Jean Claude had a heart

…even when he was young.

Please Hang Up and Order (An Open Letter to the Cell Phone Guy/Lady)

Dear Cell Phone Guy/Lady,

Seriously? What is so important that you have to talk on the phone at full volume while you are in line and then whisper your order to me, only to return to your conversation while looking at me like you are annoyed because I am asking you to pay?

HTD (here’s the deal). If you are on the phone, step aside and finish your conversation so that the person/people behind you can order. Or better yet, hang up. It’s simple really. Otherwise, your cell phone conversation looks like a big middle finger in my face.

So here’s what I’m going to do as this continues: While you are having your conversation after you order, I am going to call your order to the barista (as required of me) only I will do it at a slightly louder volume than usual. I will also tell you how much you owe me, only again I will do this at a slightly louder (but still courteous) volume. Yes, I realize that this will annoy you, but really, isn’t this what you are doing to me and others?

So Mr/Mrs/Ms Cell Phone user, I ask this of you. Please hang up and order, or let others after you order first.

thank you,

Your Barista – The Brown Kid

I Will Not Let You Grow Old (An Open Letter to My Friends)

This was inspired by a lady I saw at Starbucks one day. I wanted to share this letter that I wrote with everybody to let you know what kind of friend I can be. I care too much about all my friends to let this happen to them, as I hope you do also. If you know the kind of person being described here, please pass this on to them. enjoy!

2/27/09

Dear Friend,

I won’t let you grow old with you believing that you are younger than you truly are. Talking and dressing like you are 40 going on 20. Eventually, it might become embarassing.

Low rise jeans with muffin tops or Abercrombie fashion on a JC Penny body. Faux hawks at 50 and puka shell chokers choking out the last bit of sense that you might have.

Front butts playing peekaboo out the bottom of camisols and beer guts in a wife beater are never sexy. Both seem to reveal denial and freshly inked tribal tattoos.

Fake tans and highlighted hair make for an interesting contrast. Not intersting like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but more like Michael Jackson and Priscilla Presley.

So it comes to this: I promise as your friend to inform you rather than embarrass you if this happens to you. I would rather inform you than allow you to become red in the face. I would hope that you do the same for me. Let us grow old and move forward rather than trying to deny the inevitable. Growing old is a rite of passage and it is for you and me.

Sincerely, Your Friend,

The Brown Kid

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Carols

Am I the Grinch who stole Christmas carols? I had some people ask me to do Christmas carols during our worship at Roosevelt Community Church. As a staff member of a church that practices and obeserves the Advent season, this brought up a few Questions for me:

What is the true job of the ministers of the church?

Is the true reason to appease the congregation? Should we say “give them what they want”, or should we liken our job as ministers to teach what, how and why we believe as Christ followers? As a staff member of a church which follows the church calendar, only to find themselves in the middle of Advent, then I believe this is a great teaching moment. What if we taught the idea of patience in the midst of the season of antcipation. otherwise, to put it semi-crudely, we experience the climax without the foreplay. It’s just straight to the money shot and we don’t realize what had happened in between it all.

As an artist, what am I to do?

Do I simply go with the congregation, or do I challenge them to think? Is that not the purpose of the worship leader – to help people think, see, and experience Jesus in different ways? Maybe we need to push people outside of their comfort zones. Instead of singing the familiar tunes of  “Angels We Have Heard on High”, we challenge people in experiencing the anticipation through the ideas of  “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”.

What tears me apart as an artist is I want to challenge people, but on the other hand I have to think about the feelings of the congregation. So what can I do? Do I feel like a sell out, or keep the integrity of the season? I opt for the later, myself. Which draws another question:

Why couldn’t there be more accesible ways of explaining the Advent season?

Really, in teh singing world, you are stuck with a handful of songs that describe teh Advent season…about three I believe – the two more recognizable being “Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel” and “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”. After those two you need to be creative. I’ve written an Advent specific song that we share as a congregation, and have allowed artists to share in teh past through visual arts of painting. I wonder if, you who are reading this, you have any ideas? If so, please let me know.

