Building of a Tour Day 3/ Week 1

The Crown of Thorns Cantata (no, we’re not kidding)
I call this opening session sequence of video, live drama, music and theatrical props, “The Crown of Thorns Cantata”. Partly in jest, partly not. We have been struggling to come up with a term that communicates these little experiences in our sessions that are like rides at a theme park. It’s not just a video or a sketch. It’s a everything we have in our tool bag to communicate. I realize all the negative connotations that come to mind of painful Easter play moments but it’s time we reclaim the true beauty of the term. Cantata can freaking ROCK!! That really is what it has developed into.

Since October of last year the Believe team has had in the back of our minds the nagging question, how do we top the Brent moment from last year’s tour. I know all the Sunday school answers here about how it’s not our job to top it every year blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I get it. I tell myself those things all the time and at a certain level believe them too. But, we have 9 months to plan one event that people give a whole weekend to come to! It should freaking ROCK! We are sons and daughters of GOD- the greatest creative mind EVER! It should be awesome. Not to mention that this year we are telling kids about the Messiah.
Well, this has been an amazing week and I can’t wait to see kids experience this for the first time in Anaheim, CA! In a nut shell, this Cantata will be the crucifixion from God’s perspective. We’ll start with God drawing texts that confronts us on our misinterpretation of Jesus and then move to a dramatic presentation of Eric drawing a crown of thorns. This will culminate in God (Eric playing the role of God) turning his back on Jesus as Jesus is taking the upon the weight the world’s sins. We don’t stop with that. The music keeps going and we transition with scripture leading the way into a beautiful crowning ceremony. (Remember the Mosaic statue of Christ we have been creating throughout the weekend? It is revealed live here and kids see God applaud the work of His Son. God will invite all of us to acknowledge the full work of Jesus.) There are some secrets we want to hold onto for the live event; but here is what the session is going to look like and how the Cantata will set up everything perfectly.

The teaching moment:

As with many things related to God we don’t understand much. Jr high kids are no different to the 1st century Jew when it comes to placing expectations upon the Messiah. We can go through the general list of things that were expected for the Messiah to bring and see the parallel expectations that jr high kids and people of Christ’s day have. Jews under Roman occupation wanted justice. They wanted a political and physical redemption for themselves in their lifetime. Jr high kids find themselves needing this same kind of ‘saving’. Perhaps they are picked on, made fun of. They literally get what it means to need a physical Messiah to meet a present need. There is a sense of urgency that both the 1st century Jew and a Jr high student understands.
Likewise, we all have our personal boxes that we try to put The Messiah into. Eric will be painting these thoughts in text on a canvas with our point of reference coming from the canvas:
We want a Messiah that makes us popular, who gives us more video games, who makes us rich.
The Messiah is more than a cosmic cop, kill joy, vending machine, genie in a bottle, or a nice person
The Messiah I sent gives more than happiness, eternal life, forgiveness, justice, a church to belong to
The Messiah is my Son. He is the way, the truth the life YOU NEED. He is MORE.

This session happens on day two of Believe after lunch. Up to now we have had an incredible amount of energy on the screens with Eric acting as God. Eric will be communicating directly to the kids in a calm manner thus setting up the storm that is to come. We get a picture of God working through all types of means to bring a plan for reconciliation together. We don’t understand how God works. It’s mysterious. And as soon as you think you have it figured out you can bet you’re wrong.

God is essentially saying that the Messiah He gave us is SO MUCH MORE than anything we would have been able to construct. Our incomplete version of the Messiah is false because it doesn’t come close to describing the whole work of Christ. God is screaming through the life, death and resurrection of His son that His better is always better.

The crucifixion scene:

After Eric is finished painting text in this teaching moment the music will change drastically taking us into a new and more intense direction. Here the kids will see Eric portray God’s wrath, justice and righteous anger. Eric will put the tiny text brush down and force himself upon the painting ferociously painting with all his energy this messy crown of thorns. This could lend itself to being to abstract so we will constantly be firming up what kids are seeing on the screens with concrete explinations. Another differentiating jr high intentional quality of Believe is that our speakers don’t come into the program with a huge agenda to communicate apart from the already singular focus of the main session. I like Kurt Johnston’s statement about speaking at believe, “we really more of a tour guide pointing out and clarifying again for kids what they are experiencing during the weekend”


The Crowning:

