First off let me say how much I am grateful for Chris Tomlin and what he has done for worship over the decade.  He has moved worship in a great direction and modern worship owes a lot to his influence.  Shoot I wish I was a tenth the writer that he is.

But due to his overwhelming popularity and the business that is Christian Radio and marketing (we’ll save that for another show…) The pervasiveness of Tomlin in our worship services has become well, a little overwhelming at times.  How Great is Our God is a wonderful song but quite honestly I don’t want to hear it or play it for quite sometime.  I need a break from it so it doesn’t end up in the same category as Lord I Lift Your Name on High and Shine Jesus Shine – which were great songs when they were written but in my opinion need buried and not giving the Lazarus treatment.

Tomlin has it down, with every new release there is a plethora of anthems gobbled up by the church and put on heavy rotation.  While that is not a bad thing – and trust me there are some great songs being used – what happened to the church being the producer of art to becoming the consumer?

As a worship leader there are few songs that get as good of an immediate response than a Tomlin song.  People know them cause they are payed on the stations a good number of them listen too.  So in planning songs it’s easy to go to the grab bag of songs that people will know and respond too.  And let’s be honest there are a number of great worship artists who could fall in this same category – Hillsong and Matt Redman, just to name a few.

So here is my challenge for us as creatives, as worship leaders, as people wanting the church to be the creator of art rather than the consumer.  Can we as worship leaders go and entire month without planning a Tomlin song?  It’s harder than it sounds at first.  Can we take a month and rather than use what is popular and easy teach songs people don’t know?  What if rather than taking songs other leaders wrote and using them for the heart of our church, we discover what the people we serve are really needing, where their heart is, what God is doing among our people and write songs to fill those needs?

What if we took a month and really prayed about seeking God’s direction for our church and rather than plan certain songs, we write them?  Here’s my challenge: Let’s start with one month – pick an artist you know you tend to use a lot – Tomlin, Hillsong, Crowder, etc – and don’t use their music.  In it’s place pray for the heart of your church and write songs, teach songs from unfamiliar places that really speak to who your church is and how God is leading them to worship.

Just a thought…  Will you join me?

Wow I am amazed at the response this video is getting.  If you haven’t seen it you should at least go watch it to see what all the hullabaloo is about.  What is amazing to me is how the desire to see the world made a better place can start so much controversy and discord among people.

“It’s a scam!”
“They call themselves filmmakers and drive really nice cars around now! The nerve!”
“They are just greedy, if they really wanted to help they would…”
“Ugandan’s are irate and wish the video would go away!”
“There are invisible children in America too! Why focus only on the children in Uganda!”
“The abductions have dramatically decreased over the past decade plus he’s not even in Uganda anymore!”

There are more critics of what a group of people did to try and change the world than there are of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I think we are missing the point here.

We are so ready to point the finger at the missteps of an organization than understand the power of what is really happening here.  Social media has given us more power as a people than ever before.  Here is how I see it.

I am sure that there is some misappropriation of monetary donations to the company but that doesn’t negate the great social media campaign aimed to make this war lord known and hopefully captured.  Are they a perfect organization – No. Do I think they could spend their money better – probably (but so could compassions and other well known charities). Do I support their overall mission to keep these children from being abducted and forced to kill – absolutely. I do wish their financials reflected a bit more heading towards uganda and the greater area but I do want to see continued support from the U.S. in helping capture Kony.

Let’s all pray that through this (corrupt financials or not) that God’s work can be done.

To make this about money is to miss the point as to what’s going on here.  We can debate all day about how you would run their organization but we’d be missing the point.  People doing what they know to do to help other people.

You see what this campaign is really doing is showing the powers that govern us that we care about this issue.  And the way our government works – for better or for worse – is if enough people make enough noise and enough potential votes could be lost then action is taken.

Yes there are other just as worthy causes to be fighting for.  I predict that if this Kony 2012 campaign is as successful as it is appearing to be then you will see this same thing employed to bring and end to sex trafficking, provide clean water, stop genocide, and more.

That is what I am excited about – action can be taken when it is outside our nations “financial and general interest.”   All we have to do is stand up and say that’s what we want to see!

Also Charity navigator actually ranks them rather high (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12429) and they post their financials online for everyone one to see (http://www2.invisiblechildren.com/financials) and have responded to the recent critiques that come with recognition (http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html)

This post was written extremely quickly and not proofed – please excuse any incomplete thoughts or spelling errors, I will check my work when I get home and have time – I have to get back to work.