The First Day of School

I remember the anticipation of a new school year, the joy of seeing friends who were as close as siblings that I hadn't seen in several months because they were in another country for the summer and the excitement of what the school year would hold.

As one of the main high schools for missionary kids in Far East Asia, a handful of my classmates' parents were missionaries serving in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the various islands of the Philippines - so the return of school meant the reuniting with friends. The school's tradition was to gather the entire student body of 700 strong around the school flagpole for a brief ceremony of raising the Philippine and Christian flags and officially opening the school year with a word of prayer.

To my knowledge, no formal opening day ceremony is planned at Grace this morning, though I keep suggesting the idea, but I suspect the excitement is high among the students as they embark on the next year in their educational quest. When we last saw them the members of the Class of 2008 were screaming in the halls celebrating the fact that they were on the cusp of their senior year of high school as the 2007 school year drew to a close. Now they are all of 180 days away from graduation.

Join us in committing this school year to the Lord, that it would be a year full of both academic growth and spiritual growth for each individual and for the student body as a whole.

UPDATE: I didn't have anything to do with it, but the school year kicked off this morning with a 40-minute First Day Worship. Led by the students, we sang choruses, had a time of prayer and launched into the academic year focused on what God wants to accomplish in each of us this year.

The 2008 Church Directory

We are taking a different approach with gathering and checking information for the 2008 Church Directory. We printed out the information we have for every family/individual in the database and mailed it yesterday. Here's how you can assist in making sure we print your contact information in the way you desire...

1. If you find incomplete or inaccurate data, contact us either via email (jlmiller@lgbc.org), by calling the church (626.2155) at extension 1026 or by mailing the form back to the church.

2. If you're information is correct you don't need to respond.

3. Individuals/families that are not in the church database yet can submit their information by using the weekly Connections Card that's in the bulletin or we'll be putting a directory information card in the next month or so.

4. In case you're wondering why we ask you to check "I grant Grace Church and its ministries the right to publish any photograph taken of any member of this family", we do that for promotional purposes. During the year we may take photos of different church activities that we want to print in the bulletin, use on our website or on a church publication. Technically, we need authorization to do that.

We publish a Church Directory to facilitate the Grace Church body connecting with each other. Though Church Directories are often maligned, they are so important that there's one included in The Canon.

What's in a name?

One of the internal jokes among our staff relates to the way the church's nickname, Grace Church, came into existence. It's first use, just kinda happened. However, before we finalized it, incorporated it into our logo, etc., we did some checking. We investigated how many other Grace Churches there were in Lancaster County and the Commonwealth. We discovered there was one church that was officially registered as Grace Church in Philadelphia, but our multiple attempts to contact them were unsuccessful. We felt it was important to use a name that wasn't infringing on the name other churches were using, maybe get their permission or to at least let them know we were planning to use the same name they were using. So much for that.

Several years later what was known as the Grace Brethren Church of Willow Valley started calling themselves Grace Church. And in the past week I've heard the Ephrata Grace Brethren Church refer to themselves as Grace Church on WDAC. Oh well. What's in a name anyway.

How to give anonymous gifts

There are several ways to give someone an anonymous financial gift. I have to state that unless the leadership of Grace Church has announced that a special collection is being taken, any such gift, according to IRS regulations, does NOT qualify as a tax-deductible gift. But that shouldn't stop you from making the gift. Here are several methods you can use to keep your financial gift anonymous:

1. Go to your local bank and ask the cashier for a Cashier's Check in the amount you want to contribute. From what I've seen a Cashier's Check has not identifying information on it other than the bank institution used to produce the check. I think you can have the check made out directly to the person you want to give it to. With the check, you can hand it to someone to deliver it for you.

2. You can give a cash gift, put it in an envelope and ask someone to give it to the person on your behalf.

If you're looking to give a tangible gift, it's just a matter of how you deliver it. You can again ask someone to be your delivery person, you could also drop ship it directly to their address. Or, if you could make it a family deal and plan a covert operation to drop the items at their home without being noticed. Just some ideas.

Christmas Card 2007 Design Phase Begins

My wife has been creating and hand stamping/making our annual Christmas card for the past 9-10 years. She does a tremendous job and invests a lot of effort. The design phase for the 2007 Christmas Card began this week. Yep, it's 95+ degrees outside and so humid the earth itself is sweating and we're contemplating the Baby Jesus, Wisemen and snow and all the winter chills that come with it.

In light of the current weather I think it's entirely appropriate to say, come quickly winter, come quickly and more importantly, come quickly Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Weekday Evening Schedule for 2007-2008

In all the places I've lived I haven't experienced a culture like Lancaster County that was so built around church schedules. It's slowly changing, but remnants are still there. Take for example Wednesday evenings.

I think there are still business that close early on Wednesdays so their employees can go to Wednesday night church.
It's an unwritten rule in the school's athletic league that there are no games on Wednesdays and in some cases, no practices either.

