Responding to challenge through prayer

We've been facing challenges at Grace Church over the past few weeks. In addition to the extra activity surrounding our Easter activities (At the Hop, Easter Egg Hunt, Night of Worship and Easter Sunday), God has been putting us through some additional tests of our reliance and trust in Him. Such tests are common in ministry.

God seems to test us in waves and though we've never studied it, they seem to come in sets of three. Three families will experience some sort of hardship in a matter of a week or three members of the body will pass away in a short period. All in threes. Of the tests of late, I think we're on successive test number seven or eight, far more than we're accustomed to enduring. It's testing us individually and in most cases, further bonding us as a staff. Our leader/Pastor set the tone earlier this week through a fervent prayer study based on Acts 12 and Peter's imprisonment. I'll try to capture the highlights though since I was late for staff meeting and didn't want to disrupt the study, I listened in from the lobby. Fortunately, he projects well so I was able to follow 80% of the content.

The King Herod of Acts 12 was a ruthless guy who beheaded a lot of people
during his reign.

The original Greek word that's translated fervent in Acts 12:5 is a word they
used to describe physically extending a muscle.

Peter was so sound asleep that the bright light didn't even awaken him
requiring the angel to physically strike Peter awake.

My personal commentary on verse 10... this is the first record of an
automated gate system. We like to think that our electronic contraptions are
innovative, but God's been doing this stuff before the beginning of time.

The group gathered at Mary's house had been praying all night.

Though they were praying fervently, they didn't anticipate God to answer.
They didn't believe Rhoda (who, by the way, in her excitement, left Peter
standing outside the gate while she ran in to announce his arrival).

Thomas didn't believe until he saw the nail-scars; several years later the
prayer-warriors didn't believe until they saw Peter; now, over 2,000 years
later, I still struggle to believe - my commentary.

We are praying with exertion for those who are going through hard times at this very moment. We are praying earnestly that through the Easter activities, the people of Lititz would recognize and see who God is. We are stretching our prayer muscles unlike they've been stretched before that God would bind us together in stronger bonds as a staff and as a church.

A Vote that Counts, at least if you're a Democrat

The value of the Pennsylvania Primary Election was usually lost on me. During the Presidential races I can remember, the nominations were usually locked up by the time the PA Primary rolled around, so it was just a formality. The political climate this year has been quite different and the PA Primary means something, if you're a democrat at least. Though we'll cross our t's and dot our i's and stay away from endorsing any political candidates, we will be one of the polling locations as we've been for over a decade now.

What happens when someone isn't crossing T's and dotting I's

Someone has to fill the role at every church of making sure every T is crossed and every I dotted. If the role goes unfilled, problems eventually happen. Sure, 9 times out of 10, it's only a minimal impact, but that 10th time???

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120511457633523621.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

http://www.wtvynews4.com/news/headlines/16075777.html

Final Hop Photos

Seeing all of this brings the Good to Great quote to mind, "What can we potentially do better than any other company, and, equally important, what can we not do better than any other company? And if we can't be the best at it, then why are we doing it at all?" I think it's safe to say Grace Church does large events well.

And to think in less than 24hrs time, we'll be back in 2008, hosting several thousand families for an Egg Hunt. There's a long night ahead.

Still more At the Hop Photos

More contraband photos

We interupt this broadcast...

I have to break in to update you on progress for tonight's women's event. Since men have specifically been instructed to stay away, I figured some contraband photos of what we will be missing might be of interest. Here's the state of things as of 12:30 Friday afternoon, 6.5 hours before the event.

More to come...

Ministry Partners: Grace Church & Camp Conquest

I had lunch recently with Mike Gehlert, Camp Director of Camp Conquest. Mike shared some encouraging information with me.

• Of the approximate 550 total registrations for the various programs of Camp Conquest, 116, roughly 20% of the registrations indicated Grace Church as their home church.


