Wonderful Healing Service and ...

We had our quarterly healing service last night.  Maybe a dozen people came.  We prayed.  Everyone prayed for the person who came up and knelt and was anointed with oil as the pastor prayed for him or her. People confessed guilt for asking God for more when he had already done so much for them.  I get it.  But God does like to be asked.  Ok?  People confessed prideful ways and feeling like they were paying the price for it now.  But would God still heal them of their affliction?  Yes.  And thanks for confessing that because it makes me realize I'm the same way and more!  People wept out of frustration with parts of their body that were so uncooperative and even painful.  What frail tents we have for this earthly stay.  Good but when they get old or break, yuck.  And there was just such a sense of love among the dozen or so who prayed together.  I'm glad we had it.  I'm looking to see if God will heal those we prayed for.

And ... 95% of our Easter attenders said they came to Cocoa because of a family member or friend.  This church isn't going to gain members to compensate for the number that are dying.  The cheapest and most effective way is to get more people here is to have members invite.  If you care about preserving your investment in this church, you better invite.  If you want this congregation here for the generation of tomorrow, you better invite.  If you want this congregation to be here to make a difference in this community, you better invite.

As I said before we can say, "Ok, tomorrow."  Or we can say, "I don't like to invite so I'll let someone else do that."  But if it isn't you, you're a part of the problem and not the solution.  If it is tomorrow instead of today, you're a part of the problem and not the solution.

You know how to have lots of good ideas?  To have lots and lots and lots of ideas.  You know how to get some people here?  To invite lots and lots and lots of people here.

Why should they come?  Ahh, because they like you and you like the church?  Ahh, because we have a great choir and a reasonably informative and inspiring service?  Ahh, because we are on the doorstep of mission work -- it's as close as RFM school.  Ahh, because we want them and need them ... other churches have more than enough and one more is just one more.  Not here!

If you're on the session, I am going to ask each month how many you invited and how you invited and how it went.  I don't like just receiving reports.  I like asking for reports and asking for reports that have you saying not just stuff but what you're doing that's critical to our mission.

Why I Do What I Do On Easter

On Easter we were deliberate about
a.  starting a new and short sermon series
b.  putting in an insert that showed a new Sunday School class the next week
c.  putting in that same insert a special, interesting event happening within a short time frame.
d.  using "we're here" cards

Let me explain.  Biggest attendance days for churches -- Christmas & Easter.  We're to be fishers of men.  When the fish are running, do the fishing.  How do you fish?  Get your people to invite.  Promote -- sign, banners, newspapers, social media.

But once you get people there you must help them feel that what they got was worth the effort of going.  In a restaurant you do not want people thinking they drove thirty minutes and paid $10 for a $5 meal.  They will certainly go to a restaurant where they drive only ten minutes and pay $5 for a $10 meal.  And they will go back to that restaurant.

So have the place pretty outside and in.  That means people and place.  A pretty place with unfriendly people, ugh.  Vice versa sorta the same but not quite.  Try to do both.  People inspire.  Places inspire.

Then have the whole service be personal and on pace and possessing quality.  These things will help them feel good about coming and want to come back.  Having a sermon that has a bit of "to be continued" quality and piques their interest will also help.  That's the sermon series idea.  But a 12-part series might be too daunting for a person just getting their feet wet.  Coming for three weeks might work.  So make it a short series.

What if someone wanted to see what else is going on that might fit their age group or set of concerns?  Why not have an insert that samples some of your best activities from across the board.  Remember, however, less is more.  Don't try to list everything or they will get lost.  This is a fly-by kind of list.  Something for men. Something for women.  Something for kids.  And if you can add into your listing for men, for example, that they are just beginning something kinda neat next week, do that!  Listing that they will start that seven weeks from now is too far away.  Six weeks from now you will be out of sight and out of mind for them.

We put in that we were having a healing service next week.  That might arouse some interest, might get someone hurting to come again. That's putting in the insert a special event.

