Branding and Storytelling from AdAge

From the Transmedia talk comes a perspective from AdAge about how to look at brands adn apply new storytelling techniques. The applications for storytelling are everywhere and it is only going to increasingly weave its way into every facet of our lives from entertainment to advertising to the church and beyond.

Building Kindergartens in Vietnam

Jon Acuff used his powerful blog for good by raising money for 2 kindergartens in Vietnam. He was shocked after his posting that $30,000 came in. Love the power of technology for great projects like this one. Read about it here and here. Thanks to Ben Arment for putting me on to this.

Transmedia Storytelling

With so much opportunity for cross-media marketing, a professor at USC has coined the term "transmedia storytelling" meaning a story spanning multiple media in a coordinated way. The most recent example cited in the story is District 9 that had ads behind bus benches that read "bus benches for humans only."

Putting people into the story is where it's at.

Unbeatable- St. Louis

My friend Laurie Frey has created a musical about her experience with breast cancer. If you live in the St. Louis area, it looks like this weekend (today even) might be your last chance to see it. It's a great show, here's a taste...

Wheaton College and the Underground Railroad

There was a great story in the Chicago Tribune this weekend about Wheaton College unearthing some of it's archives to discover that it was part of the Underground Railroad.

I read it to our family and we had a great discussion about the Underground Railroad and the courage that it took for people to do the right thing. It is still hard to believe that this was part of our country's past but an important story to tell so that our children and their children will always stand up for what is right.

Storytelling in Business

Stories connect whether it is business, personal relationships, entertainment or the church. Here is another business example with storytelling tips from Salesforce's Marc Benioff on the power of storytelling in a business.

StoryChicago is now hiStory...

Hats off to Ben Arment and everyone who collaborated on StoryChicago, an event designed to challenge and inspire all of us to do a better job of telling a better story. Job well done! Click HERE for some great pics from the event.

Story was broken up into two days. Day one had keynotes speakers sharing about...story. Day two had workshops on...story.

Here are some notable quotes from the event.

"The church is a rescue community. And everyone wants to reach people until you start reaching people." Ed Young

"We need to listen to people's stories and then customize a spiritual formation plan for them." Dave Gibbons

"When we are transparent about our weakness, there is a release of the power of the Holy Spirit...we need to develop a theology of suffering." Dave Gibbons

"We need to tell the story of God so that the hearer will want to be a detective and desire more." Chris Seay

"We thrive when we are on mission but we wither when we sink into institutionalism." Chris Seay

"We have lost our sense of shalom (the way things are supposed to be)." Nancy Beach

"The Gospel needs to be rooted in comedy and tragedy and wrapped in transformation." Nancy Beach

"Movies are high budget parables." Stacy Spencer

"A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it." Donald Miller

"We have a relationship with the Bible that is strange. It is a collection of stories that we moralize. What if 5 minutes into a story we were telling on fishing someone asked 'what's in this story for me?' Or 'what does the fish represent?' People would hate us." Donald Miller

A story cannot be meaningful without conflict. But the average American sees 3000 ads a day telling us the opposite...and the church does the same thing. The reality is there was conflict in paradise. Before the fall, Adam was lonely. And God knew it and he still assigned him to name all of the animals. And it's not like Adam met her at a bar and just can't go out with her...she didn't exist!" Donald Miller

"The way we consume stories isn't books or movies, it's each other. You and I are setting the moral compass for each other. We are the story." Donald Miller

And that was just day one! There were many great speakers and interactions at the workshops on day two. Overall, this was a great first step in helping the church understand how to communicate and connect God's story and our. I am looking forward to how Story 2010 will . We need events like these to remind us that it is stories that will continue to shape us, move us and transform us all.

Haiti and the ApParent Project

Our church is developing a strong relationship with a fledgling non-profit in Haiti called the ApParent Project. They work with orphans and many living in extreme poverty. By helping the poor, they are preventing more orphans.

