Search results for: “good news”

  • The Goal of the Staffless Church

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    Which came first? The staff who ran the programs or the programs which required the hiring of staff?

    No offense to my friends who work at churches– but I wonder if their goal is to secure a job for life or to work themselves out of a job as quickly as possible?

    When I read church growth strategy books and articles I’m always amazed that they only talk about getting larger budgets, larger buildings, and larger staffs. Never mind that it’s a horrible strategy. Most think tanks only think about one strategy… how to get bigger. The idea of getting more efficient is ludicrous.

    When I read about the church of the first 100 years after Jesus I see a church growth strategy of “get in, train people up, and get out as fast as possible.”

    Here’s a centuries old tried and tested church growth strategy we have rejected: With no staff your church will grow.

    The “if you build it they will come model” of the last 50 or so years has lead to utter devastation of the church. Numbers are down big time. Sure, you can point examples of big churches. And no doubt people will leave comments saying how awesome their programs are. But the percentage of Americans regularly involved in the local church has declined sharply in the current multi-staff model.

    The fact remains that a church with less staff will be forced to be the church more than a church with programs where people show up and everything is done for them. This “worked” for thousands of years. What we are doing now isn’t working and we all know it.

    At some point someone decided that everyone needed to be on staff at the church. So we hired a music pastor. A worship pastor. A youth pastor. A children’s pastor. An associate pastor. An administrative pastor. A senior ministry pastor. And all of that staff required administrative support. Oh- and they’ll need offices and space– so we’ll need a bigger building.

    If I put my businessman’s glasses on I examine this trend and say: You’ve added a lot of overhead. Your business multiplied by 25 times, right?

    Wrong. The strategy didn’t work. But now we have an entire industry of church workers in an environment where they are reaching fewer and fewer people with bigger, more expensive programs. Now we’ve created an entitlement that simply isn’t sustainable nor is it leading to the growth long ago predicted.

    It’s almost too easy for me to point to examples of this in other countries. (We certainly saw this in Haiti.) But it’s also true among the exploding Latino and African-American churches in the United States. With almost no infrastructure they reach thousands. In your own community it is likely that there is a church kicking butt with nearly no overhead of staff or a building.

    I’m well aware of the biblical justifications that church staff deserve to make an income. Yes, I’ve used that myself. I’m not arguing that you have a right to claim that to be true. I’m merely questioning the strategy and inviting you to recognize that this strategy has seemingly paralyzed the church.

    Even those who bring up the Pauline argument for getting paid in ministry often neglect to mention that Paul also didn’t implement this strategy in all the places he ministered. Nor did he ever buy a house and start a family.

    Some questions to get you thinking

    • Where does the offering at your church go?
    • Where did the funds in Acts go?
    • How much has your church grown in the last 10-30-50 years using the current staff-heavy strategy?
    • What would it look like if say… 90% of that offering were given away in your community to feed the poor, care for the sick, take in orphans, protect widows, on and on?
    • Don’t you think that would be good news to the neighborhood?

    What I’m not saying

    • The church is wrong to have staff
    • The church should fire staff
    • All of my friends who do associate level ministry are bad/dumb/hurting the ministry of the church in their community
    • My own church is bad, filled with money hungry punks who make fat salaries. (Um, they all raise their own support!)

    What I am saying

    • A church as effective as the Book of Acts is possible today.
    • Churches should ask hard questions about meeting the needs of their community.
    • A lot of church growth strategies are really “church growth industry” growth strategies.
    • Church leaders should challenge their assumptions of what they know vs. what they know to be true in Scripture.
    • It is possible for the local church to reach 90%+ people in your community.
    • We should not be satisfied to “pay the bills” and reach 5-10% of our community.

    “Wake up, O sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.    ” Ephesians 5:14

  • Smart Media

    The most important lesson I’ve ever learned about business and social media was from Duck Tales Scrooge McDuck.

    Work smarter, not harder

    This mention of my work by Derek Johnson of Tatango proves my point.

    I’m not a guru. I don’t have a degree in media design. I have never taken a marketing class. I don’t have an MBA. The truth is that there is nothing special about me— all I do is stuff that is obvious.

    That’s good news for un-experts like you and me. You don’t have to have a bigger budget, you don’t have to have a pedigree, you don’t have to schmooze a newspaper editor, you don’t have to buy Super Bowl ads.

    In today’s world a smart message is all you need. Spend all your energy (cough, and money) investing in working smarter not harder.

