By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio over any other option, unchurched Americans prefer churches that look more like a medieval cathedral than what most think of as a more contemporary church building.  The survey found that while billions are being spent on church buildings, overall church attendance is declining.

The article rightly implies that the unchurched prefer the more aesthetically pleasing look of gothic cathedrals because it speaks to a connectedness with the past.  The younger the person, the more they prefer the gothic to the contemporary.  “I don’t like modern churches, they seem cold,” said one survey respondent who chose the Gothic design. “I like the smell of candles burning, stained-glass windows, [and] an intimacy that’s transcendent.”

I’m finding that the ’seeker’ of today is not the seeker of decades past.  For years we’ve built and programmed our churches on the philosophy that the ‘unchurched’ don’t really want a traditional church experience.  And in some respects, that is still true.  They don’t want the trappings of a church that is judgemental, lifeless, condescending, and more concerned with themselves and their tradition than those in need who need the love and life of Christ.  What they DO want is connectedness, unity, and a sense of something beyond themselves.  The ‘tradition’ of being involved in a church that has deep roots, a rich history, and is connected to the life of Christ through a vibrant community is very inviting.

As I am preaching, writing, teaching, design media, editing video, or programming services, these thoughts are always on my mind.  How can I help those around me connect with God on a level that is deeper, richer, and more connected with the world around them.

Stained glass, sculpture, art, hymn, call and response, and other traditional elements might just be what the churched AND unchurched are longing for.  I wonder where my clerical collar is…

RALEIGH, N.C. — What was supposed to be an honor — a cover story about a group of successful women pastors — has instead been tarnished for a Durham non-denominational church leader.

Sheryl Brady, the 48-year-old pastor of The River Church, was featured among four other women pastors on the cover of Gospel Today, a Christian lifestyle publication based in Atlanta. The article, titled “Women Pastors: Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” was pulled from the shelves of LifeWay Christian stores because it upset the owner — the Southern Baptist Convention.

The convention believes the position of pastor is reserved for men. “I respect the theological debate about women in leadership and the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to disagree, but to deny Gospel Today the right to freedom of the press to cover it and discuss it is alarming,” said Brady, who preaches in the Pentecostal tradition of prophesy, healing and speaking in tongues.

The Detroit native and her husband, Bishop Joby Brady, travel widely on the Christian conference and seminar circuit and grabbed the attention of Gospel Today founder and publisher Teresa Hairston.

Hairston said she was impressed with Brady’s dynamism.

“I was absolutely shocked,” said Hairston, when she learned last month that LifeWay and its 150 stores nationwide was pulling the September/October edition.

The chain is a major distributor, but the magazine is still widely available elsewhere.

A spokesman for LifeWay Christian Resources based in Nashville, Tenn., said the magazine story was contrary to the Southern Baptist denomination’s statement of faith and therefore stores were asked not to promote it. Customers may ask for a copy of it at the counter, said spokesman Rob Phillips.

Having been a member of a SBC congregation in Texas, as well as having been ordained in the denomination, this story is interesting to me.  I do know where I stand on women in the senior pastorate… but I am not sure where I stand on censorship.  Or, perhaps I do.  Do you?

I assumed that the press and blogosphere would be abuzz over this social gaffe.  Not so.

Last night, Senator Biden employed the same tactic multiple times in reference to McCain.  One can only assume that the democratic advisors assumed that if it worked once, it would work again.  And work it did, serving to demean McCain.

I never liked it when my republican counterparts referred to President Clinton as simply “Clinton” or just “Bill” during his term in office and I don’t like it now.

Come on people, let’s show some respect.

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

A year ago we began planning and working towards a new online presence for Mountaintop Community Church, the progressive church where I serve as Minister of Creative Media.  We occasionally measured the year-long journey in miles and laughter.  But typically, it was inches and strife.

We had thought the process would take a couple of months.  We were grossly naive.  Fall turned to Winter and we had rejected our first round of designs from the vendor.  Winter turned to Spring and we’d passed rounds two and three.  As Spring gave way to Summer we’d said no to a fourth round and all communication had broken down. 

Seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, we took the bull by the horns (as they say in Texas) and set out to design the site ourselves.  I became the design firm and my pastor became the client.  During a week of hashing out the design during a retreat to the mountains (about which I care not to speak), we finally came to the design you see today.  If we had tried to do the design ourselves a year ago, I don’t believe we would have ended up with as good a design as we did.

Now, as Summer turns again to Autumn, the site is live and we are moving on with finishing smaller elements of the site such as podcasting, video archives, live streaming, an online store, etc.

