They're back!

It's the beginning of day 4 of the 2006-2007 school year; the students returned on Monday. The building is abuzz once again with activity, school bells, and lots of activity. It seems a lot of people assume that I resent the return of the school year as they ask questions like, "Did you miss us?", "Don't you wish the building was still empty and quiet?" It's actually the opposite, in some ways, I wish the summer break wasn't so long.

See from my perspective when the building is empty for 16 straight weeks, we cram to get all sorts of projects accomplished before school begins in the fall. While it's a logical response, it makes for crazy and hectic summers. So in many respects I look forward to the return of school because with it comes a more normal routine.

And most important, the daycare and school represent between a third to half of the lives our entire ministry impacts on a weekly basis. They are a big part of our ministry and key reason as to why I'm here.

AFF - The Draft

It's the return of our Adult Football Fellowship (AFF), kicking off the first week of September. We convened for our annual pre-AFF organizational meeting last Sunday (aka the Fantasy Football draft) to set our teams for this coming season.

I meant to look for some articles online to help me improve my draft selections (I'm notorious for having a very weak draft strategy), but I ran out of time. Inspite of the lack of external help, I think I ended up with a half-decent team this year. This format for year's league, The Pulled-Pork League, is each team will play 4-Quarterbacks, 4-Running backs and 4-Wide receivers each week (a non-traditional format). By the luck of the draw, I had the first pick with which I selected Peyton Manning. My team rost includes:

Peyton Manning
Matt Hasselback
Trent Green
Drew Bledsoe
Byron Leftwich
Tiki Barber
Steven Jackson
Reggie Bush
Brian Westbrook
Kevin Jones
Larry Fitzgerald
Roy Williams
Deion Branch
Darrell Jackson
Derrick Mason

Side note: My SpeedRacer team has been in first place for several consecutive weeks, but has slumped as of late dropping into second place in the Grace Racers NASCAR fantasy league.

The guy in the blue shirt

What I learned at last week's Twp mtg

I was at last Wednesday night's (8/23) Warwick Township Planning Commission meeting and I learned some interesting things. Since the meeting is a matter of public record, what I'm sharing isn't private info. So here's what I learned...

A Turkey Hill gas station is planned to be built on Newport Road near entrance to the Newport Square development.

Turkey Hill is actually owned by Kroger.

With the high price of gas, gas stations are seeing a huge increase in drive-offs.

The gas stations make a ton of money off of the cold drinks they sell, so much so that in designing gas stations the aim is to fit as many refrigerated units in the store as possible.

Because the new gas station will be nestled in a residential area, the planning commission was concerned that the station wouldn't be lit up like other large gas station complexes that can be seen from outer-space.

While to some sitting through a plan review discussion like this that took about 45 minutes may seem a bore, I learned information that fascinated me and I enjoyed watching our local government at work. I continue to be impressed with the organization in Warwick Township and their commitment to excellence.

A blog year in review

Administering Grace was launched August 18, 2005, just over a year ago and I thought you'd enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the behind-the-scenes blog.

I've posted 133 entries in the past year.
The two entries that generated the post comments were:
Grace Church Video Phone System on March 2
The Sword-Wielding Pastor on March 6

An average of 14 people check the blog each day, a blog-record 51 checked it on January 9. If I were all about numbers I'd keep posting on topics like last Friday's because that generated a lot more hits that usual - 46 today as compared with 20 hits last Monday.

An average of 94 people check the blog on a weekly basis with a monthly average of 378.

The highest percentage of readers visit the blog between 9 and 10 a.m. and Monday is the day when people read the most.

While read predominantly by people in the United States, the blog has attracted readers from Canada, The Netherlands, Japan, India, The Russian Federation, Philippines, France and Australia.

Inspite of my recommendation, the vast majority of the readers access the blog through Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Through all of this, hopefully those who are connected with Grace Church on a regular basis have gained a behind-the-scenes insight into why we do some of the things we do at Grace and learned a little bit more about the Business Manager.

$1M Bill

While I am all about confidentiality when it comes to church giving (as I explained yesterday), I couldn't pass up the opportunity to let you see what came through in this week's offering.