Not attendance cards but "We're Here" cards.  That's a fun thing to do, to say, "We're here!"  I have everyone fill them out while we wait.  I don't want anyone opting out because we just moved along and let that be a possibility.  Why?  Because we want the cards!  That's how we can follow-up and send them the newsletter a couple times, an invite to the men's breakfast, or whatever.

You could collect those cards then and there.  But I like to use them for some interaction with everyone.  So I plan to use them at the end of the sermon.  I ask them to pull them out towards the end of my message.  And I ask them a couple of simple questions.  For Easter it was, "On this believing Jesus was real and actually rose again, I am  [A] On Board (circle A which was preprinted on the back of the card), [B] Could use the pastor's prayers to understand this better (circle B), etceteras.

Now (not later because they'll lose the card) you have the offering and have them put the card and their money in the plate at the same time.

YOU BIG BABY

I took off blogging for Holy Week.  I got a couple of days in with my kids, grandkid, and friends in San Antonio.  Had a wonderful Easter with the Cocoa people ... who are so talented and dedicated!  Now off to blogging with a bang.

I like it when one church incubates another.  One has plenty of facility and the will and the flexibility to take another church onto its property.  It might take it under its wing in some other ways.  They can share all-church-work days and make the worship flower arrangement get in twice the duty. 

Some worry that there’s twice the wear and tear but probably not quite.  And nobody says to a couple getting married and moving into one or the others’ apartment, “Watch out because you’ll have twice the wear!”  No.  They say, “Two can live as cheaply as one.”  Or they say, “Twice the fun!”

But today I am thinking about a backwards idea that, as I am thinking about it, is  very true to life.  The incubating happens when a bigger takes on a smaller.  So there’s a full-grown mother who has a tiny, tiny little life inside.  Usually, an established church is incubating a little congregation of 20 or 30.  In my circles it has been an anglo church taking on a fledgling Korean, or Brazilian, or Arabic, or African American Church.  Other places have Laotians, Chinese, and so on. 

Now to the backwards part.  What if the congregation that you incubated was larger than yours?  What if after your family house was down to just you and your wife, would you consider moving into the mother-in-law quarters so you son or daughter and their growing family and their limited income could have a better home arrangement?  Or consider how in life we have children and we are big but they are little.  Fifty years later and they are big and we are little.  The kid I taught how to read is now teaching me how to manage my computer.  I remember a photo once where there was dad carrying Johnnie and then next to it the fifty years later where Johnnie was carrying dad.  So what if the congregation that you incubated was larger than yours?  It happens in life. 

So I know a church that is growing in a community where an established church is shrinking.  That same growing church is outgrowing its facility and the established church is down to using about 20% of its.  How could the established church incubate the growing one?  What would that look like?    

Fun and Thought

                                                  This guy is about to have a bad day!  

Churches measure many things.  One is seating capacity.  Our sanctuary seats 400.  But let's talking about sending capacity.  Not only how many rear ends we can get in a pew but how many people we can get into the world telling and showing the reign of Jesus Christ.  We definitely want people to come to church.  We also want church members to go to people.  Not one or the other but both and.  

I like this very short, very simple, very helpful video that is a part of this topic.  Please watch it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxfLK_sd68

Holy Spirit & Julie Andrews

Bring up the Holy Spirit and we can get into hocus pocus pretty quickly.  Not that the Holy Spirit doesn't have some of that.  But there's a lot of the Holy Spirit that is supernatural in a mundane sort of way.  For example, three big chapters on the Holy Spirit are in I Corinthians 12-14.  Note that the famous chapter on love, chapter 13, is in the middle of that.  So rather than hocus pocus we have living in self-giving love as being full of the Holy Spirit.  

As Americans we don't realize it, the way fish don't realize they are in water, until we are in other cultures, or they are commenting on ours, that we are highly individual based in our outlook.  When it comes to the Holy Spirit the first way we think of it is how does he fill me?  In the Bible, however, while filling me is legitimate, an equivalent or greater concern is how the Holy Spirit fills us.  Ie, the group, the congregation.  

