Are you like me? Do you like the good quotes? If not, go find something else to do. If so, read on, my friend, read on...
"The happiest man is he who is able to integrate the end of his life with its beginning."
- Goethe
OR:
"I suggested we flip a coin, but Angela said she doesn't like to gamble. Of course by saying that, she was gambling that I wouldn't smack her."
- Pam Beesley
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Yesterday my wife was out-of-town and went to a new church where she was (I'm not naming names). This church is a couple years old and seems to be doing well.
Afterwards, I called and asked her what she thought. She said, "It was weird. All they did was 'worship.'" "What do you mean," I asked. "I mean the service was an hour long, and the entire thing was worship, from beginning to end. We sat down for 2 minutes in the middle to take communion, but we stood for the other 58 minues, and the whole time we were singing."
Now it's easy for me to put myself in the head of the pastors of that church: It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It would be low attendance. It's nice to have a week off of having to prepare a sermon and produce creative pieces. Maybe they ended a series the week before, and you don't want to start a new series on a low attendance day. Plus, "our people will probably love it."
And all of that might be true. Well, my guess is that maybe half of their people loved it, and the other half most likely hated it. My wife found it annoying - she kept waiting for something else to happen, waiting for a sermon, waiting for anything. And she IS a Christian. AND she said that the band and worship leader were really good. AND she liked everything else about this church. And, AGAIN, she is a Christian.
I wonder how any non-Christians who happened to show up that day felt. Even if there was only one, I wonder if it made that person say, "The music was good, but I'm not gonna go back. One hour of standing there, listening to songs I don't even know was a bit much. Plus I wanted some help for my life, but they didn't give me any." And I wonder if maybe that was that guy's last attempt at going to church.
In an earlier post I talked about the Joe Dimaggio principle: Always keep in mind that person who is there for the first time. They're forming their opinion of you on that day, while all your regulars are not. All your regulars will have all eternity to sing to God, the first time person may not.
Maybe you didn't sing for your entire service yesterday ... but what did you do that may have confused or annoyed or bored a first-time person???
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Are you like me? Do you like the good quotes? If not, go find something else to do. If so, read on, my friend, read on...
"Living the good life is frequently dull and flat and commonplace. Our greatest problem is to make it fiery and creative and capable of spiritual struggle."
– Nikolai Berdyaev
OR:
"Nobody likes beets, Dwight. You should grow something everybody does like. You should grow candy."
- Michael Scott
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I know I'm supposed to have a post about what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving, but I hate being predictable. So I'd like to tell you a few things I'm bitter about this Thanksgiving. I could give quite a list, but I'll keep it short:
1. The proliferation of cran-drinks. I mean, seriously, the first time someone made a cran-drink they said, "There's no way anyone would ever drink this crap." And now that crap is everywhere, and that guy is laughing his friekin' butt off. C'mon people, seriously, no more cran drinks.
2. Words that have two alternate spellings. Grey or gray. Catsup or ketchup. Give me a break! Isn't spelling difficult enough? I'm writing my second book right now (my first book comes out February 1st, you totally have to buy it, it's only the best book ever, that's all) and it's called "Guerilla Lovers" or is it "Guerrilla Lovers"? I don't know, because they're both acceptable.
3. Chef Boyardee. Just never liked that guy.
4. The NFL tradition that Detroit and Dallas always play on Thanksgiving. How about just making sure it's great games?!?
5. Commercials for the news. "Tonight at 11! Is the meat you bought today at the grocery store going to cause you to die?!? Find out at 11! Unless you're already dead! And get the weather with us, because we have the biggest doppler in town!" Seriously, enough of the doppler envy already...
Okay, those are a few things I'm not thankful for...
Are you like me? Do you like the good quotes? If not, go find something else to do. If so, read on, my friend, read on...
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
- Helen Keller
OR
"To be delicate, they hang off me lady's chest. They ... make milk."
- Michael Scott
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Had a good service tonight in the bar ... except ... for those of you who are "preachers" (or maybe another type of public speaker) - ever have a "oh my goodness, I am sucking so bad a trap door should open up beneath me and I should disappear off this stage" kind of night? That was my night tonight. I sucked. It was ridiculously bad. One of my favorite verses in the Bible says that God loves to use the "foolishness" of what was preached to save some. That is the only hope I have for tonight...
