by tashmcgill | Dec 13, 2007 | Uncategorized
I’m working away but watching with one eye on the tv as the show “superskinny me” is playing. The premise is putting 2 female journo’s onto the latest mad diet crazes in an effort to see how close they can get to a size 0.. hollywood’s dream size.
In the space of 2 weeks and half an hour of reality tv, a thirty-something woman has gone from having all the appearance of confidence and assurance to a weight-obsessed, colonic-addicted halfshell of a girl.
I’ve been thinking for a little while that it might be time to take a break. Stuff like this makes me worry – because I think it would be so easy to become either completely obsessed or start to hide away in a binge-purge lifestyle in order to maintain… whatever normal is.
by tashmcgill | Dec 12, 2007 | Uncategorized, worship
The Song That Just Won’t Leave Me Alone
And the problem it seems
Is with you and me
Not the Love who came
To repair everything
And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that
What I really wish Blogger would do is create an application that allows me to determine the soundtrack you read this to. The collection of tunes for the last weeks posting is really cool. So … in case you feel really motivated.. you should line up these tracks on your iTunes and just soak in it for a while. Oh yes, you should. It will heal your soul. You should also drink a large and exceptionally fine single malt whisky no less than 12 years old (ht marko) and enjoy it under a dark black sky somewhere.
Soundtrack for the next few minutes of your life – my Christmas gift to you is 61.53 minutes of music for the Soul.
Catch Your Fall (Blow Out Your Candles) – David Yetton – 3.55min
Ran For Miles (Night On My Side) – Gemma Hayes – 4.32min
Naked As We Came (Our Endless Numbered Days) – Iron & Wine – 2.33min
West (West) – Lucinda Williams – 3.33min
Beside You (The Islander) – Dave Dobbyn – 3.43min
Won’t Give In (Everyone Is Here) – The Finn Brothers – 4.17min
Inside of Me (Real Life) – Evermore – 4.07min
Stall Out (Mutemath) – Mutemath – 7.10min
Colorblind (Cruel Intentions) – Counting Crows – 3.26min
Stable Song (Plans) – Death Cab For Cutie – 3.43min
No Ordinary Thing (You Are Here) – Opshop – 4.06min
Two Places At A Table (Last Fair Deal) – Rory Block – 3.38min
Ez (Music For The Morning After) – Pete Yorn – 4.42min
My Lover’s Prayer (Unknown) – Otis Redding – 3.12min
Ágætis byrjun (Ágætis byrjun) – Sigur Rós – 7.56min
Responsiveness In Mass Communication
Had an interesting meeting today with the new young adults guy at church, who also has responsbility for Sunday night services. Talked a lot about my observations over the past four weeks and the experimentation that we’ve been doing, the responses to it as well. The energy in the room has been at an all time low – people simply not engaging at any point in the service. The rise in room atmosphere has been happening around the notices – usually where there is a bit of comedy just in people doing their thing. The atmosphere relaxes and feels more personable. Consequently we’ve adopted some of this into our singing worship and seen a great response.
It was pretty obvious I was skating on some thin ice, which I can understand. After all, I live and breathe community gatherings, how to shape them into genuine and signficant experiences. I also don’t take it too seriously, and realise that there is room for safe experimentation. It’s going to be uncomfortable if I’m talking about things that they haven’t noticed or thought about in regards to the room. Right now there’s even confusion over what kind of atmosphere is the goal in the room. The ‘feeling’ around celebration even brings different things to the surface for different people. Still.. I brought it to the table, regardless of how it’s received. I offered to be on the frontline of doing something to make it work.
Yup, I’m still feeling about as frustrated as I was before. Lame-o. I think I need a holiday quickly followed by an attitude adjustment. From my perspective I think the basics would be to start with creating the kind of atmosphere that people can engage with, that energizes the room and helps buoy the whole thing along. Laughter is key, as is earnestness. Earnestness is not the same as seriousness. I think I put a serious foot in it when I commented on the overall tonality of the services finishing in the same low-frequency, mellow and reflective comtemplation. There is a space for it but it’s very difficult for some introverted comtemplatives to easily build spaces for energised, extroverted teenagers. I’m making some gross generalisations based on anecdotal observations… but I think the research would back me up. At least we could both acknowledge the absence of many that would formally have helped to shape our services.
by tashmcgill | Dec 11, 2007 | Love & Marriage, Relationships
A few years ago, I let love grow deeply within my heart. It didn’t grow into anything fruitful, at least not on the outside. But I learned a lot about how to love someone wholly and completely.
