Cutting Edge Worship Gadgets

Due to a rising concern of eye care during the Campus Church Sunday celebration we have decided to promote a cutting edge worship gadget.  This has been a difficult issue for us in general to cope with and finding a solution that works for everyone was beginning to seem impossible.  

The issue surfaced as a result of the worship teams demand for low lighting and candles during the celebration.  "We didn't feel like the issue of lighting should be a congregational decision to begin with and who can deny the tangible benefits to the expression of worship through the use of low lighting and candles",said Scott McBrayer the worship leader at Campus Church.  The firm position of the worship team quickly gave rise to a dispute that had been a long time awaiting.

As the pastor of Campus Church I have made a priority of making every reference to scripture available on the projector for everyone to see.  I did this for two reasons.  First, due to the low lighting in the room, I did not want to put anyone's eyesight in danger by attempting to read their Bibles from their seats.  Secondly, I wanted to accommodate folks who might not have a Bible with them.  To my chagrin there has been an alarmingly high number of participants who are continuing to read their Bibles from their seats.  I fear that this must be persisting due to a lack of translational agreement I'm the church.  The translation being used from the projector is the English Standard Version.  

I couldn't bear the thought of either over riding the stand of the worship team or continuing to see the translational dissenters suffer eye loss due to their lack of confidence in the ESV.  There had to be a solution.

Campus Church's Committee On Committees voted and decided to create a committee in order to stifle any opportunity of division or fighting to take hold of the church.  The committee was titled The Low Lighting Task Force Committee and is made up primarily of medical, military, and worship professionals.  After a lot of thoughtful deliberation in a ten minute discussion the task force came to a resolution.

We will be taking proceeds from the Campus Church offering account and purchasing a number of L.E.D. enabled baseball caps.  This is the perfect solution...well, we thought it was, until another chorus of ill effected consciences sounded an alarm because there are men wearing hats inside the church not only on Sunday, but also during worship.  The Committee On Committees will be convening soon in order to address two issues.  First, they as a committee must reprimand The Low Lighting Task Force Committee for thinking that a ten minute meeting could accomplish anything in a church.  Secondly, we now need to create another committee to resolve the age old question of whether men should or should not wear hats as a matter of conscience or truth.

Kenny Deason
www.campuschurch.tv
405.474.1783

Celebrate The Creator

Every Wednessday morning I do a discussion group at UCO (8am in the Nigh Bldg).  We've been going through the first chapter in Romans.  This morning we read and discussed Rm 1:17-23.  

Take time to celebrate God for making himself plainly known to you through the things he has made.  Take time to think about the eternal attributes of his power.  Outer space is being sustained by this power as much as the jumping spider in a city park.  If you were capable of making up a god in your own imagination, what would be more divine, eternal, mysterious and brilliant as the God who designed, created, and sustains the universe you live in, right now.

The goofball with the party hat in the picture is my youngest son Josiah.  At five months old Josiah lives in a world filled with wonder.  Josiah laughs and giggles as he explores the big things in life, like the rough beard hairs on my face compared to the soft touch of mom's cheeks.  He greets each new region of exploration with a timid nervousness because he knows that there is so much he doesn't know.  When we take Josiah outside he becomes tightly wound up in a rapid firing visual overload.  His neck snaps his head back and forth as he tries his best to understand what he is experiencing at that moment.  God has created a world of wonder for Josiah, so that Josiah can be certain that an eternal and divine being gave him life.

Learning To Like Correction

Nobody likes failure, but we all experience failure at different times in our lives. Think about a time in your life that you were really blowing it and somebody came in and spoke a word of correction. What was the source of the correction? Have you ever experienced dynamic transformation and change because someone was willing to speak that word of correction. The purpose of correction is to redirect us away from something that is wrong and toward something that is right.

We've all had lame experiences with people who have abandoned us because we were failing. I'm sure all of us can hear the hackling criticisms coming from an impatient bone head who is on their way out the door. Because of experiences like this we tend to condition ourselves to hide our failures from others. We don't want to experience rejection, abandonment, and hurtful words. A saint should never, ever, treat somebody this way. We did not learn this from Jesus. God has not dealt with us like this and demands that we express the same degree of mercy and forgiveness to others that we have received from Him.