Channel 3, CBS, News was there tonight filming. It will be on tonight at 11:00. I think it's going to be a very positive story.
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This will be kind of an odd post but ... This morning we had a team visit that's about to plant a church in North Carolina. I think this is the fourth such group we've had in the last month. I'm also getting to fly to Nashville this week to do some sessions for a Church Planter's Bootcamp.
So here's why I mention this: Back ten years ago when we were in the dreaming stages of planning a new church, we prayed about and put down on paper seven core values. One of them was that we were going to be "Pacesetters." That we would partner with, and teach and inspire and equip other churches whenever possible. Why? I'm not sure. Part of it was that there seemed to be so few churches we could look at as an example of what we wanted to do. We searched all over, but there were almost none. And when we did find a few, I loved being able to study what they were doing and learn everything I could. So we felt like it would be cool to be able to inspire churches that wanted to be really different and reach people who were really far from God. (I don't think it came from any bad, or egotistical motive; this is one thing that was really altruistic.)
What was funny about that core value was that we had four people at the time! In fact, for the first five months of our church's existence we had four people. (Well, six if you count kids.) So at the beginning we had four, and five months later we still had not added one new person! It was pathetic. But still, we put down on paper that we were "Pacesetters." It was laughable. Pitiful really.
But God has honored that desire. From our earliest days we have had people looking at what we're doing. And we've had this happen way disproportionate to our size or level of "success." Even in our first year (when we still had very little size and almost no "success") we received phone calls from a famous church-growth author, and a pastor in Australia, and many others who said, "We've heard about what you're doing and want to learn from you." Every time I was stunned, and then laughed. And I continue to be surprised every time a team drives hours to be with us, or we get those phone calls, or I get invited to speak at something, etc., etc. Especially because we have never (and still don't) do anything to "promote" ourselves. (In fact, this blog is definitely the closest thing we've ever done to self-promotion, and I fought against doing this.)
So why do I tell you all this? Well (and this especially goes out to you church planters still in the dreaming stages) - I believe that the reason we are (to some extent) pacesetters is because ten years ago we wrote down on paper that we wanted to be, and we had good motives, and God has honored that. And if you're in the dreaming stage, I would encourage you to ask God to reveal passions He's put inside you, and to dream big, and to check your movites, and then to put on paper things that you will be, even it seems laughable right now. God loves to use "pitiful," "foolish," "ridiculous," "silly," "pathetic." Trust me, if Forefront can be pacesetters, you can be whatever God has put in your heart to be.
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Are you like me? Do you like the good quotes? If not, go find something else to do. If so, read on, my friend, read on...
"A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake."
- Carl Sandburg
OR:
"It's better to be hurt by someone you know, accidentally, than by a stranger, on purpose."
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Today our staff (there are eleven of us) did a off-site/one-day-retreat kind of thing. The only reason I mention this is to make a suggestion to you. We brought in someone to lead us through the Myers Briggs personality type indicator so we could learn more about ourselves and each other. That is a great team-building exercise and I recommend it.
But here's my real suggestion. The person we brought in to lead it was Ben Arment. In addition to being a trained/licensed Myers Briggs instructor, Ben is (1) a church planter, and (2) an awesome guy who has a real heart for God and lost people. It is very cool to be taught something really helpful, but even more to have it taught by someone who understands what life is like working in a new church.
So, I have no idea if Ben would be willing to come and do something with your staff and leaders, but if he would, I would totally do that if I were you!
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Tonight is our service in the bar (and we wouldn't mind your prayers). Yesterday I heard about something I had somehow missed.
There's a bartender/waitress at this pub where we're meeting who is very pregnant. She used to be a stripper. (Let me make it clear that I have this information second-hand. I have seen her wait on tables, but I have never seen her strip.) Apparently there's not much call for pregnant strippers, so she had to find a new job, which is why she's now at the pub.
Anyway, a couple of our Forefront ladies decided to throw her a surprise baby shower. So a few weeks ago they showed up early on Tuesday night, with all kinds of presents for her! (How awesome is that?!? No offense to any one else's churches, but we have the coolest people on the planet!)