That was the traditional church schedule, services Sunday mornings, Sunday night and Wednesday night. I'm excited that we're adding to that schedule this fall. Our children's ministry is going to make use of break out groups Wednesday night to the point that they need additional room space. Our youth ministry is also planning to use break out groups and was looking for more rooms too. Those two ministries are essentially going to have the majority of our building in use on Wednesday nights this coming academic year.

Meanwhile, that didn't leave enough space for the Worship Arts ministry, so they're moving their rehearsals to Thursdays nights. Our assumption used to be that families would come Wednesday nights, the adults would go to choir practice and the kids would go to the children's/youth programs. From what we can tell, that doesn't hold true so much anymore. So we can make this shift without creating an inconvenience for the average family.

So the building should see even more use and more importantly, we see God working in and through our children's and youth ministries, so we're making adjustments to join Him in what He's doing.

Musical Chairs

We've been playing our own version of musical chairs at Grace in recent weeks. The Worship Design Team (a group that works with Pastor Scott and Matt to plan different elements of each week's service) wanted the Auditorium in a centered-stage configuration for the Samson series. We've used a centered-stage config two times previously and by luck of the calendar, Jay was out of town or unavailable those weeks, so I took charge of laying out the chair setup. For this third time, Jay was around and thankfully, he didn't use my notes.

The setups I used were very boxy and used unusually long rows. Those setups worked, but there downsides:

-with more than 12 chairs in most rows, some event topping out at 30, it was hard to get into a row having to crawl over others who were already seated.

-with each section parallel to one of the walls, we needed to setup additional video projectors.

-with each section parallel to one of the walls, if you sat in the corner you had to turn in your seat to actually face the stage and it felt like you were a long ways away from the stage.

The setup Jay used for the current configuration improves, if not eliminates all of those issues. I give him credit.

We're also working on a revised configuration for the regular chair setup that we hope to roll out in September. We're looking to accomplish a couple of things:

1. We want the main aisle at the back of the room to directly connect with the main lobby entrance.

2. We want the center of the room to be filled with chairs, not an aisle.

3. We want to see if we can put full-width aisles on the outside of each side wall.

It's still in research and development, so we'll see if it becomes reality. We're also exploring other a chair setup system to replace the longstanding ABF-reliant system. Thinking most ABFs view their chair setup responsibilities as a chore, if not a drag, we're investigating whether there are people at Grace who view chair setup as a ministry opportunity. It's a long shot, but we're investigating.

Musical chairs, Grace style.

What's happening with Grace athletic nights?

Monday nights have been associated with pick-up volleyball at the Grace Auditorium.
Thursday nights were associated with pick-up basketball, more recently replaced with floor hockey.

Pickup basketball's been on a break for something like three years now and in 2007-2008, volleyball and floor hockey will be joining basketball taking a break as well. While not something we've prescribed, we see it fitting in with the ongoing morph of Grace Church.

The leaders of pickup volleyball and floor hockey were ready to pursue other involvements at Grace. We encouraged them in their desire to shift, but saw it as an opportunity for the church at large. Demand for rooms has increased in the past 2-3 years and having the Auditorium signed out Monday & Thursday night's left little room for other ministries to get in there.

Though they'll be on a break for at least the next year, we're interested to see where God works in the coming months and how we can join Him, and however than applies in the way the building gets used. In the meantime, the Auditorium will be used by other ministries on Monday and Thursday nights in 2007-2008. I'll describe exactly how in my next post.

Grace Church Bible Reading Challenge - Home Stretch

We're getting close to the home stretch of the Grace Church Bible Reading Challenge. Are you still going strong? I got behind last weekend and spent most of this week catching up and finally caught up this morning. Commitments are tough and they take... commitment.

We've been pleased with the traffic on the Reading Challenge blog. As of Friday night (8/3) at 7:15, by my quick count, I came up with 38 unique contributors to the comments out of the total of 213 comments posted. I'm guessing that about half of the 213 comments are Pastor Scott's, but I'll let someone else count them up while they're waiting on hold during a telephone call or something.

As you can see from the following graph and table there's a sliding trend on the blog as well. The blog spiked to 853 visits on July 18th whereas today, Friday 8/3 registered 264 visits. All in all though, it's been a neat forum for the church body to interact.

The individual pages views listed in the table below report the number of times someone actually clicked on the post for each particular day whereas the chart above reports the daily number of visits to the general blog site blog.lgbc.org.

