Starting tomorrow, I will be in Tampa for a national Lutheran campus ministry conference called the "Confabulation".

Image: Road Confabulation by Taylor Family Project at Flickr

When you google "confabulation", the first hit you get is a Wikipedia article that tells you that a confabulation is "also known as false memory is the confusion of imagination with memory, and/or the confusion of true memories with false memories. Confabulation can result from both organic and psychological causes."

I'm not sure why a word with that definition was chosen for a national Lutheran campus ministry conference. Honestly, it bewilders me. The only thing I can come up with is that hopefully something like this would have the effect of purging "false memories" and false ideas and replacing them with God's truth. There has to be a reason just like there was a reason that the Fshbwl's web-devotional is called "the 27 hour service".

We'll be listening to "The Chalk Guy", Ben Glenn, who I saw at the District Youth Gathering. He was pretty good. This band "Rough Draft" will be the house band. They sound decent enough.

And then we're going to go do "intentional witnessing opportunities". Those honestly freak me out a little. I think it's an issue of role confusion with me. I'm not sure who I am to other people in those situations. I'm not their potential pastor. I'm not even sure they want a potential pastor. I don't know how I can bless them. I don't know them. I don't even live in Tampa. How am I going to connect them with? Why are they going to listen to me? Would I listen to me?

All of those things could completely halt me from witnessing to anyone. They are all "confabulations" - imagined situations that I have at least partially decided are reality. And because I think of them as realities - they have the potential of stopping me dead in my witnessing tracks.

I'm interested in what "intentional witnessing opportunities" means. I hope it is nothing that I will disagree with. I don't think Busch Gardens is a good place for flyer-evangelism like FSU's orientation is. I hope I'm not being asked to perpetuate any of those bad stereotypes of the "nasty Christian" or even the "dorky Christian". Sometimes I think those stereotypical nasty Christian techniques are confabulations. I think sometimes we've tricked ourselves into believing that some stuff works when it really doesn't.

Whatever it is, I'm going to go on faith. I do believe that the words given to me by the Spirit will not return void. I believe in word of mouth, and that my mouth can join in the words of all God's people. I'll let reality and truth burn away "confabulations". I'll let the Holy Spirit rock the world in the ways that He chooses, and I'll let Him do it through me if that's what He wants.

Early on in my career as a vicar and campus minister at the University of Florida, I learned my first lesson in marketing the church. That lesson is this: I'm not nearly as effective as you are.

Image: Day 157 - Shhh... by Clarity25 at Flickr

I'm a pastor. I get paid to do things like write people notes thanking them for visiting with us, and figuring out what kind of cool give-aways can support the message of the church and empower you. In a large way, my major job as a pastor is to make sure that you understand the message so that you can give it to other people. My job is also to support you in ways that make it easy or even possible to give the message to other people.

When my job becomes "sole message-giver", it's not a good thing. When people come because of me, they have less of a chance of returning. That's not saying that I'm bad at what I do. That's saying that you know people and if you invite them your word of mouth is more trustworthy than mine, at least at first. After all, I'm the guy who is paid to be here.

Here are a few things quasi-stolen from Seth Godin's blog about what might be hampering you from giving the message to people you know (Seth's stuff is in italics):

1. It's embarrassing to talk about. That's why VD screening, no matter how well done, rarely turns into a viral [ahem] success.
jW - Ok, so I realize that some of you are embarrassed to talk about your church with some people. Why is that? What could your church do that would make it an unembarrassing thing to talk about?

2. There's no easy way to bring it up. This is similar to number 1, but involves opportunity. It's easy to bring up, "hey, where'd you get that ring tone?" because the ring tone just interrupted everyone. It's a lot harder to bring up the fact that you just got a massage.
jW - I'm not sure that I can give you a University Lutheran ringtone, but what kinds of other stuff could I give you *for free* that would encourage you to bring up that you go to church, believe in Jesus, and that you're connected at this church? Honestly, I would rather give you free stuff than give it to strangers.

