Posts from April 2013 (Page 2)

Our passage for this week tells the dramatic story of Saul’s conversion.  He receives a new name, a new passion and new life grounded in sharing his witness of Jesus.  I’ve never had a religious converson like that.  A conversion that changes me instantly. Not yet anyway.  I have had other sorts of reversals in my life; changes in which I am instantly different. The first time I had great sex.  Becoming a mother.  Losing my father.  I know that…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlTeCe30m84] In this recording of a live performance of “Moanin” by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers from a concert in Belguim 1958,  listen to each solo improvisation.  Notice how each musician begins from the point where the previous musician leaves off.

  We began a new series yesterday!  Yes to the Mess: Surprising Lessons from Jazz & Acts.  This series is structured around a book called Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz by Frank J. Barrett.  Throughout this worship series we will hold Barrett’s reflections on jazz in creative tension with the development of the earliest church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.   This week worship will be rooted in Acts 9.1-20.  This is the story of…

Our new worship series begins tomorrow.  Join us as we do church differently.

“Jazz musicians seek to live lives of radical receptivity.  Human beings are at their best when they do the same – when they are open to the world, able to notice expansive horizons of possibility, fully engaged in skillful activity, and living in contexts that summon responses that lead to new discoveries.”  (Yes To The Mess by Frank J. Barrett p. xv) How might your life reflect “radical receptivity” to doing good, doing no harm and staying in love with…

  Writing about his album Kinda Blue in “Miles, The Autobiography with Quincy Troupe” Miles Davis says:   “This time I added some other kind of sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and they were playing these bad gospels.  So that kind of feeling came back to me and I started remembering what that music sounded like and felt like.  That feeling is what I was trying to get close to. …

“Jazz bands actually are organizations designed for innovation, and the design elements from jazz can be applied to other organizations seeking to innovate.  Further, in order for jazz bands to be successful, they require a commitment to a mind-set, a culture, practices and structures, and a leadership framework that is strikingly similar to what it takes to foster innovation in organizations.”  (From the Preface of Yes To The Mess, Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz by Frank J. Barrett) There are…

We begin a new eight-week worship series this Sunday called Yes to the Mess: Surprising Lessons from Jazz & Acts. Our worship series is structured around a book called Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz by Frank J. Barrett.  Throughout this worship series we will hold Barrett’s reflections on jazz in creative tension with the development of the earliest church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Acts of the Apostles “is a highly evocative story of the…