jeff mikels

For the second time in our brief history, Southside Church will change our Sunday morning meeting place.

We started in an elementary school. Then we went to a Junior High. So where would you think we would go next?

That’s right!

The Holiday Inn! Actually, it’s the Holiday Inn Select: City Center here in Lafayette.

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We think it’s going to be a great opportunity for us, and I’m really excited… but now, we have to rethink our name. Downtown isn’t exactly “Southside” anymore, although the hotel is actually on “South Street”!

The second week of our WHY campaign got quite a bit more meaty as we discussed the heart reasons for believing in God and touched briefly on some of the head reasons for belief in God. Listen up and give me your feedback!

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swingset, by jeff

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For 6 weeks, we will be exploring the six biggest questions in life.

• 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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To have lasting success in life, there really are only four things we need to focus on. They form the core values of our church and can readily be seen in the contrast between King Saul and King David.

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