scotthodge.org

Are you a MOST or a SOME?

Most read books.  Some write them.

Most attend conferences.  Some create them.

Most fake intimacy.  Some live intimately.

Most love great design.  Some design.

Most listen to great music.  Some write great music.

Most point out problems.  Some solve them.

Most admire beautiful art.  Some create it.

Most receive generously.  Some give generously.

Most imagine what should've been.  Some imagine what can be.

Most criticize.  Some create.

Are you a "MOST" or a "SOME"?

Let's stop being afraid of those blank canvases that stare us down and scare the hell out of us.......and let's create.

Artist (and many others) as Worship Leader

It’s not uncommon for us at The Orchard to have various artists participating in our weekend gatherings during our worship and/or teaching time.  But this past weekend, I watched God do something that has really stuck with me these past couple of days.

It was the beginning of a new series entitled, “The Gospel: From a Garden to The City”. This first week’s  theme was “Creation”, so Mike Jones and his amazing team of musicians and vocalists led our community through several songs that highlighted the beauty and majesty of our Creator.  At the same time our weekend artist, Julie, was painting a beautiful depiction of God reaching down from the heavens to humanity. 

And man.....the mix of songs, art, visuals, lighting, and the theme of this week’s teaching all flowed powerfully together in a way that undoubtedly impacted many, many hearts.

But one of the things that stood out to me the most was the beautiful and profound way in which God used Julie and her talent as an artist.  See, Julie was not just a “supplemental” artist off to the side "doing her thing”. She was a worship leader.  A choir conductor!  An integral part of the team God was using to accomplish something powerful in people's hearts.

Perhaps we need to rethink how we're using the title "worship leader".  If anything, I think it needs to be expanded!  While it was evident that Mike and his team were doing an incredible job leading us in worship, it was even more evident that they were simply a part of many worship leaders God was using as well. 

Julie was leading us through her passion and painting. Our visual team was leading us through the use of imagery and light.  Our audio team was leading us through the mix and balance of sound.  But perhaps the most beautiful part of it all was the way in which we, as a community, were leading each other as we lifted our voices in unison and declared the goodness and beauty of our Creator.

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

The Orchard's Art Initiative!

“Art...can be a doxology in itself.” Francis Schaeffer

This coming weekend is the grand opening of The Orchard’s Community Art Initiative! 

Here’s the deal...  From now through January 2010, we are featuring over 60 paintings, original prints, and mixed media works by five local international and nationally acclaimed artists.  (Their work is already on display throughout The Orchard’s campus and let me tell you....it looks AMAZING! Will post photos after this weekend...)

This is a dream come true for us on so many levels.

For one, we believe that we must be people who recognize, create, and release beauty in our city and world.  And since we value the artful expression of people from all different backgrounds and who are at all different places in their spiritual journey, we believe that partnering with local artists is essential in seeing this happen.

We’re also joining together with these artists to create tangible expressions of love through existing partnerships both locally in Aurora and globally in Uganda, El Salvador, and Thailand. 

(And here’s the really cool part...  Not only are these works available for purchase, but all of the artists have agreed to donate a percentage of their proceeds back into one of our Glocal Partnerships.  How amazing is that?!)

Best of all, this is just the beginning.  We want to keep finding new and creative ways to be a supportive and empowering voice to our local artists as they continue to bring beauty to our world through their unique expressions of truth.

Can’t wait to see where this journey leads us in the weeks and months ahead!

Here are the details for this weekend:

Opening Reception & Food Drive
Sunday, November 15th, 2009 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm
The Orchard Community | 101 S. Barnes Rd., Aurora, IL 60506 | 630.897.8888

We're also encouraging everyone to bring non-perishable food items to benefit the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry.

Here’s a link to a few of the artists:

Dorothea Bilder
Tim Burns
Maureen Gasek
Cheryl Holz

P.S. Attention Artists! Continuing Art Exhibitions are scheduled for 2010 and 2011. We are currently looking for artists to submit their work starting fall 2010 and continuing through 2011.  For more information on future exhibits or for information on how artists can submit work, please contact: Maureen Gasek, [email protected] or 630-898-3859.

