CLT - Charlotte/Douglas Airport

We quickly found a monitor, informing us that our plane, which we figured we had missed by this point, was in final boarding. Granted, it's gate was about as far away on the opposite side of the terminal as possible. Fortunately for me, I must still be in some residual shape from the over-30 soccer season. Unfortunately for Tim, he didn't play in the over-30 league.

I'd seen a cartoon many years ago that featured a man rushing through an airport only to reach the gate just after the plane had left. The person at the ticket counter says to the man, "Miss you flight?" To which the man replies, "No, I just like to chase airplanes." Always found that funny, though it wasn't so funny anymore.

Running with a loaded carry-on case is a bigger challenge than I realized but I was outrunning everything in sight. In the meantime, we were creating quite a sight! A guy driving one of those people mover carts you only see in airport, something I've always wanted to ride since I was a kid, offered me a ride. Thing is, he offered it to me as I was passing him. I figured if I was passing him that I was gonna get to the gate before he was anyway.

By this point, Tim was sucking wind, so I told him I'd go on ahead and hold the plane (if it was still there). I arrived at the gate in time, but was so winded that the blood flow to my brain had decreased. So in a temporary loss of brain pressure, I told the attendant Tim was on his way and I boarded the plane. Meanwhile, Tim runs on past the gate. In the end we both were buckled in our appropriate seats, winded, sweaty and ready for a late night arrival in Dallas. Oh, but it gets better!

A not so ordinary trip to Dallas, TX

This past week, Tim Reedy (who is our PT Media Producer) and I had the opprotunity to attend a Worship/Facilities Conference in Dallas, TX. We attended to glean information about the technological aspects of worship and the design of church facilities. Only knowing Tim from interactions on Sunday mornings, I was also interested in getting to know him and share the conference experience with him. Who knew we'd find ourselves in so many different situations in a 4-day span?

What started out to be a routine flight to Charlotte, ended like the mall parking lot on Black Friday. Apparently, Charlotte had experienced bad weather all day, necessitating numerous flight delays, if not cancellations. Since all of the gates were occupied when our flight arrived we sat on the tarmac, very much like when you're in a parking lot having seen someone about to pull out of their parking space that's so close to the mall entrance that you decide it's worth taking the time to wait for the person to pull out... Yeah, that was us, except in an airplane. After 15 minutes with no gates opening up, we were rerouted to the long-term parking lot - at least that's what it seemed like. There were half a dozen planes just parked in the far corner of the tarmac, so remote that we didn't even have a gate, climbed off the plane and walked along the tarmac to the terminal. By this point our 30 minute layover to catch our connecting flight to Dallas had been reduced to 5 minutes. Being a NASCAR fan, I knew Charlotte was known for racing, little did I know how it would affect Tim and me in what would happen next...

My Scott Distler playlist

Following up on the last post, here is my Scott Distler playlist...

The Hope of the World, September 5, 2004

Let's Dream Big, Sunday, October 31, 2004

Mortgage Burning, Sunday, April 23, 2006

The Need for Connection (part 1), October 22, 2006

Pastor Appreciation Month

October has been designated as Pastor Appreciation Month and one of many things I appreciate about my Pastor and boss, Scott, is his passion for the ministry of the universal church. I figured this picture was a fair rebuttal to the grandma photo of me that he posted last week. Through the two plus years that we've served together, a couple of the messages he's preached have really resonated with me and the mini-library is growing. A couple of times a year he feels led to speak on and exegete scripture's definition of the role of the church, its foundation, its purpose and how it applies to us today. Maybe it's just my ears, my observations, but he seems to find a different gear when he discusses the role of the church. Like Scott, I'm passionate about the local church.

Since birth, my life have been intertwined with the local church. My Dad served an Assistant Pastor during the first 3-4 years of my life and for the 22 years following that, my parents served as church planting missionaries. I went to Bible College because I knew I wanted a Biblical education as my foundation before pursuing anything else. One of the courses in my studies devoted an entire semester to understanding what scripture says about the local church and from the first day to the last, the study hit a nerve. Even with all of that background and involvement with the local church, at the end of college, I still had no clue as to where God was going to lead me. Out of the blue, the local church I had attended for the previous two years, offered me an administrative position and I've been serving in the local church ever since.

The thing I appreciate about Pastor Scott's messages on the local church is his ability to capture what I believe "with every fiber of my being" and communicate them in easy to understand terms. And I appreciate his enthusiasm and passion, it gets me fired up to get back to work! I find the messages so inspirational, I listen to them often to remind me of our focus, to rekindle my passion, to lift me up and to keep the main thing, the main thing.

