kinnon.tv

The Post-Production Biz Re-visited

As part of MKPL, Imbi and I owned a post-production company in Toronto for almost 20 years, Scene by Scene®. We did great work. (We being the company and all its employees.) Odds are good that if you've been a North American television viewer since the mid-80's, you've seen our work - whether music videos, series, commercials or docs.

One of the problems with being in post-production (the editing, effects and mixing stage of the production process) was how many clients had actually burned through their budget before they got to us. Something they, of course, didn't tell us before we finished their work. (I won't give you the amount but from the number of people who stiffed us, we are owed well into six figures - money we will never see - and that's not including what Livent failed to pay us.)

One of the unique joys of our biz was post negotiating - the art of negotiating after the work was done. (Which I've had occur with long-term clients, six months after the project was completed - after we've called them repeatedly for bill payment.) This video cracked me up. I've had every one of these conversations. (And once got to play the role of the big guy @ the end, when Imbi was having a conversation with the then largest advertising agency in the world who was trying to stiff us.) [HT]

Post-Negotiating, Post-Production, Vendor-Client Relationships

Random Links

"Some of my best friends are Neo-Reformed" - Dave Fitch on The Gospel Coalition [HT Triple D] Some of my best friends are Neo-Reformed, too.

My two volume copy of Calvin's Institutes arrived from Amazon. Now I need to read it. Thanks to John Armstrong for prompting the purchase (along with my Neo-Reformed friends, Triple D and DannyMac).

One of the most gifted people I know, futurist Brad Sargent with another must read, My Big Bad Beatitude, Harry Potter and the Resolution of "Narrative Misdirection" (Brad's had some recurring health challenges and his finances have taken a pretty huge hit. If you could, hit the PayPal link on his site and help a brother out, please.)

Please make a point of visiting the blog of my daughter, Kaili and her best friend, Robyn as they work @ an orphanage in Johannesburg, SA.

If you are at all interested in insight into the controversy in the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Communion Institute site is a must read. (Disclosure: Imbi and I are working with ACI on a series of DVDs that features NT Wright, Lord Carey, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Dr. Ephraim Radner, Dr. George Sumner and others.)

My Left Coast buddy, Mike Todd has an interesting discussion going on the Atonement. I respond a couple of times in the comments. Triple D responds in the comments and at his blog. (As usual, Darryl is way more gracious than me.)

Ben Myers has written The Parable of the Great Theologian. (Kind of fits with my Missional Gurus post of old - though Ben's much more creative.)

The best Random Linkster on these here interwebs is Brad Boydston. He and his dear wife are leaving Guam for a missional church plant in the financial hurting city of Phoenix.

We kind of force fed our kids a lot of the music Imbi and I love. A a result, they are fans of folk like Lyle Lovett, Steely Dan, Michael McDonald and Eric Clapton. Andy Crouch has a good post on the impact of engaging your kids with good music.

Furthering my love for Lyle Lovett, er, Lyle Lovett's music check out I've Been to Memphis - featuring the killer keyboarding of Matt Rollins and Lyle's great acoustic playing. And if Lyle's not to your liking, perhaps you'd prefer a dancing cockatoo.

UPDATE: Oh. And One More Thing. THIS Changes Everything. [HT for video]

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And A Little Lyle Lovett @ Church

And no my dear preaching friends, this isn't a shot at you - unless you never stop preaching, of course. :-)

Humor

Keeping It In Perspective

It's been around for a while, but this xkcd cartoon really does nail it.

Humor, Lighten Up, Eh!, We Take Ourselves A Little Too Seriously, If I'm Wrong, Who Dies?

The Islamization of Christianity

The iMonk points to an important essay from the Francis A Schaeffer Foundation, The Islamization of Christianity. I have commented to friends that the God of some of my brethren, a portrait of the Father as one who is most concerned for his own glory and sovereignty seems to me more like the Allah of Islam than the God I see revealed in the Old and New Testament.

The essay author, Udo Middleman says this,

When life gets tough, we have all heard here and there in Christian circles one or the other of the following comments: It was the right time for her to die. God must have had something better in mind. God in his grace took him home to himself. God allowed it to happen. He made it come to pass. God must have wanted it that way.

Wait a minute! Are these comments typical for Islam or do we hear and read them in wide circles of the contemporary church? They have a ring of familiarity about them. They are the comments made in the face of what we used to consider tragedies. People comfort each other by these words!

To the extend to which we agree with these statements and find them a comfort, we have ourselves moved over from a Biblical perspective to an Islamic one. The change can be gradual and insidious, but we have redefined God for the sake of our peace, our longing to make life in a fallen world less absurd existentially. We have found a way to make the experience of brokenness acceptable: we assume that it was acceptable to God.