  • Facebook App Gets a Facelift

    I use the Facebook app for iPhone all the time. It is my #2 most frequently used app behind Tweetie. While periodically they have released updates, they’ve mostly been cosmetic or UI in nature.

    Last week’s update offers something brand new and fun. But it’s also something you need to be aware of even if you aren’t an iPhone user.

    Two new features:

    1. Push notifications. Starting with version 3.1.1 you will get notified any time a friend does something on Facebook. I haven’t decided if I like this yet or not. I’ve got a lot of friends on Facebook and consequently a lot of activity on my account. People leave comments, wall posts, reply to threads I’m replying to, and send me lots of messages. I love this activity on Facebook, it’s one of the coolest things about the site. And now, each time they do something, a little announcement pops up on my phone. The good news is that it doesn’t make a sound to alert me that there is a new notification. The bad news is it is an interuption and I’m trying to eliminate those from my day-to-day, minute-by-minute life. It’s not that I’m super important… it’s that I need to eliminate distractions so I can give people/projects my full attention. If you don’t know how to turn it off, go to your iPhone settings> Facebook>Push Notifications> and you will see that you can decide what types of notifications you’d like.
    2. Massive data schmooshing commencing

      Contact synching. This is, by far, the coolest new feature they’ve added to the Facebook app. If you turn on contact synching the app will look at your iPhone contacts on Facebook and merge stuff. So if a contact has a phone number listed in Facebook, it will automatically import. The fun feature is that it also pulls their current profile picture and uses it as the picture for that contact on your phone if you don’t have one already. That’s just slick! Here’s the kicker that will make some people mad. The iPhone app doesn’t care if you are friends or not. If you have a profile and you are in the iPhone’s contacts… it will pull that picture. For those concerned about personal branding, that’ll force you to be more professional about your profile picture on Facebook. If you represent your organization… it might be a good idea to keep that profile picture looking good too.

    More data schmooshing to come? I’m sure there is a more technical name for this, but I call it data schmooshing. That’s where information from one application/website is merged with data from another application/website and out of that comes a new, more complete data set. I’m excited to see where this Facebook app takes things. I’m hoping that as time goes on it will schmoosh data with my Google contacts as well as my Google calendar. If they all start talking better the Facebook app could become a must-have application for everyone.

    This is precisely why people are saying that Facebook could make a run at building their own operating system, just like Google. Yes, the Facebook phone may just be one of those surprise 2010 products.

  • Greater things…

    I think the visuals of this version of the song, coupled with the history of Northern Ireland… really adds the significance and desperation needed for this song. Greater things are needed in the city.

    For those of us in ministry, the real question this song brings to the forefront is one of priorities. Will 2010 be a year when we lay aside our pet projects and church crap and actually bring Good News to the cities we live in? Or will we just continue “discipling” and “entertaining” the same people another year without ever compelling them to take action and live out what we believe?

    Unrelated sidenote: I’m itching to get back to Belfast.

  • Themes from NYWC

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    I had a great weekend in Cincinnati. I had lots of time to connect with old friends, meet tons of new people, and got into a multitude of deep conversations about life, work, ministry, and family. Over and over again themes came into conversation. These weren’t things I brought up… it just seemed like everything came back to these things eventually.

    • Mentorship, tutoring, education: Apparently, I am not the only one thinking that if youth ministry needs to be Good News to students it needs to somehow involve education. It seems like this is a youth ministry-wide tribal reaction to the realization that programmatic stuff isn’t as effective as it was just 5 years ago.
    • Calling: Living on the West Coast I’m a bit insulated from what is going on in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio churches. My friends would say, “it’s bad, real bad.” And I think that means giving is way down, they are taking pay cuts, and they are having to go back to God and say… “Are you absolutely positive I am called to this?“
    • Ministering to gay and lesbian students: When Andrew Marin came to NYWC last fall and talked about the big rainbow elephant in the room… it opened up a can of worms! One of the things I’ve learned is that while teens were coming out of the closet to youth workers EVERYWHERE, the youth workers were still closeted about it. I can’t tell you how many times a conversation brought this up.
    • Dependency. I think this is related to calling– it’s just the theological “aha” so many are embracing. We all know God’s got this. We all know that no matter how bad things look for the church, the church will be fine. But this weekend I ran into a bunch of people who literally are putting their life out there and depending on God. Even during the convention I ran into people who told me they had been let go that weekend. But they aren’t giving up. They aren’t freaking out. They are depending on God.
    • Fun! Even with the heavy stuff right under the surface. This is a tribe of people who loves life and wants to have fun. Check out what they did on Halloween.