Tomorrow, I'll share my Scott Distler playlist.

Just 7 Short

In case you missed it, I made Scott's blog yesterday. I should note that I chose that particular hat on my own without any persuasion or influence - the game may have been more interesting if we were forced to wear particular hats, but we weren't - freedom of choice.

What's really interesting is that yesterday's entry on Scott's blog fell 7 visits short of setting the all-time high mark for visits to his blog in one day. Apparently people like to see me in funny hats.

I've become adept at hiding aspects of my personality. In college, most thought I was a 4.0 student and a brainiac - mostly because I wore glasses and carried a notebook computer with me to class. What they didn't know is that when Dr. Ceperley would go on tangents about the Tohu and Bohu as we studied Genesis, I'd start playing Tetris. Not the best game, but it's what my computer could handle at the time while allowing to quickly switch back to notetaking. Oh, and the truth is, my undergrad GPA was more in the 2.0-3.0 range.

Being a Business Manager does help matters as the title and position carry a stigma of being the gestapo, the person who declines requests, says no and doesn't know how to have fun. In the past several months, I've had co-workers tell me that they didn't think I'd find the humor in the funny email that was being passed around. And at another time a different co-worker exclaimed, "I didn't know you knew how to have fun!"

I'm having fun, may be more fun than you realize.

Emergency 911 at Grace Church

On Sunday a person collapsed during the middle of the worship service. The congregation was standing singing the first several verses of How Great Thou Art when I noticed Matt running toward the back of the Auditorium a few aisles over from where I was seated. I instantly figured something was wrong. I proceeded to leave my seat to make sure appropriate help was being given and if there was anything I could contribute. Since I happened to be sitting in front of an attender who works in the medical field I grabbed them by the arm (yes, I literally grabbed them and pulled them down the aisle, not sure why, but I did) and pointed them to the person in distress. While it was clear plenty of medical attention was being given to the individual, I went to make sure 911 was being called. I then waited in the driveway to meet the EMTs, with so many different entrances to our facility, we like to help them quickly identify where they need to go.

Back in the Auditorium, the service was proceeding as normal. We don't draw attention to these kinds of situations for the most part - so long as the individuals are getting appropriate care, there's not much else we can do, but keep worshipping. When the medical staff have had a chance to assess the situation and feel the patient is stabilized, they usually try to move them out of the Auditorium as quickly and discreetly as possible. This past incident, that wasn't possible, so care continued while we awaited the EMTs.

The EMTs arrived just as Pastor Scott was beginning his message. You may have wondered why he read so many verses in the scripture reading during the service, it was partly to give the EMTs time to move the patient out of the room without attracting any more attention. Before long, the patient was on their way to the hospital for further treatment and care. I'm happy to report they are recovering and they aren't experiencing anything life threatening.

We're blessed at Grace with a good number of attenders who are medical professionals who have loved ones and friends who have an amazing ability to summon them in a moments notice when medical emergencies occur. As the EMTs wheeled the patient out of the Auditorium this past week, I counted something like eight Grace attenders who had been caring for the patient while they waited for the ambulance. Our response and systems will always benefit from improvement, but by the grace of God in each emergency that's occurred to date... medical professionals have reached the patient within seconds to begin care, the injured received appropriate first aid and each patient has made a full recovery.

Lititz/Warwick Joint Strategic Plan

Last week the Lititz/Warwick joint comprehensive strategic plan updated the public on their work and the status of the plan and what they've accomplished so far. It's a guide that both Lititz Borough and Warwick Township use in the direction of the area, roughly in five year increments; the plan was last updated in 1999. Many of the advancements we have experienced in the region can been traced back to components of the plan where through various studies and analysis, needs were identified and decisions were made to address issues in a cooperative effort. The Warwick Recreation Commission is a prime example of one of the things that came directly from the strategic plan. So as they've looked at the next 5 years, it should be of interest to us to see where our community is headed and what role we can play as a church in helping them further their causes.

Churches can often be viewed as merely resource consumers in a community since they are tax exempt organizations and don't contribute to the economics of a region. That however is a gross misconception when you consider all the resources that churches contribute to a community and I think it's one of the areas in which Grace Church excels. When you think about our daycare with over 100 children and our K-12 Christian school with just under 300 children; those are all kids that were we not in existence, the community would have to be providing services for them in some way, shape or form. It would be close to 300 more school students that the school district would have to be able to absorb... things of that nature. Of course, there's also the religious services that we provide and the counseling, the benevolence, of course the use of our facility. We have many outside groups that use our facility on a regular basis.