Now over my few years of ministry in the church, the offering plate has been a magnet for the unusual. In each instance, I've assumed that the donor, following the New Testament example, was giving of what they had with the purest of motives. It's not uncommon to find foreign currencies representative of multiple nations and in one case we even received a wedding ring. I can promise you that we value each gift and treat it respectfully as the Lord's, regardless of how unusual it might seem.

In the case of the wedding ring, we first were concerned that it may have fallen off the persons finger by chance so our first priority was confirming that it indeed was meant to be an offering to the Lord.

All of that said, I haven't decided what to do with what we received this week...

Hibernation begins next week

If you've read my bio you may have taken note that I play in an over-30 soccer league. It's one of the highlights of my week between the months of April and August each summer.

It's a wonderful league in that the focus is on having fun and not getting injured. The regular mantra among all of the players is "remember we have to go to work tomorrow!" It's a family oriented league too, which means in those rare moments of frustration and expletives start to fly, there's usually one or more teammates that begin yelling, "remember the children, remember the children."

Though April is often a month full of sore muscles which make it difficult to walk, by the time August rolls around, I hate to see the season end. And that's the case this week as it's the last week of the season. I've had a blast (as I always do) playing this year. We don't keep track of wins/losses, but it seems like our team lost more than we won, but we had fun none the less. We had a good combination of teammates who got along well and had fun playing together. To my knowledge, no one's been injured this season that didn't have a pre-existing injury.

For me personally, I continued my streak of scoring at least 1 goal a season, scoring a few weeks ago. Though I'd hope to get playing time in a mid-field position, the team needed me to defend which allowed me to improve my defending skills.

Starting next week, my winter hibernation begins (some call that the NFL), but I'll emerge from the cave once again next April ready to pull the boots on once again for another invigorating season of over-30 soccer.

Giving envelopes - why we use them and how we protect donor information

The main reason we use giving envelopes is to provide donor confidentiality. If you watched the movie Mission Impossible, you can think of the giving envelope numbers as the Grace Church NOC list. If you don't have the list of names and envelope numbers, you have no way of identifying the donor of each giving envelope. The list of donor names and envelopes is a list we keep highly secured. We have one individual designated with handling the list on a regular basis. To serve our donors when troubleshooting giving questions, two staff members can access the list, but we attempt to get the donor's permission before doing so. As they open the giving envelopes and count each week's offering, the members of the Count Team obviously see the information firsthand. Everyone who is involved in handling the finances are required to sign a financial confidentiality agreement. My predecessor, Tom Avey, worked very methodically to set up financial systems and procedures that handle sensitive information in a highly confidential manner and I've worked to maintain those standards.

The second reason we use giving envelopes is to help us track donor contributions for IRS purposes. The IRS requires us to provide donors with receipts of their tax deductible contributions. The envelopes help us keep track of individual donor's accounts and their weekly donations.

If you would like to request numbered giving envelopes so your donations are more confidential and to help us track your giving record, please contact Brenda through the Church Office. Use of numbered giving envelopes is not required, but I do suggest it for higher confidentiality and to assist us with record keeping.

My Review of Open Office

I told you about Open Office back in April and I concluded my testing today.

Since we use Microsoft Office XP, that was my standard of measure; was Open Office capable of doing everything I do with OfficeXP? Let me break it down into the sub-applications: word processing, spreadsheet, etc.

As a word processor, Open Office is just about equal with Microsoft Word. There weren't many features that Open Office couldn't do and it's seamless interfacing with the other programs in Open Office make it a better product in my mind. It's clear that the most time and effort has been spent perfecting the Open Office word processor. In addition, it's great to be able to save files in just about any format you'd need including Word format, and even straight to a PDF.

As a spreadsheet, Open Office was again just about equal to Microsoft Excel. I did find that Open Office did support some of my more elaborate charts that utilized two y-axis, but I only have one of those in all my files so it wasn't a big deal. Open Office had all the formulas I needed and supported everything I wanted to do.

I didn't have a need to try out the other aspects of Open Office, so I can't comment on those.

