come to the table

Yesterday was our second week of a 4 week teaching series called "Come to the Table".

We have been studying the book of Genesis since the beginning of September. But, because we have changed our Sunday morning location, we thought we should take a short break to talk a little about our values and about grace; that way, anyone who might be checking us out because we are the new kids on the block will know what we are all about. We'll jump back into Genesis in a couple weeks.

Last week, we had two guys from our community who happen to know a thing or two about the art of carpentry build us a table, right off stage, during the service. It was a pretty cool visual.

This week we took that same table out into Knoxville and shot a short video. Last week was about God bringing us to the table. This week was about us bringing others to the table. Here is the video...

public service announcement

This is a Public Service Announcement we have shown the last couple weeks at Crossings. Our hope is that it would raise awareness for something we believe is very important...

smelly people - teachers

And now...

Our second installment of "Smelly People"; the series of short, news-piece...ish videos telling the stories of individuals in the Crossings Community who are "looking like, acting like and smelling like Jesus."

We have a large number of teachers that are a part of our little faith community. This is just a small sampling of them, but it shows the unique opportunity teachers have each day to be Jesus in their schools.

smelly people - jens juhl

I have mentioned before that, at Crossings, we want to look like, act like, sound like and even smell like Jesus.

And, knowing that there are many individuals in our little faith community who are already "redolent with the aroma of Christ" (doing things, big...small...whatever, that make Jesus' presence real and tangible to those around them every day), we decided to create a video series to highlight them. The series is called "Smelly People".

Our first Smelly Person is Jens Juhl. Here is his story...

the ballad of beverly brown

(written by Greg Adkins)



I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you and me, we’ve all been left behind
I know it sounds crazy but I swear that it’s the truth
The rapture happened back in 1989

Beverly Brown taught Sunday school at the church where I grew up
And my friends and I would sit there every week
We were only in the seventh grade and that class got pretty rough
She was all about good doctrine and theology

She said
I’ve got it all figured out
I don’t have any room for your questions or your doubts
You better listen to me now
Because I’ve got it all figured out

Beverly used to tell us that this world had gone to hell
And if we didn’t listen close we’d go there too
She said “I have all the answers so memorize them well”
It turns out Beverly Brown was telling the truth

When she said
I’ve got it all figured out
I don’t have any room for your questions or your doubts
You better listen to me now
Cause I’ve got it all figured out

On the Sunday when it all went down
I didn’t know what she was talking about
She was ranting and raving over her interpretation
Of transsubstantiation and predestination
And then a sound came in like a mighty roar
The light went out I fell to the floor
I looked around and the lights came on
Beverly Brown was gone

Just a steaming pile of clothes there in the floor
And her giant king james Bible, nothing more

Out of all the people in this world, she was the only one
With her doctrine and theology just right
I would have paid attention if only I had known
What can I say I was just in junior high

When she said I’ve got it all figured out
I don’t have any room for your questions or your doubts
You better listen to me now
Because I’ve got it all figured out

smelly people

At Crossings, we want to look like, act like, sound like and even smell like Jesus. And we know that there are many people in our little faith community who are "redolent with the aroma of Christ"; people doing things, big...small...whatever, that make Jesus' presence real and tangible to the people around them every day.

We want to hear those stories and more than that, we want to share them with the rest our community. So we are trying to start a video series (2-3 minute pieces that tell these stories; which we would play as a part of our worship gathering, maybe once a month or so...) titled "Smelly People".

Here is a promo we put together for it:



(by the way...kudos to Kim Bedford for having to smell so many people in one day and to Gabe Crutchfield for filming her do it).

advil, afrin & neosporin

Yesterday at Crossings we started our new teaching series titled, "Sacred Pathways". The basic gist being that there isn't just one way to connect with God. And to illustrate how silly it would be to think that there is, we showed the video below.

But, before watching, you need to know that Mark has three things on him at all times...Advil, Afrin & Neosporin. I sometimes think that he really believes those three things can cure any ailment...

today is earth day

So, what better time to display your uninhibited love for God's creation...

sunday morning timelapse

As I mentioned in the previous post, I edited a timelapse video which shows a typical Sunday morning...from 6:45am to 12:15pm...in just under 4 minutes.

We filmed from set-up to tear-down on the first Sunday of August, capturing the action from 6 different view points, using 5 cameras (I actually wish we could have had one or two more).

There was nearly 30 hours of raw footage, making this one of the most ambitious and time consuming videos I've ever tackled (a big shout out to Paul Clouse for all his help). But I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. Okay...maybe not the whole process. Having to capture and render 30 hours of footage...that I did not enjoy so much.

But the rest of it was fun. The best part, actually, was getting to see everything that goes on in the different areas at Crossings. I rarely leave the main theater on Sunday mornings, so I never get to see the happenings in the lobby or in Kids City. It was cool to finally see it.

