• Read the Rules: http://lafayetterocks.com
• Reply to the YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biXyVq6toa0

This was posted to YouTube by a lady who had never been to our church before, but came with the violinist.

Theory:

• Church planting is the most effective method of evangelism in the world today.
• Only 20-30% of the people in Tippecanoe County go to church on a given Sunday.
• If all the churches were filled to capacity twice a Sunday, that would still total less than half the total population of this area.

Concerns:

• Every individual church has a high amount of initial financial overhead. To effectively run a small contemporary church (100 in attendance) in our community these days takes an annual budget of at least $120,000. But if the attendance doubles, the budget needs do not double. With $240,000 that same church could serve 300-400 people! Therefore, is it a wise use of God’s finances to start new contemporary churches where there already are healthy contemporary churches?
• There are already three contemporary churches in downtown Lafayette. Lafayette Community Church, Clear River Church, and The Bridge. So I wonder what the motivation is for this new church starting in the same area.
• How does an unbeliever view the proliferation of churches? People these days are already critical of the proliferation of Starbucks, but they still buy the coffee because they love it. However, what about those who don’t like coffee? What do they think of the proliferation? Will they give Starbucks a shot because another one opened up down the street?

Self-awareness:

I am a competitive person, and Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven will be advanced by “forceful men” (Matthew 11:12). So the “competition” between churches is good for me and it prompts me to renew my passion to do things in our church right and to cooperate effectively with other churches.

I pray that God will reach this city, and that in His divine power, this new church will be part of making that happen.

I’m uploading both brochures here for your use if you want.

• LCC Baptism Brochure
• LCC Information Brochure

On the printed front, we have been using Apple’s Pages for basic word processing and simple page design and Serif PagePlus 11 which is exponentially greater than anything else in its price range ($50 for features that easily surpass Microsoft Publisher and even rival PageMaker or Quark). However, that’s for another blog entry. On to what we do for video now and what our next steps are.

Video Presentation Hardware

• 15″ MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 1GB RAM
• Draper Traveller portable projection screen with High Contrast Gray screen material.
• DLP Projector (I don’t remember the specs right now).

Software

• ProPresenter 3.3.8 by RenewedVision.
• Keynote 3

Description

ProPresenter is the best program we have found to display lyrics on the screen. It’s very easy to learn with only a few quirks that take getting used to. Together with the Mac, it is unbeatable in terms of visual quality of the text even with full motion high resolution video images in the background. On top of that, the programmers are very responsive to requests for improvements, and the software was designed from the ground up to meet the needs of touring worship bands like Chris Tomlin and David Crowder.

Keynote is the hands down winner in presentation software that understands the line between attention-getting and cheesy. Transitions, fades, and slide builds are unmatched in PowerPoint because Keynote does what it does with subtlety. It’s also much easier to work with once you learn a couple of its quirks.

Our current setup has us running ProPresenter and Keynote simultaneously on the MacBook Pro. ProPresenter takes over the projector screen and turns it black while waiting for us to begin. Navigation is done on the laptop screen, but lyrics and backgrounds are sent to the secondary display.

Just before my message, we hit F1 in ProPresenter to black out the projection screen, switch to Keynote without closing ProPresenter (the projection screen stays black during and after the switch), and hit “Play” on my sermon Keynote file. Keynote takes over the projection screen with my slides and also displays a “Presenter View” on the laptop screen. We turn the laptop to face me, so I can see my current slide and my next slide without ever needing to look over my shoulder.

Next Steps

Now that we are meeting in the Long Center (a larger venue), we want to make some changes to our setup so we stay on the excellent side of things.

1. Replace our screen with a larger rear projection screen. We’re looking at the Draper Cinefold and Draper Ultimate series of screens for this.
2. Consider upgrading our projector depending on its performance with the new screen. Most likely, we will just need to buy a new bulb.
3. Purchase a new Mac to put in the sound booth. It needs to have dual external monitor capability, and the only Macs to have that now are Mac Pro computers or Psystar Open Computer Macintosh clones.
4. Split the monitor signal from each monitor out to drive four displays (1). The monitor in the sound booth, (2). the projector on stage, (3) One monitor in front row pointing to stage duplicating what’s on the projector screen. (4) One monitor in front row pointing to the stage duplicating what’s on the screen in the sound booth. That way, the stage-facing monitors will show what’s on the screen and also show the “Presenter View” that Keynote can display.
5. Use VGA cables or a VGA over CAT5e system to get video signal to the stage from the booth.