In general, Open Office is a feature-rich, stable office application platform. Because it is so integrated it does take a while to load, but that's a worthy tradeoff for the synergy you get in return - much better integration than what OfficeXP affords.

In the end, I've decided to wait before making a switch to Open Office for all of our offices here at Grace. It's a definite possibility in the near future, but not something I'm ready to tackle right now. I am using Open Office at home as it's a cost-effective way to have a powerful office application suite on my home computer and it's definitely up to snuff in that arena.

Find out more at openoffice.org

Our greatest expense

I keep up on a blog by former employees of the search engine Google and recently, one of the Xooglers recounted a meeting in which Sergey (one of the co-founders of the company) addressed a group of the employees…

Sergey once asked a large assemblage of Googlers what our greatest corporate expense was. “Health insurance!” was one answer shouted back. “Salaries!” “Servers!” “Taxes!” “Electricity!” “Charlie’s grocery bills!,” came back others. “No,” said Sergey. “Opportunity cost.” He explained that the products we weren’t launching and the deals we weren’t doing threatened our economic stability more than any single line item in the budget. It became a regular call and response at staff meetings and added to the sense that no matter how hard we were working, success was slipping through our fingers. Rather than cause employees to feel defeated, however, it became a rallying cry to redouble their efforts.



I found that insightful and wondered what the greatest expense is in the church.

Do you play?

If it involves competition, the answer is yes. You name the sport and I'm up for playing or at least give it a try.

So recently when asked if I wanted to play in a foursome at a golf tournament, I said sure! By no stretch am I an avid golfer. I've played all of a total of no more than 5 rounds in my lifetime, but I've played. I don't own clubs and the last time I played was about 3-4 years ago. But in my book, do I play golf? Sure. It's no different than if you asked me if I play croquet, cricket or cross country skiing.

The tournament was last Friday and from the moment I arrived at the country club, I realized I was as they might say a few clubs short of a full golf bag. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the weather was almost perfect, but it's questionable whether you can call what I did for those 4+ hours, golf.

My scorecard read 97, but that included a good number of 6's where in the interest of time, I just picked my ball up. I think I lost about 12 golf balls, but found 1 for a net loss of 11 on the day. We yelled "fore" for only one of my shots, but no word yet on whether anyone sustained injuries. If you were driving south of Lancaster on Rt 222 and noticed some low flying golf balls... To my credit, our team used one of my 18 drives and I had two other decent shots in the round. But I spent most of the time just enjoying myself - I had so many slices the corner deli called offering me a job!

I identified several years ago that my affection for golf stems from my having no drive to improve. It's the one sport that I feel no desire to try and learn how to play better, no pursuit to perfect my swing. I just like to get out, swing away and watch the ball fly, regardless of the direction so long as no one is injured and no property is damaged.

And such was my mentality on Friday. Let me note here that I had my team sign disclaimers prior to the tournament that my joining their ranks was not going to further their pursuits of winning any of the tournament prizes. It was clear from the outset that this was the best groomed course on which I had ever played and with my game living up to it's billing I realized that I needed to take some unconventional steps to try and keep my score respectable, forgetting standard shot selection.

And so, on several occasions when I found myself in the fairway with 100+ yards downhill to the pin, I pulled out my putter and power-putted away. To everyones surprise, I did so with relative success, reaching the green several yards from the pin. By no means conventional, probably deemed disrepectful to the game by some, but when a fairway is as high quality grass as the ones we were playing - I've seen greens that looked worse than that fairway - why not pull out the putter?

So while it was an enjoyable day, I came to realize that while I'll always be up for a game of golf, I need to change my answer to the question, do you play golf? No, I'm not a golfer.

1am prayer call

Our Maintenance Director is on vacation this week, so I'm filling in. I'm sure he gets his fair share of 1am prayer calls and doesn't even tell me, but I received mine tonight after a full day.

The fire alarms, for which I now have a new-found appreciation after the fire last spring, went off around 12:40 this morning. After talking with the fire chief and cleaning the faulty sensor (oh yeah, it was a false alarm) I decided to stick around for a while to make sure the system was stable again.