I would say that I am the farthest from being grinchy. I start my Corporate Christmas ways on November 1st. I listen to music and tour around Target looking at the lights and decorations that have been made by children and prisoners from foreign countries (that’s a topic for a whole other post). I just want to teach my congregation just a little bit of restraint. I want to have one place where they can reflect and not be sucked into what they are hearing outside of the walls of our little church. Somewhere where they can learn a little more about their faith. Call me crazy, but that just might be what the church service was designed to be.

St. Arbucks Jumps on Board

…two years too late.

Starbucks announced that they will give money this holiday season to the (red) campaign. Seriously, didn’t this happen already? Isn’t everybody done with the (red) campaign? Of course, it’s a good thing, as St. Arbucks will donate .05 cents from every holiday trio sold (Gingersnap Latte, Peppermint Twist Mocha, and the Eggnog Latte), but what if instead they said they will donate all procedes from the holiday trio sold on one day? I am sure more people would be on board for this. Maybe Uncle Howie should have been on board two years ago when the (red) campaign was relevant.

This would have been mine

…if I was in the 11th grade.

HIJACKED!!!

If you read the post below about my “After Election Hangover”, it got quite a response. A great deal of a response actually! It started out good, but suddenly we started debating over abortion. Not a bad thing really. I like that people are actually discussing stuff here (it hasn’t happened for a while).

I hope that the conversation continues as it is very respectful and backed by well thought out responses – thank you. I did also want to point you to another site who is talking about this strange division in the church over politics rather than morals. Eugene Cho, from Quest Church in Seattle, is asking us to Kiss and Make Up. Please check him out. Anybody who is a cover boy for Sojourners magazine is worth the time to read.

ps – Check out his links that he put up to other thoughts that he has had in the past! They are great.

My Job Description

As a staff at Roosevelt Community Church, we have been asked to write out our job description and what we do at RCC. Below is what I have so far.

“I am an artist who is in love with Jesus. I want to inspire others to see this love through my expressions and in themselves, and in turn allow them to find new and different ways to express this love through the arts.”

This is what I have so far for my job description, but it is also my personal mission statement for my life. Do you have a job or “mission” statement for what you do? It doesn’t have to be spiritual or anything, I just want to know, if somebody asked you what is your personal mission statement for life what would it be?

Is it me…

or did McCain come off a little snarky last night? That’s right, I said snarky. To tell you the truth, it was a bit of a turn off. Now I know that Obama had his times of side comments, but I felt that McCain was really overdoing it.

just another reason I’m not going to vote for “that one over there”, and by “that one…” I mean McCain.

Here is a positive though: For a drinking game, someone can watch the debate and drink everytime McCain says “My friends…” or mentions Ronald Reagan, or when Obama says “rather I say out loud…”.

Regarding Community

The idea of community is wierd. What is community really? Is it the place that you live in? Or is it the company that you keep around you? We have a strange community emerging within the last five years or so with MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and even as you read this blog entry we are engaging in some sort of faux community.

We have our home community in which we live in a neighborhood. This is our direct community. Sometimes we try to block out this community by building fences around our homes, to which only those who are invited may enter. This home community is quite tricky, because none of us truly want to invite others into our lives usually. Sometimes I find myself inside of my home with the blinds drawn and the lights off so that nobody thinks I am home. We seclude ourselves so that we never have to speak to others, but really we are missing out on the community that we crave.

We also have our work community (neighborhood) in which we go and punch the clock. Sometimes we get so caught up in how much our job sucks that we forget the impact that we might have on people. Sometimes when working at the church, I feel like a jukebox playing the songs that people like or dislike. I feel like I am there to play the hits, but then something changes. I see somebody standing and truly worshipping. Those are the moments that my work community is at its best: when I’ve led somebody to a place of happiness, or they are touched by Jesus. The same thing happens when I work at starbucks. Sometimes I see people who are regulars coming in as I am leaving and they say things like, “you can’t leave, who will make my drink for me?” Though they may not be complimenting me, I feel that I am touching their lives in some way. Though I leave somedays hating people more than one man should, I know that Jesus loves them even more than I hate them.

I think this is the purpose of community. True community is the effect that you have on other people’s lives. Whether you are living around them, serving them at your job, or even seeing them on the same bus everyday, true community is formed when they notice you aren’t there anymore. When people start to miss you, then you know that you have formed community.