Final thoughts

If anyone is reading this post thinking that technology will save your bad presentations, think again. Websites like http://presentationzen.com are a great resource to help you rethink the how and the why of your presentations. Technology can make your presentations more effective, but it isn’t guaranteed to do so.

• At least 10 minutes a day with God, every day.
• Time with God means something is read (from the Bible), something is written, and something is prayed.
• There will be some kind of award given for the person who lasts the longest.
• There will be some kind of award given for the person who accumulates the most individual “God-Times.”

I haven’t figured out the prizes yet, but I’m willing to take donations! If you want to sweeten the pot, let me know!

I’m also working on setting up some kind of online tool to track our progress and see how we are all doing. For me personally, I’m going to use my blog to record my progress.

• Why am I here?
• Why should I believe in God?
• Why should I trust the Bible?
• Why is the world so messed up?
• Why is there such conflict between Science and the Bible?
• Why Jesus?

It’s going to be a powerful program combining dynamic Sunday worship experiences with casual but deep discussion groups. I’ve been looking forward to it for 3 months now!

In many ways, I’ve been thinking of this 6 week campaign as a re-launch of the church. During the summer, our attendance went down quite a bit, but now that school is starting up again, I’m really hoping that we can get a jump-start on this new year by launching this campaign.

I want every Sunday service to be a real event. More than that, I’m really eager to see us take the life of the church to a new level. Here are my personal dreams for the campaign.

• That we would get more than 50 people solidly involved in a small group experience.
• That our Sunday attendance would double.
• That all our volunteers and campaign directors would be encouraged and excited all the way through.
• That the campaign would launch us full speed into the Fall.
• That we’d get a solid small group thing happening combined with memorable Sunday gatherings.

These things are so doable, and I believe God can easily accomplish them all. I’m eager to see it!

This week we executed a plan that I had been brewing since last year at this time.

You may already have read about our “Black Friday” Hot Chocolate Giveaway. On that day, we gave out nearly 500 mugs of hot chocolate or coffee to shoppers braving the local Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving. Well, this week, we gave out flying discs to families at the fireworks show on Purdue’s campus on July 4. It was a blast, and it was a big success too.

The setup

At the top of this post, you can see the final design for the flying discs that we bought through <www.dollarimprint.com> for around 70 cents each once shipping was included. The design on the top is a gradual spiral (which looks really cool when the discs are flying) surrounded by the words “stop spinning, find your center, reach higher | southside church” our phone number, web address, and core value verbs are also printed on the top.

We ordered T-Shirts with a tye dyed look and a very similar logo design on the front and the back. Here’s a picture of what they look like.

The elements of the plan were simple and very much like the hot chocolate giveaway:

• Give a free flying disc to every family out there until we ran out or it got dark.
• Have two tables set up to take registrations for a free drawing to win an iPod shuffle or other prizes.
• Have all our volunteers wearing matching T-Shirts.

I should soon have a picture of what the setup looked like.

How it went

In all, it was a very successful event. The volunteers had a lot of fun, the people who received the flying discs were very appreciative, and a large number of people signed our entry forms. I don’t have a final count yet of those who were willing to be added to our mailing list. It was so cool to look across the field of families waiting for the fireworks to start and to see hundreds of purple flying discs whizzing through the air all over the place. It was really exciting.

On top of it all, I personally was able to get in some good conversations with at least 4 different families who were very interested in checking out one of our Sunday Gatherings. Who knows if they will actually make it this week, but I believe we really put our name out into the community in a positive way.

I’m really eager to hear more feedback from our volunteers and also from people who may visit our church because of this outreach. If I hear some good things (or criticisms) I’ll post them here. If you would like to chime in with your opinions please add your comment. I want to know what other people think about this kind of outreach. I especially hope that events like these let people in Lafayette know that there is a church around here that cares about them and is willing to invest in their lives in a way that makes their lives a little bit better (and a little more fun too).

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It’s my passion to see people get a big vision for what God is able and willing to do in our lives. I am convinced that God is bigger and more willing to do more incredible things than we give him credit for, than we expect, and than we are ready for. We just don’t have big enough dreams, but for those who do have big dreams the problem is often that they aren’t ready and willing to put in the effort required to see those dreams come true. Now I don’t have the answer to how to make your dream life come true other than a few simple suggestions I’ve picked up from the story of Joseph, but I do know that whatever your dreams are, if they are God’s dreams, and if you are faithful, they will come true.

