Security at Grace

The conclusions we reached to solve our security dilemna at Grace is to provide open access for the church side of the operation because we thought it was important that not only the congregation, but people coming to the church for assistance and those types of things, would have access and wouldn't be locked out. Kind of following in the historical tradition of the church, and providing a place of assylum, a place of refuge, a place where you could get help. For those reasons, the church side will remain open and accessible.

But because of the changes in the daycares and schools across our country, and the concern for the safety of the children, the daycare/school areas will have a higher level of security. It will be more inconvenient to access those parts of the building. You'll see in the coming weeks more of the logistics of how we'll carry this out. We've had to put in some new things inside the building to create different perimeters to go with those concepts, but overall I think our next step will be an improvement and continue taking us in the right direction to keeping the children for whom we're responsible safe and securing the building.

More Nativity Sightings

Though he has not visual evidence, Pastor Scott claims he answered the doorbell at his home last night, only to find the wise men standing on his doorstep. Apparently their travels have taken them outside the premises of Grace Church and meeting people where they are.

A first for the Administering Grace blog, Eric Lewis, Seconday Principal for our Christian School ministry, filed the following report on additional nativity sightings today...


BABY JESUS FOUND!!
Nativity characters and exclusive photos!

The Buzz around town was the missing Baby Jesus from the office Nativity scene and the whereabouts of the three, maybe four, “wise men” and their entourage. These wise men have been spotted at rather surprising locations. According to unnamed sources, one office staff was entering the ladies restroom when one of the wise men “jumped” out of the stall!

Well, the Buzz is pleased to announce that many questions have been answered concerning the lifestyles of these Nativity characters when they are not posing for pictures.



Bull’s cousin, Donkey, grabs a few extra hours working security at the LCS office.



This photo is of Mary going “head first” into the candy jar!!

In a surprising file photo from Wise Man “Myrrh’s” college days pranking some of his professors!

One of the angel’s is caught scrolling through Janet’s rolodex, but quickly resumes the pose of innocence. What numbers would Janet have that the angels are looking for??

Wise Man “Frankincense” has an off-season hobby of scuba diving shipwrecks in the Caribbean. Evidently, “Frank” has also played as an extra in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy.

“Bull” worked his way through college as a telemarketer for a 24- hour Wicker Warehouse in Nazareth.

Where will we find them next?

Deacon's add Benevolent Ministry

I'm excited about a new addition to our deacon ministry that is starting to come online. Obviously, the role of a deacon and the ministry of our deacons is quite broad. In addition to helping the needy, they are a very important touch with our ministry. They are charged with caring for our people, getting to know the people on their list, and things of that nature. Often though, the perception of the role of the deacon is that they focus solely on helping people with financial assistance. I often felt that that robbed them of the full magnitude of their role. So recently, the deacons have developed a new component addressing the benevolent needs of people and they have set up a subgroup of the deacons that is responsible for the benevolent side of the ministry. This group will field all requests per need and work with a budget to administer and care for those needs. They have set up criteria to help them add some objectivity to explaining why we help one individual and not another, or why we help people at different levels, things of that nature. So if you are in a position of need, you will find that there is a new process that is being used, and I'm excited about it. I think it adds strength to our ministry and it is a better process to help people out.

Desecrating the Nativity

After Pastor Scott's message on Sunday, O, Little Town of Bethelehem, mysterious things started happening to the nativity in the church office.


The baby Jesus has been missing most of the week, there have been a few sightings and I was fortunate enough to capture Him in his manger for this picture.

And after Scott's comments about the wisemen, they've been journeying all around the 501 W Lincoln property. I managed to catch snapshots of a few of them on their journey.






You might want to ask ADT to alarm the nativity in your house or on your lawn.

A Warwick Christmas - The End

A Warwick Christmas - Part 2

More houses decked out in Christmas decor... Just wait 'til you see these inflated!

Christmas: The Bumps

Young missionary families face all sorts of fears as they embark on their journey to a foreign land, fears of foreign diseases. So it was with my parents and as our launch date approached, my brother and I were pricked and prodded with vaccines and shots to help our immune systems prepare for the disease ridden jungles. Nevertheless, vaccines and shots cannot protect against everything, so before we left the US, anytime my Mom would hear of a child who had been diagnosed with the measles, mumps or chicken pox, she would rush my brother and I over to the house for a play date. Amazingly, neither of us ever contracted those viruses.

In retrospect, those health concerns were laughable. I regularly drank water out of the tap (a cardinal sin in remote areas, all drinking water was supposed to be boiled a minimum of 10 minutes to kill all the flotsam and jetsam) and dined off and on with my friend’s families. How I never contracted ameba, dysentery or any of the other diseases that put the fear of God in the adult missionaries, I’ll never know. Though, I often wonder if my large appetite is because I’m eating for two. Anyway, back to the program…

Having survived the Philippines relatively healthy and returned to the US to discover that it was possible to have cuts and abrasions that didn’t get infected; I figured I was in the clear. Maybe I had an uber-immune system, able to fend off anything. Then the bumps appeared.