So there I was laying in the dark lobby trying to catch a little shut-eye while I gave the system time to check itself and it hit me... it's not often I'm the only person in the building and in a mindset when I don't want to do anything at all. So I prayed...

"Lord, thanks for the ministry you've given me here and the way You are expanding Your Kingdom through us. I recognize that in the leadership position in which you've placed me that I often have to make decisions about our ministries, please give me wisdom in that decision-making and open my eyes to the things You want me to base those decisions on. And I ask that You would continue to work through us and through this building which You've provided for us, to change lives, to help each one of us grow closer in our walks with You."

Next time you hear a fire alarm sound, first exit the building to safety, then consider using it as a call to prayer.

Webpage needs a makeover

It’s been about two years since the church webpage has had a makeover. I can’t decide if I just like changing things or if I don’t feel like we’ve found the right setup yet; but either way a webpage makeover is on the horizon.

While our homepage is effective at highlighting a few key aspects of our ministry, it is difficult to find information on selective ministries until you get beyond the homepage. I know I often click on any link to access the lengthy menu that runs along the left side of the secondary level pages to get to the meat of the entire site. Aesthetically, we’ve made the homepage work, but I know to a graphic-oriented person, it comes off more like a puzzle pieces that were forced to fit together.

Our webpage has come a long way over it’s history; I recently found Tom Avey’s original proposal for the website from some 10+ years ago. I’d like to think that in each makeover its evolved a little bit better and that our next makeover will take us a few steps more in the right direction.

I do hope the new makeover includes:
Drop down menus of some kind at all levels of the site to replace the lengthy menu that currently exists on all secondary pages. While the current menu has been functional, it’s a list the length of my arm and looks like a kid who ran out of paper in class and had to resort to scribbling notes on his hand and on down toward his shoulder. Drop down menus should allow us to present the same lists in a more organized and eye-appealing structure.
A new color scheme – I like purple and Pepto-Bismol pink and all, but I’m ready for a new color scheme.
Find what I need to find – the current site is organized based on my logic, but not everyone thinks the way I do. Some pages are tucked away in corners that make sense to me, but if you don’t think like I do, you may never find them or even know they’re out there to be found.
Media bells and whistles – along with the audio/video techs, we hope to introduce some sort of streaming audio and/or video before long. Whether that’s a live stream of the service or archives remains to be seen.

And in case you’re wondering, I’ve developed the layout of the website for the past four or more years, so I’m criticizing my own work.

Happy Birthday PC!

Saturday, August 12, 2006 was the 25th birthday of the IBM PC which brought to mind my introduction to computers.

Truth be told, the first computer I came across was the abacus - seriously, it's viewed as the first computer ever.
Side note, I think it would be fun to give every stu
dent an abacus and advertise that we give
every student their own, custom-made personal computer. Back to your regularly scheduled
blog...
Store owners and even in the Philippine public schools, the abacus was used for calculating mathmetical functions. I vaguely recall seeing them in use as far back as 1978-79, but I never learned to use one.

My first exposure to an electronic computer was the Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. I was in 5th-grade at the time, attending Faith Academy. I don't know that there were computers elsewhere on campus, but the Middle School Principal had the TRS-80 in his office. Somehow, one of my friends received permission to play games on the machine afterschool and he took me along with him. I only remember doing that once, but it left an indelible impression.

As you might see from the picture, the Model 1 featured a cassette tape drive. If you never experienced a cassette tape drive, you're blessed! My memory recalls that programs took 15-30 minutes to load, but due to often poor audio quality, programs would often misload, requiring restarting the process all over again. We loaded a one dimensional airplane flying game. Contemplate that statement for awhile to grasp the crudeness of all this. In the end, I think the program gave us an error half-way through and by then it was almost dinner time. Though archaic compared to today's standards, something happened that day.

In the next year or two the school had a TRS-80 Model 3 that had a disk drive!!! I also recall taking a little class using an Apple II and learning some BASIC programming.