It’s so easy to craft an image of love that is somehow shallow and momentarily fulfilling, pinning that to an ideal of romantic soulmates. As if somehow solving the mystery, finding your way through the maze to the goal of love fulfills purpose. In doing so, it can be so easy then to look around your present circumstances and feel less than.
However, when I think about the belly-shaking, heart-warming feeling that you’re supposed to get at the end of romantic movies… I get that all the time. In fact, I get that feeling every second day or so just opening my email inbox and seeing the names there.. people from all over the world that know me and dare I say.. like me and love me even a little bit.
After all – whether I am partnered by a lover, or by a team, or by my dearest friends… the expression of love may vary, but deep true Love in my life is present, and what I have of Love right now is more than enough. To be known in words, deeds, mannerisms. People who know what I’m thinking – I have all those things. People who stand beside me and love me, correct me and cheerlead. There are even people who believe in me more than I believe in myself… so what more is there? Anything more than this would be an abundance.. and a good good blessing, but not necessary. The Love I have right now is big and gutsy and resounding. I feel it in my belly all the way to my toes. I speak out the names of Love in my life and feel stronger and stronger.
Perhaps, it is the fear that I will be ok and that perhaps all the waiting is better spend in living. Because the Love I have is so much more than I could imagine or dream of. Perhaps it is the fear that in letting go of our peer expectations, our definitions of fulfilment, our idea of satisfaction.. we will be irrevocably changed. Is it enough to be satisfied, to love well and be well loved? To find expressions of physical intimacy that are appropriate and safe, that are engaged in the best of humanity. To recognise the fullness of life in the oneness of human life. To suggest that the key to Genesis is the ‘helpmeet’, the partnership..
In fact to go one step further and suggest that we are called to partner with each other in many varied and unique ways.. and these connections of love, expression and strength are in fact, the deepness and beauty of being in Love.
The love that I share, and am blessed with is still deep, abiding, gutsy love.
Not all women want to be maidens pursued. But then there are times when you do. Sometimes I want to be rescued, and sometimes I just want to be cheered on from the sidelines. Sometimes I really want other people to take charge, and sometimes no one needs to be in charge. The image I like most is discovering Love where it has already been waiting to be seen. The revelation of where Love is already abiding. I have a friend who I’ve known for years that I’m only just uncovering a deep Love for, a shared partnership and commonality. Still… I’m just a girl, and I’m prone to change my mind.
by tashmcgill | Dec 10, 2007 | eastercamp, god ideas, Uncategorized
This is the most exciting and brief post that I will write for about 3 posts.
This year in preparing for Eastercamp, it became crystal clear to me all of a sudden, that it’s no point booking Christian bands for no reason other than they are Christian. Those bands very rarely offer any major drawcard or culture access point for non-churchy kids into the Eastercamp culture. In fact, it could be seen and experienced as another sub-culture exclusion point instead.
So what if, I said, we actually hosted non-Christian bands that do create a culture access point at Eastercamp? What if we created the culture access point around common World Vision values, a supportive media proponent like txttunes.com and do something that’s never been done before.
A few years ago, it was easy to book Christian bands that were doing a bit of mainstream crossover. But now, the case is not the same. Those acts have either wound up or moved overseas. Currently, there are a wide range of artists where one or more member of a group is a committed Christian. For a number of those bands, they carry strong social justice themes and that means a wide common ground can be found between Eastercamp’s theming, World Vision and the advocacy causes of the artist.
I put it forward, simply asking that I have permission to pursue the kid that otherwise wouldn’t come to camp, to create a resource that actually creates inroads or helps build impact for kids that seeing this and not usually coming to camp.