One interesting side note: it is official that Kids City people move twice as fast as the rest of us. In editing it, I sped up all the footage to 4000%. All the footage, except Kids City. Most of that was only sped up to 2700%...anything faster and you couldn't see them. Seriously.

Anyhoo, here is the video. Enjoy.

Jesus Gone Wild

Relating to the subject of the previous post...and a much more light-hearted note...below is a video I made for our worship gathering this past Sunday.

It is a montage of Jesus' temple fit in John 2 from various Jesus movies.



By the way, I really want one of those Jesuses to say, "...brotha" after his line. Can you guess which one?

4 w's of small groups

Below is a video I made this past weekend featuring a handful of people from the Crossings community answering the questions: "what?", "where?", "when?", and "why?" in reference to small groups.

Is the video any good? Maybe. I don't know. But I stayed up late editing it after going to the UT game on Saturday night. And if I am going to miss out on sleep for it, I'm sure as heck going to post it. So here it is....



(side note: you can now go to Crossings' website and from the Experience section watch the videos we have created.)

world view

This is a video we showed at Crossings back in April. I have been wanting to post it for awhile...but because we performed the background music live, the video originally had no sound.

This weekend, I finally got around to editing up the live mix from that Sunday and adding it to the video. And now that it is YouTube ready, I can post it.

That week, we were talking about creativity...which is one of our 5 Core Values...and our belief that, regardless of what we may think about ourselves, every one of us is, indeed, creative. You may not paint, sculpt, or make music, but you have been wired with certain gifts and passions that allow you to see the world from an angle that no one else can. And our call is to take that view of God and the world, and respond by expressively pouring ourselves out.

A great example of that is found in Luke 7.

With the video, we choose to use a form of art that we had yet to use at Crossings: photography. I also tried to be as creative as I could with the display of the photography in the video.

The song is "My World View" by...believe it or not...Audio Adrenaline. We changed it up quite a bit by using banjo, acoustic guitar, melodica, piano, etc. I was pretty happy with how it turned out and will probably be posting the full song, as an mp3, in the next couple days.

All photography is by Erin Maple. She is a part of our faith community and was gracious enough to provide us with a small glimpse into her world view.

So, with out further ado...

dances with wolfs

The past few weeks at Crossings, Mark has been teaching on the work of grace in the life of Paul. This morning he took us through the series of events that followed Paul's conversion.

One of those events was the changing of his name from Saul to Paul. To illustrate the significance of a changed named, we used the example of Kevin Costner's character in the movie Dances with Wolves. If you remember, he began the movie as Lieutenant John Dunbar and ended it as a Souix named Dances with Wolves.

To bring it all home, we were going to use a clip from the movie. But we accidentally played a scene from the wrong Dances with Wolves. Either way it was extremely powerful. You might be confused, so I suggest taking a few seconds and giving it a glance.

Click HERE and enjoy.

(Seriously...watch it!)

close encounters...

...of the celebrity kind.

Here is a video that we used in our worship gathering this past Sunday. Mark was teaching on the passage in Mark 2 in which four men lower their paralytic friend through the roof of a house in order to get to him to Jesus. As I am sure many of you know, the reason they had to go through the roof is because...as the Bible says, "so many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door."

To set the scene of the crowd that had gathered around Jesus, Mark referenced the packs of people who always seem to surround celebrities whenever they are in public. We asked our community if any of them have ever run into a celebrity. A few had and they agreed to recount the story on camera for us. We edited it up and this is what we got:



A friend named Paul Clouse helped edit this and worked incredibly hard on it. I am sure he doesn't read this, but if you see him...tell him I said, "thanks again".

V for Sesame Street

Below is a video that I made to introduce the topic of our worship gathering this morning.

Mark was speaking about our need to "defeat the letter 'V'". As he was using it, 'V' refers to 'Versus'...as in:

-Grace V. Truth
-Principle V. People
-Emotional V. Practical
-Spiritual V. Physical

Instead of picking sides and choosing one over the other, Mark taught that we need to embrace "the paradox of 'and'", and walk the line between the two.

Okay, enough introduction...here you go:

news coverage

Here are the two local news segments covering Crossings first Worship Gathering this past Sunday. While quite different from one another, they both were very good to us and portrayed us in a positive light.

Before watching the video clips, however, I want to give you good reason to keep your eyes peeled and your minds sharp. So here are the Top 5 things to watch for:

5)the "mystery men" huddle

4)Mark Nelson in a collared shirt

3)a beautiful strawberry blonde, wide awake and listening intently

2)a banjo-wielding madman

1)a nifty play on words in the opening of both segments


Channel 8 - WVLT



Channel 10 - WBIR