Tag: Romeo

  • MainStreet is back tonight!

    It seems like a huge layoff for the MainStreet gang. (Since Christmas Eve) But we are back at it tonight with a great event.

    During the layoff we’ve gotten an opportunity to do a few things that will help us in the Spring run.

    • Rest!
    • Reorganize!
    • Re-prioritize!
    • Renewed enthusiasm!

    Rest. We needed it. Pulling MainStreet off every month takes about a month of preparation. The result is that each month our team gets just 3-4 days of not thinking about or acting on MainStreet per month. We need this layoff just to have some time to not think about “Oh my gosh, it’s 2 weeks away!”

    Reorganize. If you come to MainStreet you may get the idea that we’ve got a play book. You are wrong, we have created MainStreet from scratch. Things that we thought would work didn’t. And when we divided up jobs we didn’t know what would be big jobs or small jobs… so during the layoff we were able to reorganize a little bit to divide things more reasonably. It’s a big project, but when the team works together its pretty manageable.

    Re-prioritize. Sometimes you are so busy working on a project that you can’t think enough about the strategic goal. Stepping back gave us the chance to change some things and focus this more specifically as a foyer environment. (An invitable event) Tonight, you’ll see this play out in a couple of ways as we specifically point new people to the next step… our living room environment of UpTown. Watch for this in the greeting and goodbye especially. Another thing we’re doing better than ever is teaching the virtue. As we point attendees to the next step, UpTown, we want to introduce this month’s virtue… watch for kindness to be taught all over the place… from the greeting, to a special song, to the skits, to Bob’s talk, and other places.

    Renewed enthusiasm. Stepping back and evaluating MainStreet helped us recognize just how far we’ve come and just how effective MainStreet has been. This charged us up. This helped our team look at our body of work and say, “It is a ton of work, but it is helping us draw people into the Kingdom… so let’s do it even better!”

    We’ve got a long way to go until our next break. (July… maybe!) I’m looking forward to the next 6 months of MainStreet. We’ve got some goals to accomplish along the way and I can’t wait to reveal them as we go. Let’s just say we plan on doing MainStreet bigger and better as we finish season 2.

    UPDATE: Man, the snow is so bad… and getting worse… that’s we’ve called off MainStreet for tonight. I am so bummed out! So, the layoff continues until March 5th.

  • K Games Promo

  • A brand new RomeoKids.com

    It took several month to say this, but RomeoKids.com has a brand new look. This was the first project that the church has ever sent out to a web designer and I think it turned out awesome. Matt Adams, that guy is great to work with. If you ever need a WordPress theme totally custom designed from head to toe… he’s your man.

    I think the new look is very bright, cheery, inviting, and screams “Kids!” as soon as you load it. What do you think?

  • Mercy: Some practical theology here

    Last night at Light Force small groups we talked about the difference between mercy and grace.

    Grace = Getting something you don’t deserve.

    Mercy = Not getting something you deserve.

    I could see the students wrestling with this. Here are students completely covered in both. They have parents who bathe them in both on a daily basis. Yet they don’t see it. I think it goes back, for them, to a fundamental misunderstanding of what “deserve” means. They think that they deserve mercy and grace.

    I left thinking that most of the students expect to deserve grace and mercy. (By their birth they feel they have merited favor with others and even God) And I wondered how I could communicate that they don’t deserve to deserve grace and mercy better?

    What are some practical areas of grace and mercy the students in your life experience but fail to acknowledge?

  • CSR: The Crazy Loon Cafe & Pie Company

    CSR GreatWith Pepper’s, the Doghouse, and Sempre` now out of business, I am looking for a new spot for my lunch rotation. This gives me the chance to revisit some old favorites that just didn’t make my rotation before.