2007-07-04 to Today

Title	Views
Psalm 119:1-40	369
Psalm 119:81-128	365
Psalm 119:41-80	298
Psalm 119:129-176	275
John 10-12	253
Judges 13-16	247
John 1-3	235
John 4-6	206
John 13-15	181
John 16-18	165
John 19-21	162
2 Peter 1-3	154
1 John 1-3	150
Philippians 4; 1 Peter 1-2	139
John 7-9	137
About the Challenge	121
Philippians 1-3	109
1 Peter 3-5	95
1 John 4-5; 2 John; 3 John	84
Ephesians 1-3	59
The Challenge	37
Ephesians 4-6	33

If you've fallen behind or dropped out of late, I encourage you to get back in the game. After all, it's not so much the challenge that's the point of this, it's our immersing ourselves in our Saviour's Word.

Heat activated alarm

Around 1 or 1:30 yesterday the normal Grace Church summer routine was interrupted by the sound of an unscheduled fire alarm. Well versed in the drill, everyone evacuated in a calm, orderly and timely fashion. I on the other hand was scurrying. First of all, I was in the bathroom at the time the alarm sounded. As I washed up, it dawned on me that I didn't recall seeing Jay Hall's motor scooter in it's normal parking spot, meaning Jay was likely not in the building. When that's the case, I'm the guy that's responsible for handling the alarm.

When an unscheduled alarm sounds, there's added pressure to figure out whether someone inadvertently pulled an alarm or where the problem lies, all the while making sure the building is being evacuated. So I'm running around, trying to assess all of this.

Turns out one of the heat detectors in the attic popped. It was set to trip if the temperature exceeded 135 degrees, which gives you an idea of how hot it was up there. It's been replaced with a 194 degree sensor - otherwise we'd probably have another unscheduled alarm again today and from what the forecast says, tomorrow, the next day, the next day and the next again.

Anyway, it was another chance to chat with the Lititz Fire Chief, Ron Oettel. He and I have developed a casual acquaintance over the past 10 years. I appreciate his demeanor and attitude to these sorts of deals. He's usually very professional, cordial and expresses his best interest in protecting the people and assets of Grace Church. As is often the case with these kinds of alarms, we can spend 30-60 minutes trying to track down exactly which sensor (out of over a hundred in the building) is the one that's reporting trouble. It's often because of dust or like yesterday, overheating. Anyway, during that troubleshooting time, we get the chance to talk and catch up. Of course, all the while the daycare kids and staff were out in the sweltering heat of the parking lot. I regret not letting them at least come in under the main entrance to get in the shade.

Thankfully, we were able to get everything cleared sometime after 2pm and the kids were back to nap time in no-time.

Guarding our hearts and our internet connections

I've appreciated Pastor Scott's admonition over the past three years for us to guard our hearts and in particular guarding them in the area of our internet connections. Matthew's (5:29 and 18:9) pretty clear in describing how seriously we're supposed to treat this stuff - a good reminder for all of us.

At Grace, we take it seriously employing a content filter that's tight enough that it's a nuisance at times, but it's worth the trade off. Not perfect by no means, but we restrict access and track usage. We recently switched from using SurfControl to using St. Bernard's iPrism if you're interested. I've gleaned a lot from working with these companies. One, their databases of sites to be blocked change daily, if not minute by minute. Two, I appreciate their willingness to deal with smut day-in and day-out to protect all of us. Since they often take control of my workstation to troubleshoot problems during tech support calls, I inform them that I've turned off my monitor and to alert me when I can turn it back on while they test if the filter's working etc. They understand when I explain I work at a church and Christian school, but chuckle at how they have to deal with the junk daily and get paid to hip wade in the filth. Another tip I picked up - to test if our filter is working okay, rather than using an explicit site, I use guns.com as a test. It's blocked under the same policy as the explicit stuff, but the guns.com site doesn't run the risk of any elicit pictures coming up on my screen.

With all of that I've been surprised at the number of other organizations that I've had contact with in the past year that don't seem to take a high stance on this. Some don't use a filter at all, others use a filter but never monitor the activity. It takes time, is a nuisance and can be embarrassing to track and at times confront users who are attempting to reach inappropriate sites. It happens and we have to deal with it.

What about at home? I've heard of two products used by several families that they've found successful, if you're looking for resources:
Bsafe Online
Cyber Sentinel
I mention these for the benefit of any readers that don't know where to start in addressing this for their home use - don't take this as an endorsement.

Just like the security system on our houses, locks and deadbolts, these measures do not provide absolute protection. But we still lock our doors because it reduces the likelihood of a break-in. In the same manner, a content filter reduces the likelihood of viewing inappropriate material.

Of course, there are other measures we can take to improve our protection and the protection of our families. Place computers in a public area of your home with the monitors positioned such that anyone can see what's on the screen. Use password protection to restrict access for those who would benefit most from the protection. Just to name a few.

And that is what this is all about, protection. The filter at Grace Church is not employed because we do not trust our staff or students, it's because we want to protect them from coming across stuff they don't need to see. The leaders at Grace recognized from the outset that we needed to offer that protection to our staff. As leaders of our homes, we need to recognize our responsibility to protect ourselves and our families. Join me in doing whatever it takes to guard our hearts and our internet connections.