Category: church

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you’ve got to be kidding

today was a fun day for youth ministry. i was paid to setup and play halo and risk in the student center for 8 hours. not a bad life.

since, i was hanging out with teens most of the day i wasn’t in my study that often. i checked in every now and then just to make sure that i hadn’t missed anything important. during one of those check in’s i found a message from from someone i didn’t recognized. it was a long distance number so i thought i probably should call it back soon. i took a few minutes away form the youth and placed the long distance call. the second the guy answered the phone and i mentioned my name, he kicked into a sales routine for a video casting program that is geared towards ministries. i was dumbfounded. i could not believe that this guy had asked me to call him back on my church’s dime do that he could make a sales call. i had to make sure that he had actually done this so i asked him “let me get this straight. you asked me to call you back long distance so you could try and sell me something?” he said “yes” but then told me that if it was a problem he could call me right back on their line. “nope,” i answered “you pretty much just told me all i ever need to hear about your company. please don’t ever call here again. good bye.”

i don’t know what it is like in the real world but in the church world this crap goes on all the time. i probably get a message each week with a saleperson getting me to call them back so they can give me their sales pitch. it would be one thing if this was a salesperson that i had a relationship with – those phone calls are a good thing. i know who they are and they have built up my trust by following through on what they say and actually carrying on conversations with me passed just selling me something. but these messages are from “cold calls.” why should i use my time to do your job for you?

i was raised by a salesman. i know how hard “cold calls” are. yet i also know that if you build up enough relationships after awhile you don’t have to make that many “cold calls.” i wish more ministry-based businesses care more about relationships than just making sales.

i leave by bragging on one company that i love – uthstuph. i love them because not only do they do things right but we actually know who they are. we weren’t friends before we started buying t-shirts from them but from our first phone call we could tell that they were concerned with more than just making a one time sell to us. jessica, my assistant, and i both know several of the people at uthstuph and it is not uncommon for our “order” calls to go on for quite awhile talking about allot of things that don’t seem related to the sell. it’s because of the fact that they care about our relationship that we have ordered everything we need printed from them over the past 5 years. in fact, sometimes we look for other things we can send their way. those of you who know me know that it is no small thing when i give a business (rather than individuals) glowing reviews in public. i wish more companies were like uthstuph.

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bragging on some friends

i thought i would take a second and brag on some friends at the ring community church. i was talking with jessica today and she told me what they had done for mother’s day. if you have ever been in an evangelical church during mother’s day then you have probably watched as a big deal is made of mom’s (which is a good thing) and a crappy gift is given to them (these are usually cheap, stupid little things that nobody ever uses – like a quote book, or a flimsy bookmark, or a wilted carnation). jess recommended that instead of wasting allot of money on allot of people to acquire nothing more than clutter she recommended to the leadership of the ring (basically josh and meg for this decision) that they take the money they would have wasted on the meaningless gifts and instead give it to world vision in honor of their mom’s. so that’s what they did – they gave all the money to world vision to help the helpless and printed out a little booklet to give to the mom’s in their church explaining what the money would be used for.

it was a simple yet brilliant idea. from what i hear many of the mothers in the room were moved to tears. i wish i had thought of it. i will definitely be using it when jar starts.

speaking of “jar” i figured i would give y’all an update on what is happening now that our assessment is complete. here’s what is happening:

  • sometime this week my future “boss” in wisconsin will call and we will work out the details for what is basically a grant application for income from the north american mission board.
  • research, research, research – pam and i have to learn as much as we possibly can about the wonderful people of stevens point and we also need to learn more and more concerning the details of planting a church.
  • develop prayer partners and needs – we’ve got to figure out what to ask people to pray for (for some reason just saying “everything” doesn’t help much) and while we figure out what to ask people to pray for we also need to find people to pray for us.
  • we need to find a way to move up to wisconsin – the price of moving has jumped up considerably since seven years ago when we moved to baton rouge.
  • depend upon GOD even more for what HE wants us to do up there.
  • i think for tax reasons we are going to have to determine a name before we really start and have a group to help dream up a name – this is not something i am really excited about (i’d rather the group do it) but it’s not something that is life or death for me.

