I was reading Wired over the weekend and this article seemed hit Friday's post on the head. The paragraph that jumped off the screen for me was,

Until about five minutes ago, remember, almost all video-entertainment content was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time is over. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences for what Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all but over. There was a time when broadband penetration was too slight and bandwidth costs too prohibitive for video to be watched online. That time is sooooo over. "The era of the creepy blue light leaking out of every living room window on the block is now officially at an end," says my pal and occasional colleague Steve Rosenbaum, founder of video-sharing startup Magnify.net and one of the inventors a decade ago of citizen video. "The simple, wonderful, delirious fact is that people like you and me can now make and share content."

In conversations with friends and co-workers I hear and sense that many just don't get all of this. Some don't understand the fascination with blogging, let alone YouTube. "It's a dear diary for the world, but why would I want the world to know what's in my diary and why would the world even care?" But it's a whole different mindset.

Administering Grace readers seemed to enjoy the other week's series on our travels to Dallas. Wouldn't it be cool if I could have recorded the encounters so you could have seen us running through the Charlotte airport or seen the security guard ask if I wanted sheets and a pillow? The technology is available that I could have done that. And if I had that I could share it with the world, "Hey, did you see Andrew's..."

Interactivity is another component, one that's been underutilized on Administering Grace by the way. Unfortunately, the majority of people who've attempted to interact with this blog aren't regular attenders of Grace, my intended primary audience. This whole digital mumbo-jumbo gives you the opportunity to interact. It's an element I still hope to add so this can become a two-way dialog about Administering Grace.

There's more I want to comment on regarding this topic, but I want to read The Millenium Matrix first.

Clickable Content

A mouse click here and a mouse click there and presto, you've got information...

While the video is disturbing and not something to joke about, I find the events of this week groundbreaking. The actor who portrayed Kramer on Seinfeld, Michael Richards, went verbally postal at a comedy club in the past week. Thanks to YouTube, if you want, you can see the whole clip (I'm not linking to it, but you can find it if you want it). And that's the groundbreaking part. Where it not for YouTube or the Internet, I probably wouldn't have heard of the incident and the media may not have picked it up. Not anymore. Someone had a video recording device, figured it was worth posting to the net and now there's a visual record of what went down. Very ugly.

We have to adapt to this latest facet of our culture, what H. Rex Miller termed at the WFX Conference as the digital age. He contrasted the current digital age with the earlier broadcast age and applied it to the role of the church in this one statement. In the previous ages (broadcast, written and oral), the role of the church was to provide CONTENT, in the digital age, it's to provide CONTEXT. Though I haven't read his book yet, he backed this premise up with his observation that just about any content is readily accessible in the digital age. I can't tell you the number of questions I've been able to answer utilizing the Internet. The content is out there somewhere, I just need to find it. And it's not just that the church is no longer a key provider of content, it's that everyone is providing content.

Think about the ramifications...

• There was a time when TV stations solicited home videos of "news happening", but I don't need to bother with that laborious step now, I can just upload my videos to YouTube in a matter of minutes and broadcast my own stuff.
  

• If the content is readily available, what does education need to look like? With so much information available now, it may be more important for students to learn fundamental search principles more than memorizing everything.

• If the content is readily available, I can find messages by just about any Pastor on any portion of scripture, whenever I want, the church will need to educate people on how to discern truth to be able to filter out what's contrary to scripture.

There's a part of this that intrigues me and there's a part of me that's very afraid. That makes me wonder if my age group has a tremendous responsibility over the next 20 years. I sense that I can relate to the generations growing up in the digital age because my generation was on the crest of the digital wave. At the same time, we were trained through the methods that had been tested over time. I sense we're a generation that has the opportunity to fill the gap. What scares me is the amount of garbage that's included in the volumes of information available now. If we fail to provide context, the garbage could go unfiltered.

I hope to read H. Rex Miller's book, but I continue to ponder what changes we need to make to our ministry in order to adapt. I'm finding more on YouTube that I'll share next week.

The Joy of Friday Mornings

A key component of our weekly office routine is the production of the weekly bulletin. One of the more labor intensive aspects of the process is collating and stuffing which occurs on Friday mornings. Over the years several different individuals have volunteered to assist us with this part of the production. Most recently there's been a group of 5-6 people who come to the office each Friday morning and spend about two hours helping us with this task.

