Ministry Design: Greeting as Hospitality, Connecting & Ministry

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 15, 2006 in Church, Leadership, Ministry Design | 2 comments

Last month I transitioned from many of my responsibilities, such as overseeing our deacon development (which has entered a more mature season, we've installed 3 new deacons and have 3 more identified this year) into thinking through the process people go through from the time they visit the church, through connecting, being developed and being sent on mission. Over the next couple months, I'll document some of these thoughts in a Ministry Design series focusing on Connecting, Developing & Sending. 

The first step in this is greeting people when people visit our church.  Most churches have 'greeters' to welcome people on Sundays.  But how many churches are deliberate about using their greeters as a ministry beyond hospitality?  Each week I typically speak to 2-3 visitors who are attending a Kaleo service for the first time.  The 3 most common reasons people visit Kaleo are: they have newly moved to the area, they are looking for a new church or their life is in a transition.  In each of these there are direct ministry opportunities for us to provide these people. 

• People that are new to the area need to find gospel community and fellowship.
• People who are looking for a new church are leaving because there was some un-met need (whether consumerism driven or legitimate we are still responsible to minister to them.)
• People who are in a life transition (loss of job, health, death in the family) many need counseling, intense prayer and support.  

How do we connect with these people and gather this information in order to minister to them?  We are looking to train our greeters where there will be a 'front door' welcoming greeting team and a second greeting team inside near a resource table to meet these people.  Our goal is to partner these guests with people in our church who can help minister to them and help them connect.  We would hope to have our people pray for, meet with and love these guests. 

How do you ensure you connect with all visitors?  We will offer guests a Kaleo Vision Package.  This packet would include our vision/values and a cd that they could listen to in their car during their 15-minute drive home from church.  At the same time we would gather their information if we had not received it.  On subsequent visits 2nd time guests could pick up copies of our worship cd and third time The Gospel for Real Life (or other resource).  This is how we would see our greeting operating as a ministry to those who visit Kaleo.

Preparing Him for the Other Woman

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 15, 2006 in Church, Culture | 0 comments

Any mom's read my blog? Read Preparing Him for the Other Woman review by my wife over at Misguided Saint.  Summary: In her book, Preparing Him for the Other Woman, Sheri Rose Shepherd uses scripture to encourage mothers in their journey to raise this next generation of men. Shepherd emphasizes that when our boys are young, we are the woman in their lives. We are the standard for them. We are defining and shaping how they look at women. The way a man loves a woman has a lot to do with what he learned as a little boy through his relationship with his mother. Sheri Rose Shepherd stresses the importance that if your son is going to respect his wife, he has to respect you first.

Acts 29 Europe

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 10, 2006 in Church, Church Planting | 1 comment

This year the Acts 29 Network has formed an international board to begin building the Acts 29 Network throughout the world.  Mark Moore (Pastor of Providence Community and who made his first blog comment EVER on this site ) will head up A29 Europe.  Read more about the announcement and how you can support or join the movement of Acts 29 in Europe.  Also, read Acts 29 and the Missional Call to the Whole World by Mike Gunn (Co-founder of Mars Hill and now Pastor of Harambee Church) .

Getting Things Done (Summary) & Ready for Anything

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 9, 2006 in Church Technology, Culture, Leadership | 0 comments

Getting Things Done is a giant method of how to be productive and efficient, without being stressed out.  The goal is 1) to get all of the stuff you need to do and remember out of your head and into an external system that you can rely on, so your head isn’t trying to always do the remembering (namely, organized lists—a key value of this book), and 2) to get you to make decisions about your work right away.  Here is a link to Word document summary of Getting Things Done: getting-things-done-summary.doc

NOTE: The Getting Things Done Summary document was created by Leah Hardwick for David Fairchild at Kaleo Church.  (So if it mentions creating a 'Grace' file, etc. that is his wife.)

Addressing the big “E” on the eye chart: do I think this would be helpful for you?  Yes.  If nothing else, you can walk away from this with a few nifty “tricks” about how to get things done more efficiently, with less stress, etc., if you don’t adapt the whole method.  I have outlined the major points and methods of the book so you can determine what would be helpful for you to implement on a day-to-day basis.