This video gives you a window into the ministry and some of the startling statistics of the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere.

The ApParent Project from Corrigan Clay on Vimeo.

Eat, Pray, Love... Create

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love talks about how creative people do not have to be doomed to suffer in order to be creative. She talks about how the renaissance did serious damage to creativity and has been killing off creative people in the last 500 years. She says that the shift away from the creative process being part of the divine to the human is too much responsibility for any one person to handle. While not a theologian, or probably a christian, she brings up creativity as something that is divinely given to us and is to be stewarded well as a gift.

It is a great thought. The renaissance did much damage to the creative spirit in and outside of the church. In the church, many creatives have been burned at the stake literally and figuratively because of the shift. Mystery gave way to reason and the right brain became dangerous. It is fun to see this moving the other way in the church but there is still a long way to go. Something repressed for 500 years needs to be nurtured back to health.

Here is the talk Elizabeth gave at TED earlier this year.

Is the World Better off Without Religion?

That is the question posed on US News opinion blog. They are responding to a book by an atheist who seems to think that we do need religion after all. The author of the opinion blog closes with questions about religious wars and maybe we would be better off.

It seems like that is the new default answer for critics in the west. War, terrorism, other "isms", all stem from religion. Therefore, why not do away with them and then there would be world peace. Of course there is little discourse on the fact that the major religions actually do preach peace. Take religion out of the world and maybe what you are left with is simply Darwinian survival of the fittest. Why not? There really is moral reason to hold back. Just a thought.

aMAZEing

Corn maze art is the latest to use high-tech designing to give an outlet for enthusiasm. This man is either brilliant or has too much time on his hands...or both.

News + Humor + Electronica = Fun

If you haven't ever checked out auto-tune the news, you need to watch it just for the sheer creativity. Pretty amazing how comedy and technology continue to progress.

Our Article for Shaohannah's Hope

Stacey and I wrote an article about our adoption of Rowan for the Shaohannah's Hope foundation newsletter. They finally posted it online, so HERE is the link to the article. The foundation helped us with the last part of the finances that we needed to complete her adoption. It is a great organization and I would highly recommend supporting them.

U2 360

I think many of you know how I feel about the band U2. I was a teenager in the 80's when they hit the scene with a vengeance. MTV was new and I recall watching a video from some Irish band playing at RedRocks. Steam coming out of the lead singer's mouth, passion gushing from his heart as he belted out "SUNDAY, BLOODY, SUNDAY!" I had no idea of the political nature of the song and I didn't care...these guys were just cool and I was hooked.

Fast forward to a couple of Sundays ago when U2 kicked off the U.S. leg of their 360 tour at Soldier Field in Chicago. Not sure why but Stacey and I had never been to a U2 concert and a friend of ours said that he couldn't use his tickets. We went and I crossed another item off of my bucket list.

So we show up at the concert and I was struck by the diversity of ages in the crowd. The appeal of this band is definitely not waning and if anything, picking up steam. Usually churning out 2 or three hits per album, they stay very current by putting on a very tech savvy show with Bono's ability to personally connect with each person in the crowd.

The show was complete eye candy. The mega screen a unique novelty and they used it to it's full effect. The first couple of songs looked like we were watching an edited music video. It felt like they had 100 cameras stationed everywhere with each cut to a different camera completely synced to the beat of the music. Impressive to say the least. At one point the screen starts to stretch (don't ask me how) all the way to the ground. So you are then looking at a 50+ foot screen in the round.

Bono was as you would expect. Passionate, energetic, tender, funny, self-effacing... At one point he is running around the outer ring of the circular stage with shouts of "run Bono run!" coming from the crowd. The next moment he is singing a song while lying on his back. And there is a bridge that hangs over the head of the elite ticketholders that connects the inner stage with the outer circle. Bono leans over the side of the bridge and serenades the crowds below.

