Posted by
Chris – December 30, 2007
OK, so there aren’t too many hazards living in Iowa as compared to anywhere else in the USA, but one, for sure, is that every four years we get some ridiculous media attention leading up to the caucuses. They’re coming up this Thursday, and then, please God, maybe we can be done with the attention and the advertising for a while.
A couple of weeks ago a reporter from Newsweek contacted an elder at Noelridge and wanted to know if she could come interview some of our folks to do an online piece on Iowans in preparation for the caucuses. The end result is a three-minute video that most prominently features our pastor, Richard Marsceau. You can also hear me plunking away at the piano and singing through the last minute or so. Pretty cool stuff.
Watch the video here. Sorry, Mom and Dad, it’ll probably be impossible to watch via dial-up. I’ve got it saved, though, so remind me next time you come visit.
Posted by
Chris – December 30, 2007
A couple of weeks ago a reporter from Newsweek contacted an elder at Noelridge (the parent church of our church plant, and where I’m still attending until the plant starts up THIS WEEK), and wanted to know if she could come interview some of our folks to do an online piece on Iowans in preparation for the caucuses (also this week).
The end result is a three-minute video that most prominently features our pastor, Richard Marsceau. You can also hear me plunking away at the piano and singing through the last minute or so. Pretty cool stuff.
Watch the video here.
Posted by
Chris – December 29, 2007
I’m convinced that picking a good Church Management Software (CMS from here on out) will be an important thing for Imago Christi. So for the past couple of days I’ve spent some time Googling various CMS options. There is no shortage of options; the Google search has multiple pages of primary sites that offer some sort of software, and those software packages seem to run the whole gamut. There are the amazingly cheap and out-of-date packages that are still being offered; there are more expensive packages available. One particular frustration is that a bunch of sites won’t even give you pricing information up front; they want your contact info so they can have someone call you. I hate talking to salesmen, and there’s no sense in them pitching a $1000 software package to me, no matter how good it is – we can’t afford it.
Being a geek and very internet-savvy, it boggles my mind how many really really poor websites there are for these programs. Seriously, the sites look like they were created in 1995 by a high-schooler who needed a weekend project. And like they haven’t been updated since then. I have to wonder how many copies of the software they’re selling if they can’t even afford a decent website.
There are a couple options I have found that have web-based solutions that are very attractive: PurposeWare and Church Community Builder. Both appear to be much more robust than the typical CMS, allowing church members to access the tool online to update information, sign up for mailing lists, etc. Of course, both of these places want me to leave my contact info so they can get back to me… but I think with these two it’ll be worth it. At least these two have websites that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have associated with my organization.
I’ll do some more evaluation in the next week and try to come up with a recommendation. Then we just need to justify it in the budget…
Posted by
Chris – December 27, 2007
Alex Strauch provides some practical guidance for becoming a church that truly cares for people (from the Summer 2007 edition of Emmaus Bible College’s Journey magazine):
- Organize a Benevolence Fund. Caring for the poor and needy cannot be done in a willy-nilly fashion… it’s amazing when we put our money together what we can do!
- Establish a Father Program. Many children in our churches today come without a father… over the years my four daughters would bring children, mainly girls, from school to the table to eat with us. For many of these girls it was the first time they were at a table with the father present.
- Provide language training for new immigrants. A number of our women had professional training and detrees in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and they said we should do this. We were wondering, “Where are these people going to come from? We haven’t seen any immigrants in the neighborhood.” Nevertheless, we put up a sign reading “English as a Second Language.” Within one day we filled the whole program.
- Provide hospitality to poor and needy members. People love it when they come to your table for a meal. And the Lord Jesus instructs His people to invite certain kinds of people for a meal: “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” (Luke 14:13).
- Provide the poor with cars, furniture, and household goods. How often we’re getting rid of a car, selling a car. Don’t sell it – give it to someone!
- Raise awareness of poverty both local and global. Even if your assembly is middle class or upper middle class, there are bound to be people who are suffering financially. But you must have your eyes open to see it.
- Acknowledge the reality of the AIDS epidemic. One of the greatest tragedies in world history is right here before us…
- Leaders must set a vision before the congregation. We need to set a vision before our people that pulls us out of our self-centeredness. Our people need to be stirred to a compassionate care for our congregation, and a compassionate awareness of a world situation that is almost unspeakable.