So we are an integral part to the community and therefore we want to be in line with the strategies and goals that the community is setting and trying to partner with them to meet the needs that they've identified. What was interesting from last week's meeting was they've had great success with the recreation initiatives that they identified in 1999 and that's coming together well. That's an area where, because of the resources we have, Grace Church needs to be a player. To date, we've participated. I was on the initial committee that explored how that recreation commission would be set up. I think we need to look seriously at becoming a partner now that it has been created and having representation on the group and again, partnering with them through that commission. With that success, they are now looking to build on that from a social perspective and looking to create a committee to follow the same path in regards to the social activities in the region. Again, this is an area that we are already providing services and I think it would be very wise for us to have involvement and partner with them as they look to now coordinate and facilitate in that arena.

There wasn't anything really groundbreaking on the land development side. They are firmly committed to preserving the agricultural heritage of the region and therefore are not making changes to open the floodgate for serious amounts of growth and development. That's an issue that impacts our future, particularly since Grace Church's location is just outside the urban growth boundary. It's also important because the main tract of the Grace Church property is in a residential zone and our secondary property is in agricultural zone. We understand the concerns that the region has for preserving the agricultural heritage. We support it and so we're looking to partner with them on how that desire can be aligned with what we anticipate to be our future growth. There's many other elements to the plan, not a whole lot of things that interested me, but it is significant enough that either due to our interest in Grace Church or our involvement in the community as residents of Warwick Twp and Lititz Borough, we need to participate in this process. On Monday, December 4, at 7 pm at the Warwick Middle School is the next formal meeting regarding the document and the plan. It will be a public hearing where the public can make comments. I would encourage all of us to attend and to participate.

Lititz/Warwick Joint Strategic Plan website

A Picture Directory with No Pictures

Hopefully, you're experience with this year's Picture Directory has been favorable, but the reports I'm receiving indicate that a lot, if not the majority of people at Grace have had less than favorable experiences. It's unfortunate and worthy of some explanation.

After using the same directory company for years (maybe even the history of the church) I decided to look at some other companies for two reasons. First, I had heard some reports of dissatisfaction with the way families had been organized for their picture, that the quality wasn't good. Second, the company's approach required a tremendous amount of administrative support by volunteers and paid staff.

We looked at several companies and checked references before selecting the company that we've used this year. While everything came back positive, our experience has been the complete opposite.

Here's where we are today... I spoke with the Vice President of the Church Directory division yesterday, outlining each of the problems and frustrations we've encountered. I explained to him that we're completely dissatisfied and asked him to do whatever it take to correct the problem. He assured me that our experience is not the way they like to do business, and that he was unaware of the problems we've been having. He said he needed to investigate the issues I reported, after which he would return my call with a plan of action to turn things around.

While to date, the company has not delivered the product and services they advertised, I feel terrible about the frustration and inconvinience they created for those whom I serve. For that I apologize. I will keep you posted on how the project progresses.

New Posting Time

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

An iPod, a Time Share and a Picture Directory

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

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

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

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

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

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

Security dilemma

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reimbursements and internal controls

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

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.

Watch the Posting Times

I explained a few posts ago why the posting times of my entries are usually the same time each day. Though the date of the next game night is still in negotiations, the opposing team of the ultra-competitive gaming group is using the post as bulletin board fodder. Their rebuttal goes something like, "Andrew, rest up because you'll have to get up extra early to post your future blogs at 5:30!"

I hereby accept the challenge.

If our team wins the night, then I'll continue to post at 11:49 (or later if we set a new high score). If our team loses the night, I'll post the game low score. Watch the posting times!

p.s. I won't be using 38 anymore since Elliot Sadler announced he won't be driving the #38 Ford Fusion after this season.

Larger Message Files

Since publishing our message audio files to the web, we've worked hard to keep the files small for the segment of our audience without broadband. But in exchange for small file sizes we compromised audio quality.

As an aside, you may have noticed that Podzinger ceased to catalog our messages; after some digging I discovered this was directly linked to the quality of our audio files.

My IT Assistant for the summer, Phil, pointed out the difference in audio quality a few weeks back and I decided to upgrade. It may not be all that noticeable, but our messages are now being produced at a higher quality. Podzinger recognizes them now and should be fully functional.

The downside is it will take a bit longer to download or stream.
Check out our latest message series on the Book of James.