The disciples thought that the Messiah had failed. They had to be questioning everything he had said to them. But when the world saw disaster God foresaw victory.
We saw a crown of thorns.
God was creating a crown of jewels for His son who redeemed everything that was previously destroyed in Genesis chapter 3 at the fall of man.
So in our sequence of events we just saw a depiction of the crucifixion from God’s point of view but the story isn’t over. For a time we are going to shift our attention from the screens to the island stage in the room. While the screens have shown Eric painting a crown of thorns, he has been painting live also the entire time what we thought was a version of the same thing. In fact, Eric has been painting the foundation for what will be a different type of crown. The music will morph into more triumphant themes as Eric really starts to show that the live crown is NOT one of thorns. As he starts to get into revealing a jeweled crown the screens will start to direct our thoughts to a scriptural picture of Christ’s completed work. The music, Eric’s theatrical choreographed painting and the scripture on screens will all pulse. This resounding chorus will culminate in Eric crowning the mosaic Christ. Just to give you a glimpse into the whole effect, the canvas that Eric is working on is a round canvas that he maneuvers around vigorously creating a literal crown. As all the elements rise in intensity the crown Eric has painted live will start to rise off the stage with all the other mosaic pieces falling into place under the crown. This will lead into an anthemic worship set where we celebrate the Messiah. OFF THE HOOK!

A look at the Best from the Speak Tour

Today I am cranking out content for the new Believe Web site. Publicity will hopefully go to print later today and when it hits youth pastor's desks in the next few weeks we will have all the new Messiah Tour content up on the web. Here are some looks at last year's event.

New publicity leaked

The word isn't out yet but here is a sneak peak at our new ad coming out in Youth Worker's Journal and in Interlic's fall YLO issue.

It has been difult for us to find a price based incentive for new youth ministries to check Believe out that doesn't seem to penalize all of our great ministry partners. We got it figured out and it's going to rock. The deal is that Believe is going to be only 25.00 for every new registration! Click here to read the details of the special price promotion.

We realize that the current economy is having an impact on the programming decisions that youth pastors make. We didn't know what to expect last year for attendance as the country began to feel the financial crises during the middle of our tour. What happend is we experienced the largest attended Believe tour in our 11 year history. And what a great tour of ministry it was as we looked at lesson's for jr high students from the life of Jeremiah.

We have experienced steady growth as leaders across the country talk to each other and recommend Believe. In part, some of our growth was due to ministries trying a new spring event instead of planning thier own. At the end of the day it takes lots of time and investment to put an event together for your students on your own along with everything else leaders do on a weekly basis.

The exciting thing is that our awesome administrative staff at CIY has not cut corners on the event to make the 25.00 registration happen. In fact, our plans for the Messiah tour are the most ambitious I have ever been apart of. We are quite excited and look forward to seeing many more students as we amplify Christ's call to be Kingdom Workers in 2010!

Evan at Willow . . . classic

The Believe Staff and I recently visited Scott Rubin and Jason Raitz at their Willow Creek Jr High Sunday Morning services. (we like to see the people who speak on our tour with their own students) Evan (the keytar player from Believe) was with us and we took this photo of him in the sanctuary. It's a funny picture when you think about the quintessential jr high awkward stage of life.



We just posted Evan's promotional ">rap for the Believe speak tour. I am excited to see the new version posted (hopefully today) with the director's comments included. (t was done in honor of the old VH1 pop up video. I'll post a link when it is up. For now, check out the funny regular version.

the new toy on the Believe Tour

So we have a stunt guy on this year's Believe tour and he did so well not hurting himself this fall we thought we would award him with a new crash mat. The mat came in yesterday and the staff couldn't help but try it out. Brent, I hope you put it to good use, we had fun with it as you can tell!

Time to start all over again

I am working on next year’s jr high Believe event theme. The way that I usually enter our artist planning meeting is with an overarching theme and the take home message for all 5 sessions already laid out. We then spend our time talking about the best way to make that session come alive. What I need to start hammering out is that road map of the overarching theme and the 5 take home statements. For instance, as our artist group met for this year’s tour I had only this ready to go: The theme is CONNECT. God wants to connect with you so listen, speak and look. That was divided up into 5 sessions. I also knew our Bible content would be the life of Moses.

God has used two things in my heart over the past 3 months as I have labored over next year’s theme idea. The first was a sermon at youth specialties by Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil. She gave an awesome talk using The Lion King as an extended metaphor for reclaiming our identities as the people of God and our role, as student workers in pointing students back to their true calling. This session really resonated with much of what I felt our students were dealing with at Christ's Church and started me down this path.