3. It might not feel cutting edge enough for your crowd. So, it's not the thing that's embarrassing, it's the fact they you just found out about it. Don't bring up your brand new Tivo with your friends from MIT. They'll sneer at you.
jW - Believing in something that is at least 2,000 years old may not be very "cutting edge", but the application of that 2,000 year old message can be. Tell me what's really on your mind and cutting edge for you and your friends so that I can help you to see how 2,000 years and cutting edge can really go together.

4. On a related front, it might feel too popular to profitably sneeze about. Sometimes bloggers hesitate to post on a popular source or topic because they worry they'll seem lazy.
jW - This is for all of you people that say, "well everyone goes to church," or "everyone knows I go to church". Your best friend may know that "everyone goes to church" and that you go to church, but they may still have no clue WHY you go to church and WHAT actually happens there.

5. You might like the exclusivity. If you have no trouble getting into a great restaurant or a wonderful club, perhaps you won't tell the masses because you're selfish...
jW - Lots of Christian communities like the exclusivity of their churches like they like the exclusivity of their country clubs. I could tell you that you shouldn't be exclusive, but that's probably not going to do anything if you're a snob at heart. So if you are a snob...what other snobby folks are good enough in your eyes that you can invite to church? Chances are that they have been ignored by the church just like the homeless guy on your block because American churches do wonders with the middle class - but we seem to be clueless everywhere else.

6. You might want to keep worlds from colliding. Some kids, for example, like the idea of being the only kid from their school at the summer camp they go to. They get to have two personalities, be two people, keep things separate.
jW - I know some of you "Sunday-only" Christians who are very good at keeping your worlds separate. I feel badly, though, because it seems to cause you more pain to keep your worlds separate than if you would combine them. Tell me what is so different about your two worlds that the one won't work with the other.

7. You might feel manipulated. Plenty of hip kids were happy to talk about Converse, but once big, bad Nike got involved, it felt different. Almost like they were being used.
jW - This post runs the risk of doing that. Have you been forced into the idea of sharing your faith in some goofy way or has someone told you that you're not a Christian unless you share your faith? I'm sorry. If that's the case, this is a great time for you to spend some time just in conversation with me and you.

8. You might worry about your taste. Recommending a wine really strongly takes guts, because maybe, just maybe, your friends will hate the wine and think you tasteless.
jW - Are you afraid your friends think the way you do church is weird, boring, or even tasteless? Let me give you solid reasons for the things we do at church so it can look like *THEY* are the ones without taste, not you.

Remember, they'll listen to you before they listen to me.

As a campus minister, I soon learned that one area of branding that just about every campus ministry gets into is "freebies."

Image: Racetrackblog.com

I have given away silicone bracelets, water bottles, frisbees, magnets, etc. Every time they carried my "brand name" or the name of my campus ministry.

Your freebie says something about you. If you're giving away Sno-Cones, it means you've got enough people and resources to make that possible. If you've got throw-away water bottles with your campus ministry's name printed on the label, you might have enough money to throw away. If you're giving out pens, you're unoriginal. If you're just giving out candy, you're cheap, and a sort of appreciated cheap that we can't resist.

What would you give away at your church and what would it say about you?

What should University Lutheran give away on the campus of FSU and what would those items say about us?

p.s. we're currently giving away pathetic pen-lights that we had laying around because my order of cool polycarbonate water bottles hasn't come in yet. I guess that means we're pathetic but we'll be cool in a few weeks?

The readings for the Sunday of the Holy Trinity are:

Image: Two Hearts Design

Genesis 1:1-2:4
Psalm 8
II Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20


I don't preach this week...but I sort of wish I did with readings like these...

I am the pastor of a small Lutheran congregation. As such, we don't have some things that big Lutheran congregations have like lighted signs and enough money to blow on anything we please...

Image: 0228082245 by rbatina at Flickr

But we do have an answering machine. It's sort of old. But we have one.

As a campus minister, the summer is my recruitment time. I am going through all of the churches in Florida and calling them to ask if they know of any students coming to FSU (or really any of the Florida-Georgia state schools).

Today I called 15 Lutheran churches in Florida using the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation finder. First of all, on page one of my results pages that I printed off there are 28 churches. Guess how many have websites? 16.

That means that out of 28 Lutheran churches 16 have websites and 12 don't.