Planning ahead

After completing a course in college late in my Sophomore year, I turned into a planning nut - I wanted to have a clear sense of direction with every detail and every minute of my life channeled to help me reach my final destination. Several years later, with graduation on the horizon, I quickly realized that for all my planning and direction, I had no idea what the future held in store, no leads other than directly to unemployment. And out of the blue, God orchestrated a phone call that lead to a job offer that I hadn't seriously considered. That experience altered my view of planning.

I was involved in a ministry that after years of dreaming of facility expansion, made plans to put shovels in the ground. I've seen ministries with long-range projections which years later (with the benefit of hind-sight) look far-fetched and unrealistic. Those observations again altered my view of planning.

Today, planning to me is focused on trying to discern God's plan. Pastor Scott's blogged about some of the planning process we've been taking in recent weeks and there are several questions I've been asking myself and the staff throughout the process:

Where do we see evidence of God's work?
What ways is God opening up for us to join what He's already doing?

Our purpose, our vision of where we want to be in 10, 20, 30 years, our strategic objectives of how we'll get there and the specific goals all need to be centered on where God's working and the role we can play in His work.

I'm excited because it's a process I've been taught, one I've employed in specific areas under my leadership, but I've never seen it thoroughly put into practice for an entire ministry. Even more, recognizing that it's a real-time, ever-changing process, we plan to get together quarterly to discuss, evaluate, reassess where we see God working and how He wants to utilize us in those areas.

We've come up with our answers to these questions, but we're taking time to pray about them and make sure it's where we think God's at work. After that we'll be reviewing it in a couple of weeks before we start to move forward. Stay tuned.

More facility projects

Recognizing that we don't always look like we're one organization (instead appearing to be separate entities: daycare, school and a church), we're taking steps to create more unity in the building. In addition to the parking lot paving and carpeting I mentioned earlier this week, we hope to commence work on moving from two separate resource/break rooms for our daycare and school ministries into a single, shared resource/break room. We also hope to work out how it can be accessed and used by church ministries on Sunday mornings and possibly Wednesday nights as well.

The plan, approved by the Board of Education and the Elder Board is to remove the wall between rooms 401 and 402 - commonly known as the Home Ec. room and the Teacher's lounge. They're the rooms located across from the Fellowship Hall. We'll remove the wall between the two rooms to create a large room with enough space to store office supplies, an have office work area and a place for employees to take their lunch breaks.

UPDATE (7/21/2006): the wall is down; why didn't we do this several years ago?

It's audit time :)

Every year we have independent accountants come to conduct a financial audit of our financial operations. The accountants will be on site for the next 3-4 days, randomly reviewing our work over the past 12 months to verify that we've accounted for everything appropriately and done everything above board. I view this process as a learning experience as each year I come away with a little more knowledge of how to better lead the finance and accounting aspects of our ministry. It's an intense several days, but the results are worth it!

Upcoming facility projects

Work will be commencing on several facility projects by the end of July...

1. Parking Lot Paving
What is now considered a small soccer field, located on the western side of the 501 W Lincoln property, will be converted into 122 parking spaces. This project was presented to and approved by the congregation in June. The additional spaces will meet our current demand, but still leave little room for growth. Anybody want to car pool?

2. Carpeting
With about half of our building reaching the 15+ year mark, we've been attempting to keep up with key maintenance items. For example, we'll be replacing a lot of the hallway carpets in the next month as they're original to the 1990 addition (making them 16 years old). We'll be doing everything we can to minimize the impact on Sunday morning and Wednesday night ministries.

A Safe Assumption

Assumptions can be dangerous, but there's one assumption I rely upon almost daily... always assume there's something you don't know. I find that making that one assumption helps me keep a balanced approach to the issues I face daily; particularly when it comes to making judgment decisions.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I found a clear example of this while I watched the World Cup Final on Sunday. When I saw Zidane head-butt Materazzi, I quickly went to my assumption, there's something we don't know about the situation. Yes, the head-butt was a deplorable act, but we don't know what traspired to lead up to that point. ESPN2 re-aired the final match on Monday night and I caught parts of the game; it was interesting to watch it through a Zidane-focused lens. The Italians game plan was clear, whenever Zidane touched the ball he was hounded, not just defended, by two, sometimes three players, each harrassing him extra-physically. He was given no space on the pitch. He was roughed up from start to finish, even sustaining some type of shoulder injury late in the second half. In addition to the physical abuse, he was likely getting thrashed verbally as well, though it wasn't as evident from the camera angles. All that to say that in re-watching parts of the game, it was clear there were things we as a world audience didn't know or had forgotten once we saw the head-butt. Does that excuse him? No, but it does give a broader perspective on what happened.

