I admit it, I'm bored. So here we go, ten things I never want to see at The Venue:
1. Tambourines - As far as musical instruments goes this one ranks somewhere above the kazoo and below the cowbell for me.
2. Choir Robes - Choirs aren't our style to begin with, but I'll admit that there are a couple good ones out there, however I don't know how putting on a mumu helps you sing any better.
3. Pews - We would never think of putting such a horribly uncomfortable piece of furniture in our own houses but we somehow think that God wants it in His.
4. Overuse of Spiritual Jargon (aka Christianese) - I think a lot more people would give their lives to Jesus if they could understand what we were saying half the time.
5. Name Badges - I know some churches love these, but for me there is never a good reason for a stranger to stick something on my shirt.
6. Forced Physical Affection - The only two places in America where you will be told to hold a stranger's hand is a preschool or a church. I've noticed that since becoming a Christian I hug people I hardly know more than the people I love the most.
7. A Lack of Concern for the Lost and Hurting - Many churches spend more time and money on leadership development than outreach. Maybe we'd have less trouble getting people to follow us if we were actually going somewhere.
8. Alligators - They might be part of God's creation, but they scare me and there's no place for them here.
9. A Decoration Committee - Or half the other committees that spring up around churches unchecked. If it takes a team of people gathering on a weekly basis to decide how many fake plants should go around your sanctuary then you have some serious issues. The people who have the kind of time on their hands to be on these committees are usually not the people you want making decisions for your church anyways.
10. The Word "Ministry" After Every Job in the Church - I will ever be amazed by the number of churches seem to feel that a job is not important before God unless we put the word ministry after it. I've seen the custodial ministry, the tape/CD ministry, the parking lot ministry, the refreshments ministry, etc. Why can't we just say, "I'm the guy who cleans the floors and this is the lady who makes the coffee." Does it make unclogging the toilet any less important if we forget to add an extra word to it?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
I Guess This is Growing Up...
I have a lot of big things happening in the next couple months. I bought a new house, we are planting a new church, and Autumn is having a new baby. Most of this is a big daze to me, I'm just going along with everything as it comes. The baby is not a problem, I've got the father thing pretty well down. The house doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would either, everything is going to work out fine there. The church is a different story.
I have no doubts about the church doing well, I've seen enough confirmation from God so far that my faith in that area is strong. The scary thing to me is what kind of lead pastor I'm going to be. It's starting to sink in now that I have the job of keeping the vision going. I have the job of making the final call. I have the job of seeing things in people that they may not see in themselves or are to afraid to see in themselves. I have the job of listening. I have the job of helping people grow. I have the job of driving off the wolves. I have the job of showing people Jesus. It's a little bit sobering.
The problem is that for the most part I'm a bit of screw-up. I say things that I shouldn't, I do things without thinking about them first, and I have a tendency to bluff my way through things when I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like the office slacker who shows up for work late one day and by some odd chance of fate everyone above him is out sick with the flu leaving him in charge to run things by default.
I think about these things sometimes until God reminds me of one of the most important things in leadership, It's not about me. Maybe there are a thousand pastors that could do this job better than me, but they're not here and I am. Remember in Isaiah how the prophet is standing in the throne room of God and God asks, "Who shall we send and who will take our message?" Isaiah is in the presence of thousands of angels (The Hebrew word for angel lit. means "messenger") who have been created to be God's messengers yet he's the one who speaks up and says, "Here I am, send me." This is just after Isaiah has confessed to being a man of sinful lips living among sinful people. The thing is it wasn't about who Isaiah was it was about who God is.
So off I go to lead another Sunday night.
I have no doubts about the church doing well, I've seen enough confirmation from God so far that my faith in that area is strong. The scary thing to me is what kind of lead pastor I'm going to be. It's starting to sink in now that I have the job of keeping the vision going. I have the job of making the final call. I have the job of seeing things in people that they may not see in themselves or are to afraid to see in themselves. I have the job of listening. I have the job of helping people grow. I have the job of driving off the wolves. I have the job of showing people Jesus. It's a little bit sobering.
The problem is that for the most part I'm a bit of screw-up. I say things that I shouldn't, I do things without thinking about them first, and I have a tendency to bluff my way through things when I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like the office slacker who shows up for work late one day and by some odd chance of fate everyone above him is out sick with the flu leaving him in charge to run things by default.