Posted by
Chris – December 27, 2007
What a great Christmas, and now how good to be home. We spent several days at my parents’ place in Wisconsin, though for the first day or so they weren’t there… they had to go to Chicago to pick up my sister, who flew in from Panama, and my brother, who flew in from DC. They made it within about 30 miles of home before the snow storm got so intense that they couldn’t manage to get any further. So they got a room, stayed the night, and waited for the snow plows. By noon the next day they made it home. It was sure good to see everyone.
Christmas was a marvelous time. It’s always such fun with small children, and Laura and Addie just loved opening their presents and playing with their new toys. The carnage comes when we bring them all home and add them to the existing pile of toys. I think it’s time for a garage sale or a large donation to Goodwill.
We did manage to get at least one decent family picture taken, so here we wish you a belated Merry Christmas! (For family and friends: I’ll get a bunch more uploaded to Flickr sometime this week.)
Posted by
Chris – December 27, 2007
Imago Christi’s inaugural service is just over a week away – January 5, 2008. As I noted previously, it’s a bit of a challenge to pick the music – something appropriate for the first service of a new church, setting the tone for services to come, and having something accessible for those who are coming who may not be familiar with the songs.
I’ve settled on these four:
Blessed Be The Name of the Lord (Clinton Utterbach)
Praise to the Lord, The Almighty
My All In All (Dennis Jernigan)
Jesus, I Come (with new tune from RUF Hymnal)
I think this keeps things relatively simple, yet incorporates some new and old lyrics of praise of the Father, praise of the Son as the Lamb of God, and a beautiful expression of the Gospel in the final hymn. I pray it will be a blessing to those who attend.
Posted by
Chris – December 26, 2007
Yes, the title is overly-long Google linkbait. But one thing I have been astonished with is just how many details there are that need remembered to plan for the first (or for that matter, any) worship service at a church plant. So, without any further ado, here’s my running list. I’ll update it as I remember more things.
Music-related
- Worship leader & musicians
- Sound equipment
- Sound technician
- Recording gear to record sermon
- CD for playing before/after service
- Words for the songs (either song sheets, hymnals, or overhead projection)
- Lapel/wireless microphone for pastor
Giving-related
- Collection plates/buckets/box/whatever
- Ushers
- Counters
- Treasurer
- Budget
- Receipts (donors will want receipts!)
Service-related
- Bulletin
- Communion service
Children’s ministries
- Nursery workers
- Children’s church workers (if you have it)
- Sunday school teachers (ditto)
Etc
- Security
- Clean-up crew
- Set-up crew (if you’re packing in/out)
What items do you have to add?
Posted by
Chris – December 20, 2007
Today is my last work day for the year. Thanks to a day of vacation tomorrow and a generous holiday schedule from my employer, I will be able to enjoy the better part of two weeks away from the office. Not that it’ll be slow during that time… we leave Saturday to visit my family in Wisconsin. It will be so good to have everyone back together… Rebecca gets back from Panama on Saturday. Oh, and I’m also very ready to be allowed to dig into the massive pile of cookies that Becky has been making over the past couple of weeks. I think her goal this year was to make so many cookies that she could take them up to my family’s place and still have cookies left at the end of the visit. I’ll bet she achieved it.
Lots of other blogs do Top 10 lists at the end of the year, proclaiming their best new albums or movies or books or the like. I don’t think I’ll be doing that here. First of all, I doubt I’ve bought 10 CDs all year. And I haven’t watched too many movies, either. I may do a book roundup, though – I’m probably gonna be over 80 books for the year, maybe I can do a retrospective.
After reading the above two paragraphs, I’m amazed that content like this keeps anyone coming back to this blog. 
Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.
Posted by
Chris – December 20, 2007
We’re going to have our first worship team practice for Imago tonight, which means I need to have music selected for our first service. Selecting church music is normally a bit of a challenge, but selecting music to kick off a whole new church? Intimidating. I’ll need to pick a mix of old hymns and some more modern stuff; I’m thinking of some Chris Tomlin and maybe Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. Any ideas? Feel free to leave them in the comments. I’ll post the list when I get it finalized.
Posted by
Chris – December 18, 2007
Why do geeks get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?
Because oct(31) == dec(25).
HT: The Wonz.
