12 Witnesses

*The video has glitched on and off since posting. You can follow the link to the You Tube site.*

Last week I posted on Visible Lostness. I was hurting for the young lady who felt the need to post for the world a vision of “rightness” that had as its foundation a life without God.

Over the last 20 years, I have ministered to teenagers for 19. Only the last year has been spent as a Lead Pastor. I have seen a lot of hurting and confused teenagers. Most teenagers are hurting and confused, even when they are in good shape. I have worried through the lives of many who were in a place far less than “good”.

A few years ago, I was watching MTV’s Video Music Awards, or the VMA’s. Now, before everyone on the ERLC gets their undies in a twist, let me say a few things about MTV. First, it has been one of the most destructively influential forces in the history of any culture. I watched it as a teenager and I have watched it as a Youth Minister. I encouraged the kids in my youth group not to watch it. I block it from the tv’s in our home so my kids don’t watch it.

So why was I watching MTV if I think it something to be avoided? Because teenagers don’t avoid it. Even when I say they should. The reasons why they don’t are myriad, but the main one is that their parents don’t think it is that big a deal. Church, especially Youth Ministry, works well when it supports the Spiritual Discipleship in the home.

No, it’s not about being “relevant” in the pop sense of the word. It is not so I can talk with authority about current musicians, know the top 5 songs and who sings them, etc. - all in an effort to “impress” them. That’s not it at all.

The reason I used to watch MTV (I haven’t in over a year, since I left the Youth Ministry) is to understand their lostness. Just to put words and actions together with a sense of hopelessness or to see them throw their lives at false idols. Just to purposefully break my heart over them.

One girl I had noticed was Avril Lavigne. Since a young teenager, her talent had taken her straight to the top of the pop music world. Unlike Brittany, Avril never played the part of “sweet innocent.” She has always been rebellious and reveled in it.

On the night of the VMA’s so many years ago, Avril had just come on the scene and was receiving an award for a breakout song. She took the stage to receive her “moonman” and revealed that she was too drunk to stand steadily, much less form coherent sentences. She proudly proclaimed her stupor and vocalized a few words that had to be edited out of the broadcast.

I just hated that. Not that she offended me. Honestly, she didn’t. I am a grown man and I don’t enjoy foul language and drunkenness, but I don’t wear my personal sensibilities on my sleeve, either. What I hated was just how lost she was. She was drowning in her worldly success, but didn’t know it.

One of the things about lost people is that they are really good at portraying lostness. They feel it in the core of their being and they often find it hard not to let it out in their creativity. Much the same way Christians often can’t help but portray hope in times of desperation. It is who you are coming out.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a song online and stumbled across Avril’s Record Label site with several of her videos available for live stream. I watched them. One in particular showed that crushing lostness. I found it on You Tube. Here is the video:

Nobody’s Home

How lost is the world around you? What are you doing about it? Are you complaining about how their lostness offends your sensibilities? Are you invading the lostness to your discomfort and their hope in eternity?

Or guidelines for blogging in the pastor’s world.