The second is a quote in a book by Chip Wood called Yardsticks: Children in the classroom Ages 4 – 14 A resource for Parents and Teachers:

"Twelve’s greatest need is to be with their friends. Teachers and parents take a back seat on the long ride toward the driver’s license. The primary developmental struggle is the confusing struggle for identity: the child/not child begins the search for fidelity in relationships. This is an all consuming quest beginning at twelve. Minutes turn to hours on the telephone and in front of the mirror. Twelve’s define themselves by jackets, hairstyles, shoes, CD’s, tapes, movies, videos, TV preferences, sports teams, the mall, the dance rage, what older kids are doing. School becomes the place to be, but not always for our intended purposes."

Jeremiah 1:4 -10. would be a big starting point of inspiration for the tour. I just don’t have it fleshed out as of yet. I do see us using this text in programming. Students think that they are whatevers or random particles without specific direction. The Bible Character we would look at for the weekend is currently Jacob unless something else just knocks us off of our rocker.

It is an exciting process but I always feel so much better when I get the language down for the theme and main session take home messages.

let me know your thoughts!

A look at Arlington Believe

The Believe in Arlington, TX was great! Jason Raitz was our speaker, Eric Timm is painting on the tour, Yancy is a special artist! It was the most solid start we have every had at Believe. I can't wait for Gatlinburg next weekend.

sneak peek at the new Believe Promo

Hey all,
This just went to print today! It is the new Believe promo for 2007-2008 Tour season. You can check it out in a PDF format. This years speakers are: Kurt Johnston, Scott Rubin, Steve Carter, Justin Lookadoo, Nathan Head, and Jason Raitz. Special guests hanging on the Believe tour are Robin Sanders, Joby "the Village Idiot"; Painter Eric Timm, comedian Taylor Mason, Brent the stunt guy and artist Yancy Richmond.

You can get some info on this years theme, CONNECT, as well.

Believe 2007 - 200...

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You have 7 seconds . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4

I am 31 years old today. As my good friend Karla says, “I am celebrating another 29th birthday!” ha! It did hit me hard last night when during our Foundation Red Band Picnic one of the players prayed this for me, “Lord, be with Johnny as he has to travel in a band with guys who are all a decade younger than him.” Ha!

Today’s post is about knowing who you are and what it is you do. You would be surprised how many competent trained professionals simply miss opportunities because they can not master this simple idea.

During a meeting at work today I stated that the President of the United States only gets 7 seconds to make a point so why should we think we will get any longer. I was challenged on this statement by some around the table. Think about it. It is true. The president may speak on the White House Lawn for an hour. Unfortunately, what you will end up seeing is footage of him talking while the media gives their editorial. This is usually followed by a 7 second clip of the President speaking. Because advisor's know this they routinely practice what is called a “sound bite”. A sound bite is a concise and intentionally worded 5-7 second impression of their position on any given topic. Ultimately, this sound bite is the impression much of America has to base their perception upon.

I see this play out all of the time in Directing the Jr High Believe Tour. In any given trip I meet numerous potential artists to partner with on the Believe tour. A good friend of mine, Tim Grable, works for National Speaker’s Bureau. It is not uncommon for Tim to bring talent to talk with us about our theme and a partnership of some kind. This past fall we were looking for a Painter to come on the Believe tour. I am not talking about Rick Alonzo painting with neon colors to Carmen songs here folks! This is Believe. I wanted to kick it up a notch. We had visions of painters repelling from the ceiling and using mops, brooms, paint ball guns. Our vision for this element was highly engaging, teetering dangerous.

I must have met 5 painters at Youth Specialties last fall. I couldn’t get one of these folks to tell me in 30 minutes what they did. When Tim and I tried to let them in on our vision there was a fog over their face. I could read through it clearly, “I’ve never done that before”, their blank looks told me.


Enter Eric Timm. Eric told me in 5 seconds who he was and what his passion was. Sure he risked not being bland and covering every base. There was a great chance that our interests would not have matched up. After explaining in 30 seconds what we wanted to do on the Believe tour Eric responded enthusiastically. Eric is on our tour next year. Check out http://www.no1underground.com/ to learn about Eric!

Point: Do some soul searching to find out who you are and what you are passionate about. Learn how to communicate that to others. Stop caring if they accept it or not. If they are not interested it will save you, them and the local church we are called to serve lots of time!! Eventually you will find people you can serve with!

Tulsa is done, on to Cincy!

Tulsa Believe was awesome:
I have been running like crazy lately and have not been blogging. I figured that the best way to describe what has been going on is to show you a few pictures from Tulsa Believe.
Marko has been doing a great job speaking, One Time Blind’s drama is nailing the theme, Robert Pierre has been great on the tour and the new Believe Band is kicking it! I can’t wait for Cincy here in a week!

peace