Tag: Romeochurch.com

  • Will you pray for my ministry?

    Tonight we are starting something new. In a lot of way I wish I had access to this new thing years ago. At Romeo, we say “small groups are where life change happens.” And I am entering into this new study, Life Hurts… God Heals, truly praying to see that come to life. I long to see this study connect hurting students to a God who heals.

    Will you pray with me that life-change will occur as we help our students deal with some realities in their lives? Will you pray that as we deal with the “real stuff” in their lives that they will open themselves up to the healing that comes from God?

    Why are you teaching this? Let’s face it, 100% of us and 105% of our students are hurting somehow. I want to equip them with the skills to face their “stuff” and I want to equip them with the skill to help their friends face their stuff.

    Want to learn more about what we’re teaching? Check out this link

    Want to see your student get involved? We’d love to hear from parents or students, shoot me an email or leave a comment. mclanea@gmail.com

  • I’m Crazy

    Last week I made a new friend because of the blog. Blogs are funny like that. As I talked to this person on the phone she told me she loved my quote on the top of my header. It says “Crazy enough to want to change the world.”

    The quote is personal to me. Before coming to Romeo, we served at a church in California. The church really wasn’t my style but Kristen and I thought… maybe God could use us there? My mission (as agreed to) in getting hired there was two-fold. First, disciple the Christian kids in the church. And second, reach the lost students of that community.

    The experience there was a nightmare. At one key meeting an elder scowled at me and said something like, “You know what the problem with you is? You are naive and stupid enough to think you can change the world. You walk around here as if the things you do really matter.” Later, as the meeting ended I said something like, “I am stupid and crazy enough to want to change the world. I believe with every core of my being that I was created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Reaching the lost of this community is a good work. It is crazy and it is stupid to think that one person could change the world, I’m OK with that. I’d rather be labeled crazy and lead people to reach the lost than sit here and do nothing.”

    In that moment, my mind was made up. The journey to Romeo was underway.

    When I told that story to my new friend, she was shocked. Later she sent me this quote:

    “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently–they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.”

    It’s my hope that I’m helping to create a generation of people in this community that are crazy enough to think they can change the world around them.

    What about you? Are you crazy enough to want to change your world?

  • Videos, blue keys, and more…

    blue keysMy basement is a fan of Blue Man Group right now. Hanging from the rafters are tons of chunks of metal with a fresh coat of blue enamel on them… drip drying.

    I spent about half of my week making a video for Sunday’s service.

    We called in some favors this week to get some “wow” stuff.

    Jimmy has learned a brand new song just for this service. It’s amazing.

    Bob is completely jazzed about his message.

    Why all the fuss? This week’s service will be unmissable. Seriously, I know they are calling for ice and rain tonight… but you need to know this service will be worth ice skating, snowshoeing, or whatever it takes to get there.

    I’ve been at Romeo almost 5 years. And I’ve gotten fired up about some Sunday’s. This one ranks right up there. The word all week we’ve used is “Killer.” I think this service will be killer.

    If you’ve never joined us at Romeo: This is going to be the perfect jumping in point. If you come Sunday, you’ll leave knowing exactly who we are, what we’re all about, and why we do what we do.

  • Hope for Me Yet from Married Life

    I just featured this in the brand new weekly newsletter we’re sending out here at the church, and I want to share it with my readers since I know many of you are not yet on our e-mail list. This is our worship leader, Jimmy Savage, performing at our Married Life event last weekend.

    Feel free to join our free e-mail newsletter for a fresh video each week from romeochurch.com, a preview of this week’s services, and notes from last week’s message. Even if you don’t go to our church or live in our state… I think there will be something there each week worth checking out.

  • 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?

  • Last Night was Great

    Last night in Light Force we had our 3rd worship night. And they just keep getting better.

    The first two I was really self-conscious about who was and wasn’t there. (Easy to do when only a couple people show up!) This one I was just focused on making it a great night.

     We had a fun game to kick things off. (Ping pong baseball will be back!) Then Jimmy did a great job leading worship. I may be biased, but I think Jimmy is one of the better worship guys out there! Our students are lucky to have him and I hope they recognize how good a job he is doing.

    For the talk I spoke from John 13. This was kind of a blend of a talk I heard from Andy Stanley at YS and a fantastic video that ESPN did on Tim Tebow, winner of the 2007 Heisman trophy. What I liked most about this talk (Ha! It’s my own talk, of course I like it) is that it started from a very positive angle… you are a person of power somewhere in your life… and helped students answer the question, “What do I do with the power I have?”

    (more…)

  • So, ready for coffee?

    In the coming weeks I’ve cleared my schedule a lot so that I can concentrate on two things more than I have in the recent past.

    1. Spend time with parents of Light Force students.
    2. Spend time with Light Force students, with a purpose.

    So here’s the deal. If you are a student or a parent and you would like to meet up to talk about Light Force… I want to hear from you. Got gripes? Got ideas? Got wants? Wanna share what’s been going on? Call me, email me, Facebook me, AIM me, whatever it takes… I’m trying to get in contact with you, you try to get in contact with me. Let’s get this bus moving in 2008. Let’s overcome obstacles. Let’s do what we need to do.

    One dream I have right now is to have a regular group of people who meet weekly to pray for our students. Nothing would warm my heart more and highlight my weekly calender in “can’t miss red” better than that.

  • 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!