1. Make it easy on yourself. Go back and read the other posts in the pastoral blogging series and figure out how to set up a feedreader and what rss feeds are. Also, figure out how to set your articles to drop at preset times so you can write when you want and go about your other business when you want. Hard blogging produces either lives out of whack or short lived blogging experiences. We have seen a fair share of both.
2. If you are able, tie your blog to your church’s website. It will boost your church’s site in the search engines by posting frequent content and it will keep you from saying things you don’t want your church members reading. Mostly.
3. Own your mistakes. If you can, own them before anyone else points them out. It is currency in the blogosphere to either be seen as one who will admit when they are wrong and thus be fair. The other side is that it is also currency in the blogosphere to spike someone’s words in their face. If you can point out where they are wrong - especially if they are reluctant to admit it, they lose credibility in spades. Don’t be that person.
4. Be gracious to those who admit their mistakes. It continues to boost your credibility.
5. Be a wordsmith. Capitalize, punctuate and follow the rules of grammar. Use a spell checker on your posts and comments (one comes embedded in Firefox, by the way). Know when to break those rules and why you are doing so. People naturally discount you if you can’t write clearly. Also, it’s not cute to act stupid or claim to be. If you say you’re just dumb about stuff, and that’s why you don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, etc., then people will think you don’t have anything to offer about anything else.
6. Say something original. Don’t repeat others’ thoughts like a Myna bird. People who frequent blogs read the same blogs you do, most likely, and they can see where you got things. Aside from making you look ignorant and losing your credibility, it’s plagiarism, which is stealing. It’s a major character flaw.
7. Follow the copyright rules laid out on other people’s blogs. If they copyright their work, you should follow whatever rules they have for citing it.
8. Take regular breaks from the blogosphere. It is a virtual culture and it is real, to be sure, but that is no substitute for the culture in which you currently live. If you don’t like the culture in which you currently live, change something about your life - don’t retreat into the computer. Allowing the blogosphere to dominate your life is unhealthy for your pastoral ministry (if you are a pastor) or other parts of your life.
9. Similar to the previous guideline, balance your life. Blogging can be a big and important thing that you do in this world. Again, it is a real, albeit virtual, culture. You can make a difference through it. Therefore, there are times when you need to devote to blogging. Then there are times when you need to devote to your family and no matter what juicy argument is happening on the blogs, you need to leave it alone. Give everything its proper place and make sure you know the difference.
10. Live blog a conference, if you are there. Whether you are able to blog at the moment or give reflective thoughts at the end of the day, your readers will appreciate the content. You will learn to appreciate those who live blog, more.
11. Allow comments, but tend to them. Blogging is conversation. Allow people to disagree with you and you will be better read. Tolerate disagreement, but don’t allow people to abuse others. Have some standards and publish them about what comments should be allowed. Don’t be afraid to delete comments if you have to. The secular blogosphere calls people who post unacceptable comments, “trolls.” They are everywhere, even the SBC blogosphere. Do what you must.
12. Only write on other writers’ personal thoughts occasionally. Stick mostly to your own thoughts. Wholesale reproduction of someone else’s articles shows you have no imagination. Avoid blog wars. They’re futile and only read by the participants and a few others.
13. When you read a blog that comments on an issue that you want to discuss, like a news article, give the blog where you first read about it a “hat tip.” At the end of your article, put something like, [HT: Kevin Bussey] This would let you know that I first read about the situation over at Kevin’s blog and let you jump there with the link. A permalink (link directly to Kevin’s article and not just to the blog) is the preferred option.

In honor of Joe Kennedy’s whirlwind trip through North America, with a stop in Yellowstone National Park, here is another picture from my time in our first national park.

This is Old Faithful erupting.

Regardless of whether or not you are Reformed, Calvinist or whatever your term of preference might be, if you are a typical Southern Baptist, you will affirm the truth that God answers prayer.

I commend to you the reading of Tom Ascol’s narrative of answered prayer. You will certainly be inspired, unless you really don’t believe in God at all. In that case, we have another problem altogether.

Check it out: God in the fire.

I told you last week about my meal at Which Wich, in the post, Here’s My Order… While at the table, I looked over at a wall I found to be covered with the paper sacks on which you write your order. Folks at the restaurant had decorated the bags with the signature red markers and hung them with the clips they use to slide the bags down the line while they make the sandwich. The wall was covered with wires and decorated bags.

On the top was this:

Turned sideways and moved to the top in the middle of the wall in order to dominate all other messages, these two bags were hung.

The false gospel of tolerance in opposition to faith.

I should say, now, that I don’t think much of religion, either. Jesus, called the Pharisees, “white washed tombs” because they were all about religion and not about a living God and the ability to have a relationship with Him.

That’s not what this is. This statement is a broadbrush of all faith and is a strawman.

It’s not the strawman that I am blogging about, though. This person is lost and is not capable of seeing things through my eyes. I am not writing to condemn the lostness in her. I am writing to tell you that when I read this, I was hurt for her.

I recognize that she is hurt and hurting. It makes me hurt. But that wasn’t my first reaction. My first reaction was to pull those bags down in a righteous indignation. Then the Holy Spirit started to work on me. Changing my thoughts.

So here’s my point: Why is it we don’t hurt for the lost? Here in America, we are at war with the lost. We see them as enemies to be conquered with our culture as the battleground.

Didn’t you? When you read that, didn’t you feel defensive? Didn’t you wonder if I took them down? I mean, we can’t let that competing message stay up, can we?

Truth is, the lost aren’t the enemy. The Enemy’s the enemy and the lost are the battleground.

Well, the new Outpost is up and running. In the days ahead, you can look forward to news, commentary and political cartoons.

And haters. Oh, well.

The first day hit over 3,000 hits, which are due, in large part, to the inheritance of Marty Duren’s setting the standard of excellence and then being willing to share the name, “SBC Outpost.”

It’ll at least be fun not to have to post all the time on the politics of the Convention. Marty is working on a post, I hear and so am I. We’ll see how this goes.