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Don’t look for a common thread here, there isn’t one. But I just downloaded Storiez off NoiseTrade, the new EP from rapper/theologian Shai Linne. This dude is brilliant, so check him. Thanks to the NoiseTrade system, you can pay what you want or tell 5 friends to get the album for free.

In other breaking news, Pitchfork gives Coldplay’s Prospekt’s March EP an affectionately warm review: Coldplay isn’t cool in the conventional sense, but you have to like the earnestness and rough edges of Chris Martin and co. For $.99, why wouldn’t you grab this EP?

One exciting aspect of church planting is taking a big picture vision and adding detail and color so that it begins to take shape for other people. Case in point: Now you can download a Prospectus for Crossroads Church (working title).

This file, which reads somewhat like an adventure story, gives background on our purpose, our plan, our passion, and our partners. (How do you like that alliteration?) The file is a little large (11 MB) since we couldn’t resist adding pictures, but no one uses dial-up anymore, right?

If you want to know more about what we’re doing, grab this PDF, scan it, and shoot us your thoughts or questions. We’re talking with as many potential partners in person as we can–if something on the “partners” page grabs you, be sure and let us know.

The short answer is heck yeah. The long answer requires a little context.

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Depends who you ask.

One perspective is that church planters are guys with a one-track mind, guys who can only sing one song, guys who don’t want to do anything else in the world but plant a church. Biblically, there’s some warrant for this, since the apostle Paul comes off as so single-minded that we suspect his right and left lobes were fused.

Another perspective is that church planters can have multiple gifts and passions on the table, but in a given time and place, they feel strongly directed by God to plant a church. Biblically, there’s some warrant for this since the apostle Paul comes off as a genius in multiple dimensions–he’s a manufacturer of handcrafted outdoor gear, a focused theological writer, and, for at least several years, a desert “mystic.” (Can’t think of a better word for it.)

The New Testament reveals that Paul’s primary gifting and career was that of an itinerant apostle-church planter. But even so, I have a hard time making the apostolic calling as black and white as some people seem to think it is today. Paul appears to have had other gifts as well. And he used ‘em. Paul didn’t cease to be a rigorous, nitty-gritty theologian when he started planting churches. He didn’t quit his tent-creation business cold.

Is it possible to be an apostle and a mystic? Possible to be a jock and an artist? Possible to be a church planter and a creative? I’m going to go out on a very thick limb and say yes.

Identifying people with the gifts and calling necessary to plant is an extremely helpful result of today’s assessment processes—and I appreciate assessment for that reason. I suspect, though, that an unhealthy tendency to sort and label people too quickly can creep in. I don’t want to see the mystery of created personality devalued or the ultimate causation of God’s sovereignty discounted where church planting is concerned. 

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Early this year, a dude I continue to respect told me one of the most ridiculous things, in a personal sense, that I’ve ever heard. The gist of it was this: You’re a guy with creative leanings, so you’re not a church planter. At the time, that stopped me in my tracks and caused some soul-searching—which in the long run was good. I realized with greater urgency that if I didn’t plant a church, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. Additional prayer and counsel confirmed the fact that God’s given me the right gift mix to get after it. And more time and thought invested in Kansas City’s downtown cultures has made me very thankful that I have a strong creative streak, since a big chunk of the people living here do as well.

It’s possible that this issue is just something I’ve wrestled with, as a creative strategist who likes to think things over. So maybe I’m speaking to myself only, but if I was speaking to a potential church planter with a creative streak, and ideally a stubborn streak too, I’d say this: Don’t let anyone shoot you down unless you sense the Holy Spirit’s clear involvement.

God uses people with apostolic gifts to get new churches off the ground, but He doesn’t use a cookie cutter.

Making progress through Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, which is proving to be a fantastic read.

Reading some authors is like scanning a blank wall with occasional windows. Reading Crouch is like walking through a fully furnished downtown loft with picture windows that open on the Missouri River and urban arts district (showing my KC bias there). Point is, Andy Crouch can flat out write.

Culture Making is not that book you “read for content.” Some authors make the occasional good point. A few authors do it with personality. And a mere handful write with consistent insight, voice, and artistry. Crouch is in that minuscule group, and the fact that he’s writing about cultures, creativity, and the arts makes it extraordinarily appropriate.

OK, I’ll stop raving. Here’s a piece from chapter 2:

The fact that I can give you a fairly complete description of the Gryphon Cafe depends on its participation in a broader culture, one that includes coffee shops, ponytails, realtors and bourgeois bohemians. But the culture of the Gryphon Cafe—the things it makes of the world, the horizons of possibility it creates within its walls, the new culture that its denizens make in response—is not exactly like any other coffee shop. The Gryphon Cafe is not just making something of the vast world of coffee or the current boom in “third places” all over America fueld by Starbucks; it is also making something of the lovely building it inhabits at the corner of Wayne and Lancaster Avenues, of local artists who hand their work on its walls, of the availability of artfully scruffy twenty-somethings who somehow can afford to live in an affluent community on barista’s wages.

Great book, and very helpful in exegeting an urban context like Kansas City.

Hard to make the call, but the best track on this album may be "God's Gonna Cut You Down."

Back to Rockville, the well-traveled music blog of the Kansas City star, has a good piece up on the late Johnny Cash. The article does a great job pointing out the paradoxes of Cash’s life, which ultimately read kind of like Romans 12:24-25: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

We’re big Cash fans (the American albums are awesome) and when I listen to his music I repeatedly find myself appreciating the way that even the shadows in his life end up portraying Jesus, the light that he eventually turned to.