Church Leadership Conversations

James Cameron says he has found Jesus’ family tomb

A new documentary by James Cameron (director of Titanic) entitled The Lost Family Tomb of Jesus says that Jesus and his family’s tomb has been found. He is showing off Jesus’ tomb today! See the Time Magazine article: Titanic Claim: Jesus Still Dead

For a solid response, see Asbury’s Ben Witherington’s initial take at THE JESUS TOMB? ‘TITANIC’ TALPIOT TOMB THEORY SUNK FROM THE START. Basically he says that there were lots of Jesus’s and Mary’s in the first century and that we have had this tomb since 1980. There are some good scholars involved with this but Witherington thinks they have fallen for the publicity instead of relying on the peer-review process.

In the comments, Witherington argues with one of the scholars James Tabor who is part of the project. Tabor has blogged about it at Some Initial Thoughts on the Talpiot Tomb.

Other New Testament scholars who will be good to watch on this include:

Dallas’s Darrell Bock: Hollywood Hype: The Oscars and Jesus’ Family Tomb, What Do They Share?

Duke’s Mark Goodacre who has an inital take entitled: "The Tomb That Dare not speak its name" and another "Jesus’ family tomb": how blogging helps

North Park’s Scot McKnight’s Was Jesus Married? One More Time

February 26, 2007
Who is Andy Stanley?
Andy Stanley is known for popularizing video venues, pioneering satellite campuses, speaking and writing on church leadership, being a younger proponent of the seeker-driven approach, and his belief in teaching one simple point with great creativity. He pastors a huge church in Alpharetta, Georgia, outside Atlanta.

My students for Program and Curriculum Development are beginning to read Seven Practices of Highly Effective Ministry. I have prepared this post to help them.

In a photo by James Fitzgerald of Vision Magazine, you see Andy a foot “larger than life” (as Leadership journal put it in its interview entitled “State of the Art” in the Spring 2006 issue pp.26-32). The high def image in the center make it appear that he is actually there but he is not. It is a screen.

The Andy Stanley article at Wikipedia gives some basic information about him which I have pasted below with some revision by me.

Andy Stanley is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, and Browns Bridge Community Church.

Stanley was born in 1958. His father is Charles Stanley, who is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta and founder of InTouch Ministries.

Stanley received a bachelor’s degree of journalism from Georgia State University and later earned a masters degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. After working for several years as Associate Pastor and Minister to Students at First Baptist Atlanta, he and five others founded North Point Community Church in 1995. The church has now grown to three campuses and over 15,000 attenders each week.

In 2007, he was voted the 20th most influential Christian in America and in 2006 North Point Community Church was voted the 3rd most influential church in America. Later Note August 2, 2007: the Church Report that does these rankings is probably not a reputable resource for rankings. See article about founder.

Key Video, Audio and Text Links for understanding Andy Stanley:
- He has written a number of books that can be viewed at this link at Amazon.com.
- If you would like to hear him preach, you can watch or listen to him at: North Point Messages. Or at iTunes: Pause series on temptation, Christmas series,
- He has been closely involved with the Catalyst Conference – speaking every year at it. You can listen to a great interview with him at the Catalyst Podcast page from March 2006. You can also find the Catalyst Podcast at iTunes.
- You can hear Andy, Lane Jones and Reggie Joiner discuss the seven practices at Practically Speaking. At iTunes: Practically Speaking.
- Now you can watch the Drive Conference videos from 2006 for free at Video Player for Five Sessions. H/T Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight.
- Also available is the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast at iTunes.
- Leadership journal’s Out of Ur posts generated lots of comments: Is Ministry Leadership Different? Andy Stanley and Jim Collins in an unexpected point-counterpoint and Is Ministry Leadership Different 2: a response to Andy Stanley Andy himself commented on my post entitled Andy Stanley Says There is No Such Thing as Distinctively Spiritual Leadership after this barrage.
- North Point graciously provides a number of their administrative documents for free at Nside Admin
- According to the Barna Group’s survey, you can get an idea of how well-known Andy Stanley is.
  - Percentage of Awareness Among All Adults,
    
    5% Andy Stanley
    >> 3% favorable
    >> 2% unfavorable
  - Percentage of Awareness Among Born Again Christians
    
    6% Andy Stanley
    >> 4% favorable
    >> 2% unfavorable
  - I don’t think you should conclude much from the fact that he is not viewed favorably by 2% of people. Just about everyone on the list has done publicly embarrassing things including Billy Graham (i.e. comments about Jews on Nixon tapes). Andy hasn’t. Even if you disagree with video venues or the seeker-driven approach, Andy is still pretty likeable.
  - H/T Kent Shaffer at Church Relevance post Top American Christian Leaders :: How Likeable Are They?
The bios for the other two authors of Seven Practices of Effective Ministry are at the North Point Ministries website here. I have pasted that information below.