    Location: 66850 VanDyke Washington Township This is one of those diamonds in the rough kind of things. The strip mail just south of 31 Mile, Woodland Plaza, may not look that appealing but there are a few good spots in there. (Juliet Chocolate being another)

    Description: If this were in a city I’d call it a whole in the wall. It’s a small store front that serves interesting, upscale-like sandwiches and pies. The decor has kind of a cabin feel to it with pictures of Loons and other water fowl. But overall, it is clean and simple… two things that typically don’t bode well for the long-term life of a small eatery in Romeo. They do their two main things very well, sandwiches and pie. Both are outstanding and you shouldn’t leave without trying both. Another bonus is that they make their own potato chips. They are awesome!
    Service: The thing that sticks out to me is that they aren’t afraid to be quirky. Every time I’ve been in there the folks who worked the counter gave me a hard time and left me with a smile. This is atypical for Romeo! For some reason most servers are kind of shy as if they are ashamed to work there or wouldn’t work at all if it weren’t for mom and dad breathing down their neck to get a job. This isn’t the case at the Crazy Loon. They are fun. If I had to find a negative, it’s actually a positive. Food is a little slow since they make every sandwich to order.

    Cost: I typically get a sandwich, drink, and a slice of pie and that costs about $8. In my book that’s cheap.

    Rating: A great sandwich for a low price with sassy service that leaves you smiling, full, and happy to go back to work? That’s great service to me.

  • Good news for Romeo

    The mood in town, economically, is horrid. Everyone makes it seem like we are in the great depression or something.

    Here’s a little reminder to the people of Romeo that things are still quite good. The Ford F-150, whose engine is made right here in town, is still the #1 selling vehicle in America.

    Story

    Sure, sales are down. And things may continue to slow down. But we’re still doing pretty good.

  • From the MainStreet vault

    Some of these clips are for MainStreet tomorrow while others are for “web only.” But over all I thought this was some funny stuff.

  • 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! 

  • Yowsers…

    That’s pretty much how I felt about last night’s MainStreet. In one night we had some of our best stuff and some things we’ll put under our cap as lessons learned.

    The kids who came were way more fired up than I’d ever seen. (Obviously this is good from a kid perspective and scary from an adult one.) I think the cold weather had something to do with this as they were running around the auditorium like bees outside the hive. The room was filled with energy before we even began.
    Then we got them really excited. I said in the pre-event meeting that my goal was to get everyone engaged and excited in the first five minutes.  So imagine the bee hive… and then stirring them up with dancing, loud music, and silliness.

    Then we got them too excited.  About half way through the night we did a skit that was insane with a twist. During the scene I dumped a lot of packing peanuts on the stage (55 gallons) and then at the end of the scene I grabbed a leaf blower and blew about half of those into the audience. It was crazy hilarious, unexpected, and the kids loved it. Unfortunately… this got them a little too excited right at the half way point. The ADD kicked in and it was absolutely nuts from there! (Can you believe we ended the night with a crazy game and cookies?)

    The rest of the night was pretty good, just not our best. After every event we do I instantly think of things we did right, things we did wrong, and ways to improve. My mind races for hours through all the details of it. And last nights MainStreet is like that… there were things that were great and things that need to be better.

    As this post reveals, my mind is still racing about it and it ended almost 12 hours ago. Yowsers…

  • Don’t Watch the Weather

    winter weatherI am continually surprised to see people pre-decide that the weather is too bad for an activity. They watch the weather on the local news and believe the hype that we’re going to have a blizzard or that it’s going to be bad out there… so they pre-decide tonot go to work, school, or church.

    You hear them say “It’s going to be bad out there.”  Then they stay home.

    This leads to a two-part thing that I don’t like about living in Michigan.

    1. People born and raised in Michigan are wimps about winter weather. They live in a state surrounded by water and Canada on 3 directions and are surprised to see winter weather.  Instead of being like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Northern New York and taking  “bring it on, nothing will stop us” attitude they wimp out and pretend to be surprised when winter weather comes.
    2. People born and raised in Michigan tend to lack the hardiness to overcome weather adversity. I think it took us moving to the West Coast to really see this. There are people who won’t let anything stand in the way of their going to work, school, or church and then there are people who just look for an excuse to not come. We had people in California tell us they skipped church because it was below 40 F and might freeze. Some Michigan people are the same way. They look for any excuse to call out to work, school, or church. It’s not worth the trouble they say.

    A lot of people want to blame the governor or the auto industry for the poor economic state of things in Michigan. I think residents would be wise to examine their work ethic. If something as simple as a snow storm or even a rumor of a winter storm is enough to negatively impact our economy… I think we need to examine these cultural things. (After all, this is reality we are talking about. We’re talking about attitudes.)

    You know it’s coming. Adam’s annual rant about dirt roads is coming.