• 7 days til Christmas

    Christmas PresentWith less than a week until the big day, there’s much still to do. We have the staff Christmas party tonight, the Light Force party tomorrow night, a small group party Friday night, a killer service on Sunday, and MainStreet on Monday. (We’re actually still trying to squeeze a family party in there somewhere with Kristen’s folks.) In other words, Christmas is just kicking into high gear for me.

    This year I’ve actually been into Christmas. “Into” for me means that I don’t complain about it. We’ve had our tree up for a while, we’ve gotten most of the shopping done, and Kristen has done a great job of keeping the Christmas drama away from me. (Selfishness about presents… our kids get 3 small presents from us and they think its normal and fair!)

    santaOf course, since I’m labeled the Christmas hater… I can’t be seen enjoying it too much.  Paul is a hard core Santa-hater. There was a Santa at Buffalo Wild Wings on Sunday (I thought maybe he was too drunk to drive home Saturday night, odd place for a Santa) I asked Paul if he’d be willing to have his picture taken with St. Nick. Paul told me, “I would punch him in the face and put him in the garbage!” Ah, a disciple.

    Merry Christmas! 

  • Attend Romeo? Take our survey!

    One of my side project is something we’re calling “The Invite Project.” (In other words, it doesn’t have a fancy name.) Basically, the church leadership is trying to learn how the people who attend our church feel our outreach efforts are going. Are we doing too much? Are we not doing enough? Are we trying to hard in one area and missing something obvious? Are people inviting people to church? Why do some invites work and others don’t?

    I don’t think Romeo is alone in our desire to grow and reach people. Simply put, bringing new people into the kingdom of God is one of the two primary things a church should be doing. (Equip the saints, reach the lost. Both are related.) As I taught over the summer… for the people who attend the church our primary life’s mission is to reach the community we live in with the life-saving message of a relationship with Jesus. The Romeo community, our neighbors, are the mission field of our lives.

    What I think makes Romeo semi-unique is that we’re trying our hardest to use innovative ways to reach people since the “old ways” a lot of us grew up on just don’t work. I’ve been around enough churches to know that “freedom to innovate” and “church staff” are usually oxymorons. (It’s easier to copy than to innovate.) What we need to know now is which of these methods work, which don’t, which need more training, which need improvements, and which should we kill. The thing about innovating new ways to do things is that there is always a failure rate. You go into an innovation mode needing to know if an experiment works or if it fails. When you are inventing a better light bulb, failure is obvious. But when you are trying to invent a system to invite people to church… you need feedback!

    So, without further delay. If you currently attend Romeo… please take this survey. The target for this step is at least 75 attenders. As of this moment, 12 have taken it. (Pretty good for the first 24 hours!)

  • Whopper Freakout: Freakish Solid Marketing

    I don’t like Burger King and I can’t stand the Whopper. But this video is flat out good marketing.
    What do you think? What is it about this video that you like? Dislike?

  • Yes, we are having church on Sunday

    Unless something dramatically changes, (such as there is a state of emergency) we are having church tomorrow. And not to sound trite, but unless you have a very good reason, we expect to see everyone.

    For those Michiganers who let a little snow scare you into the house instead of gathering for church… why not see just how easy you have it right now and spend some time at Voice of the Martyrs?

    Here’s a story from Iraq that should put the shovel in your hand:

    Living in the atmosphere of Iraq, those who are controlled by the spirit of fear forced many churches to close their doors and told their members, ‘We will call you when the circumstances get better.’ When churches started to close their doors, people immigrated to Northern Iraq and some to Syria and Jordan. Many Christians did not find an open church to go to.

    This isn’t meant as a guilt trip. This is a friendly reminder that thousands of men and women have given their lives for our freedom to meet and worship. Snow schmow. In the words of Todd Porter, suck it up cream puff.

    By the way, we’ve got a great service planned.

  • Phew! Romeo Printing Company Saves the Day

    Last night about midnight I shot out of bed. I realized that I forgot to pick up the bulletins for Sunday services. It was one of those days where I had about 25 things to do and the email Jason sent me never made it onto my scribbled “to do” list. Ugh, we kind of need that for services on Sunday.