It was my third month as Business Manager at Grace, the middle of December. I was in the midst of the steep learning curve and trying to fit in with my co-workers. I distinctly remember going to get the mail one workday afternoon and feeling extra chilly when I got back to the office. I finished out the day, went home and headed for bed. I was exhausted. The next morning I noticed little bumps on my arms. I think I called in sick that day and eventually went to the family doctor. After the visit, I was asked to leave through the back door.

Thinking this could not be that big of a deal, I didn’t bother to pick up the prescribed pain medication, after all, I had survived every other disease; I could handle this. I was about to be humiliated like never before in my life. I itched so badly that night, I was ready to peel my skin off like an orange peel. Fortunately, I had picked up some Aveeno, but that only provided temporary relief when I was completely in the solution. I ran around the house trying to find a straw to use as a snorkel, but that didn’t prove to be effective. By now it was pushing 3 a.m. I hadn’t slept a wink. In desperation I cooked up a batch of oatmeal and plastered my arms, I was going to try anything to reduce the itching. I barely survived the sleepless night, asked my wife to fill the prescription first thing in the morning and stayed drugged up for the remaining 2-3 weeks.

A veteran of the foreign missionary field and having been exposed to the virus several times, I succumbed to chicken pox in Lititz, PA. I presumably picked it up from our school or daycare ministries – one of the occupational hazards of working at Grace. Fortunately, the virus had passed by the time Christmas rolled around. I still haven’t had the mumps or measles and having had chicken pox, I’m now on the list for shingles. It was definitely one of the most bizarre Christmas seasons I have ever had and a time in my life I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

What I'm Like When I'm In the Zone

I greatly appreciate those who, after performing in various rooms for the Walk-Thru, came to the Auditorium to setup chairs for Sunday morning's service. Those who did got a glimpse of what I'm like when I'm in the zone. The hour of day - 9pm, combined with a diminishing workforce and anticipating a higher-than-usual attendance due to the Christmas season all collided to put me in the zone.

I was haulin' the mail pulling out stacks of chairs and intensely trying to get as many chairs setup in the Auditorium (in spite of the North Pole atmosphere). We squeezed in 743 chairs, 600 of which were used during the 9am service and 553 used at the 10:45 service. Our goal is 80% capacity, so I'm glad we pushed ourselves to find as much room as possible.

Thanks especially to Sherrie P's idea, we added enough seats to push us up to 80% capacity.

A Warwick Christmas - Part 1

The next two weeks, the Sunday messages will focus on the little town of Bethlehem with applications to the little town of Lititz. I have no idea what the Worship Design Team has planned for these services, but as I take my daily trip to work via Landis Homes, I pass so many varied Christmas displays that I thought they were worth sharing with the world.

Following are 3 shots of the same thing; I've been trying to figure out what it's supposed to be for several weeks.

Watch for more photos in coming posts.

If Someone Had Only Had a Camera

This past Monday I was covering for Jay while he was out of the office. If someone had only had a camera they could've captured me in my normal work attire, dress shirt, slacks, tie and loafers...

1. Moping and santizing the floor after a child had been sick

2. Mopping up after a toilet overflowed

3. Climbing a ladder propped against the outside of the building to talk to the guy from the roofing company.

Though often inconvinient, the value in filling in for Jay is to see just how many different things he does in a day's work.

What I Love About Grace

As I stated in a post a few days ago, we needed help with chair setup last Saturday. I knew five people had contacted the office, stating they would help out. Much to my surprise, a total of nine guys showed up Saturday to help out and in the span of just over an hour or so, we had the room setup and ready for church. I enjoyed working with Jack Y., Cliff M., John B., Jerry W., Doug F., Andy S., Jim B., Rick G. and Bryan N., many of whom stuck around to help with other aspects of the preparations even though they didn't have to. While the chair setup is a labor intensive task, it's a way for people to be a part of the Sunday morning ministry team.

On top of that, as I went to check one of our computer network servers, I passed Pearl working diligently in one of the classrooms cleaning the desks. She'd noticed they could use a thorough cleaning a while back, so she came armed with 409 cleaning solution and put some elbow grease into it.

I appreciate the people who invest so much time and effort, above and beyond their full time (sometimes even over-time, if not double-time) jobs to be a part of this organism we refer to as Grace Church. That's what I love about Grace.

The Christmas Season has Officially begun

Well, it's officially started for me at least... I made it to Monday night's Christmast at the Cloister program. In talking with friends about the program in advance, I kept getting quisical looks when I'd say, "it's a Lesson in Carols", so I decided to record the program.

