A lot of churches will host Christmas events this time of year.  Skelly Drive (where I pastor) used to have a Living Nativity that was somewhat groundbreaking in its day and is still remembered fondly by everyone that I’ve ever met that either put it on or attended.

Invariably, these productions, be they musicals or whatever, will begin to journey into the untested waters of live animal participants.  Usually, this works well until they bring in the camel.

Camels are some of the most ill tempered animals you can ever be around.  I saw one in a musical with a muzzle on to keep him from biting passersby.  They stomp on you, lay down when you want them to stand, stand when you want them to lay down and are generally naughty in every way they think will aggravate you.

And they spit.  Nasty stinky spit that you might be able to use as masonry compound in a pinch.

Not to mention that they smell horrible.  You can’t bathe these guys often, it’s winter and the water is cold.  But even if you can, they’ll be curling the nose hairs of your attendees within a few hours.  It’s just their nature.

And pray they don’t pass gas during your event, especially if you are insane enough to bring them indoors.  They can have your whole cast on the ground before the first wave hits the audience.

So, a little advice to you Christmas event planners out there.  If the donkey, the cow and the occasional goose have worked out all right so far, stick with them.  There really is no need to “up the ante” here.

Just because there are camels in the Middle East, doesn’t mean you have to have one in your church to make your event “authentic.”

But if you are stubborn and won’t heed my advice, pray this doesn’t happen to you:

I didn’t even notice it the first couple of times I watched it, but did you observe there was some poor woman, serving God the best way she knew how, coaxed up on top of the camel?

You see her bare feet and then, moments later, her head pops up.  She looks a little disconcerted, don’t you think?

Tulsa Metro Baptist Network (formerly Association) has prioritized planting churches, which has brought a number of church planters our way.  I thought this 3 minute video might be helpful to them.

If you don’t get dry wit, don’t bother.

HT:  Ed Stetzer

Rick Jenkins posted this on Facebook this morning and I thought it was definitely worth a repost…

The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.

A while ago, I posted a great video as pt. 1 of a Missional Conversation between Ed Stetzer and David Fitch, but I never saw the follow up videos.

I found them today and wanted to share, so here are all of them:

Ed Stetzer & David Fitch – a missional conversation from Missional Tribe on Vimeo.

Pt 2:

Pt. 3

Enjoy!!!

Next week, Union University will be hosting a conference entitled Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the future of denominationalism.

I’m excited to be attending for several reasons, not the least of which is that the topic fascinates me.  I am anxious to hear the thoughts of those being brought in to speak to the issue.

Further, the SBC finds itself in the moment of re-creating itself via the Great Commission Task Force and its impending report in Orlando next year at the Annual Meeting.

I’ll be blogging and twittering from the meeting, but as a primer for that time, I thought that you might be interested in these videos from the B21 Panel at last year’s annual meeting, where the hot topics of the Southern Baptist Convention were discussed by some of the leading voices.

The first video says it’s 80 minutes, but it is only about 40. Total of both videos is about an hour and 20 minutes.

B21 Panel From 2009 SBC Annual Meeting from Sojourn Community Church on Vimeo.

B21 Panel from SBC Annual Meeting Part 2 from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

Amazing two minutes of video:

If we are to engage North America as missionaries, then we have got to deconstruct our own context and see it for what it is.  If culture is our god, then we are doomed, but if culture is our language, we can communicate.

Interesting what this evangelical pastor has to say about the church’s involvement in the political process.  All three videos = just over 20 mins…

Really tough issue.  Like Driscoll, rape incenses me and I have had several close friends who were raped, so my compassion for rape victims is very high.

Here’s how he handled the text message question:

Yep, it’s pretty blunt, but not mean spirited.