Worse, we have redefined God. He now becomes the one who authors good and evil. We declare our inability to understand, then turn around and suggest that he must have thought it to be good. We are no longer partners of a God who is a war with a fallen world, who grieves over death and who has pity and compassion for people caught in a horrible situation after the fall. That God has been banished by us.

We may not have noticed this subtle, but radical change in our thinking. It leads finally to immoral consequences. If Islam considers doubt and questions a blasphemy, it is equally blasphemous for Christians to stop the complaint about death in its many forms and to assume that God identifies with everything that happens. Many have in fact become friends of the friends of Job. They overlook that much on earth is not right. It is even absurd. There is a war going on in heaven, with consequences in the life of Job and each believer. Life in war is a mess, and the just suffer without cause.

The will of the Lord is precisely not yet being done on earth in the same way it is already being done in heaven. The Lord's prayer encourages us to pray for a future time when there will be no such discontinuity. In the world today it is very real and painful. There is no tidy world in the Bible. We are not allowed to bow to fateful circumstances, but to question them and to resist them, where that is morally demanded. Even Joseph did not resign himself to being sold to Egypt. Though God would turn to good what his brothers had meant for evil, Joseph rightly asks the steward to remember him before Pharaoh, lest be left to rot in prison alone. The cause of the tragedy was not the will of the Lord.

Please read all of it.

God's Sovereignty, God's Sacrificial Love

If necessary use Weirdos

Apparently there are a lot of people in the haunted hallways of blogdom who are pleased that St. Frank never said, "Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words." At least this is the opinion of someone who has written on St. Francis and had deduced that all the Kid Brothers of St. Frank have been wrong in misquoting said Saint. And perhaps he's right.

But all you theologians in the house might want to help me here as Peter says this, (1 Peter 3:1-2)

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

Or is this verse only for use by my complimentarian friends. And only applicable to those lacking dangly bits. I'm just asking.

UPDATED: I've added the link to the CT article that started this conversation. [HT: Brad Boydston whose Random posts are a must read.]

Note that (as I say in the comments in response to my very good friend, Dan MacDonald) this passage is a continuation/re-enforcement of what St Peter has been saying in the previous Chapter. And as Dan says in response, "...on the value of deeds to give life to words we are in complete agreement. Would that there be less talk and more walk.... from all of us."

If necessary use words, St. Francis

They Were Probably Anglicans

From this interesting article in the NYT (that I've sent to my family members as a must read),

I once read a story about a church group that was supposed to meet at a certain time. Ten minutes after the appointed time, due to a gas leak, the church blew up. If they had not showed up late, all 10 would have been killed. Some see that as evidence that God was watching over them. Others might conclude that you should always show up to church late. All I learn from that is that it is a big country, and if you ask around enough, you’ll hear some pretty improbable stories.

New York Times

Hymns From My Late Thirties: Pass Me Not

OK. The title's a rip off of my friend, Brother Maynard's Hymns of My Youth series. Although I do remember a lot of the hymns from Sunday School days as a child, along with the creeds, I really wasn't brought up in the church. Had I been, I might have recognized Fanny Crosby as one of the great hymn writers, and the song below as one of hers.

Pass Me Not is a song from a recording Imbi produced and I directed for Maranatha! Music in the 90's called Live Worship with Joseph Garlington & Covenant Church of Pittsburgh. It was one of two live worship projects we did with M!M, the other being Chris Falson & the Amazing Stories. Charisma Mag called the latter, for what's it worth, the best of its genre. Word, distributors for M!M at the time, did next to nothing in marketing these projects. Oh, well.

Last week @ the Refresh Conference @ Wycliffe, Duke Vipperman and I were in a conversation about music and ended up talking about Pass Me Not. Bizarrely, about three minutes after we talked about Crosby's song (and I raved about the B3 playing in the version below) we heard the worship leaders in the afternoon session lead the gathered in Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior. Though the arrangement was of a more "traditional" approach.

This version features the wild and wonderful playing of John Cannon on Hammond B3. John attended the Music School @ the University of Michigan on a violin scholarship and then Julliard for piano. His primary love is classical organ, but he's made me weep playing Beethoven in a worship service on an acoustic grand - and I'm not a great lover of classical music.

This song also features an unrehearsed call and response between the amazing vocals of Joseph Garlington and the great guitar playing of Danny Shields.

My good buddy, George Furlow weaves his tenor sax throughout the song.