I expected a fight. I prepared my arguments. They were well-worded, compelling and convicting. In fact, I’m almost disappointed that I didn’t get to use them, because they really would have been fun to expound… but I didn’t have to because my Vision team said yes. They bought the dream, caught the vision and gave me permission to walk on the sharp sharp edge.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
A new day has begun.
by tashmcgill | Dec 10, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized, worship
Giving Thanks For DCB & The Volume Knob
I’m in the middle of a wrestle here between personal boundaries and social responsibility. We are still in the middle of transition in staff positions at my local church, with more to come in the form of a new senior pastor sometime in the new year.
There is a high density of structure being introduced in the new youth group plan for 2008 forward. However the Sunday night service is the domain of the young adults pastor, who has recently come from the very traditional church I spoke at last week. There is some hangover of this, as well as personality coming through at the moment and I feel highly conflicted about this quasi-worship leader, quasi-youthworker role at the moment. Everything in my life is about youthwork – everything influences or is influenced by youthwork and impacting young people – which for the sake of this post reflects my heart for the young at heart. I think in reflection I have found preaching at Milford last week one of the more spiritually fulfilling experiences of the year.
However – there is a big gap starting to emerge in the Sunday night service. I was very surprised when I came back at the larger exodus of young adults and 13-14year olds from a youth ministry that has previously been vibrant, full of energy and life in this age range. The kids are switching off and switching on their cellphones in a way that we haven’t seen before. We’re observing a culture shift within our community, a specific response to a set of variables that can almost be measured.
Having observed now for several months, and then refreshed the information since being back from the States for a month> the common trends are unfortunately becoming more obvious. The preaching roster is almost turnabout, as is the populus. There is a core that will sit through one preacher and not the other. They are walking with their feet. The others that stay are demonstrating something that we’ve rarely seen before. A record 17 cellphones were picked up and used throughout the duration of the sermon on Sunday night. They were mostly all youth group members rather than young adults. The young adults have a week-about attendance cycle as well.
The mid-week programme is being decimated in the younger age group as well. The older groups are more established in relationship with one another, so there are less consumer impact variables to deal with. Kids are literally flowing out the back door, something that is painful and hard to watch.
In addition to this, the overwhelming flavour of Sunday nights has moved from a sense of celebration and community to a very serious, intense time of worship. While I can totally support a proposition that suggests effective communication in the 20-30 year bracket will have some buy-in and attraction with teenage ministry groups, I’m not convinced that the 20-30 year olds that are also walking are going to buy the package.
What is there to be done about it? The first thing that struck me when I got home was the absence of fun. There was an enormous sense of energy missing from the room. In the past two weeks as a music team, we’ve simply focussed on recreating energy and engagement. That’s meant lots of songs that are easy to clap to and fun to sing. That’s where DCB come in.
I spoke last Sunday niht in worship about the joy it is to be able to sing songs together and share in our story. I spoke about my previous post regardless ‘one-worship’ and ‘others-worship’. It went down really well as the kids took hold of each other by the hand, around the shoulder. They moved closer together so as to embrace one another and then laughed together.
Sure enough – there was a slight complaint about the nature of that voice break.
So what to do? I’m out of the youth ministry loop and the current staff just don’t want to talk about it, most approaches from a wide range of players are being rebuffed with a defensive offense. The hard part is how bad I want to see these guys suceed. The youth pastor especially is young and full of energy – he should be in the prime of it, enjoying the ease of the first couple of years – finding his feet, developing a team of leaders around him in good relationship. Instead, we’ve got energy disappearing and job descriptions that would be tough for anyone, let alone fulltime youthworkers, let alone volunteer leaders. Partly, my empathetic heart just wants to tell them to relax, but it seems there is no voice .. advice welcome.
I said that I would stay, especially now that the senior role is in flux. If nothing else, I’ve been through this before and I know that I can provide support leadership to my community within my role. But how, where, when to address the other stuff in the broader context. But there are so many church communities struggling with little to no youth ministry leadership – and I feel that if I was to leave, I would need to go to one of these communities.
I feel so frustrated and useless in my church community at the moment. It’s like seeing all we could be and we’re only a degree and a half away. Slight adjustments, a little bit of fun, flavour and relaxation and we’d be there – back in the fertile soil that breeds great community. I’m more and more convinced that spiritual formation as a key value doesn’t translate to spiritual growth in young people. I think that healthy holistic communities will raise healthy, whole young people who are engaged in journey with God.