At the conclusion of this message, I take a few minutes to just dream in front of the congregation about what Southside Church could become. I have big dreams for this church, and I’m pretty convinced they line up with the heart of God for this town.

How big are your dreams? Are you ready to work for them?

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Today’s message is a message that has been on my heart for a long time, but I didn’t know it until earlier this week. I had come up with the title long ago when we sent in our postcards to be printed, and honestly, I originally thought of the sermon being one about how great the afterlife was going to be. In fact, the whole point of the message originally was going to be that no matter how good this life might get, the really good life is yet to come. It was going to be a message about the Kingdom of God!

I still want to do that message someday. I’m not sure when that might happen, and I honestly don’t know if I would be able to preach that message now anyway. I think I need some more life experience, more study or something.

Nevertheless, I was praying about this message earlier this week and all at once I realized (it was probably God giving me the thought) that the Bible is filled with “Corner Turning” moments and that God is often the instigator of those corner moments. The whole picture came to me at once that the “better life” I should be talking about is the life that follows God around whatever corner he brings us to!

I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Listen up and tell me what you think!

This is the first message in Southside Church’s Grand Opening series. It’s a short series entitled:

In this message, I talk about how the Bible contains the keys to living your best life now. There are three key things the Bible offers us that help us to live our best lives: Guidance, Encouragement, and something I call “The Secret.”

The audio can be downloaded by clicking below or subscribing to my podcast or you can watch the video online if you wish.

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My Odeo Channel (odeo/b7fe9b6d4f3e6629)

Last Sunday was our Grand Opening service as a church and I am excited to report that we had between 140-150 people there. We never got an accurate count, but this is how we came up with those numbers:

• 24 Elementary School Kids
• 6 Babies in the Nursery
• 9 Children’s Ministry Workers
• 100 Bulletins handed out (when we ran out)

I’ve tried to be conservative and stick with 140, but my wife is pressing me to say 150! and I’m usually the one who does the exaggerating!

If you want to hear the message I preached or watch the video, it will be posted here soon or you can get to it by visiting our church audio page.

God is bigger than we imagine.

My coach told me a couple of months ago, “Remember, Jeff, no one loves this church more than you and Jesus.”

I was getting kinda frustrated because of the number of people I had been trying to recruit and the slim number of people who were responding. He told me that to remind me that no one would care about the church like I do, but that Jesus cared about it more than even I did. That really helped to encourage me.

And Jesus does care about this church.

On March 18, we had our final preview service and I had the joy of preaching to a crowd of about 15 adults. The very next week, I had the privilege of preaching a message to a crowd of over 100. It was utterly mind-blowing to me!

If you were there on Sunday…

I just wanted to say that if you were there on Sunday, I am so grateful for you. You could have spent your Sunday morning in many different ways, but you chose to come out and be a part of our Grand Opening Event, and more than that, you chose to take a risk and see what God might be doing in this brand new ministry.

God has something really great in store for us, and I believe he wants us to experience it together, but that isn’t all. I think the biggest thing he has in store for us is for us to find our identity in the process of helping other people to discover how much God loves them.

We are just beginning a journey together. It will be a bumpy ride at times, but it will certainly be an adventure.

If you have been praying for us…

You also deserve a special thanks. There have been so many of you praying for us and supporting us financially, that I really am humbled. I’m afraid I will miss someone here, but I just think you all deserve thanks. You know why:

Thank You

Jennifer Asinugo, Mike Atwell, Nellie Aujero, Alexandrina Balanean, Charlie & Lea Battleday, David & Carole Beckwith, Jim & Deb Cartwright, Brian & Melissa Chupich, Sonlife Community Church, James & Katheryn Cross, Herb & Paula Frost, Gloria Greene, Jodi Hanson, Gerald Hawthorne, Dorothy Herschelroath, Rynn Hill, Mark Jacobsen, Mike & Jill Kaminski, Rhonda Kerr, Gary Krebs, David & Stacy Laneve, Chuck & Amy Larish, Larry & Claudia Lasiter, Dan & Mary Martin, Mark & Linda Mikels, Keith & Marian Mikels, Sadie Mikels, Jason & Brooke Miller, Dr. & Mrs. Tom Miller, Marion Mockler, Tom & Chris Nalian, Rob & Chris Nelson, Mark & Amy Peterson, Stephen & Jill Puett, Ken & Cheryl Reynolds, Gary Rohrmayer, Dorothy Samorajski, Greg & Laura Shackleford, Jim & Wendy Sheely, Austin Smith, Jeff & Debbie Spencer, Lorraine Spencer, Joel & Becky Sutton, Josh & Valerie Thomas, Grant & Betty Tregay, Tommy & Bonnie Troup, Zack Turner, Mike & Tammie VanDeripe, Cindy & Rick Veith, Gloria Walker, Richard Wollard, Meadowland Community Church, Tim and Lisa Beavis, Bethany Baptist Church, Community Reformed Church, Tony Suitor, Kathy Abretske, Northwest Baptist Church, Irene Portokalis, Merrill Avenue Baptist Church, Hannis & Kim Thompson, First Assembly of God in Lafayette.