SIDE NOTE – “24” has gone down hill – it is a sad day in tv-land.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – we’re entering our homemade salsa in a salsa competition wednesday. i didn’t even know that there were such things as salsa competitions.

[tags]ring community church, world vision, mother’s day, salsa[[/tags]

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facebook & teAMerica

i cannot stand myspace. i think it’s okay for organizations and media but bugs me for individuals. besides there always seem to be reports of creepy people lurking around on myspace. i’m not as familiar with facebook but some of the college students swear by it and i have seen many reports recently concerning the wonders of communicating through facebook. so i figure i’ll give it a try and see if it is something that will be useful in stevens point.

speaking of stevens point pam and i are back from our teAMerica church planting assessment week. the point of the assessment is to see if i should be able to hack it when it comes to the nature of planting a church. apparently about 85% of new churches fail within 5 years. that’s not a good percentage. yet with the right assessment and training that figure flips over on itself. the teAMerica week takes a person and sees whether he/she would be a good fit for planting a church. the way they do this is through a series of personality inventories, written interviews of your friends, surprise group projects, planned presentations, a series of interviews, and basic teaching time. truthfully the whole thing was kind of similar to a church planting version of “the apprentice” without the “you’re fired” part. everything you do is watched and analyzed to see how you work with people, how you lead, how you follow, how you think, etc. it was very tiring but cool.

at the end of the week there are 4 options of what they will say to the candidate.

  • recommend
  • recommend – with conditions (usually this is to attend a couple of conferences and do some more homework – this usually slows things down by a few months or so)
  • recommend – with strong conditions (intern with someone and do allot more homework – this usually slows things down by 12 to 18 months)
  • not recommend – (which means that in the assessors’ opinions it would be best for you to do something else)

we left the week with a “full recommend” and therefore we have crossed another hurdle on the path. now we continue working with namb to see if there is any possibility of getting some funding through them. if we get some funding from them that will mean that i can focus all my efforts on planting the church rather than being somewhat distracted by the need to hold down a part time job for financial reasons.

[tags]church planting, teAMerica, facebook, myspace[/tags]

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you should probably take a shower then

our church’s preschool has a chapel every tuesday. these chapels consist of a group of 3 to 5 year olds singing a few songs and then being led through a short bible story by one of the ministers. this means that i get to lead one of these chapels every month. this past week was once again my turn to lead the preschool chapel.

when i lead these chapels for the the kids i like to involve a good bit of participation from the kids so i usually pick a story that i can get the kids to interact with in at least a small way. tuesday i decided to use the story of JESUS healing the 10 lepers. as a part of telling this story i had ten kids get up in front to help me tell the story. when our kid/JESUS walked close to our kid/lepers they were supposed to shout “JESUS, master, have pity on us” as loud as they possibly could. that was the plan and nine of them understood and followed it. one of the kid/lepers apparently misheard me because while the others were shouting “JESUS, master, have pity on us” she instead shouted out “JESUS, he peed on us!”

needless to say all the adults in the room lost it at that point and the chapel devotion was over.

[tags]JESUS, pee, preschool chapel[/tags]

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round and round

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

cartoon by dave walker.

the cartoon blog had this up earlier today. i thought it was fitting. i was talking with someone today who left our church awhile back and has been bouncing around for the past year. he said that he was coming back because he was beginning to realize that anytime people are involved in something there are going to be ones who like to screw things up. JESUS described it as wheat and tares. if you try to get rid of all the tares you are going to hurt the wheat in the process. instead you deal with the tares as best you can and let GOD sort it out in the end.

you can find more cartoons at we blog cartoons.