It's really kind of crazy when I think about it. We might be playing it safe by hiding our failures from lame people, but we shoot ourselves in the foot by running away from correction. God and the saints (real saints as opposed to lame saints) are wired to forgive and redirect. In fact playing it safe by hiding and avoiding correction will ultimately result in a longer prison term in the solitary confinement of failure. Think about it this way. When we make our hearts hard and resist or hide from correction, God in turn is resisting us. When we allow our hearts to melt in humility and honesty, God pours out his grace upon us. In the Bible James addresses this issue very squarely, as is James' custom. There is no safer place to be than broken and humble when we are failing in our life. I want to be more pliable and open to correction. The older I get, the more tiring I feel even thinking about how long and hard the road to transformation can be when I'm proud and calloused. Being humble before God and friends is where it's at.

What Moves Us?

As a leader I am constantly looking at the broader "work of ministry" in the church.  Leaders are set in place to equip and empower the diverse purposes and spiritual giftedness in the church.  That means that I am not only concerned about being responsible with my own gifting and purpose in the kingdom, but also the gifting and purpose of others in the church.  People talk about the visible sham practiced so often in churches that result in a few leaders "doing" the work of ministry, while the church shows up at some occasional events as spectators and financial contributors of the event.  People inside and outside of the church can be heard heckling that form of spiritual community.  Why do so many Christians continue to fall into the role of mere financial contributors of events while failing to take responsibility for their own "work of ministry"? I get so excited when I see saints take hold of their calling and gifting in the church.  There are some students and families in Campus Church that bring me to tears of joy sometimes, because I realize how excited they are about their purpose in the church and the surrounding community.  I remember spending a morning in prayer when I just shut my mouth and listened to God tell me about the amazing ways that he is using some of the students and families.  I literally cried while I was smiling and listening to God speak. What is it that moves us as disciples into our own "work of ministry"?  I don't have an elixir to offer us in this blog post, but I do have my thumb on a few very vital ingredients on the matter.  1) Jesus precisely ordered every disciple to follow Him, imitate Him, become like Him.  2) Dream dreams about what that will look like in your life.  3) Share these dreams with a leader around you.  It is their job to walk with you, encourage you, and see that you are empowered to "do" your dreams.  4) Go gangbusters for Jesus and "do" your dreams.

Skyline Interview of Kenny D

Allright, after the churchline.tv spoof I have probably got everybody totally confused. This is a real interview of true events of my story and some shop talk about campuschurch. The interview, filming, and editing was done by Mr. Matt Lowery of Skyline Church downtown OKC. Matt has been interviewing a variety of folks involved in missional work in the downtown area. Skyline, along with a cluster of churches in the downtown area, including campuschurch, get together on a monthly basis to encourage each other and talk about what God is doing in OKC.

churchline.tv

Matt Lowery from Frontline Church in downtown OKC has been hard at work promoting a new movement in OKC. Campus Church is in the thick of it and along with other churches in the downtown area have initiated one of the most incredible church planting movements on the planet. We call it churchline.tv and have set a goal of planting a church in every business front on Broadway extending north of the downtown area of OKC. I'm sorry, but Pastor Mark at Mars Hill needs to realize that he's not the only show in the nation. Check out this video.

campusline?? from Matthew Lowery on Vimeo.

10,000 Feet and 15,000 Hippies

As some of you know, my family along with three single guys went deep into the Santa Fe National Forest to an epic hippie festival known as a Rainbow Gathering. My wife Jamie and I have been connecting with, living with, and doing life with young people all over the US for years. A lot of our commitment has been to "kids" who live nomadic lifestyles on the streets of large cities around the country. A part of this work included taking extreme hiking trips into national forests where the kids would all show up for a "Gathering of the Tribes" also known as a "Rainbow Gathering".

This year there were an estimated 15,000 kids in the forest. The crew that went with us was Arthur (Uganda), Jim (N. China), Russ (missionary to Egypt for 3 years), and the Deason family (my wife Jamie, Abbigail 10, Abbiyah 8, Forest 7, Phoebe 5, and Josiah .3). We spent the week in the forest taking advantage of every opportunity to share the truths of the Kingdom of God. Some of the kids that I spent time with I have known for over ten years. We got to see some amazing things happen and had a blast in the mean time.

The setting in the forest was very remote. We drove for close to an hour on forest service roads before parking our vehicle and having to hike for miles just to get to the meadows and forest where the gathering was taking place. Communities of hippies arrived weeks before we did and established villages, huts, kitchens, and out houses all over the area. All of the water is gravity fed via intricate pvc pipelines into these large kitchens etc. Arthur from Uganda was shocked that the environment was so primitive. He expected to have cell phone reception and wifi! We all gave him a hard time because he brought his computer. There is a lot of hard work every day. Carrying water, working in kitchens, even just hiking the mountainous trails at 10,000 feet is a lot of work.

Enjoy the pics below and mark your calendars for the first week in July 2010! You can check out more pics at our Picasa Web Albums HERE and HERE