    I stumbled through the darkness and turned on the computer to try to find the Romeo Printing Company website. They don’t have one. Then I finally found a listing for them on Google with their phone number.

    Wouldn’t you know my luck? They aren’t open on Saturday’s. I went back to bed making a mental list of what I would have to do to fix this problem:

    1. I’d go over to the church.
    2. Print a new batch.
    3. Bring home the cutter.
    4. Cut and fold them myself.
    5. Tell Jason on Monday morning.

    Before our traditional pancake breakfast I ventured over to the church. On the way, I saw a light on in the back of the print shop. (small town!) I thought, “what are the chances that someone is working this morning? Pretty good!” So I go to the front door and bang. Nothing. A few more minutes of banging louder. Nothing. Crap! There is a light on but I don’t see anyone way back in the shop. My last chance is to call the office one more time. (Having flashbacks to working solo on Saturday’s at BlueCross.) On about the 4th ring I see someone going for the phone. Saved! I run to the back door and he gives me the bulletins.

    It may seem like a pretty small thing to be excited about. But it just worked out better that the original set was available. What a relief.

  • Saturday Tunes

    saturday tunesIt’s a quiet day around the house. Most of the Christmas shopping is done. Right now the kids are quietly playing… which means they are likely opening presents.

    So while they are quietly enjoying Saturday here are the the next tunes flying out of iTunes. As always, no cheating and ratings included.

    1.  Renaissance by Mat Kearney *****
    2. There’s Only One by Caedmon’s Call ****
    3. Sultanas de Merkaillo by Sanctus Real ****
    4. Let it Snow… by Jimmy Savage Band **** (ha! an elf!)
    5. Where We Belong by Sanctus Real ****
    6. Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven by David Crowder Band ****
    7. Be by Kmax/DC Talk **** (old school baby)
    8. Good Riddance by Green Day *****
    9. Give Me Jesus by Jeremy Camp ****
    10. Waters Gone By by Shawn Lewis ****

  • Romeo Elves: Paint the Rock

  • Romeo Elves: Paint the rock teaser

    Since Patti told me I was being a tease about the next elf video, I thought I’d post a little taste test. The final video has a time-lapse premise.

    I wonder how the peeps over at the church marketing labs would like our elf videos? Probably not snobby enough for them.

  • vConvert allows you to save YouTube videos for use later

    vconvert_logoOne of my constant frustrations is that we struggle to use all the media we can find at our different ministry environments at Romeo. We feel like we always want to push the envelope and shape the culture around us instead of being a church that responds 2-3 years after the fact.

    In the last two days we’ve jumped past two big obstacles.

    1. We couldn’t use stuff from YouTube in MediaShout. For whatever reason, we just struggled to get a stable enough file to use consistently.
    2. We couldn’t use every DVD. For some reason MediaShout struggled with certain types of DVDs which is quite frustrating. Even if we could get it to work, it was just one DVD per service as changing discs wasn’t pretty.

    This week I’ve managed to find solutions to both problems.

    1. Enter vConvert. This allows me to easily convert a YouTube video or any other format I find online into a format I can easily use in MediaShout… like Windows Media’s .wmv.
    2. Enter Pinnacles Movie Box. This allows me to easily import any analog signal onto our video PC and capture it. So let’s say we want to show a clip from a movie. (and we obtain permission to do so) I can run it from a DVD player and capture the clip I want in Windows Movie Maker easily.

    Both of these tools will help us in the back of the house on the production side of things. It both makes our lives a lot easier and will make the whole presentation much more stable. I’m very happy to pass along these as recommendations!

    Mega kudos to myhook-ups on these tips. Patti for the Movie Box and Tim for vConvert.

  • Some elves painted the rock in Romeo

    Romeo has a “rock” that people paint to celebrate football victories, birthdays, and just about anything else deemed worth an hour or so of spray painting the 9 foot rock in front of KMart.

    Well, today was our turn to paint the rock. So Jimmy and I, dressed as elves of course, spent an hour or so freezing our elf butts off for comedies sake.

    I’ll be editing the video tomorrow. Amazing stuff.

    So, if you drive by the rock and see that it’s got red/green colors for Christmas. We were the insane people who wrote “Merry Christmas from Romeochurch.com.” Because we know you thought that the Lutheran church did that.