Though in very different contexts, assuming that there's always something I don't know makes me dig deeper into the situations that come my way, to seek additional information before making a decision.

European Football

I'm not sure I've documented my enjoyment of European Football, but for the past month, the majority of the world has been fixated on the matches unfolding in Germany - aka the World Cup. And today, much of the world is focused on the final moments of the career of one Zinedine Zidane who in one moment was being referred to in the circles of John Elway and Bill Russell, sportsmen who ended at the top of their sports in the US and mentioning him in the same sentence as world-football greats, Pele and Maradona. And then in an instant, Zidane is relegated to the realms of Mike Tyson (who bit off part of the ear of Evander Holyfield) and other disgraced athletes. Of all the commentary I've seen, I've found the following article the most insightful.

As I told someone several years ago, but for the grace of God I am just as capable of such horrific and destructive acts, for I too am a sinner.

All said, it was indeed a shame.

Important Patriotic Service Info

If you're planning to join us Sunday morning at 10 a.m. in Lititz Springs Park for our Patriotic Service, in light of this week's flooding, please pay special attention to the following instructions...

It will be our privilege to be at Lititz Springs Park this weekend for our Patriotic Event. In many respects, we have the opportunity to "set the tone" for the rest of the park events. Even with the flooding at the park this week, the park assured us that they will have it ready by our event. However, the park has requested us to make an attempt to alleviate continued flooding damage with some simple steps we can take as entire church.

As a church when we arrive at Lititz Springs Park, please park at the Warwick High School (located behind the park). Please avoid cutting through the grass but use the paved macadam walk-ways to get to the band-shell area. Please fill up the bleachers and use lawn chairs on the blacktop walk-ways first…use grass areas for seating after these areas have filled up. While we realize with 2,000+ people coming to the park that people will most likely be sitting on the grass, we hope to leave the park with as minimal damage to the grounds as possible.

For participants in the Patriotic event, when unloading and loading equipment, there will be no parking on the grass next to the band shell. Vehicles on the grass will create ruts at this point. If you need to drop off equipment, please do so on the blacktop drive closest to the band shell and walk it across the grass to the band shell.

Church watching

I recently had the opportunity to visit a church facility for a community program - a facility I had never been to before. I enjoy such experiences, making observations of people, places and things to which I am a stranger.

First off, I apparently didn't follow my Google Maps directions accurately though I wouldn't say I was lost. But it did lead into another Norton tour - infamous for finding obscure points which aren't usually highlighted on the tourist brochures. In this case, I passed the former home of a U.S. President. I eventually found the location without too much difficulty.

From the outside, the facility looked something akin to a spaceship or a large egg standing on end - not a structure that would be immediately recognizable as a church. And whether coincidence or not, many of the cars in the parking lot had the same bumper stickers, "God Bless the Whole World with No Exceptions".

Inside the egg, the accoustics were good. Being an egg, the ceiling was huge and the room was surrounded by stained glass. It's interesting to contrast such an auditorium with our square windowless box. I guess many churches sacrifice accoustics and aesthetics in exchange for maximizing space to accomodate more people.

Beyond the physical characteristics and layout, I get a kick checking out what's in the pew racks of the churches I visit. Does the church utilize pew Bibles and what version do they use? Do they use giving envelopes and how many funds do they have? Do they use a registration/response card and what information to they solicit?

I learn a lot about a church from just these simple observations.

Numerology

Someone observantly noticed that I tend to publish my entries at the same time each day I publish. Here's why...

38 - thirty-eight is the number of my favorite NASCAR driver, Elliot Sadler. I like Elliot because he's a pretty good guy and he's sponsored by companies like M&Ms. Thirty-eight is also the number worn by Curt Schilling, but that's an ancillary reason as to why I like the number.

1149 - one thousand, one-hundred and forty-nine, which is usually represented in the blog as 11:49, is a number I recently came upon. My wife and I were recently invited to join a group that gathers for some regular game nights - and a very competitive group I might add. The last time we had a game night the men's team was in a groove and we put up 1,149 points.

Automatic Alarms

I believe it was the building codes at the time that required our facility to be equipped with an automatic, monitored fire alarm system - I wasn't here in 1990 when it was built, but I'm guessing that's why our building has such a system. Automatic alarm systems could almost be renamed Cry Wolf systems as they are notorious for false alarms. False alarms occur so frequently that everyone drops their guard a bit when an alarm sounds.