Basic requirements of managing commitments:

1. If something is on your mind, it must be captured into a trusted system outside your mind that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through
2. Clarify exactly what your commitment is, and what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it.
3. Once you’ve decided on an action, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you’ll review regularly.

A few key points:

-         If your organization efforts are to be successful, you need to gather everything that requires thinking, and then do that thinking.

-         The key to managing all your stuff is managing all your actions.

Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life

Based on Allen's highly popular e-newsletter, Principles of Productivity, Ready for Anything offers fifty-two principles to clear your head, focus productively, create structures that work, and get in motion, including:
* stability on one level opens creativity on another
* you can't win a game you haven't defined
* the value of a future goal is the present change it fosters

With wit, motivational insights, and inspiring quotes, Ready for Anything shows readers how to make things happen with less effort, stress, and ineffectiveness, and lots more energy, creativity, and clarity. This is the perfect book for anyone wanting to work and live at their very best.

This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 7, 2006 in Church, Sermon | 1 comment

Rick McKinley's new book is out, This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God. Description: The kingdom of God has already broken into this world, but it is not yet fully here. Therefore, as kingdom dwellers, Christians live in tension: groaning from the brokenness of this world, but rejoicing with hope in the promise of God. This Beautiful Mess calls believers to live in the reality of His kingdom now! Not your family, not your culture, not even your church should define your view of existence — only your belonging to God's kingdom. Loving, touching, weeping, and rejoicing — it's all a part of making God's blessing of redemption known to a hurting world. Only when you practice His reign without inhibition will you begin to revel in the true gospel of grace and freedom.

In the book, McKinley contrasts the two 'gospels' as the Gospel of Jesus and the Gospel About Jesus and how not understanding this brings confusion.  You need to synthesis these two gospels to find the true sense of the gospel.  McKinley writes:

"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message.  Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches.  The reverse is also true:  if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life.  Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."

This was very timely for me, I just preached Sunday on this very idea and I stated that there is 3 aspects to the gospel.  The Gospel of Jesus, the Gospel of Sonship and the Gospel of the Kingdom.  You can read/listen to the sermon Jesus and the Revolution – An Alternative Kingdom at Sermon Cloud.  (You can also listen to a lot of McKinley's sermons on the Kingdom there as well.)   The reality of this new Kingdom brings us to see three gospel perspectives:

1. Gospel of Christ: The announcement of this Kingdom is news, not advice. It is accomplished as an actual historical event. This is important because as news, we must accept it, we cannot earn it. It becomes 'grace' rather than what we can earn. Entering into the Kingdom is only by repentance and faith (Mark 1:15), forgiveness (Col 1:13-14) and a new birth (John 3:3, 5). When we are 'born again', we are born into the kingdom (John 3:1). Already/Not Yet – Today we accept this news by faith, but one day we will see. Today we have the Holy Spirit as a promise of the true Kingdom to come.

2. Gospel of Sonship: The reality of Jesus righteousness changes our identity. When we enter into the Kingdom, Jesus' kingly authority restructures every area of our life. We can have our identity eternally rooted in God, rather than the false 'messiah's' of our heart that will always disappoint and require us to earn our own identity. We become righteous because Jesus gives us His righteousness. Already/Not Yet – The very idea of Christians being simultaneously legally 'justified' and yet 'sinful' is based on the 'already but not yet' concept of the Kingdom of God. One day sin will no longer hold its power over us; we will be freed from its bondage.

3. Gospel of the Kingdom: As citizens of this new Kingdom, we live by Kingdom values. Inasmuch as we place our faith in Jesus the King, our identity changes because of what Jesus has done and this causes us to live life's motivated by Kingdom values. We become concerned with social justice, mercy and being a loving community reminder of God's redemptive plan to mankind. Already/Not Yet - We are called to be a 'city on a hill' a physical representation of God's redemptive work, seeking to restore the world from the consequences of the fall. Yet, sin remains, death, disease and the poor will always be with us until God comes and completes the restorative work in Act 6 of the drama.

It is through both these three aspects and understanding the Kingdom of God in the phases of human history (For example, unpacking the already/not yet of both earth/heaven today) that we start to understand the Kingdom of God.