Sand Animation by Kseniya Simonova

This is just simply beautiful.  It's a sand animation by Kseniya Simonova from the Ukraine.  This is a clip of her portraying life during USSR's Great Patriotic War against the Third Reich in World War II. Worth watching the entire thing.

I'm calling it SHOCKTOBER.

Ok, so there are around 2.4 billion things that I'm excited about right now.  And I seriously feel like I need to pinch myself just to make sure this is all real.  Here's a taste.

STORY - It happens next week!  Can't wait.  Around 1,700 pastors, communicators, church leaders, writers, speakers, etc will converge for two days to learn and be inspired by an amazing line up of storytellers -   people like Dave Gibbons, Ed Young, Donald Miller, Nancy Beach, Mike Foster, Stacy Spencer, Chris Seay, and others.  The first day happens on Wednesday, October 28th at the beautiful Paramount Theater in downtown Aurora.  The next day will be workshops (sold out!) happening at The Orchard.  Honored to host and be a part of STORY!

CULTIVATE - Seriously, Chicagoland is the place to be in October.  Cultivate is a highly interactive, conversational, collaborative un-conference that's all about church communication.  It's happening the day before STORY.  And the lineup of facilitators is just sick.  Wow.

DAVE GIBBONS - We are honored to have Dave speak at The Orchard's gatherings the weekend following STORY.  Not only is Dave a good friend, but he's someone God has used to impact my life in some pretty significant ways.  I'm thrilled that our church community gets to hear and learn from him!

THE NEW & IMPROVED....ORCHARD - The Orchard has had an extreme makeover!  Through the amazing "pro bono" generosity of fellow Orchard tribal members, Dawn & Keith Baldwin (Aspire One), we have a new logo and amazzzing new website that will go live later THIS WEEK.  I'll talk more about this in a later post...  STAY TUNED!

LOVE.SERVE.GIVE. - It's The Orchard's GLOCAL outreach opportunities this winter.  More about this later as well... But just know that we are going to have some amazing opportunities to bring beauty and hope to people locally in our city and globally in places like Uganda, Thailand, and El Salvador.  

ORCHARD ART INITIATIVE - Too much to type, but The Orchard is turning into an art gallery starting this month.  Our campus will be filled with art from local artists.  Huge dream come true, but only the beginning...

Ok, there's more, but I my fingers hurt and I need to study.  OUT.

Redeemer's Renew Video

Beautiful city...  Beautiful Music...  Beautiful Call.

REN3W Vision Campaign from Redeemer Video on Vimeo.

I Got INKED.

For real.

Here's video #1 we showed this past weekend as we wrapped up our series, "Inked."  It may seem a little strange without the context of my talk around it, but here it is anyway.  I'll show part 2 and a couple of photos tomorrow.

Scott Gets Inked: Part 1 from scotthodge on Vimeo.

I'm back.

It's a  bit dusty around here at scotthodge.org.  But I'm back and ready to get this place moving again! 

BTW......had a great time in Las Vegas with Amanda.  I was there to officiate a wedding ceremony, so we took advantage of the time away and extended it out to celebrate her birthday.....VEGAS style!  :)  Whatever that means....

Anyway.....my I'm going to vomit some A.D.D. all over this post with a bunch of thoughts/links/etc....  Here it goes:

Thanks to DJ Chuang, just found out that past talks from "Q" are available for online for free.  DJ has posted the details and link here.  This is probably my favorite conference of the year because it's all about influencing culture.  Go watch 'em.

Barton Damer at Already Been Chewed recently shared a video link featuring Shepard Fairey - the "OBEY" guy.  I LOVE his work and have a few shirts featuring his designs.  Interesting to see & hear how he works. 