I got to thinking about how Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music story entered an unruly and stern family.  Let's throw in that the bathrooms were dirty and the children said self-pitying things all the time.  Or the children said uncharitable things about others.  She, of course, would love and discipline and model and sing.  The family members might not like her saying, "No," to them or saying, "No more of that," to them.  They might not like being sent to their rooms because they continued.  But eventually Julie Andrews got the sloppiness out, the encouraging in, and love flowing.  

The Holy Spirit in a congregation is the same way.  He might help the session send someone to their room.  That doesn't sound very spiritual, does it?  But it is.  He might help one member say to another member, "We don't talk that way in this church family."  He might help us prize encouragement.  He might help us hug and smile at everyone in the church family.  He might help us be brave or to sing.  He might be a lot like Julie Andrews in the Von Trapp family.  

Institution's Sake??

I am a servant of Jesus.  I care more about people's relationship with him than with the church.  I've heard people talk about their relationship with the church and never mention Jesus.  As a pastor I have cared about people sitting in the pews and let up on people who aren't following Christ becoming followers.  Too many of us have been a part of churches that transferred sheep amongst themselves rather than making new sheep.  So I am squeamish about simply trying to preserve the institution.  It can be like preserving the body and not caring about health.  If, however, you care about health, you'll preserve the body.  Right?

I will try to overcome my squeamishness and wonder if we shouldn't focus on making members.  Public radio has pledge drives.  Other organizations have member drives.  A base of members makes possible the mission.

I ponder so many of our good outreach and mission projects.  We're not giving away the farm at all.  But we give a lot of efforts to that which will not garner us sustaining members.  A thrift shop, a clothes pantry, a hefty program for helping feed the hungry by gleaning ... all very good.  All take our time and money and energy.  Some may join us because we care about others.  Hurray!  May it be so.  Yet a 100 member congregation spends a lot of itself doing a pantry for the poor, and not that they shouldn't, but those poor are not recruited as members.  If they were, they probably are so different socio-economically that they wouldn't join.  Meanwhile, the 100 member church shrinks to 90 to 80 to ... and then there's no more food pantry period.

Somewhere along the line we have to ask supremely, "Are we making more disciples?"  Too many of us aren't.  Me included.  And more mundanely and more in the sense of (yucky?) institutional preservation we have to ask, "What are we doing to get new members??"

We're doing this committee, that event, this renovation, this teaching series, this pot luck ... and none of them with the ask, "How can we leverage this for getting new members?"  Or none with the ask, "How does spending ourselves on this occupy us so that we don't have to do the perhaps harder task of finding new members?"

Good luck to us all.  Me included.

If Not Me, Who? If Not Now, When?

If not me, who?  If not now, when?  Pretty pointed questions.  Not that you couldn't say, "Not me, that guy Joe looks good."  Or not that you couldn't say, "Yes, me, but not until next year."  What I am thinking about, however, is, for example, inviting others to church.  There are some issues that are, in the old way of putting it, very important but not urgent.  And the urgent by its nature gets taken up while the important gets put off.  If we are not thinking carefully about all this, it isn't hard to say something that you know is important can be done by someone else and can be done tomorrow.  Of course, until there is no one else and there is no tomorrow.

I was thinking the other day about asking elders to say in the next session meeting who they were going to ask to come to church with them on Easter.  Something in me said, "That'd be putting them on the spot and you can't do that."  Then I thought, "Why?"  What makes that out of bounds?  Who created a value that would say sharing about who you are inviting to church would be putting someone on the spot?  If you were in Toastmasters to improve your speaking ability, someone would surely ask about what date you were signing up for to deliver your speech.  If you were in a church to improve your and others' relationship with God, and inviting them to church would improve your and others' relationship with God, someone would surely ask about when you were bringing whom.  Such invitations to share would help us from letting this important thing be done by someone else, some other day.

Hey, and I need someone to ask me, who are you bringing on Easter?  Hey, and I need someone to ask me, "If not you, who?"  "If not now, when?"