What brings a smile to my face is that, to my knowledge, each of those 5-6 people didn't really even know each other when they started working together - we recruited them individually. Now that they've been volunteering together on a weekly basis for over a year, they've formed friendships and quite frankly have made the stuffing/collating process a real hoot. They're often carrying on, laughing and enjoying each others company while they help us out. It's been neat to observe them serving the Lord together and enjoying it immensely.

The other thing that impresses me about this group is their level of commitment. Just this morning, one of them arrived extra early because they have to leave early so they wanted to make sure they didn't skimp on their commitment. I appreciate that kind of sacrifice and commitment, particularly to an aspect of our ministry that's not glamorous and completely unseen.

So to Mae, Sam, Jean, Vera and Carl, thanks for your faithful and dedicated service to the Lord and and for bringing joy to Friday mornings.

Review: Penn Cinema

I did something I'd never done before this evening. I took Beth out to the movies, to the opening of Penn Cinema. I've never been to a ribbon cutting ceremony for a building or that type of thing, so it was a new experience.

It's actually a nice complex. The all-day rain of Thursday did wonders for their beautiful landscaping - it was all dirt at the beginning of the day, all mud tonight. There appeared to be ample parking, at least tonight, in the dark I couldn't tell exactly how many spaces they have. The fact that you could drive into the parking lot at all is a minor miracle as Airport Rd has been closed for a while and was still closed when I drove by on Tuesday.

There were maybe 100 or so people who arrived early enough for the ribbon cutting dog and pony show. Judging from those who cut the ribbon etc., it's a family owned/run operation. The whole ceremony was held up by grandma getting something situated just right or at least that's how it appeared to me. They actually cut a film strip instead of ribbon, which I thought was a unique twist.

Ever wonder where they get the over sized scissors? A woman walk passed us with a large padded mail envelope which left the building with the scissors - destination, unknown.

It looked like they must've had all of their employees on duty this night, probably for training. After cutting the ribbon they showed second-run movies (Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, etc.) in each of their theaters. I'm guessing it was an attempt to attract a crowd, but just a modest one to give them a chance to run everything through it's paces without being overwhelmed. I've never gone to a theater and had someone open the door for me, two people sell me a ticket and tell me to enjoy the movie, three more people welcome us to the theater and finally two people take our tickets and direct us to the theater where our movie was showing. I'm guessing if I go back next week it will be somewhat different, but I'm not complaining.

We were in theater 5. Walking into the theater we were overwhelmed with the odor of a brand new car. I never realized that buildings have that new car smell, but that's what it smelled like. What impressed me most were the seats. Stadium seating, with tons of viewing space, if the guy in front of me had stood up, I still think I would've had a clear view of the screen - he'd have to stand on his seat to obstruct my view. The seats have nice back support and get this, they rock! I've never been in fixed seats that rock. Recline, yes; rock, not until tonight. It's also the first theater I was in which had retractable armrests. To think my rear end was likely the first to squish the foam on that chair was a unique, once-in-a-building feeling.

I wasn't impressed with the audio. I'm not a Clair Brothers-eared techie or anything like that, but this was less than I expected. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the main theater has the super-duper sound. Maybe the movie we saw didn't utilize the surround sound. But whatever the reason, the theater we were in, the movie we were watching had audio that was less than awe-inspiring. It was as if there was one speaker above the screen and that was the sole source of sound.

Overall, to have a theater on the south side of Lititz is much more convenient than heading down to Regal Manor. The Allen Theater experience in Annville is a one of a kind thing, but for just going to see a movie, Penn Cinema will be very convenient. Granted, we go to the theater maybe once a year, twice if we really splurge.

After the credits finished (we always stay for the credits to get full benefit of the ticket price) and we left our seats, I couldn't believe how quickly a brand new theater could become just like every other theater with popcorn squished into the carpet. I turned to Beth and said, "Take a big sniff, it won't smell like this again."

New Homepage Coming

As I mentioned a while back, our webpage (www.lgbc.org) has been in need of a makeover as it's been at least some two years since we last revised it. The work's progressing, actually almost finished, and I expect we'll have a new homepage up in the next week.

