• Mother of all Trailers

  • This (c)Old House

    ColdhouseLiving in a house built 135 years ago has it’s benefits. I love the history of the property, I love the old world feel to the house, I love little things like the 11 inch woodwork that makes no sense, pocket doors, an amazing yard, on and on.

    One thing I don’t like about an old house is that it is very hard to keep it warm. It’s a combination of a lack of insulation and inadequate duct work. If I had to do this house over again I would have installed radiated heat… but instead we have a blended system of forced air and electric heat. The result is that some areas are warmish while other areas are constantly drafty.

    It’s been a joke of visitors that our house is always cold. People say "We’re going to Adam’s house, we need to dress warm." Or my personal favorite is a friend of mine who says "We McLane their house sometimes." (Now we’re a verb?) Why? Um, pretty simple… we can’t afford to keep our old house at 72 degrees. Even at 65 during the day and 58 at night, we’re a little worried about energy costs this winter.

    Does this frustrate me?     Not really. I grew up in "This Old House" so I am just used to it. The house I was born in was from the 1920s, the house my dad had is from 1888, he now lives in a 1920s house, on and on. It’s not an issue to me at all. I look at it from a historical perspective and say "For 135 years kids have been raised in this house and lived, so will mine."

    My personal opinion is that most Americans  are too comfortable in their homes. They waste water by washing several times a day, they heat their homes to feel like Florida during a Michigan winter, on and on. We tend to put personal comfort so much higher than we actually need that we simply are spoiled. I hear people say "I can’t live in a house that gets down to 58 at night." Um, you would adapt. They say "I need a shower twice a day or I break out." Um, maybe your skin is breaking out because of your constantly remove the natural oils your body produces? OK, I’ll stop whining.

  • Hippies take over hip hop?

  • Mmmm… Extra Value Meal!

    If you like this, buy your own blender right here.>>click-e-click<< Just $400 for the basic version.

  • aaahhhhh…. MainStreet is over

    DefinitionLast night, was the November MainStreet. MainStreet is our kid’s program’s once a month "foyer" activity. (Meaning, we invite the whole church and the whole community to a comfortable event where we introduce a biblical concept.)

    This was our second one, and it really was better than the month before. We added a lot more characters. We technologically went a lot further. And the whole thing was a lot more complicated. And it showed. When you make that much of a leap… there will be some problems.
    Overall, the night was a massive hit. (Again) People were excited and pleased with what the event accomplished. Right now I can only think about what went wrong… but so much did go right.

    So, it’s time to tear down from last night and start working on the December one!

    p.s. Now I know who can play off messing a scene up. 🙂 That really is a valuable skill for this type of thing.

  • What does “Quality” have to do with church?

    QualityNot to often in "serious graduate work" do I have an "aha moment" where something a little fuzzy in my own life gets suddenly clear. Here is a case of just that.

    As the church leadership has "wrestled" with implementing our new vision and strategies we’ve been able to articulate what we hope to accomplish but sometimes floundered in articulating the difference between "quality control" and "quality enhancement."

    Quality control in church programs:
    "Quality control identifies and measures minimum acceptable results." In a church setting, this is simply "Is the Bible being taught reflective of our beliefs?" "Are people being led into a closer relationship with Jesus?" "Are our programs in a safe environment?" "Is the gospel being presented?" Things like that. These are minimum standards which are fairly easy to measure.

    Quality enhancement in church programs:
    "Quality enhancement focuses on excellence. That is levels of attainment well beyond minimums." This is what we’ve been doing for the last year or so but seen the biggest push in the last few months. "How can we create the best environment for Sunday morning worship?" "How can we best connect new people to the church?" "How can we best disciple kids, students, and adults?" "How can we effectively present Christ to the community we live in?"

    Different standards…
    Perhaps the hardest thing for us to communicate in the last several months is that the message of the church is not changing. In fact, we are trying to discover and ensure that our message is clearer and better understood than the way we were doing it. Oddly enough, most of our conflicts have been the result of individuals attempting to apply quality control standards to things that can only be measured in quality enhancement.

    What?
    Simply put… quality control is saying "This is what the Bible says the church is to do, are we doing it?" Most complaints haven’t had anything to do with this at all. Most complaints have come up when someone looks at what we are doing and says, "Since we’ve done this in the past, we have to keep doing it even if it is ineffective." That’s sliding something that isn’t the "minimum measurable" into a "minimum measurable status." For instance, when some have judged our services and said that since we don’t do altar calls we aren’t doing a church service correctly… they’ve elevated something that is a method to a status of "biblically commanded, enforced by church rule," when it is not.

    Deep thoughts for the day… 

  • Recovery

    The Chicago trip was great, but I’m wiped out completely. We got back at 2:00 am Sunday morning and I had to go "caffeinated" through the worship services to make it. Good trip, but I’m glad to be home and recovering.

  • Annual Chicago Pilgrammage

    Today and Saturday I’m in Chicago with 5 Light Force students as we’re enjoying our annual trip to visit Chicago area colleges. Actually, it worked out that we’re crunched for time and a lack of sincere interest in a number of places…. so it’s just one college we’re visiting. We left the house at 4 am and I’m about ready for bed right now.

    I got a chance to pop in on the class of one of my favorite people in the world, Bob MacRae. Bob was my adviser at Moody but really ended up being my biggest encourager to pursue professional ministry. It was great sitting in on his "Communicating Biblical Truth to Adolescents" class. It was like a bad flashback to the ghost of college class past! I was proud of myself that I just observed and resisted the temptation to join in the discussion.

    We’re headed back to Romeo late Saturday night and will be in church Sunday morning.

  • Quantitative overload of qualitative terms

    I think my students like knowing that I’m a student again. As I continue to wrestle my way through a Masters in Youth Ministry Leadership, I’ve come to a challenging class. (Let’s face it, some classes are easier than others)

    Qualitative research is a lot like learning how to be a documentarian. It’s a research method that is based on personal interviews. That part, I love. I love discovering the why and how of how organizations work… I really do! What is challenging to me is the amount of terminology in our text book. I’m not lost, but I do catch myself saying constantly… "Who cares!" "Will I ever need all of this philosophical crap?" It’s the same feeling I had when taking trigonometry back in 11th grade.

    Of course, having a hard class always drums up this thought… I’ve hated school since about 4th grade, why in the world am I doing graduate work? I’ve got lots of reasons for doing it, really I do.

  • Wins and winning

    It’s been about 2 months since the church started shifting to "the new stuff." While it’s been the hardest 2 months of my ministry career (people upset, a few departures) it has also been tremendously rewarding.

    • Small groups for both Light Force and adults are going great. We have about 70 adults in small groups right now… way more than Sunday school.
    • Phase 1 is essentially complete.  The building looks good and people are very happy with it.
    • KidsTown is going really well. All three children’s environments are a hit.

    So what’s left? We still have some living room environments to roll out (seniors and married life) but essentially all the "change" is done. At this point it is just a matter of taking what we’re doing and constantly improving and innovating to make what we’re doing better.

    All around, I see wins. And it feels good to play for a winner.