A reflection on computer history wouldn't be complete without bringing up the Mac/PC debate. I saw my first Mac sometime in early 1985. When you live half-a-world away, technological advances are introduced by the latest missionaries to arrive from the homeland. We never got to see the infamous Mac commercial that introduced it to the US market. No my introduction was Mr. Carlson, who'd just arrived from the US and apparently one of my teachers had asked him to bring his new Mac to class so we could see the newest and latest. I remember my immediate reaction, "Why isn't it in color?"



My family's first personal computer was the IBM PC Jr. which we purchased around 1985. Within a few weeks of getting the machine, my cousin and I wrote a simple BASIC program designed to make the machine appear to have malfunctioned. As a practical joke we ran the progam and yelled for Dad to come quick because something had happened to the computer. It worked to perfection.

From there I took as many computer courses as I could, learning BASIC and Turbo Pascal in high school and helping my parent's co-workers learn how to use WordPerfect and WordStar. When I started college, I went with the intention of pursuing Computer Science, picking up Fortran (not sure why I bothered) and the early parts of COBOL (again, why?!?). Soon thereafter I decided I'd had enough of programming and bugged-out of the program.

Today, computer work is a key role I fill. Between the daycare, school and church office, we have some 100 networked computers in the building. While I don't program, having that background has helped immensely in comprehending what's going on when things hit the fan or understanding new things like the church website.

Seeing how much Faith Academy's investment in computer hardware and education has impacted me, we've worked hard to equip Grace with up-to-date machines and my hope is that we'll be able to expose students to the possibilities in computers.

Happy Birthday PC!

Who moved my toothpaste?

I’m glad our flights to/from California were a few weeks ago and not today. Incidentally, the Distler’s got in last night, so they’ve missed today’s mayhem. Reading about what’s occurring at airports on both sides of the pond triggered thoughts about how much air travel has changed.

It is a challenge to maintaining a normal schedule while flying cross-country since the airlines don’t serve food on the flights. Our original travel plan was a two-flight journey Philly to Dallas, Dallas to Palm Springs. The flight to Dallas was delayed by over an hour, causing us to miss the flight to Palm Springs. That was the last flight to Palm Springs so we were left with the choice of staying overnight in Dallas and flying standby to Palm Springs the next day or switching to another airline and ultimately flying Dallas to Phoenix and Phoenix to Ontario (for non-CA residents, not that Ontario, Ontario, California – look at an atlas already, would you?!?). But in all of this, when were we gonna eat?

Same thing occurred on the return flight – again routed, Palm Springs to Dallas, Dallas to Philly. Fortunately, we had a 2-hour layover in Dallas allowing us time to eat at the TGI Friday’s at the DFW airport. If it hadn’t been for the 2-hour layover, we wouldn’t have had time to eat.

And don’t tell me about the little food boxes the airlines are starting to sell for $5, as the one Sesame Street bit used to say “that’s not even enough to feed a flea!”

In addition to the meal challenges, there's the security changes. I remember taking the Christmas turkey with me back to the Philippines as checked luggage and being able to watch the screen as it passed through the screener - can't do that anymore. And I’m picturing the passengers in lines this morning finding out that they can’t carry any liquid or paste. They must feel like Jonah’s shipmates having to throw so much overboard.

I must be quite the site going through security. Out of fear of tripping the sensors, I feel a need to empty all of the things on my person into one of the beautiful gray bins they provide. So there I am dumping all this stuff out of my pockets, trying to remember to take the computer out of its case, oh, don’t forget the camera too. Then rushing to untie my shoes and throw them on the conveyor. All the while attempting to do all of this with only 2 hands, trying to make sure I’m keeping track of all our valuables so we don’t loose anything and getting all of this done in under 30 seconds so I don’t hold up the line – faster than drive-thru service at McDonald’s.

Get through the screener and then it is the reverse process. Get re-clothed, gathering everything up and actually have to do it faster since there’s often less counter space after going through security than in the lines before security. And so I end up hastening away from security shoes untied, bags hanging around my neck, computer in one hand, camera in the other, looking for somewhere to get this all stowed-away again while trying to dodge people traffic. And that’s without kids!!!