So, as you might expect, this lady is all shocked and surprised and grateful. But then she tells our girls that no one else has thrown her a baby shower! Not her stripper friends, her bar friends, no one. The only baby shower she's had is the one a few Christian women from Forefront threw her; women who had met her just a few times.
Okay, seriously, that's one of the best stories I've ever heard (typically you have to hang out with Tony Campollo to get something that good), and it happened at my church (!), and I didn't even hear about it until a couple of weeks after it happened (!!).
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Want to know how much fun I get to have on a Monday? (Okay, every Monday isn't fun, but today was.)
I spent about an hour this afternoon meeting with a new lady in our church. She came because of the postcards we did last month. She's come five Sundays in a row, and also to our "Starting Point" class, and she's decided to accept Christ. She's going to be baptized at our upcoming baptism service.
Well, it turns out that until coming to Forefront she was a Buddhist. Like a serious Buddhist. Wen her son was born she had him baptized by a Japanese Buddhist monk! (I had no idea Buddhists do baptism. That is just weird.) She was telling me about Buddhist practices she does and I didn't even know half the stuff she was referring to. Like she was a pretty hardcore Buddhist! How did a postcard get her to come to Forefront, and how did she decide to change her life in only five weeks? I don't know. It was (obviously and definitely) God. She also had some seeds planted in her before showing up at Forefront. But I don't really know ...
What I do know is ... that is friekin' sweet!
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Someone named "anonymous" (it's weird how many people are named that) left a question last week asking about serving/volunteer issues, especially with us now having three portable campuses. He (or she?) asked how we encourage people to serve, and whether people see the staff as the one's who are supposed to do everything, and if we hear a lot of "If we had a building..." So ...
(1) I did a post on the issue of how we encourage people to serve. You can check it out here: http://www.vinceantonucci.com/2007/09/serve-this.html
(2) We definitely haven't gotten this one all figured out, and often hear people around the office saying things like, "I need a few more volunteers!"
(3) We started our church out too staff-driven (in large part because our Core Group/Launch Team were basically all non-Christians. And so I would strongly encourage those who are going to be starting churches - get everyone serving, and give high-level leadership positions to the high-capacity volunteer leaders God has given you.
(4) But ... no ... we do not hear a lot of, "Isn't the staff supposed to do this," or "If we only had a building." And this is the beauty of reaching people who are truly unchurched non-Christians. They have virtually no expectations of church! They believe what you tell them! And so if you say that everyone is supposed to serve, and that the staff are equippers of volunteers, they say, "Oh, okay." They DON'T say, "But at my last church..." because they don't have a last church. They DON'T say, "But the way I've always heard it..." because they haven't heard it, and if they have, they've already rejected it. They DON'T say, "If we only had a building..." because, well, we don't have a building. We are a church without a building and so, for most of them, it's never even occured to them that we could (or should) have a building. And for many others, the idea of having a building would be a negative, because it would make us more like other churches, and they don't want that. I seriously could write about this all day. Reaching lost people instead of saved people saves you from a WORLD of problems. (It will also give you a whole different set of problems, but they are, in my opinion, the kinds of problems you WANT to deal with.)
I'm not the type of blogger who writes about what's going on in my life, this is a "theme-d blog" where it's solely about Jesus' mission of helping those who are far from God get close to God, but I had a cool weekend - and it all had to do with that.
Got up at 4:30 am on Friday and flew to Cincinnati to speak at the Impact Conference at Cincinnati Christian University about being Fools for Christ and doing big, wild, crazy things in an uncivilized way, because we have faith in a big, wild, crazy, uncivilized God. That was fun.
Then flew to Nashville on Saturday and spoke at Harpeth Community Church on Saturday night and Sunday morning - getting to talk about how to bust the negative stereotypes of non-Christians, and loving the types of people Jesus loved, and helping them find their way into God's arms.
Then I found out that the article about our bar service was in the Washington Times (!!) on Sunday. I think it was on page 7 (if you have access to that paper and would like to read it). My wife said, "This means George Bush will be reading about Forefront!" I said, "You're assuming, of course, that George Bush can read." (I'm actually not a George-basher, but it seemed like the required thing to say at the time.)
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Are you like me? Do you like the good quotes? If not, go find something else to do. If so, read on, my friend, read on...
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
- Anne Frank
Which is an all-time great quote, closely followed by:
"The eyes are the groin of the head."
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