If I’ve forgotten someone, just send me a reminder email or post a comment, and I’ll put you on the list too.

Anyway, we had some really neat things happen Sunday and we learned some more good lessons.

Marketing

Because our Grand Opening is this coming Sunday (the 25th), we didn’t market last week as much as we had last month. I did send out a cool postcard to all those on our mailing list.

Here, you can see the postcard we mailed out.

Also, because of how long the signs took to put together last time, I had our signs professionally printed, and I set them up the day before. Here’s what one of them looked like.

Also, you might be interested to see the banner I set up on the corner of the school’s property.

I got all the signs put up on Saturday including an additional banner on some columns in front of the school.

Also, on Saturday, Josh came over and helped me load up the truck so that we didn’t have to do any loading on Sunday morning. It made everything go so much more smoothly in the morning.

Morning Preparation

Because last month’s morning got off to a slow start, I asked everyone to be at our house at 8:30am this time. Everyone was there by 8:45 and we were able to pray together before loading up the truck.

Yes, I did say truck! This was our first day to use the truck, and it was also our first time using the equipment that came from Willowbrook Community Church. Their sound equipment is much more elaborate than what we had been using.

Somehow we did get a little delayed at our house. I think the prayer time took a little longer than I had thought it might, but that’s not a bad thing. Anyway, we got to the school at about 9:15, and then unloaded everything.

Attendance

Our total numbers weren’t much more than they have been for any of our other services, but something about it felt really good. It especially felt good because between last month’s service and this one, three members of our worship team stepped down. However, we made up the loss in numbers with quite a few new faces.

The coolest story of the morning was one family that was on their way to visit another church when they saw our signs and recalled our TV spots. So they decided to stop on in and check us out.

Here our numbers:

• Children – 12
• Adults – 20
• Total Attendance – 32

Sermon

My morning message was entitled God Is Love and the best part of the message is when I took the “love passage” from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and asked people to consider substituting “God” for every instance of the word “love.” Here’s the verse from the NIV:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. — 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

I then asked people to consider which of those promises was God’s promise to them for that morning. Try it yourself.

However, I failed to get my MP3 recorder set up properly, so I didn’t get a recording of the service. I’m kinda bummed by that, but what are you going to do?

Lessons Learned

During our debrief lunch following the service, we discussed some lessons learned for the next time. Here they are:

• We need to get some extra equipment
  • 1/8″ stereo mini plug cable
  • 3 Speakon cables (2×25′ and 1×50′)
  • smaller box for AV cables that can fit in the cabinet
  • a mobile cart for our computer and projector so we don’t have to use the microwave stand from the cafeteria.
  • Latex Gloves for the Nursery
  • a hand truck / dolly for getting stuff off the truck better.
  • Trough or cooler with ice for water bottles
  • Bread bags for people to take the donated bread home
  • More water bottles
• We need to darken the room (the screen was getting washed out by the light coming in the back windows)
• We need to make up some cards for nursery workers to easily communicate to parents what happened with their kids (what snacks they got, if they took a nap, if their diaper was changed).

Well, that’s about it. Next week is our Grand Opening. I’ll write another post on our plans for that.

First, we needed the school board to approve our usage and specifically, we needed some clear guidance on how far into the future they would let us meet there.

Secondly, we needed something to happen with regard to the truck so that we could drive it around legally. The other church that donated it to us lost the title, and the plates had expired, so we couldn’t actually take the truck on the streets.

God moved in some big ways to answer these prayers.