• In 2007, ninety-three individuals formally volunteered their time at the camp logging 9,488 hours of volunteer service; and that's just the hours Mike could account for.


• Camp Conquest is scheduled to host two Grace Church ministry excursions in 2008: the Women's Graceful Scrappers weekend away and the Men's Retreat.


• Four of the Camp Conquest Board Members consider Grace to be their home church.

I appreciate the ministry of Camp Conquest and the partnership that exists between Grace and the Camp. The strong connection is evident in that we don't just support the camp by sending them money, the body of believers of Grace send their children to the camp and invest their time serving at the camp. It's a wonderful partnership.

Imploding Churches

To my knowledge, the churches in Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus and the others mentioned in the New Testament, are long since gone. I wonder what led to their demise. Whatever the cause, they eventually ceased to exist.


I know of a recent church (not in our area) that blew up over how to handle an unruly child that was disruptive during the worship services. The Pastor of eight years is gone, the congregation split and the ministry has deteriorated. Like any living organism, it doesn't take much to suck the life out of a church and kill it in an instant.


In recent years, two friends of mine who Pastored churches, saw the O-rings of their ministry erode to result in a cataclismic explosion. Fortunately, they and their families have weathered the collateral damage and God's plugging them into new avenues and channels of His global work. But their experiences have made me very aware of the reality of church ministry.


Without the grace of God, the unity of the local church is susceptable to fraction and in the cases I've seen, it's often a simple little rubber O-ring that's the root cause of the major explosion, not a large issue. Thus every issue must matter and be handled with enormous amounts of prayer. And any time the unity of the church is threatened, a proportional response is necessitated.


Here's the latest illustration in my growing file on the topic.


O-ring references... see the NASA Challenger disaster


Have a great weekend!

His Word will not return void

It started in August 2004 and now, three plus years later, it's continuing. In my bi-weekly meeting with Pastor Scott this week, we found ourselves once again reflecting on all that God is doing in our midst and the way the Holy Spirit is prompting people to respond to God's Word. It's incredible in and of itself. That it has continued at a sustained rate, if not an increasing rate, is unbelievable. Though our combined ministry experience of several decades isn't even a hash mark on God's timeline, I can't tell you the number of times we've remarked to each other about how we've never seen believers respond in the way the people of Grace have been responding.


Each exegetical study has produced fruit. Each of us examines our lives and strives, going to great lengths, to apply the lesson(s) to allow the Holy Spirit to mold us closer into the image of Christ. All fulfilling God's promise that His Word will not return void. I've just never experienced it to the extent we've seen.

COMING UP NEXT: How God has been working amongst the Elders

Please join with us in prayer

Pray with us and for us. God has and continues to apparently equip us for something we've yet to identify. Trusting that He's always at work around us and that He'll eventually lead us to a point that requires faith and action; please pray with us that God would open our eyes to where He is working and how He wants us to join Him and use us in what He's doing.

It's both an exciting and frightening position in which we find ourselves. So, continually pray!

All in a day's work - actually only 1 hr's worth

I'll get to some of our contingency plans, but first these messages...

It's often hard to explain what all is involved in church ministry, but the last hour is an interesting snapshot of what a day can entail. In just 1 hour...

I've talked with Meredith Jorgensen of WGAL on details of how Grace Church has helped Melissa Leisey and Laura Spotts.

I've helped put up a bulletin board in the main lobby.

I've communicated to our front desk personnel how to handle inquiries from people wanting to help Melissa and Laura out.

I've coordianted what account will be used and how we'll track the funds that will come in.


Meanwhile...

Jay and a whole wedding party are getting the Auditorium ready for a wedding tomorrow.

The weekly volunteer team is in stuffing Sunday's bulletin.

Classes continue at Lititz Christian as usual.

Daycare continues at MorningStar like any other day.



And I've only been in the office for an hour.

