The Don't Song

I'm working on a post for this week but it's taking a little longer than normal. In the meantime, here's a little something to help your marriage...

Evangelism Primer

This Sunday I'm beginning a new series on evangelism called Just Walk Across the Room. The study is written by Bill Hybels and our small groups will be using the DVD study as well. In preparing for the first message I revisited some of the older stuff I'd read on the topic including Brian McClaren's More Ready Than You Realize. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed that book and I recommend it to anyone who's tired of the outdated 20th century methods (evangelism as sales pitch, conquest, warfare, threat, argument, monologue, etc) and ready for something more retro. Something say 1st centuryish in the style of Jesus (evangelism as conversation, friendship, influence, invitation, opportunity, etc).

In chapter 17 he offers a summary of what he learned about evangelism through a on-going conversation with a girl named April. The book is basically the story of those conversations and how she moved towards faith throughout the process. McClaren describes these as "factors--not easy steps, not formulae, but elements, factors, parts of a bigger whole that cannot easily be nailed down." Many of them fit within what I'll be sharing over the next four weeks so hopefully they'll get us thinking in that direction. Here they are (without commentary)...

1. The Relational Factor: Count conversations, not just conversions.

2. The Narrative Factor: Listen to their story, share your story, and share God's story, not just propositions or formulas.

3. The Communal Factor: Expect conversation to normally occur in the context of authentic Christian community, not just in the context of information.

4. The Journey Factor: See disciple-making as a holistic process and unending journey, not just a conversion event.

5. The Holy Spirit Factor: Believe that God is at work "out there" in everyone (either working from the outside to get in or from the inside to get out), not just "in here" in the church.

6. The Learning Factor: See evangelism as part of your own discipleship-not just the other person's!

7. The Missional Factor: See evangelism as recruiting people for God's mission on earth, not just people for heaven.

8. The Service Factor: See evangelism as one facet of our identity as servants to all.

Not-So-Scary Thoughts

I'm still recovering from last night's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Maury Hills! I'm not recovering from the work (Todd did most of that), just recovering from the fun. What an awesome night!! We had 400+ and I met several new families. It's always fun to meet new families while dressed as a zombie (many said that was the first time they've ever seen me in a suit). On the way home Jenny and I talked about how we think this event has successfully made the transition from church-event to community-event. Allow me to explain...

Two years ago after completing another successful Trunk-or-Treat several of us got to talking. It was a good event, but it could be so much more! Todd, our student minister, pulled together the children's ministry team and they started dreaming about something bigger and better. Then they made the decision to move the event from a fellowship-orientated church event to an outreach-orientated community event. There were several reasons why.

One, we want people who are not connected with God or a church family to find both! Therefore, we need opportunities to interact with them, meet their families and introduce them to ours. Halloween gives us a chance to do that in a really fun way. Two, Halloween is a holiday geared directly towards kids and we love kids at MH. This gives us our community a chance to see that first-hand and it provides families with a fun, safe place to bring their kids. Three, Halloween has quickly become the 2nd biggest holiday in America. Did you know that? It's inching up on Christmas in terms of participation. Granted, it's not a religious holiday, but we're not trying to attract religious folk anyway. We just want people who are far from God to rub elbows with a few of his followers (costumes and all).

But to move an established event from "church-orientated" to "community-orientated" can be a daunting task. If you plan with only the church folk in mind then you run the risk of scaring away your target audience (no pun intended). For example, say you decide to encourage everyone to dress up as their favorite Bible character. That's cute and fun but only for those who have some familiarity with the Bible. On the other hand, if you plan the event with only the community in mind then you run the risk of offending some church folk. For example, how many churches do you know who advertise "Halloween" in their Sunday bulletin? We decided to risk the latter and here's a few of the changes we've made over the last couple of years.

1) The Name. We actually call it a "Halloween" party. That's a little unique among churches. I see lots of "Festivals" and "Trunk-or-Treats" but very few incorporate the H word. That's because some believers find the term offensive due to its pagan history, but if we're going to attract the community are we going to appeal to them or us? We figured most people outside of the church didn't know what "trunk-or-treat" meant, but almost everyone understood the concept of "Halloween." After all that's what we call it whenever people dress up in costumes and go around getting candy. If we're going to reach the community then let's speak the language.

2) The Music. We traditionally had live music at our Trunk-or-Treat but it was always Christian music. I love Christian music and it's great for church events, but when you invite the unchurched do you expect them to know your songs? Last year we asked the band to "go secular" and play some stuff that everyone knows. They now play classic rock (and they are awesome by the way).

3) The Registration. We used to completely ignore this. Just show up, we already know who you are. But again, if the community is coming, then you better have some way to find out who they are so you can invite them back for a Sunday or another special event. So we started registering everyone. The cost is still free and we don't force anyone to register. As a matter of fact, we don't even call it registration. We just put up a big sign that says "Sign up for Door Prizes!" At the end of the night we draw a name (church members are excluded) for a $25 gift card to Wal-Mart.

4) The Event. We had to expand. You can't just trunk-or-treat because that only takes 30 minutes or so to walk through all the cars, so we added a bit more (actually a lot more). We added a parade, dinner, hay maze, hayride, games, pumpkin decorating, inflatables, not-so-spooky stories, etc. We also asked a Maury County Sheriff's deputy to come out and provide security. All of that adds to the "safe and fun" goals of the event.

5) The Feel. While we don't hide the fact that this event is hosted by a church, we also don't want it to have a "churchy" feel. Therefore, we don't spend a lot of time talking church stuff. We don't preach at anyone, stop and have a devo, put a high-pressure invite on them to come back on Sunday, etc. It's all pretty low-key. We're just a church hosting a party for our community. Come and enjoy yourself and if you decide to come back on Sundays that's great. If not, we still want you to come and enjoy the party.

So that's some of the philosophy behind what we do. I know that some of you could care less about the strategy (but I suspect you've already stopped reading by now) and some of you will disagree with our approach (you're still reading but you're not happy about it). For the rest, I hope this gives you a little insight. I just thought you might be interested in some of the strategy behind the event.

Breaking the Silence

I've been on vacation the last seven days and also took a little break from twittering, facebooking and blogging. I have to confess that I still read few tweets and scanned the status updates from time to time, but I didn't post anything new. It was actually kind of refreshing. It reminded me of what the world was like before all this social media pseudo interconnectedness. I even thought about how these sites are stunting our interpersonal skills and making us all a little Heene-like in our search for celebrity and self-promotion (Heene is the ballon-boy's Dad, in case your wondering). I even pondered the idea of taking a permanent break and perhaps having a real-live conversation with a friend or writing something down in an actual journal with pen and paper. Then I thought, "Hey that would be a great blog post!" Apparently I'm too far gone. The pull was just too great and I'm back in the game. At least for now.

The vacation was good. We were back in Destin for the umpteenth time in my life. Seriously, I've logged well over 20 vacations there, but I love it because my favorite thing to do on vacation is nothing and the beach is a very good place for that. On Sunday we found ourselves back in Columbia a day earlier than expected and since it was my day off, we decided to worship with the Zion Presbyterian Church. What a great congregation! Folks have been worshipping there continuously for 200+ years and the more formal liturgy was a nice change of pace. I found the entire service to be very Christ-centered and Paul Joiner did an excellent job preaching the Word.

While I was out Tom Eddins filled in for me at Maury Hills. I just listened to his sermon online and "WOW!" He did an outstanding job (and I'm not just saying that because he bragged on me at the beginning). I thought the last ten minutes of his message were particularly powerful and applicable. He preached from Romans 14 and used women's role as a contemporary example of an area where we have differing opinions but still have to get along. The key question is not "what do you think?" but "do you have to have your way?" Give it a listen!

This week I'm just trying to get back in the swing of things and working on our new series called Just Walk Across the Room. It's a study of outreach from Bill Hybels and it officially kicks off the first Sunday in November. This Sunday, October 25th, I'm doing a little intro and we're gearing up for the Maury Hills' Not-So-Scary Halloween Party (formerly known as Trunk or Treat). We'll have live music, inflatables, hayrides, pumpkin-carving, food and tons of candy. We're encouraging everyone to dress up and we need lots of folks to decorate their cars and hand out candy. We also need parking attendants, folks to help with registration, security, etc. Contact Todd at greenlawler@bellsouth.net if you can help. Also don't forget to invite your friends and neighbors!

A Wildly Ambitious Goal

As I was running out the door to church this morning I quickly scanned the headlines of our local paper. I saw this headline for the editorial on page 3--Saving Columbia: Making a Difference, One House at a Time. That last phrase sounded a lot like the slogan we've been throwing around with our People Helping People ministry and to my surprise, that's what the article was about! I had two immediate thoughts..."That's cool" and "Uh-oh, we better get to work."

People Helping People is a ministry that focuses on providing home repair and renovation for those in need. Our dream is to transform entire neighborhoods and communities by focusing on one house at a time. I've written about it here and here. It's a vision that's slowly taking root. We've done our first two homes and now are in the process of getting organizing. We also have our first two partner churches...St. Peter's Episcopal Church and Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church. They have been tremendous in terms of support, counsel and help.

I loved the line in the article that described the vision as a "wildly ambitious goal." Yes!! Isn't that what the church is supposed to be about! Wildly ambitious goals. I love it!! The editorial is very well written and it's a clarion call to the church community of Maury Country. Here it is...

A caller to Sound Off, The Daily Herald’s anonymous comment line, suggested recently that churches should pay for the medical treatment of uninsured citizens.

Reforming America’s health care system is a job far too massive to be accomplished by any one segment of our society alone — even church congregations. But the caller’s idea isn’t without merit.

Individually and as denominations, churches already contribute to the nation’s welfare on a massive scale. How much more might they achieve if they united for a common cause?

Here at home, we’ve seen how effective churches can be when they work together to attack social problems. An excellent example is The People’s Table, a collaborative of about a dozen churches that feeds the homeless and poor twice a week.

We’ve also been shown a picture of what might be. Maury Hills Church of Christ recently launched a ministry called “People Helping People” that has paid for new roofs and other important repairs on the homes of two local families that were physically or financially unable to make the repairs themselves.

The program’s vision, according to Maury Hills Minister Russ Adcox, is to partner with other churches and non-profit organizations to revitalize the community through home renovations — to “transform entire neighborhoods by renovating one house at a time.”

The organizers of People Helping People plan to focus initially on the east side of Columbia and eventually spread out to other areas of the city and even the state.

It’s a wildly ambitious goal. But it’s not impossible. By tackling one home at a time, and recruiting one partner at a time, this group could rack up enough successes to inspire the rest of our community to get on board. They could start a movement.

Columbia needs just such a victory. Our economy is still on the ropes from the national recession, our local governments are running in the red and our unemployment is high. Things may get worse as the county’s auto assembly plant — its biggest industry — is shuttered next month.

Many of our neighborhoods were already showing the strain of decades of neglect. A few are simply slums. In times such as these, people look for leaders to step up and give them some hope. To show them the way forward. To lead by example.

Our local churches could provide that leadership.

What if every church in Maury County agreed to “adopt” just a three-block radius around its property? What if church members volunteered their time and efforts to improve those neighborhoods, by collecting litter, painting dilapidated homes, mowing vacant lots or doing whatever is needed?

Those churches fortunate enough to be located in affluent areas could adopt another neighborhood or join People Helping People.

What might be the cumulative affect of all these efforts? Clean, attractive communities attract new residents, new businesses, new jobs.

Our churches, if they answered this challenge, could be the catalyst that turns Columbia’s fortunes around.

The Daily Herald would help generate support for this effort by sharing the stories of reclamation and rejuvenation with our readers.Historically churches have been a lighthouse for the community, helping citizens navigate their way through waters both rocky and smooth.

Can our churches pull off another miracle in Columbia?