What I like most about the band though is their spiritual overtones in many of their songs mixed with a powerful compulsion to do justice. At one point during the show, the crowd of 68,000 was singing "Amazing Grace". There was a funny, spirited and moving address by Desmund Tutu and a song written for Myanmar’s jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, "Walk On". During this song many in the crowd and volunteers on stage wore masked of her face so no one would forget that she was the elected leader of Myanmar in, but currently in her 14th year under house arrest.

It is this social sensibility that has kept me a fan after all of these years. Creative, provocative, spiritual, socially aware with some pretty good rock music. U2 rocks.

Mosaic Bible is available today

I just received my copy of a new Bible of which I was a contributor called Mosaic. And I love how it turned out.

This Bible combines some elements that I have not seen in any other Bible.

v Beautiful artwork from the 3^rd to 21^st centuries from every continent across the globe.
v Moving and thought-provoking writings, poems and prayers from the 1^st to 21^st centuries from every continent and branch of the Church around the world. This includes a meditation that I wrote for the season of Pentecost on the topic of creativity called "Old Things New."

v Both artwork and writings follow the Church calendar throughout the year starting with Advent (Sunday, November 29, 2009).

v And there is space provided for you to record your own thoughts and meditations.

It is available as of TODAY (September 22, 2009) at amazon and we are trying to bump up the amazon ranking by asking people to buy TODAY (at only $20!).

And NO, I do not make a dime from this project. I am simply letting you know about it because I think you will love it and that it will enhance your spiritual journey.

The back cover sleeve of the Bible reads "On our own, we are little more than bits of stone and glass... TOGETHER we are the body of Christ." This Bible taps us into the great body of writers throughout the history of our faith to challenge and encourage us.

Another Great Adoption T

Love the creativity that is happening today to find a place for the millions of little ones needing a home.

My Week and thoughts

1. Rowan went to the dentist today and WOW do I wish I had dental insurance now. Universal Dental insurance NOW!

2. A bit surprised by all of the hoopla surrounding Obama's tv broadcast in schools. Especially since Reagan and Bush did it too. One guy on facebook compared this move to Hitler. Really?

3. Found out my old HS football team will play their first game on national television (ESPN) on Sunday at noon. Very cool except that they can't seem to beat Elder, even when they have a superior team.

4. Surprised how little support there is in Chicago for the Olympic bid. Tepid at best.

5. Am thinking that my dog Sugar needs to find a nice, loving home where there is not the chaos of a 3 and 6 year old.

Continuous Partial Attention

Add another term to our ever-growing list of issues associated with communication technology. Terms like "absent presence" began appearing when people started answering their cell phones while in the presence of a friend they were just talking with. What does the friend do while they are waiting? Absent presence.

Now a new term. (Disclaimer) I noticed this WSJ article when a link to it appeared on my facebook feed from a friend of mine. "Continous Partial Attention" is now used to describe people who are constantly checking email, texts, facebook and any other message constantly. This can create A.D.D.-like behavior in anyone plugged in to so many social networking sites. Some businesses are combatting this by having no-technology meetings.

The article describing this was actually about Generation Y's inability to read non-verbal cues. This is something that is going to affect all of us. Read about it HERE.

Where am I?

From St. Charles to Jackson Hole to St. Charles to Dallas to St. Charles to Springfield in 2 weeks. It's been a bit of a whirlwind the past 2 weeks.

Mancation in JH was great. Highlight- 12 fish. Not letting the big one get away. Hanging with the B boyz.

Leadership workshop in Dallas was also great. Highlight- talking about getting people engaged in the process. Hanging with the AC boyz.

Men's Retreat in Springfield. I leave in 45 minutes. Will let you know, but hoping for decent weather and one last boating extravaganza with LC boyz.

Spirit highlight of the week. Psalm 84. It rocks.

GONE FISHIN'

I will be away from my blog this week somewhere in the Teton mountains in Jackson Hole. Till then...