Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The Car is in the Garage!

We moved into our first house this past June. We found a Cape Cod that allowed us to convert the two first-floor bedrooms and bath into my Dad's living quarters. As a result, we have a little less space for ourselves than we did in the house we had rented for six years. So moving day consisted in large part of turning the garage into a storage unit. In my mind we would not be settled-in until the car was in the garage. This past week we organized/emptied-out the garage and as of Tuesday night, the car was in the garage. I must've caught a clean-up/organize bug last week, because my office is organized more than it's been in about 10 months. I'm a binge organizer/cleaner.

Disclaimer: this photo is not an actual representation of the Norton's house or personal vehicle

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

What to do about Christmas?


Christmas Countdown Banner

In planning for 2005, churches have had to face a problem for the first time since 1994 - what to do about Christmas - what is a church to do when Christmas falls on a Sunday? Actually, the question churches have to answer is, what will the congregation do when Christmas falls on a Sunday? Remind me to wax eloquent on the relationship of leadership and followership sometime. Anyway...

You know the conclusion we reached at Grace Church, we will have three worship services, two on Saturday night at 6 and 8 p.m. and one on Sunday morning at 10:45. All three services are identical Sunday worship services; will function like our regular worship services with greeters, friendship team, ushers, count team, worship teams and every other group that supports our regular services. There will be childcare up through Kindergarten for all three services (children grades 1 and up can worship with their parents). ABF classes are cancelled. The Saturday evening services are not traditional Christmas Eve services. And to state the obvious, the 9:00 a.m. service on Sunday, December 25 is cancelled, there is only a 10:45 service on Christmas Sunday.

Here's what we tried to navigate...
  • We considered looking at what Grace Church did in 1994, the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, but a lot has changed over the past 10 years. Though we did not investigate further, we couldn't believe that Pastor Young would cancel a Sunday service. We don't close for blizzards, let alone a holiday!
  • In the past, attendance at our traditional Christmas Eve service has been very high, so we figured we would need to add a second Christmas Eve service anyway.
  • We assumed that Christmas morning is a special part of Christmas Day for family celebrations.
  • If every other year we add a service for Christmas Eve, on the year that Christmas falls on a Sunday, why would we take one or more services away?
I am curious to see how it plays out. My guess is that all three services will be well attended, with the services on Saturday night having the largest attendance. I've had fun checking around with other churches to see their answers to the Christmas question.

In 2007, December 23rd falls on a Sunday, then what are we going to do?
My point exactly.

Monday, November 28, 2005

The holy of holies at Grace Church - Part 1

Sorry for the three-week hiatus, but now back to the blog... One of several physical indications of Christ's death on the cross was the curtain to the temple being torn in two (Luke 23:45), opening access to the Holy of Holies. Though all believers were given direct access to the Holy of Holies as a result, ironically, churches have been creating their own holy of holies ever since. I know of at least two that we have at Grace Church.

One of the holy of holies at Grace Church is the church kitchen.

Because the Grace Church kitchens are used to prepre food for the daycare and school programs, they are ruled by the criteria established by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture published in the Pennsylvania Code. This subjects us to regular inspections by the Department of Agriculture, you know the restaurant inspection reports you can read each week in the Sunday paper. This is one of the key reasons we've employed strict policies with the Grace Church kitchens. The Grace Church kitchens are considered commercial kitchens, no different than a restaurant. We have standards we have to maintain, standards that may not concern other churches, so we've put policies and procedures in place to help us maintain those standards. Our multi-use facility presents additional challenges to the kitchens that we've tried to navigate.

The Grace Church building was designed specifically for use by a lot of people with multiple uses. We succeed daily in fulfilling that goal, but it presents challenges too. Equipment and utensils are regularly moved if not misplaced and it's often a challenge to identify who last used a particular room. In the kichen setting, with the aforementioned standards, these challenges are magnified. If you read the Pennsylvania Code, you will find that there is specific criteria about kitchen equipment and utensils. What can and cannot be used, how it must be cleaned, how it should be stored. You can't just use any cooking utensil you can find or you bring from home (when you think about someone else preparing a meal for you, do you really want them to?). To help us hold each group/person accountable, we've been hard-nosed about who uses the kitchen so we can trace back if there are any issues.

Hopefully this gives you a broader understanding as to why the Grace Church kitchens are a holy of holies. It's frustrating to have to follow a complex room reservation procedure and not being able to access resources that would make life easier. The systems we have in place are designed to balance our responsibility to the Commonwealth with our need to prepare food for our different ministries.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Connecting with Youth through Sports

It's playoff time for the fall sports and while the Lititz Christian Girls Volleyball Team received accolades on Sunday, unfortunately, the Lititz Christian Soccer Team didn't qualify for the playoffs (they couldn't produce goals this season). Ironically, the goal scorers for Cedar Crest High School and Manheim Central played for Lititz Christian in Junior High.

While Lititz Christian deservedly received accolades on Sunday there are some other Grace Church connections in the playoffs. My wife and I plan to attend tonight's PIAA District 3 AA Soccer Semi-final match between Manheim Central and Mechanicsburg at Hershey Park Stadium to root on Ryan Hummer, one of Central's strikers. Kick-off is scheduled for 7:30.

I wish I could devote more time to following high school sports, not just for the entertainment value, but as a way to connect with and show an interest in our youth. When adults showed interest in my high school sports teams, it boosted my self esteem and showed me that others were interested in my life. I struggle to connect with the youth of today in a lot of respects, but athletics in one area that I share in common with them. I've heard youth speakers emphasize that the youth of today want to know they matter, want to know that we care about them, that we even know they exist. I find sports to be an easy way for me to communicate that to them.

It means a lot to the parents of the athletes too. Since I can only attend one or two games a season, I like to get the weekly update on how the team is doing from mom and dad. Their eyes light up as they give me the review and how their child did in the recent contests. Athletics are often blown way out of proportion, but it's a great avenue for building relationships with kids and with their parents.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Extreme Makeover: Distler Blog Edition

Since discovering that Blogger allows you to publish it's blog to your own location, I've wanted to modify Pastor Scott's blog into a traditional blog. To date, his blog has been a simple html page with the text and graphics of each week's entry.

Starting today, his blog has been reformatted. We're using Blogger, but publishing to the same URL path and filename, so we didn't have to reprogram any of the links. Hopefully, it will be a better layout for his weekday entries along with supporting XML/Atom feeds for those that are in to that (You can guess by now that I find feeds very useful).

Have you ever noticed how frequently he uses the phrase, Folks, Listen! while preaching? I figured it was an appropriate title, at least more interesting than Pastor Scott's Blog.