Some things I’ve learned:

1. Make sure you are comfortable with both the back-end updating software and the front-end design capabilities your vendor is offering.
2. Find great examples of great work from other great designers and churches.  It will help you communicate your ideas.
3. Form follows function.  While the design needs to be eye-catching and engaging, the ultimate test is functionality.  Is it usable and easily navigable?
4. Everyone that sees a ‘design comp’ will have an opinion, and every opinion will be markedly different.  While they are all important, the job of the designer or project manager is to communicate well using excellent design principles.
5. Opinions will change. As the project drew out, our goals and aesthetic preferences changed several times.  Keep good notes and document everything.
6. Bring your staff and congregation along throughout the process.  Keep them updated well and often.
7. No matter how much time you have, it’s never enough. 
8. A project is never finished, only abandoned.
9. There are worse projects to spend a year of your life doing.

COLUMBUS, OH — Mixed feelings. That’s the best way to describe how people feel about a controversial church sign that was seen in Blacklick this past week. For 24 hours, the message board outside Havens Corners Church, 6696 Havens Corner Rd., read, “I kissed a girl and I liked it, then I went to Hell.” The message refers to the chart-topping song by pop artist Katy Perry “I Kissed A Girl.”

Pastor David Allison said he didn’t put up the sign to draw attention to the church. “We didn’t intend to get into all this, but it’s become a bigger thing,” Allison said. He was just very concerned about the implications of the song for teenagers and what he called a music video so suggestive it borders on pornography. “If anyone’s seen the video and understands how lewd and suggestive the video is for this song, that is not something young people should go toward,” Allison said. He thought the message would be a loving way to remind teenagers that the Bible denounces homosexuality.

Taking a look at the other side of this story, some people can’t believe the church displayed that message so publically. A viewer sent us a picture of the sign with the subject title “Worst Church Sign Ever.” The sign was removed Thursday. Pastor Allison said it was not due to outrage. He said he received volumes of support from throughout the state. Instead, he said, it was confusing to many people who called in or e-mailed because they didn’t know to what he was referring. They were unaware of the song.

Equality Ohio said their “jaw dropped” when they saw a picture of the sign. “It was a little jaw-dropping. But it happens and we want people to know there are more than 300 welcoming and affirming churches across Ohio,” said Kim Welter, of Equality Ohio. They maintain while the church is free to air their opinion on a reader board, members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community will find more than 300 welcoming churches throughout Ohio.

Allison said they do welcome the GLBT community but believe they are engaged in sin.

I’m not really sure that I need to comment any further on this.  The terrible theology concerning what condemns one to hell notwithstanding, I see both side of the issue… I suppose.  I just wish the church could find ways to get press coverage in more positive ways.  I’m not sure the shock factor really helps much…. perhaps I am wrong.

In the ensuing years, many have moved on to other ministries, other churches.

I have as well.

But here, at a going-away party, a snapshot tells a story that words cannot.  Perhaps my smile gives more insight than mere words are able.  What does it say?…

Here is a group of people that I loved. 

They are the threads that wove through the tapestry of my time at Prestonwood.  A time that, overall, I greatly enjoyed.

The picture tells a truth about that time, that moment in which it was taken in, but it also lulls me into false perception that nothing has changed since then.  And yet, as I recall the stories of these volunteers’ trials over the year’s since the photo, I know that much has changed.

But that is the beauty of the picture.  It remains. It remains forever, unchanging.  I can look at it and remember the good times, forgetting the bad.  And there were many, many good times.

And in that moment I am there again with them.

The Prestonwood Media Team

Curtis Geesamen.

A 15-year-old kid who, as many us once did during our summers, joined his church and others for a week-long youth camp focused on fun and spiritual renewal.

During a simple game Curtis suffered blunt head trauma… an accident that took his life away.

Curtis’ youth camp was organized by LIFT Student Ministries, a camp that I attended for many years and worked at many more… a camp that I gave blood, sweat, and tears to over many hot summers… a camp that changed my life.

Further, Curtis’ accident happened on the grounds of my alma mater, Cedarville University.  A place that I love nearly more than any other place on this earth.

So why can’t I get him out of my mind?

Curtis walked many of the same paths that I did as a kid his age.  But he shall walk no further.

Today, he walks down streets of a city far beyond.  Curtis has left the rest of us to find our way without him.  And someway, somehow, Curtis calls out to me as a reminder that life is short.  Fleeting.  But a vapor, then gone.