The song was arranged by John Cannon and bassist Danye Roaché (who was the music producer) along with Joseph Garlington. Enjoy.

Pass Me Not - Joseph Garlington & CCOP from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Fanny Crosby, Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior, John Cannon, Hammond B3

Oh, Tim (Sigh)

There should be little doubt for those who have been reading this blog for a while, that I hold Tim Keller in high esteem. However, this quote from the "News Service of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary" is more than a little graceless. (It sounds more like a certain younger man from Seattle than the more mature Pastor from New York, actually.) [HT]

...there is an idolatrous reason behind each behavioral issue. For example, behind the belief that women should be ordained is the need for power and a love for feeling in charge.

Many of us would suggest that "the need for power and a love for feeling in charge" is precisely why so many humans with dangly bits are incapable of reading scripture in any way other than to deny leadership to those without. (Keller in praxis, does not seem to fall into this category.)

I can think of hundreds of examples of idolatrous reasoning in the church and wonder why this example is used - one with which more than half the evangelical camp would profoundly disagree. (That is, of course, whether you consider evangelicals from the developing world as part of the "evangelical camp.")

Earlier today, I linked to Peggy Brown's article Where ARE the Women? in Next Wave. Let me quote from Peggy.

So, where ARE the women? Well, they’re everywhere, actually. Doing some of the most amazing ministry. Some of them are serving “out in the open” with official status and proper recognition. Some are also serving “out in the open” with no official status or recognition. Some are serving “under the radar” where status and recognition have no meaning – or, worse, could get you in a heap of trouble. Some are also serving “under the radar” with official status and proper recognition among the “Under the Radar” folks. And some are just serving wherever and however the Spirit gives them the inspiration and the power. This last group of sisters is not interested in status or recognition, especially. They figure they are just serving Christ as faithful followers right where they find themselves, and that’s all the status or recognition needed.

The problem is not that the women aren’t out there using their gifts to build up the church. The reality is that they, in fact, are. The problem is one of perception. Perceptions about what women can do versus what they may do in ministry. And it is a problem that the sisters share with many other segments of society. [Please read the entire article.]

Keller's denomination, the PCA do send women out to the mission field, where they are expected to teach new believers up to the point where local males can replace them. Something I've always found rather inconsistent in their complimentarian theology. (Please note that the Kinnon family attended a Toronto PCA church for almost three years and love and respect the PCA leaders we know. We disagree on complimentarianism. Which probably makes me even more of an idolater than I was earlier today. Thank goodness for the Interwebs or I'd never have known.)

I linked earlier to Jonathan Brink's post featuring NT Wright on this very topic. Now I'm going to post the YouTube video here.   UPDATE:   This older post from Rebecca Groothuis is also well worth your time.

complimentarian, women in ministry

Random Links

Read this poem from John Frye, Passion.

My 'gator Sis, Peggy knocks it outta the park with the Next-Wave cover story. (And Jonathan Brink's comment on a comment had me laughing out loud - which hurt 'cuz I have a headache. Bad Jonathan. JB recommends watching BoD NTW here.)

My iPastor, TommyMertonHead, is doing a series on The Jesus Disconnect. Please read it.

My 18 year old daughter, Kaili is in South Africa doing short-term volunteer work at an HIV/AIDS orphanage (and wants to stay on longer - please pray for discernment on this.) You can follow her story here. (She's volunteering along with her best-buddy, Robyn.)

Is this "truth" or just marketing fiction; Derek Webb's Stockholm Syndrome.

Ed Brenegar and Bob Sutton both recommend this book, In Pursuit of Elegance. I'm ordering it for the Kinnon designers, Imbi, Kaili and Rylan. Note that Ed B has a week of book reviews up at his blog. Please read them all.

Speaking of Kinnons, Liam's blog is always worth a read - with some lively discussion in the comments. Liam is once again a permanent resident of Toronto. There's a lot more music happening in the studio these days.

Nashville, the Silicon Valley of the music biz according to Richard Florida.

I love Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog.

Grant McCracken quotes A.O. Scott on Dan Brown (as I tweeted last night):

I have not read the novel by Dan Brown on which [Angels & Demons] is based. I have come to believe that to do so would be a sin against my faith, not in the Church of Rome but in the English language, a noble and beleaguered institution against which Mr. Brown practices vile and unspeakable blasphemy.

I like this blog, a lot.

John Stackhouse on Seminary. Read Will Willimon, too - here, here and here. (I'm married to a recent seminary grad - with a Master's in Theological Studies - and now I'm off to continue editing her documentary on the church in the 21st century - my headache having abated whilst typing this post with one hand while lying on my bed.)

random links