You can listen to recording through these links:
Streaming audio / Downloadable audio in mp3

Not wanting to be conspicuous, I recorded it on my Sony CLIE holding it as steadily as possible between my knees for the full 43 minutes. The quality is sub-standard, but it should give you an idea of the content of a Lessons in Carols service (apparently a full service has 9 lessons). I think I was pretty effective at keeping the noise interference down except for in between songs. I was afraid my hand would go numb, so I would move around after each piece. It's hardest to hear the Reverend read the scripture passages and his prayers. Here are the passages he's reading from:

First Lesson - Isaiah 11:1-5
Second Lesson - Micah 2:1-5
Third Lesson - Luke 2:1-7
Fourth Lesson - Luke 2:8-16
Fifth Lesson - Matthew 2:1-11

I purposely didn't sing hardly at all so my voice didn't wreck the recording. I did catch the final service at 9pm Tuesday night and sang to my heart's content. Let the Christmas Season begin!

Analyzing Change to Death

Since reading, Who Moved My Cheese, I've contemplated things that haven't changed, yet still survived. You could say I've been working as Hem & Haw's defense attorney, trying to build their case. Not that I'm opposed to change, I just find it hard to believe that The Creator is the only unchanging thing or being that's survived without changing. Thus far, I haven't come up with much to help my cause.

On the contrary, I just keep coming across stuff for the plaintiff. Take my cousin's recent blog entry (he's worked in Silicon Valley for years for such notable companies as Yahoo! and now Google). His post echoes the mantra in which I'm trying to poke holes: innovate to keep meeting what people expect or die.

Contrast that with this short article from Wired. Yes, the items mentioned have had competition from improved products, but we seem to be content with the originals. Kinda like how I don't bother with the "better mousetraps".

Why the fuss over all this? It's an argument that still in the developmental phase, but the concept I'm pursuing is finding a balance between what a church needs to change in order to stay relevant to the people it's trying to reach, yet, protecting and not changing other aspects of the church. I'm still chewing on how to delineate between the two and define what's changeable and what's not. I picked up several years ago the distinction between preferences and principles, which is a key element, but I think there's more.

Eternal Value

One of the things I love about working at a church is the eternal value of what we do. The eternal value means that were are not always going to see the fruit of our labors. This can be discouraging at times. While we are doing everything we can to be a friendly church, a church where people feel welcome and at home, a staff that cares about those who are part of our body, the one comment I keep making to Pastor Scott is that we keep preaching the gospel. I believe we have been doing a very effective job of sticking to a strong literal interpretation of scripture with deep exegesis and delivering it in methods that are relevant to and connects with those in our services. As long as we keep doing that, we can hold to God’s promise that His Word will not return void. While we may not see the returns in our life times, we can trust and believe that God’s promises are true and that He will use His Word to accomplish His purposes in His time. And there is no greater thing I can think of trying to achieve in the work He has called me to and the work He has called each of us on staff to. It is great to have that confidence.

A Post-It Defense

Speaking of Township meetings, as the Business Manager of Grace Church and the Administrator of Westerly Road Church, I have had the opportunity and actually it has been one of my responsibilities to interface with the local township. It has been an interesting contrast between dealing with Warwick Township in Lancaster County and Princeton Township in New Jersey.

My experiences in Princeton became quite memorable. To get the full context of the scenario in Princeton Township, you have to understand the history of Westerly Road Church. Westerly is a church that was started in the 1950s. It actually came into existence through the work and vision of two sisters and a brother. These three siblings owned several parcels of land that abutted each other, each of them living in houses that were on this land. They owned a fourth lot that was undeveloped at the time. Through a series of events, they felt led of the Lord to build a church on the undeveloped piece which was in their backyards. Interesting side note: they found a church building in a catalog, ordered it, the building arrived on a train, was trucked over to the site, and a building was born.

Back to the story . . . so you have a church building in the middle of a neighborhood. In the 1950s, zoning regulations were extremely lax so there wasn’t much concern for development, etc. There wasn’t much record of public opposition from members of the community. So in the middle of this little residential neighborhood, you have a church. The building was relatively small but it wasn’t long before additions were being added. Fast forward 30-40 years and the siblings have passed on and the Princeton community has become quite liberal being a college town and there is much opposition to the church. What were originally the sibling’s homes have been converted into a missionary house, a parsonage, and the third one was converted to a church office. My office was once a bedroom.

The relationship between the church and it’s immediate neighbors grew very, very cold over the span of time and in the mid to late 1990s one of the neighbors filed a complaint with the township that the house that had been converted to the church office was being used improperly against the zoning regulations. They were essentially trying to kick the church office out of the house. They wanted to see that property returned to residential use. Now the church had gone through the appropriate approval process but the documentation that the township had was not crystal clear. So a hearing ensued with the township, many meetings, the church sought legal counsel and it became quite a contentious issue. As it turned out the township official that gave the approval had a reputation for doing things subjectively and also a reputation for not keeping the best of records. As fate would have it, that individual had passed away a year or two before the complaint was filed.

