jeff mikels

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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I thought you would like to see this slideshow. I have it posted on our church page at http://thesouthsidechurch.org/main but I know some of you haven’t been over there yet, so here it is…

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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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What an incredible day!

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.

Sunday was our final preview service! On the one hand, that really excites me because it means that months of preparation are finally coming to a culmination. On the other hand, it makes me nervous because now I can’t hid behind the “We’re still in preparation-mode” excuse. Also, I now have to get back into the mode of preparing weekly messages and worship services. I think it is going to be really hard work for a while. But I’m looking forward to it. It should be exciting.

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.