Recognizing that mind set, I've insisted that anytime the alarms in our building sound, that everyone be trained to habitually evacuate the building, not to return without receiving an all clear signal. I've been a pain in the neck in this area when it's been freezing outside and not letting anyone back into the building until we had an all clear. I have to admit that after eight years of numerous false alarms, I was beginning to question whether it was worth all the hassle, the alarm was more of a nuisance than anything else.

That all changed last night as the automatic alarm sniffed out a fire in our building, directing one of our staff to the specific location so he could contain it. In an instant all the nuisances of false alarms passed faded in comparison to the millions of dollars saved. Unfortunately for some, this only renews my insistence on regular fire drills and treating every alarm as the real thing.

I'm thankful we have the ultimate insurance agent who clearly was working in our midst.

Zing Zing

We added a new feature to the Grace Church website yesterday, a search box through Podzinger. Podzinger automatically takes our message audio files and allows you to search for specific words in the message and gives you the ability to play the message at the spot(s) where it finds those words.

So if you wanted to find the illustration Pastor Scott used about monkeys and coconuts, you can find it using Podzinger. Search for the word monkey and it finds it in the message.

Granted, Podzinger isn't perfect, but it seemed good enough to put it to use. The search bar is on the Message Series page on the church website.

Mother's Day

How should churches handle non-religious holidays that fall on a Sunday? Take Mother's Day for example. After all a mother was required for us to enter the world and who not better to honor with a special day. Though it does highlight the amount of influence Hallmark and the other card-producers have over our society. Mother's are special.

One dillema for churches is how to honor mothers, especially in the context of how churches honor fathers on Father's Day. I know of a church that one year, mother's received a carnation on Mother's Day and on Father's Day they gave each father a tract on how to be a better father.

While we all came into this world with a mom, there are many who have lost their mom, many who have not been blessed with children, and many who have lost children. For some in these categories, Mother's Day can be especially difficult; some even avoiding church all together because celebrating motherhood reopens too many wounds and excessive pain. Therein lies the dillema, how to honor mothers while being sensitive to and cognizant of those who are in pain.

I've heard of churches who don't give out gifts to mothers, in an attempt give less emphasis to the Mother's Day celebration. After all, it isn't a religious holiday. I've also heard of churches that in recognizing mothers also recognize those who've lost their mother or aren't able to be a mom through a prayer during the worship service.

To be serious about winning as many as possible, churches have to figure out how to navigate this dillema.

More on Route 772 Relocation

I haven't checked the Warwick Twp website in several months, but I just discovered the latest report on the Route 772 Relocation study. I highly recommend that Elizabeth and Warwick Twp residents as well as Lititz Borough residents familiarize themselves with the draft study.

I blogged a while back about the pros and cons of the relocation from a Grace Church perspective, and it appears that the initial recommendation is bringing 772 right by the church.

Why do we use registration cards?

If you've ever attended Grace Church you know that we regularly use registration cards; but have you ever wondered why?

Keeping track of a church congregation has its challenges. A church isn't like a theater which is only concerned about the number of people. In the church context, we're concerned about who was in church and we want to communicate with them. I've visited churches that have approached this using various methods, but each has something designed to try and connect with the congregation.

At Grace we use registration cards in several capacities:

1. It's an attender's way of letting us know they were here. Purposely, the responsibility of communicating that to us is on the onus of the individual. We're here to serve each attender, but they need to let us know who they are in order for us to be able to care for you. As you might imagine, the number of registration cards we received each week relfects about 100 less people than the actual number of people in the Auditorium.

2. We use the address information on the registration card to keep the church database up to date, or at least we try to; there are times when a new address slips by. One misconception is that by marking your new e-mail address on the card, your subscription to the weekly eBulletin and Pastor Scott's weekly e-mail updates will automatically be updated. Since those e-mail list subscriptions are fully automated, they can be updated on the church website.

3. The registration cards can be used to communicate information to the church office, whether it's signing up for an upcoming class or informing the Pastors of an upcoming surgery, a prayer request or other need.

How do we process/utilize the cards?
After an individual/family have attended 4 out of 6 worship services (submitting a registration card at each one) they are entered into the church database as a regular attender. With this designation, they'll be assigned a deacon as part of our deacon/pastoral care ministry. That's where the registration cards become important. It is a real challenge, if impossible, to care for people we about whom we know little.

One day each week, usually on Wednesday, a group of the staff and Pastors gather and pray for the various requests that were written on the registration cards from that Sunday. In addition to praying for the requests, we send encouragement cards to different individuals to let them know we prayed for them.