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here’s what i announced in church today

as some of y’all know (because you were there) today i asked the church to pray for my family and i as we work through the process of being church planters with namb and the minnesota/wisconsin baptist convention. we know a lot of people who we love who really like JESUS but are burnt out by the churches they have experienced. we want to be a part of starting a church that will be just for such people.

we want to be a part of a church…

  • that is okay with people’s struggles and mistakes because we believe in a GOD of grace.
  • whose members walk through life together (in the successes and the messiness) because we have a SAVIOR WHO walks with us.
  • where the weakest people are fought for because we have a KING WHO said that when we do so we fight for HIM.
  • where questions are welcomed because we have a LORD WHO is not afraid of our questions.
  • that is not concerned with being powerful because we have a GOD WHOSE strength works through weakness.
  • that does not believe that it must either spread the kingdom of GOD or fight for social justice because we have a MESSIAH WHOSE plan includes both.

we’ve experienced such things within many churches because we knew what we were looking for but a lot of people have been turned off by the church and don’t see our wonderful JESUS.

after this summer we are moving up to stevens point, wisconsin were pam (my cute amazing wife) will begin a tenure track position as an assistant professor of speech language communication at the university of wisconsin – stevens point and we will work as hard as we can to be a part of GOD’s plan for a thriving community of believers.

now you may be asking yourself how are we going to do this? we’ve got the same question. we have no idea. i’ve never been a part of starting a church before and neither has pam. we’re clueless but we’re sure that it’s a part of GOD’s will. so we’ll depend upon HIM, learn everything we can, mess up a lot, and keep plodding along to accomplish HIS will.

i’ll tell you a whole lot more about this as we go along. for now the next step is for us to go to a week of assessment and training in may. we would appreciate all of your prayers and opinions (we’re open to anyone’s advice) as we start down this journey.

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the grapevine

sometimes it is really interesting to see how “the grapevine” works. it’s interesting to see what random people hear something and what random people do not. just a side note that i thought i would type because i am pretty tired right now. i’ve spent yesterday afternoon and all of today down at new orleans baptist theological seminary for a church seminar led by harold bullock. it was a pretty decent seminar except for his brief discussion on postmodern thought. i disagreed with about 90% of what he said on the subject – but hey nobody’s asking me to do seminars so what do i know.

probably the best thing that bullock said was that people do what makes sense to them. i know that’s simple but he connected it with everything that goes on in church. i know it’s really simple but it was good.

it is a continual surprise how much is still desolate within nola.

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easter welcome video


since i’ve combined my ministry blog with this (my random thoughts blog) you guys & girls from the random thoughts blog are going to have to put up with various ministry related things that i like, dislike, struggle with, or just want to remember. the above video is something i like.

it’s the welcome video from powell church in knoxville. i thought it was a different way of welcoming people to the service. i wasn’t there so i can’t say this for sure but it seems to me that if you walk into a service, the lights go out, and this pops up on the screen, i think whether you agree or disagree with the gospel story that you are probably going to at least think that something interesting is going to happen within that worship service. of course, i’ve been wrong before (allot). maybe some of my non-believing or non-church going friends could comment on that thought.

of course, i don’t have the technical know how of doing a video like this so don’t expect to see anything like it at parkview.

[tags]video, welcome[/tags]

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huh?

part of ministry that i really love is making visits … especially hospital visits. it always seems to happen that i get the chance to be involved within significant moments during my weekly (and sometime more often) visits to each of our baton rouge hospitals. i may not like the traffic getting to the hospitals but 95% of the time i love the visits.

todays visits were not hugely amazing but one was quite funny. i went to visits an elderly woman who could barely hear anything. of course, since her lacking of hearing is more age related than anything she has never consider the possibility of acquiring hearing aides. this means that my short visit with her consisted of my shouting, her responding that she couldn’t hear me, and then me shouting louder. the conversation went allot longer than the content conveyed within it would normally taken. i think all that the lady actually was able to make out from all that i said was “hi!.” of course, everyone else in the wing knew exactly what church i am a minister of and why this lady was on our prayer list.

you may not know this but they don’t really like you shouting in hospitals. thus when i left the lady’s room i was given tons of nasty looks and a couple of “shhhh’s”. i guess they hadn’t been any of the nurses taking care of the lady i visited.

[Listening to: 06 – The Kingdom – Caedmon’s Call – Back Home (4:30)]