  • Support Holistic Youth Ministry in San Diego

    kathy-phamI’m a part of a team at my church trying to figure out how to create a holistic youth ministry right here in San Diego. What exactly is a holistic youth ministry? Well, we don’t know just yet! But our vision is to architect a ministry that is good news to the urban working poor students in our neightborhood. We know that in our neighborhood we can just talk about good news, we have to bring good news to them. So our ministry will be teaching the Bible, aggressively sharing our faith, providing academic support, family services, and based on what we’ve heard from the first 3 weeks of our ministry… some sort of justice seeking mission. (Helping to right wrongs caused by oppressive situations, manipulative landlords, harsh government officials, and other fun things like that!)

    Obviously, I’ve got a full time job already. (As do the other 3 people volunteering) And getting something like this off the ground is a Herculian task. That’s why I’m stoked that our church has brought on Kathy Pham to lead this project that is crazy enough to change the world. She came here first as a summer mission intern– but we begged her to stay and transform those relationships with high school students into our launch of a youth minsitry.

    This idea was born just 6-7 weeks ago. We started with a handful of kids, no building, , no team, no concrete plan, and of course no money. So here we are: We’ve got a plan, a team, a building, a growing number of kids… and now we need some people to get behind Kathy so we can fulfill the fullness of what holistic youth ministry in San Diego can look like.

    Two ways to support:

    1. Support Kathy. Pure and simple. She’s the practitioner. We need someone out, on the ground, making this thing happen. She needs to raise $40,000 per year. And quick. [download id=”4″]

    Kathy has set up some times where you can meet her and here her presentation:
    October 18th: Vietnamese/English Presentation in Santa Ana, 6pm
    October 24th: English Presentation in Anaheim Hills, 6pm
    November 8th: English Presentation in City Heights, 6pm
    Any Day: English Presentation at wherever you would like to meet, any time:)

    2. Let us pick your brain. We’re looking to learn from others doing urban, holistic ministry. If you’re doing it… let me know. Our team is commited to learning from others.

  • The Hook-Up for Youth Group

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    I was so distracted by convention last week that I failed to really process/understand/comprehend an e-mail I got about our brand new youth ministry. It’s really cool to see people get on board with what we are trying to do.

    Background: About 6 weeks ago I had lunch with two pastors at Harbor Mid-City. Basically, they felt like the time was now to form something more substantial. Christine Brinn had done an amazing job with some of the young women and created an awesome model for mentorship. We wanted to build on that and reach more students. So we quickly formed a team, had 3-4 meetings, and launched last week with a handful of students. Idea-to-launch in 6 weeks. Stellar.

    What we want to do: Our dream is for this thing to be Good News in a holistic way. You can’t be in this neighborhood and think that a youth ministry can just be about teaching the Bible. So we want to meet practical needs… as many as possible. Stuff like, making sure our students get a good meal experience with us. We want to offer educational tutoring. We want to offer leadership development. We want to offer family services. And we want to provide a more substantial level of mentorship than we currently can handle. And we want to get all of that started yesterday because the need is so great.

    The problem: Practically speaking that’s an awesome dream. But as I’ve said a bunch of times… an unfunded vision is just a dream and when we said what we wanted the vision to look like we were really just dreaming. We had 4 adults. We had no where to meet. We didn’t have tutors or mentors for everyone. Pretty much all of the vision was laid out in faith that somehow, in time, God would provide.

    How God hooked us up! This church moves quick… have you noticed? I got an email from Kathy that outlines two amazing things. First, a church in City Heights has made their building available to us. That’s amazing stuff right there! Not only did we get hooked up on a place to meet– we can use it tonight! Second, Kathy made a pitch to InterVarsity over at San Diego State to students about getting involved by offering educational tutoring to students in the neighborhood. That’s right, you guessed it… our tutoring ministry kicks off NEXT WEEK!

    Building momentum towards the rest: These are two awesome things. A place to meet and a gaggle of people wanting to help teach is awesome. Those two things make the dream a little more of a reality. But there are also new challenges ahead. We still need access to family services. We still need people to help provide the stuff these kids need. We still need more mentors. And, of course, all of that stuff requires money we don’t have.

    But for now, I’m celebrating!

  • The Dark Side of Attractional Ministry

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    The dark side of attractional ministry is that it’s a short term strategy.