I think about these things sometimes until God reminds me of one of the most important things in leadership, It's not about me. Maybe there are a thousand pastors that could do this job better than me, but they're not here and I am. Remember in Isaiah how the prophet is standing in the throne room of God and God asks, "Who shall we send and who will take our message?" Isaiah is in the presence of thousands of angels (The Hebrew word for angel lit. means "messenger") who have been created to be God's messengers yet he's the one who speaks up and says, "Here I am, send me." This is just after Isaiah has confessed to being a man of sinful lips living among sinful people. The thing is it wasn't about who Isaiah was it was about who God is.
So off I go to lead another Sunday night.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Church Planting with $1.58
When we first felt God wanted us to plant a church in Las Vegas Autumn and I just kinda excepted it the way you except any crazy thing God tells you to do. He could have told us to part Lake Mead and it would've seemed just as possible as planting a church with no people, experience, or money. Yet, here we are four years later holding preview services and about to launch an honest to goodness church plant.
I might talk about how God overcame our other shortcomings sometime in the future, but right now I'm in awe of how God has provided and continues to provide for the money problem. Early on we took the same stance with money that we took with all of our needs, either it was going to show up or it wasn't and then we'd worry about it. Don't get me wrong, we did some budgeting and planning but at the end of the day it came down to the fact that you can only do so much before you are forced just to trust that if God wants this thing done He's going to have to do the financial backing.
Start up costs are enough to make anyone shy away from the idea of church planting real fast, but we referred back to the "it will either show up or not" principle and we are starting to see the amazing happen. The things we planned to do to raise money haven't raised anything but people I have never met are sending me checks for large amounts of money because they believe in what we are doing. Some of our biggest money items have been donated to us and our preview services are taking in enough to cover most of our needs. Right now our start up costs are about 75% covered and we have about eight weeks to go before our launch. I am now confident that God is going to have us more than covered before Easter.
If you are like me though, you want practical advice and not just the "Trust God" answer. So here it is, keep in mind I'm not out of the woods yet but these are the things we are doing:
Have the core team start tithing as soon as they commit to the vision - If we made one mistake in the area of money it is that many on the core team still tithed to there former churches while we were in the planning phases of The Venue. See if your mother church will take your tithes and keep them in a separate account until you launch. If you don't have a mother church have someone on the team you all trust open up a savings account and keep track of the giving until you receive your nonprofit status.
No one on staff takes a salary until a few months after the launch - This goes against everything I've been taught and seen modeled, but it's common sense unless you are planting with a group of 150+. I have three or four people I would like to have paid on staff but we all decided that we'd wait until six months after the launch before we'd talk about salaries. I just talked with a church planter friend last week who hired someone on as his assistant pastor when they started and now that the church hasn't grown as fast as they thought and the money dried up guess who split. The fact is you don't know how fast or slow you're going to grow in the first few months. You don't know who will stay or leave and you probably don't know where your people are going to fit best in on your team.
Some people might say, "But I need to support my family and pastoring a church is demanding." No kidding it's demanding, that's why it's not for the weak! Go get a job, its only for a few months and you might actually meet people in the community you're trying to reach. If you can't handle a juggling a job, family, and a church for a few months while the church is small how are you going to handle the church and family when it's large? If pastoring is the only thing you know how to do then you might need to learn something new or wait until you have a large following before you start.
Don't let the lack of money stop you - If you know God has called you to do this then do it and push anything out way that tries to hinder you. Your church doesn't need stuff, but people need Jesus. I've seen church happen with next to nothing as far as equipment goes and God will always provide what you need as well as some stuff you don't. Do what you can with what you're given where you are.
I might talk about how God overcame our other shortcomings sometime in the future, but right now I'm in awe of how God has provided and continues to provide for the money problem. Early on we took the same stance with money that we took with all of our needs, either it was going to show up or it wasn't and then we'd worry about it. Don't get me wrong, we did some budgeting and planning but at the end of the day it came down to the fact that you can only do so much before you are forced just to trust that if God wants this thing done He's going to have to do the financial backing.
Start up costs are enough to make anyone shy away from the idea of church planting real fast, but we referred back to the "it will either show up or not" principle and we are starting to see the amazing happen. The things we planned to do to raise money haven't raised anything but people I have never met are sending me checks for large amounts of money because they believe in what we are doing. Some of our biggest money items have been donated to us and our preview services are taking in enough to cover most of our needs. Right now our start up costs are about 75% covered and we have about eight weeks to go before our launch. I am now confident that God is going to have us more than covered before Easter.