There's no difference between bulletins and missionary slideshows

Missionary slideshows are more and more a thing of the past, but when they were common place, I'd heard someone say that missionary slideshows were more for the missionary than they were for the group watching the slideshow. In many cases, the group watching the slideshow had little connection with those pictured in the slides, the faces in the pictures could've been photoshopped out of a National Geographic for all they knew. To the missionary, however, they'd invested their life into those people creating a deep bond. So while the audience, I'm sure appreciated seeing the pictures and hearing about the ministry, it probably meant more to the missionary. I've realized in recent months that bulletins (both the Sunday bulletin and bulletin boards) have a lot of similarities with slideshows.

Among church office circles, the Sunday bulletin is often viewed as one of the most ineffective channels of communication though for some reason it's the default channel utilized in many churches. If people read the Sunday bulletin, it's rare that they remember to respond to the items that caught their interest when they read it during the worship service. At least, that's the perception in the offices I've worked in. Bulletin boards run a close second.

My epiphany in recent months is that the Sunday bulletin or bulletin board is of high interest to the ministry or person who submitted the information for that publication. The group who requested a bulletin announcement for their upcoming excursion, flips through the bulletin to see their announcement printed. The ministry that requested a bulletin board to highlight their summer ministry week, looks to see the bulletin board. So even though it may not be the most effective communication method, it's important to those groups because they want to see their interest promoted in print. That's as far as I've gotten in my breakdown; I'm still extrapolating further conclusions as to where this leads and the impact it has on our communication methods.

Late addition - I found this correlating post today

Opportunities & Threats to Grace Church

A strategic planning tool is assessing an organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, commonly referred to as a SWOT analysis. The strengths and weaknesses are easy enough to understand, but I find organizations struggle to differentiate strengths from opportunities and weaknesses from threats. In short...

Strengths/Weaknesses focus on the internal characteristics that currently make up the organization

Opportunities/Threats focus on the external factors that could impact the organization

There's a difference in the internal/external and a difference in timing - current/potential. Let me share some of my opportunity/threat analysis of the ministries at Grace that may help clarify the differences. Items listed are not prioritized in anyway.

Threats

Downsizing at the Johnson & Johnson plant in Lititz - the ongoing downsizing and the potential for even more job losses at the Johnson & Johnson plant in Lititz is a threat to our daycare ministry as several families who are employed at the plant bring their kids to our daycare because we're less than a mile away from the plant. The potential loss of those daycare customers is a threat to the future of our daycare.

Warwick and Manheim School Districts continuing to provide a conservative education - So long as the Warwick and Manheim School Districts provide a conservative education (recognizing that's a relative concept) the difference between a Christian education and a public education will remain less noticeable and thus a threat to our Christian school ministry. It's a double-edged concept because this sounds like I'd want the school districts to shift and I don't. But I can't rule out that as parents weigh the options available for educating their children and compare the costs of a Christian education against a free public education at Warwick/Manheim, the differences are not as stark as they are in other parts of the country.

Satellite churches coming to Lancaster - I can't imagine it won't be long before a church or churches establish satellite locations in our area giving families and individuals the option of going to a church where they get to hear nationally-known Pastors on a weekly basis.

The local economy - If, as mentioned previously, Johnson & Johnson continues to downsize the Lititz plant, and if other area businesses follow suit, it will negatively impact the local economy. A drop in the local economy presents a threat to all of our ministries as it will inevitably affect our finances. Fewer families will be able to make the sacrifice for a Christian education causing school enrollment to decline and with less income in the local area, I would anticipate Church giving to decline too.

Future facility expansion - While I dream of us expanding our facilities in the coming years, such projects have been known to divide a church. I'd be negligent to not state that our dream of future expansion could be a potential threat to our ministry.

Opportunities

772 relocated to West Lincoln Ave - The Township/County's consideration of relocating Route 772 to pass right in front of the church is a potential opportunity, possibly sending more traffic and people past the church and giving us a chance to make our presence and existence known. Just think of more traffic having passed by during the Rodeo last June.