Reggie writes the meat of the book. Andy basically writes the preface and conclusion.

Reggie Joiner is the executive director of Family Ministries at North Point Community Church. He leads the staff responsible for programming children, student, and married adult ministries. He is also creator of FamilyWise a non-profit ministry aimed at helping churches and families teach kids character and faith. Reggie lives with his wife Debbie and his four teenagers Reggie Paul, Hannah, Sarah, and Rebekah in Cumming, GA.

Lane writes the parable in the first half of the book.

Lane Jones is a native of Atlanta, Georgia where he lives with his wife Traci and their three children, Jared, Caitlin and Madison. He is on staff at North Point Community Church where he loves to write and participate in the creative process. Lane holds degrees from Georgia State University and Dallas Theological Seminary. A commenter, Nick, writes that:

Lane Jones is the campus director of Browns Bridge Community Church (a campus of NPCC).

Note: I had previously thought that North Point Community Church was a Southern Baptist Convention church but a commenter says it is not. Thanks for the correction commenter.
February 26, 2007
CCLI’s SongSelect – Why Every Church Should Pay $179 and Get It

Here are seven reasons why every pastor should make sure their church coughs up $179 to get a 1-year subscription to SongSelect Premium from CCLI.

CCLI are the people that give you the copyright to sing the songs and this is an extra service they offer.

1. Because you can instantly get perfectly spelled and formatted lyrics for projecting songs on the screen or printing words in the bulletin. No errors and consistent copyright information – can you imagine that?

2. Because your musicians will love you for it. This is a godsend for musicians. They can get chord sheets, lead sheets (those things with notes – yes they have them for contemporary music), and hymn sheets for virtually every worship chorus and hymn. Not only that but the musicians can simply choose what key to put the song in and the chord/lead/hymn sheet automatically changes. Incredible. Can you say "better music with less headaches?" Can you say "organized musicians" without feeling faint?

3. All your worship leaders, the pastoral staff, the secretary, (even all your musicians if you trust them and I suggest you do), can have access to this awesome resource online anytime. In the old days, churches kept file cabinets of choir music and in the 90’s we all kept three-ring-binders of worship chorus chord sheets. It was a big pain to access and it did not foster good communication among people! So use this resource and let everyone have access to it. The only limitation is that you can only print 200 lead sheets per year. As long as you make it clear that only a few designated leaders can print out lead sheets, you can make a "regular musician account" for the rest of your musicians. Do it. Let everyone share the wealth and have access to this tool. If you let just the "worship pastor" have access to it, you are killing the spirit and potential of other musicians. Give as many people access to the music as possible. Don’t you want to develop other musicians?

4. It is a good financial investment. In the old days, churches spent lots of money on choir music, robes, and hymnals. Today they spend it on technology. $179 is not bad considering the potential for better communication, better quality, increased creativity, and less stress.

5. You can make song books. For home groups or a retreat outdoors, you can make lyric sheets. You are allowed to do that. I think you are supposed to collect them at the end though but you would have to read the fine print. You are not supposed to allow people to use your SongSelect for anything unrelated to the church where the license is from I think.

6. Lots of people on your staff will use it if you allow them to (and since you bought it and that is what it is for, let them use it!) Let the youth pastor use it. Let the people who plan worship use it. The pastor will use it to look for songs that might go with the sermon. It will be well used. Stop using google and illegally posted song lyrics to find "that song you were thinking of." Use SongSelect.

7. It may help bring unity. Having worship choruses with notes (lead sheets) and not just chord sheets will make your musicians better and will bridge connections between the young and old. Having worship choruses arranged as hymns with four parts will also draw young and old together. Having chord sheets for hymns will allow your guitar playing musicians to play hymns more easily.

Conclusion: Church musicians, worship leaders and secretaries have it hard enough and pastors have enough trouble getting along with them. Don’t deprive them of this resource. It will make their lives easier.

Here is the CCLI’s price list for SongSelect. Their demo is here. (As for me, I am impatient watching demos and just want the facts).

See my suggestions for coordinating worship at my post entitled "How to plan and lead worship."

February 18, 2007