    True confession–

    I was a perveyor of an attractional ministry model. It never permeated any youth group that I’ve been a part of, but the structure of our last ministry was– at it’s very core– an attractional model within our two biggest demographics. (Children and adults 40+) Time and time again here on the blog I’ve made generalizations about attractional ministry, not just as an outside observer, but as someone who has participated and performed within the model. I critique because I know!

    Three quick reasons attractional ministry doesn’t work:

    1. A life with Christ isn’t entertaining. At the end of the day, a day-to-day walk with Jesus isn’t filled with flash pots, set design, video screens, and compelling skits, and crafted messages for the heart. So the premise itself presents a well-intentioned lie about Jesus.

    2. When the lights go out, people feel empty. Whether its an amazing kids program or a great event for adults. The reality is that people leave feeling empty and longing for more. Just like 2 hours of television doesn’t fill the soul quite like an intense conversation with a good friend, an amazing night of Jesus-y entertainment just leaves you tired and empty. The attractional model had the same effect as a visit to a casino. A huge build up and a huge let-down. (With free drinks along the way.)

    3. It’s unsustainable. This goes in a few directions. It isn’t sustainable in that a single church cannot entertain all the demographics/age groups you will attract. Also, it isn’t sustainable among volunteer and paid staff. (People don’t volunteer to entertain, they volunteer to minister) Lastly, it isn’t sustainable as it doesn’t prepare people to leave your church and fulfill the Great Commision.

    You can’t sustain it as a church

    When we first began our attractional ministry to children it seemed so innocent. The idea was if we could make the kids program awesome, kids wouldn’t want to miss church. We’d target kids knowing that parents would follow and support something that was great for their kids. It wasn’t about attracting money, it was about attracting families. Our hearts were in the right place as less than 5% of our communities families were part of a church. It wasn’t a false Gospel, it wasn’t evil or about self, it was just a short-term strategy that worked very well at first.

    The dark side of that is that entertaining people is an ever-hungrier dragon. Our initial efforts were simple and fun. But expectations quickly swelled. It didn’t take long for us to rethink our plan… we needed bigger casts, more production money, more planning, and if we just upped our game a little bit we could attract more people. When we got to the next level, people were excited and wanted more. Within a very short time people were expecting an experience we couldn’t create. They’d watch television or go on vacation and their expectations increased as they wanted those experiences with a Jesus-twist. More money, more people, more production… this is not a model for sustainability. I don’t care if your congregation is 200 or 20,000. You simply cannot compete in a sustainable fashion with the entertainment industry.

    Your leadership can’t sustain it

    The same truism played out among the leadership. The folly of turning one area of the church into mini-Disney quickly caused unintended consequences. Within a few months I went from ministering to the hearts of people to the host of a three ring circus. I had a hard time getting into spiritual conversations. It always came around to “I loved what you guys did, what’s happening next?” It was such a time-sucker that in all reality… I was the host of a three ring circus who did the bare minimum relationally to be called a minister. The community recognition was useful, the day-to-day reality wasn’t useful.

    Among the leaders, people turned on one another when one attractional ministry got more attention or funding than another. Remember that dragon? He always needs to be fed and as he grows he gets hungrier and more demanding. And a church only has so much talent that is functional for entertainment. As expectations for better entertainment attracted new and more people– competition for resources began. Feelings were hurt. Rank pulled. Volunteers stolen. Guilt laid. Moral shrank. Frustration set in. We all wondered in our silence, “How can we spend the same amount of time and money and get a bigger and better product?” We had fed a dragon that now spit fire.

    That’s right… the church staff began thinking of worship services, kids ministries, and adult outreach as product to be perfected and sold to an audience. Before we could figure out what was happening, it all turned into one tragic game a bigger or better. The problem this model was created to solve really just made the original problem ten times worse.

    The whole time I knew we couldn’t sustain it forever. There wasn’t more money. There weren’t more people. The questions went from “what are we looking to do in the next 3-5 years?” To “what are we trying to do this year?” To “what are we doing this quarter?” To “what are we doing this month?” To “what are we doing this week?” In desperation you just get into a survival mode of… how can we get through this week? No one entered into this foreseeing this problem. But that’s how dragons go, I guess.

    Ever increasing expectations + lack of resources + staff frustrations = burnout. I wasn’t alone in feeling burnt out. All of our staff and volunteers felt it. But none of us would admit to it because we were all too busy feeding the dragon. He wanted more.