Regional or Community Church - we're positioned geographically in such a way that we have the option of choosing whether we want to configure our ministries to serve our local community or to serve the broader region.

Diversity - I don't have consensus data to back this up, but my hunch is that our area is becoming more diverse and will continue to do so in the coming years giving us an opportunity to reach more people.

Draw families together - our culture is naturally spreading families apart with numerous activities. The church has an opportunity to unite families by structuring our ministries to involve family members together.

North Lititz gathering place - Lancaster and some points south of Lancaster provide gathering opportunities... Park City, Penn Cinema etc. But in Lititz itself and north, there aren't many gathering places. It's a role Grace Church has an opportunity to play.

Wedding Chapel ministry - with the recent renovations to the Chapel we can once again provide a service to the community in hosting weddings.



By no means a comprehensive list nor official, just my attempt to show how a list of opportunities and threats differs from a list of strengths and weaknesses.

See you a Mickey G's on Sunday

The Worship Design Team has rolled out another catchy way to package the next message series. Don't let the packaging fool you though, just cause it's a culturally relevant wrapper that's easy for us to remember, doesn't necessarily mean the content's like a watered down drink from the soda fountain.

But in a whole different context, out of nowhere I think we stumbled upon the next wave that's going to spread across churches. For the past, boy, I don't know when it started, so for the sake of this post... several years, gourmet coffee bars seem to be the in thing at churches. I've been asked countless times over the past several years as to whether Grace will take the coffee plunge. Though there are a ton of practical reasons, there's one response I enjoy sharing just for the fun of it.

The coffee-craze has been around for a while and instead of joining the dance years late as yet another follower, I'd rather find and pursue the next thing our culture will associate with casual social gatherings. To date I haven't come up with much more than an ice creamery akin to Cold Stone. That was until today.

Various fast food menu items adorn the main lobby doors, leading one of our guests to the building this Friday morning to excitedly exclaim, "Are you guys getting a McDonald's!" That's it, a Mickey D's! The next church craze.

This is actually a great microcosm of target audiences. Those who come to a service on a Sunday morning understand why there are McDonald's posters in the main lobby or why there are Happy Birthday balloons around the front desk. But to the non-Sunday guest who visit during the week these things have no context other than our front desk personnel, Charlene and Megan.

I felt for them the entire month they were asked over and over by every different guest, "Oh, is it your birthday today?" The target audience of Sunday mornings gets the message, but there are other audiences that receive the message. And, like the man who laughs last, they don't get it.

A World Transformed

Prior to vacation a while back, I took time to walk the aisles in the Lititz Public Library scanning the titles and came across A World Transformed. I enjoy reading and learning about the behind-the-scenes perspectives of events and things I can relate to, like the coup-de-tat in the Philippines in 1989.

Scowcroft and the President detailed the meetings and diplomatic challenges in how the US chose to respond to the political crisis. While they were doing their thing, I was living it on the otherside of the globe. Since our boarding school overlooked Manila, we were in relative safety, but also had a peanut-gallery view of the action. We saw the smoke from the fire that ensued as a result on the airport attack and the rumblings of tank artillery lulled us to sleep at night. We prayed a lot that week for our friends, classmates and teachers, some of whom lived within less than a mile of the action... fortunately, no one was injured. My most serene recollection was, with school closed, a group of us were on campus playing a softball game while a war was being carried out but just several miles away and as we focused on catching fly balls US Air Force F-4 Phantom's were circling overhead providing air cover. Planes that Scowcroft and the President had authorized to be there.

One quote from the book caught my attention. Though I don't remember the specific conflict, the principle applies to any... That evening also reinforced one lesson for me - never believe the first descriptions of a crisis. Amost invariably, early reports are erroneous or garbled, and making decisions based on them could lead to serious mistakes. The difficulty is that there is nothing else to go on, and inaction is rarely a feasible option - one of the major problems of managing a crisis.Brent Scowcroft - p.453-454A World Transformed - President Bush & Scowcroft

It's a principle for me to employ as we face crises at Grace and one I wish the media outlets would accept and apply to their reporting!

