Chan's Personal Blog

So this weekend I was at the Live The Difference Conference at Colwood Pentecostal Church. I made a somewhat spontaneous decision to go. I had no idea who was going, what it was really about, or what kind of talks they were offering; however, it was a worthwhile conference to go to. It was nice dropping everything and just going to it. For a few brief days, all the deadlines of my hectic schedule faded into the background, and didn't matter.

In either case, the general theme of a lot of the talks was essentially, how does Christianity remain relevent in this day and age. So, a lot of ideas involve rethinking how we do church from the ground up. This is loosely known as the Emerging Church. It is a movement to make Christianity accessible to people living in the post-modern world.

It is refreshing to reevaluate how we have done things traditionally in the Christian world. One of the preachers talked about cookie-cutter fluffy model Christian answers to hard questions doesn't cut it any more in the post-modern age. When someone comes to ask for advice, and you merely say, oh, just pray about it, THAT DOESN'T HELP.

Another point was that we need to change our exclusive language into an inclusive language. What do I mean by that? Well, usually communities of professionals, people, etc tend to develop a specialized language that only have meaning to that community. For example, computer geeks have a their own sub language like: "My P4 wintel box is mad 1337." These langauges are gibberish to outsiders. The same can be said about Christianity. The language has to change because more and more people are growing up without any background about the Bible that was traditionally taught in Sunday school. So, when preachers talk, they have to give more background information when they talk. For example, you can't make a subtle reference to a parable of Jesus and expect everyone to know what you're talking about.

A very interesting topic was about how the church can learn from the business world. We can look at the ways their businesses are run and how they're organized. Something that corporations spend a lot of money on is ethos which is defined as "the distinctive spirit of a culture" or "the invisible emotional force." The best example of a company that is driven by ethos is Starbucks. They deliberately choose the decor, the music, the lighting, etc. Using this, they have been able to build a community, a culture, a status symbol, all around a simple cup of coffee. They have built a very inviting environment where people want to come and gather. That sounds like attributes that a church would like to have.

The speaker challenged us to consider what a new person feels when they first enter your church. Does it feel inviting? Do I get wierd glares from people? Do I feel accepted? What are the sites and sounds people will see when they come in? After this session, the people from my church were able to brainstorm a few concrete ideas about applying ethos to our ministry, The Oasis.

Another tool that the church has under-utilized is multimedia. This generation is a very media orientated generation. A quick look at the statistics confirm this. DVD sales were worth $10 billion dollars in America last year, while video game sales were worth $6 billion dollars. Some progress has been made. There's not so much, "that music's pretty good for a Christian band," any more as the quality of the music is on par with mainstream music. Other things however have lagged dramatically behind. The websites for churches are usually pretty low end. This is not so good because in this generation, a lot of people do their research about a service on the Internet. Another thing that is lacking is the use of audio/visual tools in a service. Today's church service for example, there was a pretty brutal powerpoint presentation that blatantly abused audio visual. It was REALLY difficult to watch.

However, where there are weaknesses, there are oppurtunities. They emphasised to the young people of the conference to not ditch church because it sucks. Rather, become agents of change. Help shift the internal church culture to be more accommodating to today. A really good quote I heard about this was, "Just as you've heard you can't complain about government if you didn't vote. So too, you cannot complain about church if you're not helping build it." That is quite insightful as it is very easy to complain as a spectator.

I for one am excited about the prospects of effecting change in my church. Multimedia and technology is one of those things that I am passionately interested in, and it can help change the way our church does business. In my young adults group, The Oasis, we are starting to mobilize in this front. These are exciting times. Thankfully I am old enough now, and have the knowledge and skills to contribute professionally to this area. I was always frustrated growing up that I didn't have what it took, nor the motivation to contribute in this area of the church. Quite honestly, some of the youth ministries that I was a part of before, I didn't believe they were going to succeed, so I didn't bother investing in it. This time, it feels different though. Everyone in the youth group seems to have matured a lot over the years, and we are moving from a season of spiritual winter, to a season of reaping. People seem to actually care about this ministry, and they're taking up leadership positions in it, and lending their time and money to the effort.

More on the conference later...

This morning I was at church yet again. Before the service, I was running around getting the sound and computer system up and running, and getting the band equipped. Amongst this chaos, one of the board members gave me a sealed letter. I was too busy to read it that second... but I'm sure it was an excommunication letter or something . If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me! j/k.

So later in the afternoon, I opened the letter. To my suprise, it was a letter saying someone had nominated me for the office of the Deacon. (Background information: Every year the church holds elections for the office of the Deacon. Generally, deacons meet to discuss church matters, and are the caretakers of the church.) I have a few people that I suspect may have done this, but I'll never find out since nominations are supposed to be secret. Anyways, I'm flattered, but I don't think I'm ready for such responsibilities. I think I'm still a tad immature to be wielding such powers.

The letter also included expectations the church has for a Deacon, and a really funny line came up. "Expectations of a Deacon: Have a supportive spouse (where applicable)." I'm desperately lacking in this prerequisite. One step at a time people!

Another thing that I think the nominator overlooked was that I am not even eligible to run as a deacon. The church constitution says that if a family member is serving as a deacon, other members of his/her family cannot serve as a deacon at the same time. My dad is currently a deacon, so that would automatically disqualify my running.

In the recent year, there has been suggestions that younger people should be voted into the Board. Conceptually this does sound like a good idea to inject some young blood into leadership, and if that person has a calling, then great. However, I do caution people jumping on the bandwagon of voting young people into such a position just because they're young. This isn't some magic cure-all that will solve all our problems. There are also those who provide a skewed representation of people my age. So, proceed with caution.