Hopefully that sheds a little more light on why we ask for the registration cards to be filled out each week.

The Business Mgr and The Prince of Denmark

Based on this article I guess I'm not the only one who has enjoyed Filipino hot wings.

My Super Deacon

I never thought my observation skills would become so handy.

Since mid-February my daily commute has increased some 10+ miles as I travel in to East Petersburg and then back to Lititz at the beginning and end of each day. As stated previously here, I know a number of people by the cars they drive, so with this longer commute I've been able to identify who I pass along the road from Grace Church each day. I figured it was worth noting, but had little other value to my daily living. That was until the day the tank ran dry.

As I was approaching East Petersburg coming down Route 72 I sensed the engine was running a little different than normal. I knew I was stretching the run on that tank of gas, but I didn't have money to purchase gas at my first chance, the second chance I passed up because I didn't have time and the third chance I passed up because I figured I'd be okay. So in true NASCAR form, as we passed by McMinn's Paving company, I had pressed my luck too far and the van came to a stop right under the billboard.

As I stepped out of the car quickly gauging how far of I walk I'd have to the nearest gas station and laying my plans, the thought hit me with little time to spare... I knew that I had passed Dave heading North on 72 every morning about that exact time for the past two weeks. Just as I looked at the Northbound traffic, there was his maroon Ford Escape about to pass me by. I called out to him and waved my hand desperately hoping I'd catch his attention.

It worked! He stopped, delayed having breakfast with his wife to help me out and then was on his way. Dave and his wife are our Deacons, but this made them Super Deacons, right there when I needed them.

But most of all, I thank them for so kindly calling ahead to the office to let my staff know that I run out of gas and that I'd be late for work. They really went the extra mile, making sure I'd get a good ribbing when I got to the office. Somehow this violates the Deacon-Congregant privilege, but I haven't been able to find the exact statute.

Thought it doesn't do much for my resume, being extra observant saved me a long walk to the gas station that morning.

A more detailed property update

As I mentioned last week, there's been little news to report on the property across the street, but I realized there is more info I can share. The current crop planted on that land is rye. The rye was chopped late last week and is I guess drying on the field right now (or at least it hasn't been picked up yet). I'm told corn goes in next.

Testing the OpenOffice

I came across OpenOffice.org a few months back. I installed it on our personal computer, but I've been interested to try it at the office. Software licensing costs us a chunk of money each year and while the Microsoft products are generally accepted as the industry standard, they aren't necessarily the best. So to outlay the sums of money we do each year for software that could be better... it just doesn't seem like the wisest stewardship. So I'm embarking on a test beginning this week to see if OpenOffice can adequately replace Microsoft Office for the tasks I do on a regular basis.

My hypothesis is that indeed OpenOffice will serve my needs sufficiently, the challenge will be whether those with whom I exchange files will be able to convert the documents I send them.

I'll keep you posted.

Introducing Grace Church eVites

Sorry for the long hiatus, I suffered a coup d'etat lead by the tyranny of the urgent. Thankfully I survived and control is being restored. It remains to be seen whether I'm still in power or not :)

My co-workers will tell you, when they're away and I fill-in for them, I have a tendency to upset the apple cart and make changes. I'm proud to say that I resisted this temptation last week while I had the opportunity to handle the webpage for the week. I dutifully updated information only and didn't reface the webpage or anything like that.


I did roll out a new piece we've been working on for almost an entire year, the eVite. An eVite is an email message, containing information provided by Grace Church, that you can use to invite people to an upcoming Sunday or message series. Right now, the eVite highlights the Mansion of Prayer message series that kicks off this Sunday. The email message generated by the eVite not only includes information about the message series, but also includes services times, directions and other pertinent information for someone who's never been to Grace before.

Our hope is to roll out a new eVite about 2-3 weeks in advance of the next message series so you can invite people early and often.

Here's a little tip. If you have a real-time internet connection and you don't delete the eVite message, the graphic will update when we change the eVite to the next message series. For example, the eVite highlights Mansion of Prayer right now. Next month, we'll switch to the Raising G-rated Kids in an R-rated World. When we switch, the message sitting in your inbox will change as well.

Check out the eVites at http://www.lgbc.org/gracechurch/sunday/invitation/evite.htm

We have some additional plans in development to further promote upcoming message series and events. We are becoming more and more cognizant of the people who enter our facility, a captive audience we can target in an attempt to invite us to join on a Sunday morning. Don't for a second think that these methods release us from our responsibility to make personal contacts - a personal invitation will always be the most effective.