Those thousands attending camp with him will never forget the lesson he taught them this week.  I know I won’t.  As Reagan said of the Challenger astronauts, “We will never forget [him], nor the last time we saw [him], this morning, as [he] prepared for [his] journey and waved goodbye and ’slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Tonight, I lament with the Geesamen family.  I lament with Cedarville.  I lament with Dan Brown and all of those who have been changing teen’s lives since 1992.  This week, I wish I were still an integral of producing camps for youth.

I wish I had been there, if only to be a part of the healing that will come… albeit somewhere long down the road of an unforeseeable future.

O.J. Simpson was on trial, eBay was founded, and I was closing out my high school career.

As a part of a local barbershop group in my hometown, named Twice, I had the opportunity to travel a lot. Our group performed for senior events, lodge parties, the occasional school function, and a multitude of other community-oriented events.  But often we found ourselves in churches.

When one grows up attending church and has the opportunity to visit so many churches, it is easy to become cynical and tune out even the best of speakers.

But a warm Summer morning in 1995 changed all of that for me.  On a performance tour we stopped at a small church of some random denominational flavor in upstate Indiana. It was a nondescript church with a graying crowd… a church with more empty seats than filled ones… a church not unlike the millions of others one passes daily and never takes notice of… a church that passes immediately into forgotteness.

Our group sang with as much gusto as we could muster during the worship portion of the Service, smiling broadly and trying to seem oh-so-sincere. But inside I think we all felt as though we were doing this boring church a favor.  As we stepped off the stage and into the front row, I never imagined that this little church and it’s dry Service was going to change my life.

As the Minister, an older gentleman with peppered hair and a lanky build, approached the pulpit I feared the worst.  He was not unlike the endless parade of preachers I had come to tune out on so often an occasion.  Except… he had a bit of a sly grin on his face, which I thought was rather odd.  And to this day I swear he looked right into my eyes, and perhaps even my soul, as he bent over the pulpit.  And then he did something wholly unexpected: digging into the dark recesses of the pulpit he pulled out a 2-liter bottle of soda pop and held it up for all to see, much like angler might raise a prize catch for all to see.

“THIS!,” he said in a tone seemingly swollen with pride and love, “is none other than Vernors Ginger Ale, the best drink on the planet.”

He then, ginger ale in hand, spent the next 20 minutes describing why Vernors Ginger Ale (and no other ginger ale but Vernors) was the perfect metaphor for Christ and a life spent sold out to Him.

I was spellbound.

He was short, to the point, and painted a picture in our minds about life with Christ that forever altered both my view of God… and ginger ale.  There weren’t three point and a poem, there wasn’t an altar call, and there was no yelling, sweating, or crying.  There was nothing shocking, mind altering, or ground shaking about anything he said.  Yet above all other sermons this is the one I still remember.  Perhaps that is shocking in and of itself.

And now, as a preacher myself, there’s not a sermon that goes by that I do not think back to that warm Summer morning in ‘95 when an unassuming preacher taught me the greatest lesson on preaching I’ve ever learned….

Make it memorable.

Writing over 2,500 songs in her lifetime, she was an unassuming little women who’s testimony and way of weaving words could keep you spellbound for hours.

“I Will Glory in the Cross”
“For What Earthly Reason”
“Holy Spirit Thou Art Welcome (In This Place)”
“If That Isn’t Love”
“I Go to the Rock”
“I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before”

Dottie will be greatly missed.  And yet, sadly, most people will never know the contribution that she made.  And while churches will continue to sing her sweet words for ages to come, there is a fresh hole in Christian music left by the little lady that somehow knew exactly how to paint words in our minds and spin stories to our hearts about the most important thing of all: God, Heaven, and Salvation.

I think there is no more fitting tribute than to close with the words of one of her most famous songs, “We Shall Behold Him”:

The sky shall unfold, preparing His entrance;
The stars shall applaud Him with thunders of praise.
The sweet light in His eyes shall enhance those a waiting,
And we shall behold Him then face to face.

And we shall behold Him, we shall behold Him
Face to face in all of His glory;
And we shall behold Him, Yes, we shall behold Him
Face to face, our Saviour and Lord.

The angels shall sound the shout of His coming,
The sleeping shall rise from their slumbering place.
And those who remain shall be changed in a moment,
And we shall behold Him then face to face.

And we shall behold Him, we shall behold Him
Face to face in all of His glory;
And we shall behold Him, Yes, we shall behold Him
Face to face, our Saviour and Lord.
We shall behold Him, our Saviour and Lord.