Actually, the new design is the work of Bryan. We're putting his eye and creativity for graphic layout to work for us or back to work for us. If you look at the past 8-10 years, I'm not sure we've ever figured out who's best suited to do our website. Bryan ran it until around the year 2000 or so, when I picked it up. I've run it (with Elaine's help the past two years) since 2000 and now it's sorta going back to Bryan, if only temporarily.

Fortunately, I think each time it's changed hands, we've only taken steps forward, building on what the other has accomplished. From the draft I've seen, that trend continues with this latest change.

And don't worry, while a new homepage will be nice, a new menu layout for all of our pages is not far behind. We've recognized for sometime that the menu structure is lacking.

Tag

If you haven't noticed, I upgraded the Administering Grace blog and now, Blogger is offering tags. This is really nice for my blogging since I wax eloquently (or attempt to at least) on a variety of topics. I'll use the tags to categorize each entry. That way, if you're especially interested in my entries regarding finance, facility or some other area, you can sort by those entries alone. So make use of the tags.

Would you like sheets, a pillow and a blanket with that?

Knowing that our flight was scheduled to arrive in Dallas at 11:30pm with a 45 minute drive on top of that, I called the hotel a day in advance to confirm our reservation and inform them of our late arrival. The hotel "system was down", but somehow, our room information was already printed out. I need to hire the guy who, knowing that the system will be down, prints out all of the information he needs in advance. The hotel turns out to be at capacity, "we're giving you a room that may only have 1 bed, check it out and if it does, we'll send another bed up. Having only 1 bed wasn't the only thing about the room, it was a smoking room and nicely equipped for the handicapped. Those comfy beds that had been awaiting us (or that we'd been awaiting), turned out to be less than comfy and technically, I didn't even have a bed yet. Oh, and it's 1:30am at this point.

After 15 minutes my bed arrived. Of course, at that hour of the morning, hotels are operating on a skelton staff. The guy who dropped off the bed didn't appear to have ever done this before. He looked at me as if I was supposed to know where the bed would best fit in the layout of the room, not that it's a technical thing. Once we had the bed situated he looked at me and asked, "Would you like sheets, a pillow and a blanket with that?"

The bed accessories were dropped off another 15 minutes later. They provided me with a Queen-sized sheet for a twin bed! The night couldn't pass quick enough. Fortunately, we were transferred to a nicely accomidated room in the morning and enjoyed a nice stay the remaining three nights of our trip. In exchange for the inconvinience the hotel credited us a night's stay on their tab. Fortunately, while a memorable shared experience with Tim, the content of the conference outweighed the interruption of our travels. I'll get into what I took away from the conference in the coming posts...

SuperShuttle

With such a tight connection in Charlotte, we were convinced there was no way our luggage would meet us in Dallas. But to our amazement and to the credit of US Airways, our luggage was there, fully intact. Luggage wasn't going to be the problem this night. The infamous line from the movie Apollo 13, "Looks like we just had our glitch for this mission" was ringing in my ears.

Having never been to Dallas before, I had scouted the travel arrangements to our hotel, those wonderful soft beds awaiting us, and was advised that the Super Shuttle was the most convinient and economical method. The Super Shuttle turned out to be not so super.

After taking 20 minutes to find the umarked pickup location, we found two other travelers awaiting the shuttle with us, one of which had used it before and found it to be super. This night would change his mind.

Three shuttles stopped, asked us our destinations, told us another shuttle would pick us up and promptly left. The fourth shuttle finally picked us up. The poor guy who'd used it before was going to a different part of Dallas and was left to wait for a later shuttle. We thought that was the last we'd see of him, but for some reason the rest of us never did figure out, our driver Jamal looped around the airport terminal, taking us back to our pick up spot. Now you have to understand the timing; our flight arrived at 11:30pm. And it's pushing 12:45am with all of us having sessions to attend at 8am. We were more than ready to get to those comfy rooms that were awaiting us. Jamal soon finished circling the terminal and put us on our way to downtown Dallas. If and when the poor other guy got to his destination, we'll never know. But I doubt he'll be using the Supper Shuttle again.

At this point, the trip which started in such a routine fashion, which had been so rudely interrupted by the Charlotte dash and the not so super shuttle, should've returned to a routine trip again. That was going to turn out to be a bad assumption.

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.