Weekend Fragments

Sorry for the black out I suffered a coup de ta by the tyranny of the urgent. To bring you back up to speed here are a few fragments...

1. Did you hear that 18,000 attended last Saturday's Blue/White game at Penn State? Keep in mind the Blue/White game is an intra-squad scrimmage with free admission and that it was raining all day Saturday. I figure if 18,000 are willing to watch a scrimmage game in the rain, then it's another reason we don't need to cancel services due to a few inches of snow.

2. Easter Sunday - What a great day! I was thrilled with all the participants who helped pull the whole day together. Dee Miller did a wonderful job with the continental breakfast, the ushers did a tremendous job getting all 1,856 of the people seated, the worship teams/choir/musicians were good, the greeters did a great job welcoming all the visitors, we had just enough parking, we had seats to spare... all around it was a great team effort and a wonderful celebration.

3. Projector Roulette - Notice anything different with the Auditorium screens lately? We've been playing projector roulette. I admire Tim Reedy's patience; I'd be pulling my hair out by now. First the left projector started fading and we limped with it through the Christmas season. After having it for four weeks, the technicians couldn't conclusively identify the problem. We reinstalled since a limping projector is better than no projector. Then Plan B (replacing the projectors with existing projectors in other parts of the building) was implemented only to discover that their throw distance didn't match, rendering them unusable without physical changes that had other complications. So we went to Plan C, purchasing a replacement projector. The one dillema when you have two projectors is whether to replace both simultaneously; we decided to be frugal and just replace the one which was installed in time for Easter. Now, as luck would have it, the right projector is fading.

4. It's been awhile since there's been any news about the property across the street. Officially, there's been nothing to report; we've been consumed first by Christmas planning followed closely by Easter. As Pastor Scott announced yesterday, we will be forming a Concept Development Team in the coming weeks to get moving on the property once again.

5. Now that I've weathered the coup de ta of the past month, hopefully I'll be able to resume blogging with some frequency. I've been pitching in as a Receptionist the past several weeks as we wanted to have a Receptioninst from 8:30-5 each business day. I've pitched in while we worked on the long-term staffing plan.

The Madness of March

For years, basketball was my favorite sport. While playing in high school I tried to emulate the NCAA stars of the 1980s-1990s. Coverage of NCAA Basketball Championship in those days was limited, even for the US audience. The early round games were broadcast on CATV with only the later rounds picked up by the national network. So for the international viewer, coverage was even spottier. I think the first championship game I remember seeing live was the Michigan/Seton Hall final – I think that was another watching the game between class periods type of a thing (see my Super Bowl post).

Since returning to the US combined with CBS’s broadcasting every game of the entire tournament, the annual March Madness tournament has been one of my most favorite times of the year. My enjoyment reached even higher levels during my years in Princeton, NJ, which happened to coincide with the Princeton University basketball program producing the memorable first-round upset of the defending champion UCLA Bruins. My co-workers will confirm that the Tournament schedule is blocked off on the church master calendar years in advance and I’ve even used vacation days just to be able to watch every minute of action of the first two rounds of the tournament.

But the madness of March hit me in a new way this year. First off, work at the church has been so intense I’ve hardly had time to think about the tournament this year. My engagement level in the tournament is lower than in previous years, though I can still tell you who’s in the Final Four. But when I reflect on what I did during the first weekend of the tournament, you’d think the law of gravity was turned on it’s head.

On the beginning day of the tournament, a day in that past that I’ve devoted solely and completely to watching basketball from 12 noon until 12:30 at night (with about an hour’s break for dinner), this year I instead rented Pride & Prejudice to watch with my wife. GASP!

My wife is a Jane Austen fan, among other authors. We have a BBC version of Pride & Prejudice, a two-tape set that is several hours in length. She’s watched it numerous times and I’ve endured it a few myself. So it’s not as if we didn’t know the story. But recently, Hollywood released another rendition of the classic and we missed it in the theaters. It was released on video in late February, but every time we were at Blockbuster, all of the copies were rented out. As fortune would have it, when I stopped at Blockbuster on the beginning day of the tournament, one copy was available. Without hesitation, I grabbed it and went on my way, thinking of the ramifications of my actions only after I had picked it up and headed for the counter.

And so, while the results of the first round were being decided on the court (mind you, I don’t think I missed any of the big upsets), my wife and I enjoyed an evening together with Mr. Darcy, Liza Bennet and the rest of the Bennet clan. Yes, the title March Madness really is apropos.