While you're at it, check out this video about Fairey's work on the Obama campaign.  It's interesting and cool - regardless of what you might think of Obama.  Also, check out this this screenshot of my desktop.  It's an "OBEY" style design by Barton Damer.  LOVE IT!  Thanks Barton!

I think I need to get this iPhone app.  It's like Tetris on LSD!  Or something like that.  But anyway....here is Kevin Rose from digg.com showing it off.

Have you seen the lineup of speakers for Exponential?  Holy smokes!  Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, Craig Groeschel, Alan Hirsch, Tim Keller, Erwin McManus.  Check out the entire list here.  Exponential is one of the largest gatherings of church planters in the US.  I'll be there!  Hope you will be too!

Last but not least....  Do you have a tattoo?  Check out MyTatStory.com - a new site that we've launched in conjunction with our new fall series called "INKED."  We're asking people to snap photos of their tats and share the stories behind them.

That's it.  I'm done.

For now.

We Are Becoming!

As most of you know, several weeks ago we began what I think has become one of The Orchard's most unique and impacting series in a long time.  Each week, we have journeyed through different spiritual practices such as: silence, solitude, scripture meditation, daily prayer rhythms, generosity, and others.

The big idea of the series is basically this:

God is at work in us.  Spiritual practices are some of the ways that we cooperate with that work as God helps us to become the people He created us to be. 

There's a couple of reasons why I think this has been such an impacting series for us:

1. It's been unplanned.  At the beginning of the series, I really felt impressed to forgo all long term planning for this series.  Usually, we try to plan topics, etc... WEEKS out in advance.  But with this series I really felt like we needed to be completely flexible with where God wanted to take our church community throughout this series.  So we have literally planned out each weekend gathering one week at at a time. 

2. It has stretched us and pulled us out of our comfort zone.  We're comfortable with our long-range planning.  But starting with a blank canvas every single week throughout this series has stretched us and challenged us - in fresh and much needed ways. 

Has it been challenging in the area of creative planning each week?  Yeah, sort of.  But at the same time, I have to say that this has probably been one of our most creative and artistic series ever.  Watching it all come together each week has been amazing.

2. It's been very personal.  For both me and our community.  Each week has been planned in response to what it seems God did in hearts the week before.  It's almost hard to put into words - but it feels like a journey that God is taking us all on to prepare us for a shift from 3rd to 4th gear.  

3. It's been experiential.  Each week of the series we have tried to creatively provide ways for people to not only learn, but also experience and taste the spiritual practices we've been teaching on.  For example, one week we led everyone through several minutes of silent scripture meditation.  Another week, we utilized the technology of Twitter to guide people through a week of daily prayer rhythms.

When it's all said and done, my hope and prayer is that our community has had small, bite-sized, appetizer-type tastes that will only make them hungrier for the ways in which these spiritual practices can truly impact our lives. 

So with all that said....

I'm thankful.  God seems to be doing something really great at The Orchard right now.  And I'm even more excited what's to come these next couple of weeks as I teach on a few missional practices.  Which ultimately, is what all the other practices eventually point to.

On a side note.....We've been really honored by the influx of requests for our artwork, sermon transcripts, video pieces, and other creative elements from this series.  Typically, we are more than happy to share whatever we come up with.  We're all about that.  However, because of the uniqueness of this series and what it is that God seems to be doing through it, we've decided to hold off on sharing any of our creative or teaching elements for at least three months. 

And to be honest, I can't even tell you why I feel so strongly about that, but it just feels right, so I'm going to follow my gut.  Who knows, maybe there's something else that God wants to do with this series that we're not aware of yet.  Or maybe it's just that this thing feels very personal for us at The Orchard.  Or both.  :)  Either way, thanks for understanding....

Art + Technology = WOW.

 

This is just amazing....  It's projection art by Ross Ashton.  Check out his work here.

And you also have to see this. 

A lot of great stuff coming out of the UK...

Don't forget to also take a look at some urban light graffiti. 

And.....while you're at it, check this out. 

Be inspired. 

All via the visualworshipper who is blowing minds down at Irving Bible Church.