Of course, the luggage thing has changed too. When we traveled to/from the Philippines, we were moving our life’s belongings with us, so we were packed to the max with as much if not more than the allotted checked luggage. I’m amazed at the number of passengers who were flying to/from California that didn’t check baggage but used extra-large carryon suitcases instead. I sure hope those overhead bins are as securely fastened as my seatbelt is supposed to be or else I’ll loose my head!

With the terrorists seemingly coming up with ways to turn every conceivable household item into a life-taking device, how long will it be before no luggage is allowed on board? Travel expenses will rise sharply... travel to California, buy clothes and toiletries to last your stay and before returning the rental car, don’t forget to donate your clothes from the week to the Salvation Army. Oh and that would also explain why cargo pants are all the rage.

Changing the room request system

I’m not sure when the system was created, but one of our reputations involves room requests. Our room request system is notorious for being a time consuming, headache producing system. It can take a week or more at times for someone to request a room for an upcoming event. There were valid reasons behind the system, though it wasn’t customer oriented.

The previous church I worked in used a multi-use approach to their facility. Every room in the building was considered a multi-use room that could be used by any ministry, as they needed. I’d imagine that approach could work well in most church ministries. However, a State-certified daycare and a full school program create challenges to a multi-use approach.

For one, the State requirements for the daycare are explicit when it comes to sanitary/cleanliness standards not only for the room, but also for all of the furniture and equipment in the room. That places a burden on the room users to be familiar with the codes and trained to abide by them.

A full school program comes with many extra-curricular activities on top of the daily educational schedule. There’s always a large block of time each day when the educational rooms, if not the entire educational wing is simply unavailable. The same applies to the daycare area since those rooms house children for 12-hours a day.

Our room request system tried to account for these unique challenges. The ministry leaders over each ministry that used a room had to approve every request. With some of our rooms that meant that upwards of four to five people needed to approve the request! As you can imagine, ministry leaders have a lot to administrate and signing off on a room request was often the least of their concerns and it wasn’t unusual for the requests to sit on desks for a day or two and for all the approvals to be secured in over a week. I once jokingly compared this process to NASA’s challenges in staying in contact with the Mars Orbiter.

Over the past couple of years, building use has increased and our ministries want to do more and more activities. It was clear that the laborious orbit-approval process was going to be too time consuming and take too long in order for us to function efficiently, so we’ve changed the system.

We’ll still be utilizing the same principles, daycare and school rooms have to primarily serve those ministries and the State codes must be enforced for the daycare rooms and the kitchens. What we are eliminating is the orbit procedure. We’ve centralized the approval process into one individual who knows the intricacies of each room but can approve requests on the spot.

This will definitely speed up the approval process and help us be more focused on serving our ministries and those who use the facility.

The McD and O'Dea Connection

Though it's some five years old, it struck such a chord with me that I keep a copy of it on the bulletin board at my desk... it's the want ad (text only) of a man named Brian O'Dea.

My first paid job was working for McDonald's in the Philippines while in high school. When I went to look for summer work during college, I didn't think my McDonald's experience was promotable material, but after seeing what Brian O'Dea was able to do with his employment history, I realized I was selling myself short.

The Philippine economy was such that working at McDonald's was considered a gainful employment, so as a high schooler I was working shoulder to shoulder with young adults who were building careers working for the golden arches. As a foreigner, my visa didn't allow for me to earn money for my work - technically, I was a McDonald's volunteer. As students we ran some fundraisers at school to raise the money which we would use to virtually pay ourselves. For reference, we raised enough money to get about $1/hour which due to the Philippine economy was still more than what the actual employees were making.

I vividly recall my initial training session, the trainer emphasizing what the name and logo stood for, to produce quality food in a timely fashion; the need to always provide a positive experience for the customers and doing it with a smile. Apparently, the conventional wisdom was that after working at McDonald's you'd grow to hate it and never be able to eat at the restaurant again. In my case the complete opposite occurred. From that first training session, I dove head first into the vat they call McD's. I simply ate it up. I worked in multiple stations: cleaning tables (in the Philippines, employees throw out the customer's trash once their done with their meal), working the register, making French fries, dressing the burgers, drive-thru and running the apple pie/fish filet station. Virtually earning $1/hour was nice, but I liked the free meal more than anything else.

