

It’s time to make a difference. Are you ready?

 

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The Right Voice Makes All The Differance

I love distinct voices; it comes from my days in radio. The right voice can make or break a character. Take Darth Vader for example. Would he have been intimidating with a tenor type voice speaking in a Scottish or British West Country accent? I think not! He would have rivaled Dark Helmet in the intimidating department. Don’t believe me…see for yourself.

The right voice and tone is also important when it comes to communicating your message. The old joke rings true, people would pay good money to listen to James Earl Jones read out of the local phone book. Take look at these TV spots and see if you can figure out who is doing the voiceovers, and yes, it gives you the answers at the end so you do not go crazy or wake up in the middle of the night wondering “whose voice was that?”

What Are You Doing? What Should You Be Doing?

My wife has been out of town for a few days and I have been at the house with our two homeschool kids. In essence she left three kids and the dog at home by themselves. However, I have been doing my job, keeping up the house, feeding the kid…well at least one good meal a day, and making sure they get their school work done. All this while working, researching, writing and doing some sermon prep of my own. For the most part the kids are doing their school work and keeping up with their responsibilities around the house like clearing the breakfast dishes and feeding the dog.

Kids however will be kids. They…er we…get sidetracked, and loose focus on the task at hand. Over and over the past few days I find I am asking the kids these two questions:

What are you doing? What should you be doing?

"Braiden… what are you doing?"
"uh…checking to see if there is a Pocket God update on your iPhone."
"’What should you be doing?"
"My math work."

"Braiden… what are you doing?"
"Just sitting here watching TV with Kailee."
"What should you be doing?"
"Cleaning up the dishes."

I think after a few days he will hear that question in his sleep, which is not a bad thing. This is not only a great question to be asking our kids, it is a great question to ask ourselves. I ask myself the same questions every day. "What am I doing? What should I be doing?"

"What am I doing?"
"Scanning eBay for Harley gas tank emblembs."
"What should I be doing?"
"Helping Mollie finish fixing dinner."

"What am I doing?"
"Getting mad at the kids because I can’t hear the game on TV and just got hit in the head with a nerf dart."
"What should I be doing?"
"Turning off the TV, grabbing a nerf gun and joining the battle."

Time is the one commodity we can’t replenish, recycle or replace. Once it is gone it is gone. There is limited time we get to spend with our family and limited time to do the things we need to do to accomplish the goals we have set for our lives. If we are not carful other things can sidetrack us and consume all our time. And they might be good things…but are they the BEST things that make the most productive use of our time?

So… "What are you doing?"
"Reading a blog."
"What should you be doing?"
Only you can answer that question for you. Make sure it is a good answer.