If you are like me though, you want practical advice and not just the "Trust God" answer. So here it is, keep in mind I'm not out of the woods yet but these are the things we are doing:
Have the core team start tithing as soon as they commit to the vision - If we made one mistake in the area of money it is that many on the core team still tithed to there former churches while we were in the planning phases of The Venue. See if your mother church will take your tithes and keep them in a separate account until you launch. If you don't have a mother church have someone on the team you all trust open up a savings account and keep track of the giving until you receive your nonprofit status.
No one on staff takes a salary until a few months after the launch - This goes against everything I've been taught and seen modeled, but it's common sense unless you are planting with a group of 150+. I have three or four people I would like to have paid on staff but we all decided that we'd wait until six months after the launch before we'd talk about salaries. I just talked with a church planter friend last week who hired someone on as his assistant pastor when they started and now that the church hasn't grown as fast as they thought and the money dried up guess who split. The fact is you don't know how fast or slow you're going to grow in the first few months. You don't know who will stay or leave and you probably don't know where your people are going to fit best in on your team.
Some people might say, "But I need to support my family and pastoring a church is demanding." No kidding it's demanding, that's why it's not for the weak! Go get a job, its only for a few months and you might actually meet people in the community you're trying to reach. If you can't handle a juggling a job, family, and a church for a few months while the church is small how are you going to handle the church and family when it's large? If pastoring is the only thing you know how to do then you might need to learn something new or wait until you have a large following before you start.
Don't let the lack of money stop you - If you know God has called you to do this then do it and push anything out way that tries to hinder you. Your church doesn't need stuff, but people need Jesus. I've seen church happen with next to nothing as far as equipment goes and God will always provide what you need as well as some stuff you don't. Do what you can with what you're given where you are.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Monday, February 5, 2007
Girly Music
I normally like my music tough and manly like myself, but lately I've been very happy with The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. They have some stuff that isn't too far from my usual stuff like Face Down, but I find myself also listening to songs that I'm ashamed I like so much like Your Guardian Angel. Man, even the title of that song sounds like a Lifetime original movie, but I can't help it I'm hooked. If you don't mind music that you have to roll up your windows to enjoy you might want to check them out.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
It's All Coming Together Now
We're off tomorrow for the Super Bowl and then we have five weeks of preview services left before we move to the elementary school. Our launch date is going to be Easter Sunday, but we will be going public in the sense of advertising to the community starting the week before Palm Sunday.
Now that we have our EIN number from the IRS we have been able to do a lot of things that we've been waiting to do. We got our phone number this week, as well as our bank account and mailing address. This also allowed us to get our insurance so that we can rent the school. We should be getting our paperwork back for our permit to use the school any day now and then the paper work nightmare will start to come to a close.
Advertising has been a big priority in my mind. I don't think many churches realize that they need to let people know that they are there and want visitors to come check them out. We don't have a lot of money but we've been blessed with some and we are going to spend a healthy percent of it on getting the word out. We are going to send in our mailer order this week and probably get the signs ordered in the next couple weeks. It's pretty simple stuff, but I've seen it work wonders for our mother church and I think it's a big mistake not to make an effort at letting people know you're there.
Now that we have our EIN number from the IRS we have been able to do a lot of things that we've been waiting to do. We got our phone number this week, as well as our bank account and mailing address. This also allowed us to get our insurance so that we can rent the school. We should be getting our paperwork back for our permit to use the school any day now and then the paper work nightmare will start to come to a close.
Advertising has been a big priority in my mind. I don't think many churches realize that they need to let people know that they are there and want visitors to come check them out. We don't have a lot of money but we've been blessed with some and we are going to spend a healthy percent of it on getting the word out. We are going to send in our mailer order this week and probably get the signs ordered in the next couple weeks. It's pretty simple stuff, but I've seen it work wonders for our mother church and I think it's a big mistake not to make an effort at letting people know you're there.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
I Need a Drink
I've cut my soda intake by more than half for the last three or four weeks. Since then I've lost about 10 pounds putting me back down to my drivers' license weight and my hands have almost stopped shaking. I also had massive headaches the last couple weeks but I think those are done now. The hardest thing is having a fridge full of Pepsi down stairs but knowing I can't have any more today. They call to me at night and say, "Come" but I do not go. Temptation sucks.
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