Thursday, September 21, 2006

New Posting Time

Did you notice the new posting time? It's now 8:10. As promised, I said I would change the posting time depending on the outcome of our game night. In actuality, I'm being gracious. Due to darkness our last gamenight was called after only 2 games with the guys having won 1 game and gals having won 1 game - we simply were too tired to play a tie-break. When deferring to the aggregate scores of the two games, the guys were outscored (but to my knowledge that's never been an official determinant of a winner in this league). In any event, our lowest game score was 810, thus the new posting time.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

An iPod, a Time Share and a Picture Directory

What are all things you can get "for free"?

I like to get things for free and am often willing to endure things I generally consider unpleasant for the sake of receiving a "free" item. I recently was offered a free iPod Shuffle if I participated in a 1-hour software demonstration. Since the software was mildly of interest to me, I decided I could afford to give up an hour and getting a Shuffle was a bonus incentive. No harm, no foul and I'm hip with today's youth with my iPod (though Apple just released new versions which make mine out-of-date).

For vacations, my wife and I have found Time Shares to be a frugal way to get out of town for a week at minimal costs. Oh, we don't own one, but friends of ours do and offer to let us take advantage of the extra vacations. But at each time share, we're offered a morning-long sales pitch for which the resort will give us free stuff (a round of golf, a dinner or something like that).

At Grace, we're about two-thirds of the way through getting pictures taken for the church pictorial directory. The picture directory is another "free" deal. Get your picture taken and you get your picture in the directory and a free copy of that photo. But in exchange you have to sit through the sales pitch designed to get you to buy even more pictures.

With the church picture directory, I'm guessing that most of us aren't interested in buying the pictures. We simply have our pictures taken to participate in the directory. I'm trying to get statistics from the directory to test my assumption, but I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to discover. But are we really being fair to the sales people who are trying to make a living based on selling us pictures? I'm finding the picture directory experience to be more and more awkward. I feel like I'm taking advantage of these people, even though their company made the initial offer of get a picture for free, they're assuming that we won't settle for the minimum offer and that they'll actually make some money off of us.

All that to say, I think this may be the last picture directory we do at Grace in this format. I wonder if others find it as awkward an experience as I do.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Security dilemma

Securing a church facility which includes daycare and school ministries is extra challenging in our times. Daycares and schools across the country have increased security in light of Columbine and the other tragedies that have occurred over the past decade. It's not uncommon to find such facilities in a lock-down mode with no open access to the public. In a day when we have to anticipate minors not responding to conflict appropriately, when we have to anticipate child-custody issues, when we have to acknowledge the sensitivity of private information in the information age... all things that are inherent with daycare/school ministries.

At the same time, churches have played a safe-haven role in the community... a place where anyone can go for help, a place were anyone can seek, to a certain extent, asylum, a place worshippers call their church and can go anytime.

It seems these two paths are on a collision course, if they haven't collided already. At Grace we introduced new daytime security measures last spring and we're hoping to introduce further improvements in the next month or so. Our biggest dilemma has been trying to navigate these two forces: the security needs of our daycare/school ministry and the open-access needs of the church.

We had reached a concept of keeping the main lobby an open access area, meanwhile isolating it from the rest of the facility. The downside to the concept is that it would create obstructions in the main hallway, obstructions that I fear would negatively impact people flow on Sundays. The traffic flow on Sundays is of great concern to me. We have a lot of people moving about our building between services and I find it challenging to get from one end of the building to another - it's like the Christmas shopping season, it's so crowded. Putting doors across our main hallway just doesn't seem like a good idea with the volume we already have.

But not to obstruct the hallway means that open-access to the building will be sacrificed. I don't like that, but I'm struggling to find another solution. Instead of being able to walk in the church doors, the entrance will be monitored with a intercom/bell-type system where the receptionist will have to buzz people in. Remember, this is for business hours only. On Sundays the doors would all be open.

That's where my thinking is right now. It's a dilemma. I'm torn between giving up the open-access and obstructing the hallway traffic flow.


Reimbursements and internal controls

I inherited an accounting department with strong internal controls and I've benefited greatly from it. I applaud Tom for his efforts to get our church to that level. But I'm constantly pressed to make exceptions and to loosen the controls for the sake of convenience. It can be tough to hold the line when you see ministries having to go through what seems like laborious paths to achieve a simple destination, but when I hear of stories of the person who received some $35,000 in fraudulent mileage reimbursements it affirms our hard-lined approach. The internal controls are not a nuisance, they're a protection. And while they protect the church, they also in a large way, protect the individuals, even though they don't always recognize it.