Closed door, open window

I was so concerned about the title for the truck, that I had been calling Larry, the representative of the other church, to find out about the title, and he offered to look into what it would take to get a duplicate title. I was worried that it might end up being a couple of weeks, and I had internally just committed myself to thinking we would drive the truck to the school this Sunday anyway and run the risk of a cop seeing us.

However, Larry and his wife figured out a different solution. When she went to get the replacement title, she found out that she could just pay the registration fee to get new plates for the truck and thereby make it street-legal again! She did that, express mailed the plates to us, and we got them today! The truck will be drivable in an hour or so when I get around to putting the plates on it! Also, the duplicate title should be arriving in about 3 weeks. And if that weren’t enough, they also found the missing amplifier for the sound system. We should be able to go down there some time this week to go get it. Praise God!

God Uses Secretaries

The other answer to prayer completely shocked me. I got a phone call on Monday from Cheryl, the secretary of Gary Jenkins who is in charge of maintenance for the Tippecanoe School Corporation. I called her back on Tuesday and she wanted to know if we needed to use the school at any point in March or April.

Apparently, the principal hadn’t gotten our paperwork into them by the deadline and this lady thought she would call me to double-check that we didn’t need the school! Praise God! If she hadn’t called me, our request would not have made it to the school board on time. The school board was to meet the very next day (yesterday), and if our request didn’t get on the agenda, we would have been WAAAAAYYYYY up a creek with no place to meet, $4,000 out of our pockets for the postcards advertising our launch and no way to reprint them in time! As it was, our request made it onto the agenda and was approved! We are good to go all the way through April! I just can’t stop using exclamation points!!!!

God was looking out for us this week and has caused all these things to come together. I’m so thrilled and encouraged to see how He has confirmed just this week that he is watching over this whole process. Keep praying for the turn out at our launch service on March 25!

Here in Lafayette, there is an association of ministers that is far more significant than some “ministerium” that many communities have where pastors of various churches get together to try to demonstrate some unity but never really get anything done.

TEAMM is the Tippecanoe Evangelical Association of Ministers and Ministries which has a couple things going for it that get me excited:

• They are committed to the core beliefs of “evangelicalism” which are basically the lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible as God’s Word.
• They are developing a strong sense of unity among churches that have traditionally been at odds with each other in this town.
• They are being noticed both locally and nationally for their accomplishments in social programs and community prayer efforts.

This last weekend, TEAMM hosted its annual pastor’s prayer summit and I had the opportunity to go. It ended up being a very refreshing time, and since most of the pastors there were coming from a charismatic bent, it was spiritually uplifting as well.

Our two days followed a process of talking about what God is doing in Lafayette, what it’s going to mean for us and our ministries, and what he’s saying to us individually. We had significant times of worship through music before each session and long prayer sessions after each discussion.

On top of that, I had a great time getting to know a couple other pastors and allowing them to get to know me a bit. They were very encouraging and a few of them gave me some prophetic words that seemed quite authentic.

I also had the joy of playing my guitar as Randy Skidmore of Elston Family Church led the worship music.

All in all, I came away from that meeting with a deeper respect for the other pastors here, a deeper sense of the promises of God for Southside Church and some inklings of a more vibrant life of faith God is laying out for me.

Jen, the kids, and I all went up there Sunday morning and had a good time at the service. Afterward, Pastor Tony and his wife treated us to lunch at Portillo’s. It was a great meal and a great conversation too.

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We had a great service this morning. It was our second monthly service and here is a brief rundown of how it all went:

Marketing

We really ramped up our marketing efforts this time. Here’s what we did:

• We sent out our “New Movers” letters this week. (We send a letter welcoming them to their new home and giving them a coupon to a local bookstore and one for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich.)
• We sent out a postcard to everyone on our mailing list inviting them to come to our service.
• We put an ad in the newspaper.
• I sent out an email to everyone on our email list.
• I made a bunch of phone calls.

Monthly Service #2 Postcard |Newspaper Ad

Despite all these things, it seemed that we were fighting an uphill battle because this week saw the worst snowstorm Indiana has had in years. In addition to a storm that closed schools for the whole week and cold weather that caused school delays the whole previous week, we had an extra 5 inches of snow fall Friday night and all day Saturday.

Morning Preparation

Jen and I put in a lot of work last night and this morning before anyone came over to load up vehicles, but I won’t report on all that. People arrived at our house at about 8:50 this morning. As a result, we didn’t get everything loaded up until about 9:15. I didn’t think that would be a very big problem, though because we weren’t planning to start our service until 10:30. As it turned out, though, it put us way behind.