    You can’t sustain it as a model for walking with Jesus

    The model itself sounds so Christ-like when you start. We justified, “Hey, this is exactly what Jesus did. He drew a crowd, then invited them in to a relationship.” But our theology was short sighted. We forgot John 6, didn’t we? When Jesus confronts those following him with the reality that following him was going to mean they’d have to carry His burden and that in order to follow Him lont-term they’d have to eat his flesh and drink his blood… John writes... “From this time many disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

    Within a year, the most dedicated volunteers were still following us but the majority had pulled a John 6:66 and gone home. Who could blame them? The leaders were defeated, but still had people coming– expecting to be entertained. Pride set in as we doubled down to say, our plan MUST WORK! We couldn’t admit our mistake or tell those people that ultimately our vision failed. We knew a walk with Jesus wassn’t about fun skits, silly songs, games, and great music. Ultimately, our attractional-style of ministry worked in one way and had devastating effects in another. All the staff hated what we had created. All of the staff lied to themselves that it was worth it. All of the staff openly questioned themselves, “Is this what ministry is all about?”

    A life with Jesus isn’t about making it from one event to the next. It isn’t about getting inspired by an event. Teaching people that by depending on entertainment to draw people is ultimately not the Gospel. It looks like Jesus. It smells like Jesus. But its just a shadow of the real thing. Luke documented this phenomenon in Acts 8.

    Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is the divine power known as the Great Power.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic. But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

    I share this story as a warning to my friends in ministry— tough times make us all look for easy solutions. It’s Fall. A lot of churches are in the same position we were in when we started our attractional ministry. They have vision, they have unreached people, but right now money is tight and you think… “If we could only attract 20 more families, we’d be OK. We wouldn’t have to lay off staff.” That’s right where we were when we brought the dragon into our church.

    That dragon may be cute and cudely today– but trust me, it will breathe fire soon enough. He will eat you up, spit you out, and leave you quoting Ecclesiastes.

  • Getting Started in Investing, part two

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    Here’s a scenario for you. You are serving at a church and things go sour. I mean, they go really sour. Meetings are arranged behind your back. Students stop coming to events and making excuses to avoid you. Your weekly staff meeting with the pastoral team becomes a finger pointing competition. And all roads are leading back to you. You’ve done nothing wrong but everyone hates you. You leave the meeting and head back to your office. You know your ministry at this church is coming to an end. You have felt it ending for a long time. And you are sweating the reality that a job search is imminent.

    All spiritual realities aside. In these moments, and all vocational people in a church will one day be in these moments, there are two positions you can be in.

    Position A: You can make a rational decision, knowing that you will be financially OK whether you stay at this ministry or not.

    Position B: You can make an irrational decision, knowing that if you get fired you are screwed financially.

    [Of course, I’m simplifying this as there are lots of options.] The point is that when things hit the fan at work you need to be able to make a decision that is ultimately best for you and your family. And being knee deep in debt with no savings is not going to help.

    Having worked in churches for nearly 10 years I know that there is rarely much margin between income and expense. And this makes saving money hard and acquiring debt easy. Add to that mix that many people in youth ministry brought college debts into ministry… and you have a recipe for disaster!

    So, practically speaking, what can you do?

    #1 Most Important Thing: You need to figure out how to get a few grand in the bank. You hear every single personal finance person say this and there is a good reason. Having 2-3 months living expenses in the bank allows you the freedom to make decisions that are best for you and not just what will get you through the next couple of months. Living paycheck to paycheck just leads to you acquiring more and more debt. I believe for folks in ministry this is more important than paying down debts… our jobs are just that insecure. And this goes beyond just job issues. I don’t think you can seriously build a budget until you have this little bit of breathing room.

    With almost no margin, how do I get that much cash in the bank? Some ideas…

    – Sell stuff. Have a garage sale. Have a bake sale. Sell used books on Amazon. Sell your baseball cards on Ebay. Sell your extra car.

    – Make more money. We’ll talk more about this in another post. But practically speaking, if there is no margin between what you bring in and what goes out you will need to find another source of income. For Kristen and I this meant that Kristen watched a child from the church four days a week. It wasn’t much… but it helped us widen the margin. If you’re single… you’ll need to look for alternate forms of income. Again, we’ll talk more about this in part five.

    – Spend less money. That’s easier said than done, I know. Our friends mocked us, but in Michigan Kristen and I learned that by heating our house less we could find a bit of margin. Also, cutting back on things you don’t really use that much can make a big difference. Remember this is just temporary until you get a few grand in the bank. 6 months without DVR or trips to Starbucks will be worth it.

