welcome and overview page

Welcome to the lighthouse/searchlight blog!  This commentary site exists primarily to chronicle and resource the local efforts of one Presbyterian congregation to explore our twin calling of being a gathered and sent expression of the hope and light of Christ.

When people are new to a blog, they usually just pick up reading with new posts.  It is my hope that new readers will connect to some of the archived material.  This "highlight" page attempts to pull together and list some of my favorite posts and series of posts, as well as point to several additional areas of interest. 

Lighthouse/Searchlight (missional)

• Wednesday Night Experiment (series) - initial description and follow-up reports of our experiment of pushing the Wednesday night church meeting outside the walls into the neighborhood.  Some exciting results!!  Continue reading about year two HERE.
• Missional Identity in the Small Church (series) - this series chronicles the visioning, communication, implementation, etc... of a missional identity at Good Shepherd.  This material was compiled for a workshop I taught, but comes from an officer retreat in 2006.  The initial link has links to the successive posts.
• VBS on the Road - the story of taking our Vacation Bible School outside the walls
• Searchlight-in-Training - a missional look at parenting my young daughter
• More than Cookies - narrative of two memorable days in ministry that highlight our growing missional mindset along with the mess and the glory of being a lighthouse and searchlight church
• Truth and Error (series) - study of truth and error in the local church from 2 Timothy 2
• Frost Defines Missional (part 1, part 2, part 3) - blogged through Michael Frost's presentation on missional church at the 2007 Presbyterian Global Fellowship conference
• The Talent Challenge - a real-life missional "parable of the Talents" exercise; two follow-up reports below
  
  • Mission Benefit Concert - a $20 talent turned into a fabulous fund-raising concert for our missionaries in Spain; raised $1800!
  • Family business in Nicaragua - a $20 talent sent to our missionaries in Nicaragua purchased equipment for start-up sewing classes

Worship and Music

• Don't Waste Your Time - on the primacy of worship as the foundation for mission
• God's Refrigerator Door - perspective over worship and worship styles
• Facedown, pt. 2 - on the need for (and difficulty of) humility in worship leadership
• How Do We Praise? - a look at our work as worship
• Biblical Worship through Music (book) - my doctoral project on a biblical theology of worship, focusing on the use of music; includes specific field research in the Presbyterian Church (USA) setting; also on Amazon 
• The Breadth of Worship (book) - devotional book with study and application questions on the "worship words" of the Bible; great for small groups or personal devotions

Technology

• Twitter and General Assembly (series) - this was written in advance of the 219th General Assembly in 2010; subsequently the GA wrote a social media usage policy and since then social media has developed even more; nonetheless, this is a helpful exploration of the potential role social media (and specifically Twitter) could play in such a gathering
• Online Ministry Tech - survey of the online tools I use most in minsitry and mission, with ideas of how to use and apply them.
• Website Outreach Philosophy - the missional vision behind our website design (note: we've since changed to a blog-based site, but the philosophy remains the same)

Denominational (PCUSA)

• Searchlight Presbytery? - some ponderings on whether the presbytery can transform in some of the missional ways our local church has
• Intentional Residence Communities - a new model for theological training for ministry
• 10A Presentation in the Presbytery of Charlotte - significant not only to understand my approach to the topic, but the interaction with my friend and colleague; note our introductions of each other and the following three inter-connected pieces:
  
  • Kate's speech
  • My speech
  • The article in the paper by a local columnist in attendance as an elder commissioner
• Deep(er) Thoughts - Presbytery Meeting - thoughts on friendships "across the aisle" and the need to speak truth in love in the fertile field of trust and hope; also what started in this article found significant expression a year or two later as described in the post above
• Gracious Witness Resolution - the story of the overture I wrote in 2008 appealing to Presbyteries to create pastoral and grace-filled ways of responding to congregations seeking dismissal; the story in itself (also linked in the post) is interesting
• Some Things are Bigger than GA / Ichabod and Scribbling on the Wall - if you are looking for my most direct opinion on the denomination and my role and calling in it, here they are; hopefully, these pieces explain both my disappointments and my deep calling and commitments