In addition to that, as I went through my 15 churches to call I found that 2 of them did not have answering machines. ANSWERING MACHINES! According to Wikipedia, that's a technological innovation from 1935. We hadn't even printed "The Lutheran Hymnal: 1941 Edition" by that point.

I also found that 2 more of those churches had insane voice mail procedures to get through to talk to a human or to leave a message. It was like calling BestBuy. Dial 1 for the pastor, dial the middle 4 digits of your Social Security number if you really want to talk to the pastor, otherwise just hang up and call the Baptist church down the street - they answer their phone.

It could be that I was using an outdated number because that is the number that the LCMS has published. I hope that's the case.

If you're the pastor of a church without an answering machine, you're on my "righteous indignation list". Arggghhh!!! And we wonder why people aren't coming to Lutheran churches!!!

Two of Seth Godin's recent posts talked about "4 words" that should be at the heart of every effective marketing campaign. "Make big promises; overdeliver" and "Connect like minded people"

Image: Connect4 by Banalities at Flickr


Technically, the Church should be pretty good at marketing if this is what is at the heart of marketing. Maybe it really is pretty good after all when it comes to marketing the product - the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let's dissect:
"Make big promises" - Ok, I don't think you can get a much bigger promise than an afterlife that is already paid for and a role in changing the world today.

"Overdeliver" - I think we see the antithesis of this in the prosperity or "health and wealth" Gospel of many televangelists. For them the "big promise" of life in Christ just isn't big enough. Not only do they want heaven and a role to play in the Church, but they would like to add a BMW and a 5 bedroom house onto that.

"Connect like-minded people" - Christianity may take an interesting approach to this since it seeks to create like-minded people that live connectedly. At least that is what Jesus' disciples seemed to be (the 12 included a tax-collector who would have been considered a traitor, a zealot who would have been something like an uber-religious violent fanatic, a couple of fishermen, and some others). The early Church of Acts also seems to take different sorts of people (Jews, Gentiles, Pharisees, ex-Pharisees, etc) and establish bonds between them. However, when churches get into only connecting with one demographic (college students, yuppies, rich folks, poor folks) they seem to go downhill.

How do you think the Church is doing in "Making big promises, overdelivering, and connecting like-minded people (or creating like-minded people via connection)?"

When Jesus said "On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” in John 7 (oddly one of this week's Bible readings in liturgical churches), I don't think He meant this.

Image: Balance from Spiritual Water Inc.

According to a Denver Post article that Dan from Prayeramedic sent me, you may be seeing "Balance" Spiritual Water showing up at your local grocery store right next to the freaky looking Santaria candles in the Hispanic foods aisle.

There are 11 kinds of "Spiritual Water" that you can purchase, each with a picture of a religious figure (Jesus or Mary), except for the odd omission of "Freedom" water which contains no image (that must be for those anti "graven image" folks).

For example, you can purchase "Balance" water with a picture of Jesus in a "Sacred Heart" pose with the Lord's Prayer on the back or "Focus" water with the Virgin Mary appearing to ascend on the front the Hail Mary on the back, or a personal favorite - the "Formula J" (for Jesus, you heathen) with the "Oh My Jesus" prayer on the back. As I mentioned before, the "Freedom" water has no image, but includes the "Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace" prayer from mystic Francis of Assisi.

Noticeably absent is the "Mo' Spirit, Mo' Money" water with a prayer from prosperity Gospel guru, Joel Osteen.

I've seen this kind of thing before. I've even used Peter Popoff's "Miracle Water" (he has switched to Miracle Manna now) as a sermon illustration. Hopefully needless to say, it disappoints me just as much as the pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo of Rome disappointed Martin Luther when he visited.

However, being chronically iconoclastic, I am tempted to wonder what kinds of products the church could put out that would actually say something about *real* Christian thought. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod now has its own brand of coffee, "Cafe Sola". Could we open up our market for Cafe Sola to Starbucks around the world and ask only that people knew that this coffee was produced by Lutherans helping poor people with a fair trade coffee?

Whatever we did, I'm sure it would be better than this crap. Besides, what's a clearer picture of the Lutheran idea of sacraments as being a physical element (like water) being infused with the Word (in this case, not Word but coffee grounds)?