Contacting missionaries in the new millenium

I remember my parents and brother sitting around a cassette recorder with a microphone recording tapes to send to grandparents in the US... awaiting the latest aerogramme from Grandma or Oma... urgent messages with stops interspersed coming via telegram... and in the most rare of occassions, sitting by a phone waiting countless of hours to get a line and even then, the connection was so poor you thought you could hear the schools of fish inevitably swimming around the wire that was likely traversing the ocean floor. Such were the overseas communication channels of the past.


In this day, those channels have been replaced primary by email, more dependable phone connections and the internet. I find I have to consciously remember that today's technologies bring our overseas contacts closer than ever and to take advantage of them.


I'm initiating at least montly communication attempts between our church staff and the families we support in faraway lands. Two weeks ago we tried the Weaver's, they were out that day, so we were only able to leave a voicemail message. Friday, we rang the Becker's and were able to talk with them for close to 30 minutes. Next, we'll attempt to connect with the Beuggert's.

This past Sunday, the Next Tier ABF talked with Mike and Joan who are in Cambodia right now. They had a conference call with the whole class that apparently went very well. So whether it's an ABF, the Missions Team or some other where two-or-three are gathered, don't miss out on the opportunity to connect and encourage others.


If you haven't discovered it yet, the internet based communication progam, Skype, is a very user friendly and reliable system. It's been around for a while, so I'm behind the curve having just activated it in the past two weeks, but it's been very effective thus far. Calls between Skype users (I've seen as many as 9 million of them online at one time) are free. I connected with a college friend who's serving in Paraguay on Wednesday. The line was clear as day, as if he was only in Ephrata. In fact, I have contacts in Lancaster County, who for bizarre reasons I don't understand, have to pay a toll call to call me at home. I hope to get them Skyping with me.


We need to maximize today's technologies to maintain, if not deepen, our relationships with our missionary families.

Thank you for calling Grace Ministries, how can I help you?

If you haven't experienced it already, the next time you call Grace Church, you'll be greeted on the phone with, "Thank you for calling Grace Ministries, how can I help you?" As part of the merger that really isn't a merger, we've consolidated the phone answering duties to one position. That means Charlene and Megan answer all phone calls that come to our facility - daycare calls, school calls and church calls. Last time I checked, we average just over 100 income phone calls a day. To emphasize our being one ministry, it seemed logical to refer to all that we do as Grace Ministries.

Anticipating your next call, Charlene and Megan await the opportunity to greet you with, "Thank you for calling Grace Ministries, how can I help you?"

Do you call Him LORD or Lord?

Ever notice when reading your Bible that you see Lord printed in all uppercase or small caps sometimes? As we print the Bible passage for the bulletin each week, we try to maintain the exact same printing as you'll find in your published Bible and that regularly means manually adjusting Lord using the small caps font feature in our publishing software. The English alphabet/language (who am I to be dissecting English?) doesn't convey the nuances of the Hebrew language like Hebrew text does; for one, English has fewer names for God than Hebrew does.

One minor tidbit I picked up in Bible College is that anytime you see LORD in all caps/small caps, it's specifically referring to YHWH or YAHWEH, commonly referred to as the Tetragrammaton. From the Preface to the New International Version, "...the translators adopted the device used in most English versions of rendering that name as "LORD" in capital letters to distinguish it from Adonai, another Hebrew word rendered "Lord," for which small letters are used.

The profs in Bible College also stressed that anytime we referenced to the books with numbers that we specifically use numerical numbers and NOT roman numerals such as 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings as opposed to I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. Though why this was stressed I'm still trying to figure out. Until I do, I won't require such usages in the Sunday bulletin, but we do attempt to faithfully reproduce the scripture text as accurately as possible.

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.