    – Decide a dollar amount to save per paycheck. I take great pleasure in transfering a prescribed dollar amount to savings every payday. But if you lack the discipline to do that, there are more forceful options. If you have direct deposit simply direct a set amount to your savings account so you never actually see it as spendable income! A more manual way to do this is to ask the person who cuts paychecks at the church to write you two seperate checks. One goes in checking and the other goes in savings. If you really lack discipline… go ahead and have the take out your tithe/offering too!

    #2 Most important thing: You need to stop using your credit cards. When Kristen and I got married we didn’t have any debts. About a year later we bought a car and went into debt big time to make it happen. But that wasn’t the really dumb thing. The dumb thing is that a few weeks later I said “yes” to an offer for a Discover Card. That thing has been a thorn in my side ever since. At first we paid it off every month and I only used it for gas purchases. Then, we took 3 months to pay for a laptop. Then we bought some furniture. And started using it everywhere we went. Then the monthly balance was so high I couldn’t make myself pay $1000 per month so we let the debt build a little. Before we knew it, it was almost maxed out and we were screwed! The point is… until you take the first step and take using the credit card as part of your buying habits… it’ll own you.

    – Stop carrying it with you if its a temptation.

    – I like using plastic for every purchase, that’s why I use my debit card.

    – Come up with a repayment plan on your own. Currently, we dedicate one of Kristen’s paychecks to savings and one to paying down debt each month.

    – As you pay down the balance, call the card company and ask them to lower your limit. While you’re at it ask them to lower your interest rate.

    – Try to pay at least double the minimum payment… you need to get the principle down ASAP to incur less interest payments.

    – Once you get a few grand in the bank, turn all your efforts to getting rid of credit card debts. If you have more than one debt, pay the one with the highest interest rate off first.

    #3 Most important thing. Reward yourself! Look, our jobs are hard. And I think some of the reason so many of us get ensnared in debt and no savings is because we overcompensate and reward ourselves too much. I think there is ample reason to celebrate your successes and take time to celebrate. My beef with Dave Ramsey’s style of personal finance is that he’s too aggressive. He sets you up for a fad diet… and once you reach your goals you have starved yourself so much that you are liable to go buy something stupid just because you can. I go for a more reasonable style of savings/debt repayment. I’m OK with it taking a few months longer if it means I make sustainable changes to my life. That’s why we reward ourselves regularly along the way. We save up a little something outside of our “plan” and then do fun things! Our family has a date night each week… it’s frivolous, but it is a nice reward. I think you deserve to treat yourself for doing a good job! I know in youth ministry there aren’t many other people who will reward you, so reward yourself.

    Here’s the good news. Getting a few grand in the bank will probably only take you 6 months if you make it a legit goal. And from there you can turn your DVR and your heat back up! But a little bit of pain is going to go a long, long way for you sustaining in youth ministry into your 30s and beyond.

  • Reigning in Christmas

    This was the 3rd year where Kristen and I really controlled Christmas instead of Christmas controlling us. We’ve always had a desire to keep Christmas in it’s rightful place. It seems like it is finally sinking in and becoming a habit.

    The good news is that anyone can control Christmas!

    Practically, we are celebrating another Christmas paying for everything in cash. (Gasp! You can do that?) Around Thanksgiving Kristen and I discussed how much we wanted to spend and we did a good job sticking to our gift giving budget. (Our big splurge was the new TV. The crazy thing about that is it was the first TV I’d ever bought!)

    We don’t have the best history as far as gift giving goes. Like a lot of couples, we completely overspent for years. In those earlier days of our marriage, when we had more cash flow than wisdom to handle it, we managed to spend way more than we could afford and got used to paying off Christmas debt well into Spring.

    My only encouragement to those who want to make a change is plan early and pay cash. I don’t mean “buy early” as that’s not the best way to get deals. Just plan early and set aside some cash to buy gifts. From there, commit to not dipping into savings or using a credit card.

    Here’s the kicker. We’re less stressed out about it and it gives us a chance to teach our kids about Jesus. Now that Christmas is over I have zero guilt about what we spent. The secret is that the kids are just as happy with fewer, smaller presents, as they were when we spent a lot! The Incarnation didn’t happen so we could get further entrapped! He came to fully release us from bondage. That means the bondage of sin. But it also means that Jesus’ taking on flesh is a reminder that we can be released from our other indebtedness.

    A simpler Christmas is over the top fun. I just hope we can be even more disciplined in 2009.

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