A few things happened this morning that increased our time by a lot.

1. Our directional signs had to be put together at the school. Last month, we put our signs together at our house at 8:15am. This month, we didn’t have the super early gathering at our house, so the signs were put together at the school.
2. The banner outside fell down last night, so I had to repair it.
3. We were couldn’t find one extension cord and a couple mic cables.

As a result, we never actually got to have a full sound check, and the service started 5 minutes late.

Attendance

Our attendance reflected the difficult circumstances of snow and cold. We had a number of new individuals make it, though, so that was encouraging, and every one of them told me how much they liked the service.

• Kids – 12
• Kids Helpers – 3
• Congregation – 15
• Total Attendance – 30

Here are a couple comments people put on the comment cards:

I know God is working in my life right now. But sometimes it’s hard! Coming here today made me feel good today! Thank you.

The service is awesome! I will bring more people next month! … The message was GREAT! I really like the way you put things so simply.

Message / Sermon

<img src=’http://jeff.mikels.cc/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/title_slide-1.thumbnail.jpg’ alt=’WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT GOD title slide’ />

My message todaywas entitled “God Always Does What’s Right” and it was actually a rehash of a message I’ve preached before. You can hear the original one at this link: God Always Does What’s Right

In fact, I think I did a better job with that one than I did today, and that disappointed me a little. Last week, I was so concerned with the logistics of the church service that I hadn’t been able to put the time into my message that I would have wanted, and thinking that I was doing one I had already done gave me a false sense of security. Nonetheless, the comments from people after the service really told me that they were listening more to God than to me, and that was quite encouraging.

Here is today’s version: 030-02 — God Always Does What’s Right .

For Next Time

As I think about our next scheduled service (March 18), I’m thinking honestly that a few things will need to come together in order for us to go ahead with the launch on March 25.

• We need more strongly committed team players. While we already have an excellent group of people that have come together to make all this happen, we also have some odd inconsistencies. For example, a week and a half ago, we got in touch with a Purdue student who was really interested in joining us. He was fired up and excited and made a commitment to run our children’s ministry on a volunteer basis for a while, but after he left our house after our last planning meeting, Jen sent him an email asking for his references, and he hasn’t answered his phone, or returned any messages since then.
• We need a solid system of pre-service set-up. Our haphazardness today resulted in a lot of unnecessary stress before the service started and it caused us to start late.
• We need to reach a “critical mass” of at least 60 on the 18th. The first major attendance barrier is 50 and I don’t want to waste time trying to beat that one. We need our Grand Opening Sunday to surpass 100 (I want it to surpass 200), but I really doubt our ability to do that if we can’t reach 60 at our next monthly (preview) service. Don’t get me wrong, 30 is a good number for today, but we need many more than that to really launch a church that will be able to impact our community.

All these things are quite doable, and this is what I plan to do about them:

• Talk to my coach and get his feedback.
• Make phone calls to all the people on our local contact list to see where they are in their interest level.
• Spend more money on some direct marketing.
• Host an info dinner in early March at a local restaurant / banquet hall to raise funds and commitments.

UPDATE:

After talking to my coach, I decided against the info dinner. He thought it was a good idea, but that doing it would take too much attention away from the other plans we needed to make. Our third monthly service didn’t reach the 50-60 that I said I wanted, but our plans to do two Big Sundays might allow us to launch without that number.

I thought some of you might be interested to see some pictures from our house of the Indiana snowstorm that hit us yesterday, so I’m posting them in a little gallery here http://jeffnjen.mikels.cc/~jeff/snowstorm_2007/.

You should have seen the huge pile of snow that the snowplow left at the end of our driveway. I was out there shoveling from about 8:30 until 11:00 when a couple neighbors came by with a snowblower and made short work of the rest. Praise God for nice neighbors!

I’m not sure why it was such a struggle to get people to come to our house for a meeting on Sunday night, but Sunday morning seems to work out a lot better. We now gather for breakfast followed by a time of worship songs and interactive teaching, and for the past two weeks we have had pretty good attendance.

Another benefit has been that we are able to have a second meeting each week to focus on planning. For some reason, having two weekly evening meetings also seemed like a hardship, but now, having the morning gathering on Sunday, we can have another meeting to focus more on the planning end of things.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about it all.