Church

Fresh Air and New Eyes

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ Leave a comment


As I look back on 40plus years of my walk with Christ, I am mindful of some big twists and turns in the road. The journey has not been a straight line. Please allow me to indulge in some personal reflection and then I’ll bring this back into a local church framework.

Have you ever heard a story of a child caught smoking cigarettes by a parent, and in order to “cure” them of the desire to smoke, the parent forces them to smoke an entire pack? Of course, the child becomes so sick, they never smoke again. The unpleasantness of the experience cures them of any future desire.

This is one picture I would use to describes my ministry journey. God has placed me in some toxic environments. They have each made me sick in their unique way. But I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water. The toxic atmospheres have made me desire good air even more. I long for the purity and health that is the Kingdom of Heaven, that Jesus inaugurated, that God promises us now.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Advertisement

Pursuing Good: Exposing Vulnerability

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 2 Comments

pursuinggood_vulnerability

The world looks completely different.

Sometimes it lasts for a day or even a week.

After reading a really good book it can take time to recover, to reorient oneself to the world outside of the world of the story. The same is true of a concert that elevates us to a new level of heightened experience and emotion.

All of us have had experiences with art that enable us to transcend reality, if even for a few short moments. Whether a theatrical production, film, music, a painting, a book, or design; art resonates with us in a deeply satisfying way. It also connects us to those with a shared experience.

We cannot always put our finger on what it is that is creating this reaction when we feel it, sense it, and experience it. For those of us who do this for a living — crafting experiences and art to move people into closer relationship with and obedience to Jesus — we cannot afford to not know. We cannot afford to guess.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Pursuing Good: Surprise

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 2 Comments

pursuinggood_surprise

In my recent post Pursuing Good: The Backstory, I began to process what makes something good. I ran into a couple of articles that really helped propel this idea forward. I even started to address the bad press we give good as opposed to great or excellent. I’ll continue to focus on that tension.

We already looked at authenticity. In this article I want to tackle the second characteristic in my master list of what makes something good:

A service is good when it is surprising.

As usual, let’s define this word in an effort to get on the same page.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Pursuing Good: The Backstory

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ Leave a comment

pursuinggoodheader

When is something good? How do we know we are doing good work?
Is there an objective standard that church technical artists can use to make sure the effort that we are putting in is paying off?
How do we know if our transitions are good? Or the infrastructure we are adding to the word and worship is good?
Ultimately, it’s really about the service itself, as an entity, how do we know it is good?

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

I Beg Your Indulgence

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 2 Comments

95thesis

The longer I live, the more I serve Christ, the more I am compelled to take a long view of history and an eternal perspective toward the few small years comprising our life on earth. I love the emphasis I often hear calling for increasing the Church’s role in societal restoration. These are big issues and range in areas diverse as long-standing nationalistic enmity, to racism and racial disagreement and distrust, to environmental awareness and care, and the list goes on. This adjustment seems to me to be the right track. After allowing the pendulum to swing too far to individual evangelism, it is appropriate to look at the church’s role in the world that goes beyond just trying to get people to say the sinner’s prayer.

I also recognize that this is perhaps uniquely an evangelical problem. And an American Evangelical problem at that. Mainline churches, for all of the flack they catch from others in the evangelical community, are now being seen as a source of some stabilizing and “successful” practices: liturgy, comprehensive catechism, and this stance of social restoration that I am talking about. It’s almost as if the younger brother is just now waking up to the family business that has been going on for hundreds of years. At least that’s what it feels like in the church circles I move in.

With that caveat in mind, I must confess, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about indulgences. You know, those things we were taught to protest against as Protestants. You know, those things that caused Martin Luther to nail 95 Theses to a door.

Yeah, those.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.