So everyone was in a predicament on how to solve this because you have a group using the building that was under the understanding that they had been given permission to use this building. The township acknowledged that the official that gave the permission had a reputation for being subjective but wasn’t around to confirm or deny what the agreement was. My role in all of this was fact-finding, digging through files. I get a kick out of looking through historical documents and like I did at Grace when I first arrived, spending time digging through archives gleaning the history and what the church has been through. So, as we are going through this, I am digging through any file I can think of that might be related to our use of the office. I found the construction permit document, the certificate of occupancy, some notes and meeting minutes discussing the issue, etc. I also went through the township’s records where I would eventually find the crux of our argument and the deciding factor in our meeting with the township.

So, the township held a public meeting, our legal counsel is there leading our discussion and participation in the meeting. The meeting room is packed. Anything that involved the church always drew out the entire neighborhood surrounding the church. We, in turn, would challenge our entire congregation to show up. So we have 200 people squeezed in this tiny room, people sitting on the floor and lining the walls, every seat filled, with a thick tension as angry neighbors are squeezed in next to church members. And as the discussion of the meeting is going back and forth, finally the lawyer calls me forward. I oathed-in pledgeding to tell the truth etc. and asked what I discovered in the township records. So, I convey for the public record that I discovered on one of the documents in the township records was a Post-It note with a short but brief scribble along the lines of, “I’m okay with this.”

I’ve always thought it was intriguing that one little post-it note from some time in the 1980s would play a key role in our defense. Anyone could’ve pulled that file and removed that note without anyone knowing. The 3M glue could’ve gone dry for that matter! But in God’s sovereignty, that little 2”x2” Post-It had glue that was so strong, it held an entire defense.

Joint Strategic Comp Plan - Public Hearing

I attended the public hearing last night on the Joint Strategic Comprehensive Plan. Much to the encouragement of the steering committee, township/borough officials and everyone that's worked on the project for the past year, there were more than 50 people in attendance. The presentation was the same as the one I attended just over a month ago, but the public comments were entered into the record at this meeting.

Grace Church submitted a letter to the Steering Committee with our comments a few weeks back and they entered that into the record. We were very impressed with the plan, but felt while steps were continuing to be taken to preserve the agricultural heritage of the area, the religious heritage was being forgotten. As part of the fabric of the community and as providers of more and more civic services to the community, the role of churches in the region has to be a consideration. The feedback to our comments has been positive and it was good to see at least three other Grace attenders at the public hearing.

Fortunately, I took a camera along with me and I snapped a couple of shots of maps that pertain to our location.


Map #1 - New roads being considered



This graphic shows future roads that are being considered. I added the yellow X which indicates the 501 W Lincoln property and the yellow O which represents the property we own across the street. Extending Arrowhead Dr should be a favorable addition (if it is actually implemented) to the church because it will give us an access to the other property.

Map #2 - Traffic study in 2005

Average daily traffic in 2005 that drove by the church on W Lincoln Ave was 5,390 a day. That compares to 16,000 a day on 501 North of Lititz.

Map #3 - Traffic study

Comparing 501 North of Lititz with 501 South of Lititz, 16,000 a day north of town, 22,160 a day, south of town.

Map #4 - traffic study

About 10,000 a day take Newport Rd heading East towards Rothsville.

This information is of interest to Grace for advertising purposes and for the potential relocation of Route 772. But I now realize that I didn't pay attention to the volume on 772, so I guess I'll have to go back to the Twp to look at the map again. The maps (there are like 9 or 10 others not pictured here) and the draft plan are available at the Twp and Borough buildings.

In my next post, I'll share some of my more memorable Township meeting memories and why Post-It's, a simple 2" x 2" piece of paper can become so important.

Christmas at the Cloister

As December is now upon us, I just wanted to remind everyone that the Cloister Christmas program is coming up on December 11 and 12. Performances are at 6:30, 7:45, and 9:00 pm and tickets can be purchased through the Ephrata Cloister by mail only. I find it to be one of the best ways to start the Christmas season.

Help needed, chair setup on December 9

The chairs in the Auditorium need to be specially arranged on Saturday, December 9 for our Sunday service on the 10th. While Adult Bible Fellowship classes (ABF’s) are usually scheduled to help with Auditorium chair setup, an ABF is not assigned this week. In addition, with the school Christmas program scheduled for Friday, December 8, all of the chairs will have to be taken down and then reset in this special arrangement. We could use your help on Saturday morning, December 9th to set up chairs. Please contact me if you can help us out. We really need you!