While I was told that after working for a summer in McDonald's I'd never want to eat the food again, to this day I'm a frequent McD's customer. The condition and level of service at today's McD's leave me disheartened. The standards which were emphasized during my orientation and training have been lost. Cleanliness of the restaurants and cooking areas doesn't appear to be as high a priority as it was. Serving drive-thru customers in 30-seconds or less doesn't appear to be the goal. Greeting each customer with a friendly smile and a "Welcome to McDonald's how may I help you?" doesn't happen to me at each visit. I relished the challenge of trying to achieve those standards with each customer I had the honor of serving during my McDonald's years.

Here's the crazy part. I enjoyed working at McDonald's so much that I often worked 12-hour shifts for them. I just thoroughly enjoyed the work! That's the selling point I was missing.

Other California observations

A couple of other observations from our California visit - recognizing up front that my focus was on those things that relate to my involvement in church...

• The ministries we visited received their offerings at the very end.
• We saw everything from offering bags, baskets and even paint cans used to collect the offering.
• You know you're in a large church when people are using cell phones to figure out where their family members are sitting.
• The buildings appeared to have been designed with more emphasis on function and less on aesthetics. Not that they looked bad or ratty; they just weren't overly decorated.
• The seats were not overly comfortable; but they were functional.
• When seats were in demand, the ushers served throughout the entire service helping people find and fill every available seat.
• The California weather patterns give the churches an opportunity to do a lot of stuff outside which we in the Northeast aren't able to maximize.
• You know you're in a large church when people are worried about beating the traffic to get home in time for lunch.
• The services never officially ended with someone telling us to have a good week or whatever; each ended with a song which the band continued to play for several minutes as the crowd instinctively exited.
• The weekend meetings/services where focused on corporate worship - I didn't see a single Sunday School or ABF class. Keep in mind that I didn't see an entire weekend at each ministry, just one service so maybe it occurred at another time or maybe that's happening during the week.
• Except for the rented night club, the Auditoriums made ample use of natural light through large windows to make the rooms bright.
• The Auditoriums had open ceilings with the rafters and HVAC ducts clearly visible - functional.
• Tongue-in-cheek... for all the hype about Saddelback and their best practices, there's a lot of storage space they could be utilizing better - their was plenty of storage space in their hallways and a ton of space under their bleachers.

The Mayan

To this point in my life, I've found myself in two situations where, while I looked around and surveyed my surroundings, I found myself thinking "Who would've thought that I'd find myself here!"

My first such experience was when a group from Westerly Road Church went to the Tuesday night prayer meeting at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. We arrived early as we had heard seats were usually in short supply and they were that night as well. Even before the prayer meeting commenced, all of the women were invited forward to pray out loud at the front of the Auditorium while the men stayed praying in their seats. That went for about 30 minutes. Then the women were asked to be seated and the men were asked to the front. We prayed out loud for another 30 minutes before the service began. As the service was beginning, they asked all the men to fill the choir loft. Here I was, this missionary kid, in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, surrounded by strangers in the choir loft of the Brooklyn Tabernacle with a thousand or more people at the service. I remember looking over at our Associate Pastor, and thinking who would've thought we'd find ourselves here! Having only attended one of their prayer meetings, I don't know if it's a common practice, but in any event that's what they did that particular night.

I had a similar experience last weekend with another Pastor, different context, different city. I attended the Sunday night ministry of Mosaic - apparently a inner-city college ministry of their church. The church rents The Mayan theater which every other night of the week is a salsa club of some sort. From it's decor, you'd think the theater was one of the Survivor sets or something like that. And like a club, the worship music was cranked up. Here I was, in the middle of south-central LA, surrounded by college kids, and the bass creating CPR compressions on my chest. I looked over at Scott and thought, "Who would've thought we'd find ourselves here!

I've worshipped God in a variety of contexts, situations and locations. Each time, I marvel at how diverse the Church really is, how segregated we are because of our personal preferences and I wonder the shock we may endure when we worship God in every form imaginable during eternity.