I’m a little late in the game this week, but I still want to share something that to me represents the highest possible form of creativity…

With the news of the tragedy that struck the Chapmans yesterday, I was blindsided by the eerily similar story of my friends Julie and Smith Peck. They lost their 4 year old son, Jackson, on December 23, 2004. While leaving to go caroling with family and friends, Smith’s mom Roz accidentally backed her SUV into her grandson. Jackson lost his life, but his family took the horror of it all and did something very much after God’s own heart… They turned their tragedy into a message of hope and forgiveness.

I first struck up my friendship with the Pecks while on a mission trip with a team from our church. I’ve wept as I edited home videos of Jackson to be shown on television shows. We’ve taken our family to Jackson’s birthday parties that his parents and sisters have thrown every year since they lost him… What I’ve seen is a family who has a deep understanding of the sovereignty of God and a rich knowledge that He doesn’t always rely on sunny days to brighten the world.

The fruit of their courage has been federal legislation that has helped prevent similar accidents from happening to other families. Locally, they lead a ministry called “Grief Share” that gives families dealing with loss a network of support. They have also been given opportunities to share the story of their faith with a national audience. In fact, the story that The Oprah Show ran to tell their story is being re-aired this Friday (May 23), and will feature a letter sent by an Oprah watcher who credits the Peck’s story for saving her own daughter’s life.

Tragedy is often a catalyst for new life. Anything that lives is given the opportunity for life by something else that gives its own life away. I pray for the Chapmans’ son to run full speed into this chapter with courage and hope. It will always hurt, but there IS a redemption. Redemption is simply in God’s nature.

The Jackson Smith Peck Foundation – jspfoundation.com

This is a video we put together to highlight Journey Groups (small groups) here at West Ridge Church in good ole Dallas, Georgia (not Texas).

The idea is pretty simple, but creates a deep impact. We didn’t even need a video camera.

How we did it:
We invited several folks from the same Journey Group into our studio and recorded them reading a short written ‘testimony’ (about 2 minutes each). Using Logic Pro, we then took a good listen to each of the recordings and edited down to key thoughts. Taking those thoughts, we arranged them in an order that would help us form one ‘complete thought.’ (You’ll see what I mean when you watch). With simple white text on a bg, we slowly displayed those thoughts as they were spoken.

The Result:
As the text builds, a paragraph is formed on screen that describes the essence of community in a small group.

PS: The intro is a little long because of where we placed it in the service, so be patient.

NOTE! This is an addendum to my Creative Chaos post from earlier today… I meant to add a quick video we did that went over like gangbusters. Huge laughs in all three services.

This was also for our Deadly Viper series [by the way...thanks for the mention, guys!]… We took a clip from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist and overdubbed our greeting and the week’s announcements using iMovie and a M-Audio USB mic interface. [This is the premaster edit, so the audio may be tough at places...sorry.]

The file is only 23MB, but if you’re on a slower connection, it may take a sec to fully load.

Enjoy!

[quicktime]http://unmediocre.com/wp-content/videos/kungpowchicken_sm.mov[/quicktime]

Genesis 2:18 ADONAI, God, said, “It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion suitable for helping him.” 19 So from the ground ADONAI, God, formed every wild animal and every bird that flies in the air, and he brought them to the person to see what he would call them. Whatever the person would call each living creature, that was to be its name. 20 So the person gave names to all the livestock, to the birds in the air and to every wild animal. [CJB]

My daughter McKenna is absolutely in love with any kind of animal. Even the ones that freak her out (>5 legs) seem to share a certain bond with her just like any human. At 3 years old, she has an understanding of how she fits in God’s creation, and how we all have something in common in being made by the same One.

So any time she meets a new critter (even in inanimate form), she can come up with a new name in a split second that just seems to be ‘the right name.’

When Kenni was almost 2, my mom gave her a knitted black and white striped scarf that had a puppy’s face on one end: she named her “Happy.” Her Lambchop puppet (whose decrepit, threadbare body has been attached to her hip since Christmas, 2005) is “Choppy.” When some friends gave her this glittery horse for her 3rd birthday, she immediately started calling him “Wonder.”

I guess this naming thing is just in the human spirit. It’s because names really do mean something to God.

McKenna’s name was one that my wife dreamed for our little girl months before we even conceived her. It means “able.” Nothing could describe our intense child better. Caia, our youngest, is unusually chipper. Very unlike her sister, she will reach out for a stranger to hold her. She gets so excited about the simplest things, and will beam from ear to ear as she army crawls as fast as she can toward anyone who walks into the room. Fitting…her name means, “to rejoice.” It’s not like we name our kids when they’re 12 and we already have them figured out. God knows them before they’re even zygotes.

What’s in a name?

The Name of God appears 6828 times in the Bible…
• The second line of “The Lord’s Prayer”, so familiar to us all, says, “Hallowed be thy name.” Luke 11:2
• We are also promised that, “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.” Romans 10:13
• “In the last days everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Acts 2:21 / Joel 2:32

What does your name mean?

Carlos over at ragamuffinsoul.com has asked his readers to chime in each Thursday with random examples of creativity in action. We call it “Creative Chaos.”

[be sure to check out part 2 after reading this post]

As we were brainstorming our set design for our “Deadly Viper: Character Assassins” series, we wanted to do something that would be striking, but would also come in at a price tag of under $1000. We decided to go with classic Japanese colors and materials, and repetition.

The Stuff:

• Lots of rice paper lanterns (some with red bulbs tied into our lighting system) [source: ikea, world market, home depot].
• LOTS of bamboo (used to frame our uber-ghetto 3 screen video wall) [source: a couple in our church has acres of it on their property].
• Red canvas with simple Japanese-esque graphics painted in white primer and hung with rope and bamboo [source: wally world].
• Lots of twine, lots of fishing line, and a day in the scissor lift.

The simple white globes give the intels plenty of surface area to hit. And we situated them between three different rows of fixtures so we could get several layers of color.

We’ve had tons of positive feedback, and even came in under budget.

[There are more photos at the bottom of the post]

The result was powerful, memorable, and sounded PHENOMENAL! It created a few challenges for us, of course, but was well worth the effort.

So worth the effort that we did the same thing at Easter with singers. What did we name THAT? You guessed it…”Vocal Crash.” 80+ voices. Amazing.

This Sunday, it’s “Drum Crash.” A little lower scale, and not the same “open invitation,” but we’ll have two drummers and two percussionists along with our normal band.

SHOULD YOU TRY THIS AT HOME:
[1] Keep it simple: Song choice is key. Go for the song(s) that are simplest to play in a chaotic environment, but have the most impact vocally and instrumentally. For Acoustic Crash, we chose “Forever” (because it is so familiar to the players), and “Glorious One” because it is so dynamic, but has a very simple chord progression.
[2] Set the players up for success: Over-prepare and over-communicate on your end. Provide simple charts that are clear on arrangement, but easy for a non-music reader to follow. Pick a recording to provide as a practice tool, obviously, but choose to play that same arrangement in the worship service. Otherwise, you have the potential to confuse the heck out of folks who are already nervous or very excited.

More Photos of the craziness: