Quick Book Review

Last week I read a book entitled Doing Ministry in Hard Times by Bill Easum and Bill Tenny-Brittain. Rarely do I read a book in a single sitting, but this book is an exception to that rule. I couldn't stop reading it and I wanted to finish it before going to sleep. I also wanted to get it into the hands of some key people in the life of University so that they could read it and lose some sleep over it as I have.

I wanted to share a few key insights from the book that may change how I approach leading this congregation through the next 18-24 months:

• there are two wildcards at play in the world today that make it difficult for churches to be successful while maintaining a status quo operational strategy: the cultural wildcard and the financial wildcard
• strategic dreaming trumps strategic planning during hard times
• there are ministries that should be cut during tough times (office personnel, missions, youth, non-essential ministries, money in the bank)
  
• there are ministries that should be allocated more financial resources during tough times (worship, children, evangelism, marketing, continuing ed, volunteer ministries, small groups, spiritual formation)
  
• hard times are the times to return to the basics - "sheep have a habit of getting so involved in feeding themselves that they munch along for hours without ever looking up to see where they are....Many Christians do the same. We munch our way so far from our roots that we don't realize how far we have removed ourselves from what we once were and what once made us great. Our greatness is only a memory." (pg 18)
• "Without Jesus Christ, our congregations are nothing more than clubs on the lookout for just enough new dues-paying members to support their programs and keep their buildings open....Sadly, far too many churches actually organize themselves around this loss of passion for Jesus. Instead of organizing to spread the Gospel, they organize to run the institution." (pg 21)
  
• cancel all the committee meetings you can for the next six months and see what happens
• "If you have any money saved up for a raining day, let us remind you lest you hadn't noticed. It's raining." (pg 29)
• in hard times, churches need to be led with quick and decisive action, flexibility, intuition, and self-regulation
• all of this (reading the book, making strategic budget cuts, etc.) is worthless if there is unresolved conflict within the church

Which of these points strikes you the most (either positively or negatively)? Why?

I have already given copies of this book to our Finance Chair, our Business Administrator, and our Director of Discipleship. If you would like a copy of this book, email me and I'll get it to you.

Random One-Liners, Part 2

Here's the other one-liner from yesterday's conversations:

Sometimes we think that the color of the carpet is more important than the people who walk on it.

This came out of my mouth within a conversation about the prevalence of "politicking" within the church. One of my buddies is in the throws of a serious round of "he-said/he-said" in his congregation and is fed up with getting placed in the middle of all the mud-slinging.

As we were talking about how to deal with antagonists in the church, we landed on the idea that when these political games are playing themselves out, the innocent bystanders are the ones who get lost in the shuffle or pushed aside.

How many times have you seen well-meaning Christians duke it out over the color of the carpet in the Narthex, rather than battle against the forces of evil for the good of the Kingdom of God? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter if the carpet is red, green, blue, rainbow, or plaid when there are people in our community that will never set foot inside the church to hear the gospel because the church won't spend a dime proclaiming the message of grace through Jesus Christ out in the community?

As I look out on the possible landscape of my second year of ministry at University, I want to make sure that I care far more about the people who walk on the carpet than I do about the color of it. The former will advance the Kingdom of God. The latter will only advance the Kingdom of University UMC.

I don't know about you, but I want to advance God's Kingdom, not my kingdom.

Thoughts?

Random One-Liners, Part 1

I spent several hours in ministry-related conversations yesterday (one with a staff member and one with some clergy buddies) and came away from each convo with a one-liner that I thought you might be interested in hearing and/or commenting on. I'll share one now and one later this afternoon.

Church ministry is not "Calvin-ball"!

Those of you who have worked in a church or been in leadership within the church know that one of the things that frustrates people to no end is rules that change in the middle of the game. If you are fan of Calvin & Hobbes (and who isn't?!) then you already get what I am about to say. (For those of you who've never heard of C&H - shame on you!)

When playing a rousing game of Calvin-ball with Hobbes, Calvin was (in)famous for changing the rules in the middle of the game to suit his own desires, his own needs, or his own current predicament - often without warning and without notifying the other player (Hobbes). This frustrated Hobbes to no end each time they played the game and often resulted in a knock-down, drag-out fight between the two of them.

The same principle applies for ministry within the church.

When pastors, staff, or other leaders within the church change the rules of the game without warning, then a fight is inevitable.

• A fight from those directly affected by the changes,
  
• a fight from those who don't agree with the changes, AND
  
• a fight from those who made the changes.

It really becomes a no-win situation very quickly.

Now, I am not saying that I am faultless in this category, because I most certainly am guilty of changing the rules mid-game before. However, I try my best to notify as many people as possible of the rule changes ahead of time. Do I always do that perfectly? Absolutely not! Does it still make me mad when it happens? Absolutely!

I believe the real learning takes place when church leaders take a step back and see where they have made a "Calvin-ball style" mistake and take necessary steps to recover from that mistake. I also believe that permanent damage can be inflicted upon a congregation when leaders fail to learn from their mistakes.

What "Calvin-ball style" mistakes have you witnessed/made? What did you do about them?

Confession Time

We just finished the most successful series in the last 12 months on Mother's Day. So why do I feel like we are still dealing with issues that existed long before I arrived?

I've had two enlightening conversations in the past 24 hours and I have a feeling that both of them are right and I am misguided. (I remember saying something about "having a Nathan, aka Editor (read: butt-kicker)" back in November from the pulpit.) Those two conversations put words to the feelings I was having during the latter part of the Sound Vows series - this isn't my material, I just borrowed it because it worked somewhere else and tried to replicate it here.

In an era of ministry where I can (try to) absorb the best practices of churches all across the globe from my desktop, Mark Batterson rightly points out that "one God idea is better than one thousand good ideas." He expands his thinking on that concept here, here, here, and here.

I now realize that Granger's "God idea" became University's "good idea" and the impact here was perhaps less than it could have been. Therefore, I have spent a few days re-evaluating the preaching schedule for the rest of 2009 and trying to find more ways to seek God's direction for worship here at University, not adopting other church's success in order to try and make it our success.

I covet your prayers during this season of discernment and apologize for not taking my own advice until now.

Update: Read this post from MarkB - it's like he's writing just for me this week!

Thoughts on the Worship Surveys

It's official! I completed my analysis of the Sound Vows Surveys this afternoon.

I must say that I was surprised by a few things:

1. the relatively low view (3.51/5) of an increased amount of time for people to talk to each other before worship
   
2. the number of married people (9/44, or 20.5%) who indicated a series on marriage had little to no application (N/A, 1, or 2) to their life
3. the number of people in worship (13/63, or 20.6%) who wanted to take less time to prepare our hearts for prayer during worship

Now, I know I asked for the feedback, so I shouldn't be upset when someone launches a missive at me or the way we plan worship at University, but my pride took a hit reading the responses. I also discovered that I did not communicate well about the reasons behind the choices made for worship during the series. I apologize for that - that is poor leadership on my part.

Overall, the results were positive. I will need to do some more reflection, prayer, and discernment about how we can incorporate this feedback into future message series here at University.

More later!

Sound Vows Surveys

When I decided to hand out surveys to the congregation as a feedback tool after the Sound Vows series, I was not sure what the response would be. I knew there would be people who would shout about the band (both positively and negatively) and I knew there would be people who would shout about the longer services (we averaged about 70 minutes each week for the series).

I have intentionally not looked at any of the surveys yet because I only want to look through them one or two times as a collective group. I don't want to spend the entire week fretting over comments made by people who complain about the sun coming up and the sun coming down. I just didn't want to do that to myself - for sanity reasons.

If you were not in church on Sunday and would like a survey, you can stop by the church office to pick one up or email me for a .pdf copy of it and bring it with you on your next trip to the church. All I ask is that you please turn it in by Sunday, May 17th so that the worship staff (and the rest of the staff) can begin to work through the data. Thanks!

Message Sets for Sound Vows

If you would like a copy of all the sermons from "Sound Vows" (or know someone who needs to hear them) send an email to support@uumcwf.org with that request. Or you can visit the website and download the files to iTunes for on-the-go access!

Sound Vows Celebrations

Yesterday we finished our "Sound Vows" series with a flourish on Mother's Day.

I want to go on record to say that I felt like this was our best series since I have been at University! This series had an energy and a "feel" that has not been palpable since I came here in June. I really felt like people came to worship anticipating what would happen, rather than settling in for "what we've always done."

Each week I track our stats in several key areas - not the least of which is worship attendance. I was amazed to compute that our average weekend attendance for this series was 167! That's 38 people more than we averaged during all of 2008! That's 45 people more than we averaged during the same time period last year! AND it's 27 people more than we were averaging so far for 2009! Praise God!

I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a numbers guy. Because I know that each of those numbers represents a person who gets to hear the gospel message and has an opportunity to know that God loves them right where they are.

• I am excited that we have more people in worship right now than we did a year ago.
• I am excited that we had more people in worship during this series than we did prior to this series so far this year.
• I am excited that University is moving up and to the right again!

I pray that the momentum we are building right now continues to bring in new faces and continue to spread buzz around town about what we are doing here at University UMC. I also pray that we can find ways to learn how to assimilate the new folks who have become part of our church over these past five weeks. I want this series to be a "shot in the arm" for this congregation!

What a Weekend!

I thought that our Easter celebration last weekend blew the roof off the building, but this weekend was just as awesome!

• Second week of Sound Vows series - the band nailed "Should've Said No" (thanks Liz for belting it out!)
  
• Karla "rocked" the Children's Time
• Anne Jackson spoke yesterday evening (after an eventful day on Saturday) about Mad Church Disease - I want to get that book in every one of my pastor friend's hands!

On Friday I am heading to Plano for the privilege of performing the wedding of one of my youth from First UMC. Should be a ton of fun, but a brutal drive back on Saturday night to preach Sunday morning. Prayers please!

Sunday morning's song: "Hey There Delilah" by The Plain White Tees

Anne is on her way!

I am so excited that I get to meet Anne Jackson this weekend! She will be talking about her book Mad Church Disease and spending some time with a few local area pastors, church staffers, and lay leaders on Sunday evening here at University UMC.

We are very proud to have her coming to speak and look forward to her words of hope, encouragement, and enlightenment.

And, yes. That is my personal copy of MCD!

Sound Vows Launches on Easter

Our new sermon series launches this weekend at 10:50am and I am crazy excited about how God will move in the life of our church because of this series.

This weekend will be a full-blown gospel presentation and I believe that lives will be changed this weekend! Do whatever it takes to get your friends and family to University this weekend!

Danielle & Josh

So I did premarital counseling again tonight via Skype (so cool by the way!) and captured this shot of them. I would totally do PMC this way in the future!

Stinger

I have read some blog posts that have punched me in the face before, but usually it was the whole thing, not just one line. When I read Mark Batterson's post this morning this one line - a quote from Albert Schweitzer - punched me in the face, hard!

It is Albert Schweitzer who once observed: "The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."

WHAM! For the full effect, read the whole post, but I felt like the quote was worth extra attention.

Thoughts?

Easter Extravaganza

Saturday, UUMC's Children's Ministry hosted our first Easter Extravaganza and the place was hoppin'!!

I challenged AndyK to a sumo wrestling match and we both decided that the thought was better than the execution - it was HOT Saturday! And those suits are not made of the most breathable material! Here's the proof of our adventure! Enjoy!

Holy Week Activities

I can't encourage you enough to participate in the Holy Week activities here at University UMC! Here's a rundown of what's coming up.

Wednesday, April 8th
6:00pm Cornerstone Cafe
6:30pm Final Lenten Lecture, from my buddy Tim Marks

Thursday, April 9th
7:00pm Maundy Thursday Worship
Experiential worship with stations for Holy Communion, foot-washing, journaling, and candle-lighting
(8:00pm First Rehearsal for Sound Vows Band)

Friday, April 10th
7:00pm Good Friday Worship
Journey with Christ as we participate in the Stations of the Cross in a wonderful outdoor (weather permitting) worship service

Sunday, April 12th
9:30am Sunday School
10:30am Fellowship Time in Narthex - join us for Coffee & Cookies
10:50am Sound Vows Series kicks off with a celebration of the Resurrection

This week will be a great way to remember the final week of Christ's life and celebrate his victory over death and sin. Remember, there is no need for resurrection if there is no death, so don't rush from Palm Sunday (today) to Easter Sunday without slowing down long enough to reflect on Christ's sacrifice for us on Good Friday.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as I can in worship Thursday, Friday, AND Sunday!

(And don't forget to park at the far end of the parking lot on Easter morning!)

Another First!

Tonight's going to be my first attempt at premarital counseling via Skype!













Don't I look cool? (I know, not really!)

Phone Call from a Celebrity

Yesterday morning I spoke with this wonderful person on the phone! I am so excited about her coming to University next month that I can't hardly stand it! She'll be here on April 19th, let me know if you want to be here when she is.

Reflections on a "Not Yet"

I apologize for not posting this sooner, but life in ministry never seems to slow down when I have something that I want to spend a little time reflecting on. Oh well!

On February 23 I interviewed with P&Q to determine whether or not the Board of Ordained Ministry of the North Texas Conference would recommend me for ordination as an Elder in Full Connection this June at Annual Conference.

After 3 hours of interviews and 1.5 hours of deliberation, P&Q came back with their decision - "not yet." I must admit that I was stunned at first, but when I look back on the three interviews I see the validity of their decision. I listened quietly as they explained their reasons for continuing me and I held it together until the three people who came to give me the news prayed for me. I broke down again when Deb came into the room and I had to tell her the news.

As I listened to their reasons for continuing me in the process I visualized the disappointment on the faces of my congregation - how they might not understand, how they might be angry at me or at the Board. I wasn't sure how I was going to tell them.

Fortunately, as I heard the reasons for the "not yet" they also affirmed my gifts and graces for ministry, my effectiveness in ministry, and my potential for a successful, long-term career in the North Texas Conference. They also unequivocally stated that each member of the Board want me to be part of the connection - they want to ordain me, but they also want to make sure that the people whom they send to the Bishop for ordination have a solid, Wesleyan theological foundation from which to do ministry.

As I look back on my "not yet" I see that their comments were right on. I see that my Wesleyan theological reflection was shaky at best during the interview. I see that I still have work to do in obtaining a solid, Wesleyan theological underpining for my ministry.

I see that they love and support me and want me to succeed.
I see that my church loves and supports me and wants me to succeed.
I see that my family loves me and wants me to succeed.
I see that God loves me and wants me to succeed.

My "not yet" is not the end of the world for me. It will be hard for me to watch my residency group get ordained without me this summer, but I am committed to working hard on the items the Board has identified. I am committed to serving University UMC with all my heart over the next year.

Now, let's get to work!

Sex for 30 Days

I want to start making "announcements" like this!


Beeson's Recommended Reading from Granger Community on Vimeo.

Check out the original context for this video here. Check out Mark Beenson's blog!

More tomorrow!

UM Reporter Article

I thought you might like to see the article about University's journey to pay apportionments that appeared in the February 6th issue of the United Methodist Reporter.

My continued thanks to all of you who made our 100% payout possible!