Anyways, this is a small glimpse into church organization.

So tonight I was at The Oasis. I wasn't expecting much tonight; however, I was pleasently suprised. I was feeling fairly tired and drained; I had been spending some late nights coding, so the sleep deprivation was starting to catch up. On top of that, I left work late because I was finishing off this one bug in my code. So, I get home, quickly eat, and rush off to church. This refuel and re-launch was done in a space of an hour and a half.

The setup for the service is fairly typical, the sound check goes fine. The show is about to start, so I'm perched upstairs waiting for the signal to start. I see Jen come in, and someone's following behind her. I think... hmmm...must be a new person, that's wierd, she kind of looks like Natalie.... wait.... that IS Natalie! That was a nice suprise. It's always nice to see a good friend. Anyways, looks like she found out about The Oasis indirectly from my blog. It's always nice to know people read this thing. Anyways that made my day, I smile any time someone mentions my blog.

So onto the message. Pastor Geoff was sharing an experience he had at UVic while posting posters for The Oasis. He was at the Student Union Building's information booth getting permission to put up the posters. All posters need a stamp on it before it is posted up. So Geoff shows the poster to the info booth person to get it cleared. The girl looks at it and asks, what's this for? Oh, I'm a pastor explains Geoff. So the girl goes... oh.... and okays it. She says you'll have to wait for that other girl stamping her posters. There's this girl there with a stack of a hundred posters. Great....this should take a while.

Pastor Geoff waits patiently behind this girl. It turns out this girl was stamping a large pile of pro-choice posters. She then begins to talk to the info booth girl about the horrible experiences she has had with Christians and pro-life supporters. Recently she was sitting in at a pro-life seminar, and one of the speakers pointed her out as a pro-choice supporter and started verbally attacking her and her beliefs in front of the audience. Obviously she was hurt by this experience. So during her venting, the info booth girl tries to interrupt her and goes ... pssst, the guy behind you is a pastor. Oh. She continues venting and telling her story anyways, and then says her hand is getting tired from stamping all these posters.

Geoff then interrupts and says he's sorry that she had been ridiculed and treated so badly by Christians, and on their behalf, he apologizes. The girl seems to be in a state of shock at this point that some pastor is apologizing to her. He also mentions that even though he doesn't support her views, she is entitled to them. The girl remains dumbfounded by this apology. Pastor Geoff asks if he could help her finish stamping her posters because she was getting tired. (I think nothing is quite as disarming as being kind.)

Anyways, the girl is still kind of feeling shocked at this point, and Pastor Geoff begins stamping his Oasis posters. The girl asks what the poster is for. Geoff replies that it's a Friday service that is geared towards youth and young adults. She asks if she could have one. Wow. Geoff gives her one of the cards and she leaves.

I think that was a really good story. This is unedited, real evangelism in the frontlines in my opinion. A seed has been planted today ... and it might make all the difference in the world for this girl. In either case, I found it very inspiring.

I entitled this article as "On The Frontlines" because a lot of times in Christian circles, they see the frontlines of evangelism is far away in some exotic land like Africa, but in reality the frontline is everywhere and oppurtunities can pop-up from anywhere.

What has Chan Productions been up to lately you ask? Well, I've been doing some freelance graphics and web design as of late. The latest project I finished was for The Oasis which is a youth and young adults ministry at North Douglas Pentecostal Church. They were looking at getting some posters and cards designed for advertising purposes.

So here's the finished product:



The theme of The Oasis is to be a refreshing experience. The ministry is based on the following Bible verse:


The inspiration of this design came from the original requirements. Initially, the client wanted an image of an oasis, and as far as design went, less was more. From my image collection, I couldn't find any decent pictures of an oasis, but I could find a lot of good desert pictures. So I decided to make a metaphorical oasis in the middle of the desert. The theme of the ministry is 'A Refreshing Experience', so to me, when I think refreshing, I think water bottle. Design wise, bottles of water are also very attractive usually, so I went with it. To further the metaphor, an oasis usually has something growing out of it. So, I added the plant growing out of the bottle. Symbolically, it also represents a person's faith that grows. As far as the rest of the design goes, it's pretty basic and simple. I think it is appropriate as the picture is the main focus of the whole design.

One of the problems I encountered was that Photoshop 6.0 doesn't do small fonts very well. The picture above shows that the text is a bit distorted, and not very clean. At school, tried some of the designs using Photoshop CE, and the text was crisp and clean. So, I guess I'll have to upgrade Photoshop or find an alternate graphics editor. Maybe I'll try out GIMP at some point.

The last part of the design is a subtle watermark-like effect I put in the background. If you crank your monitor brightness high enough, you'll be able to see the word 'oasis' on the black background. This was a neat effect on the printed version of the card. If you look directly at the card, you don't see the effect. But if you look at it at an angle and under some light, then you see it. Nothing like subliminal messages

So, the posters and cards are being distributed now. I printed off the final copies last Thursday. The Oasis media launch has begun.

If anyone out there is looking for a church/youth group to join, The Oasis could be a place to check out. It's geared towards youth and young adults with today's kind of music and meaningful talks. All are welcome. It starts at 8:00pm on Fridays at North Douglas Pentecostal Church - 675 Jolly Place, Victoria, B.C. If you're curious about church protocol, there really isn't any ... it's very casual ... and I wear jeans to it ... so no need to dress up. The talks are very 'user-friendly' to people that don't know church lingo; so, no background knowledge is really required.

I go to The Oasis every Friday. If you go there and can't find me, it's probably because I'm upstairs running the sound/light/computer system. I operate behind the scenes for most of the night. Such is the way of the sound man...

Comments/critiques of the card's design would be great.