Another Good Resource

Here is another good resource for those who do any kind of email to communicate with a group of people. It is called Constant Contact.

Constant Contact is a web based email system that allows you to construct emails in an html format that is so much more appealing than plain text email newsletters. The interface is fairly simple.

The cost is about $20 a month after like a three month trial. I think if you stay under 100 email addresses it is free.

I would highly recommend it.

To sign up for New Season's Weekly Seasoning email update go here.

Ancient Future

Steve Kropp has made a new album called Ancient Future with some of the old hymns done in a new way. He gave them out to folks at New Season for free to use as tools to witness and invite friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors.



More info about the project here.


Check out the teases here.

New Neighbors

One of the best times to reach new families in your community is when they first move into your community. Most churches who have any type of desire to reach the people in their community have some form of new neighbor outreach.

We are currently using ReachingAmerica.com. Here is how it works:

• They identify the new neighbors in your community.
• They send three predesigned by you postcards to your new neighbors in the first 30 days.
• They can furnish you with the names and addresses of the people they sent the postcards to so you can do your own follow up.
• You can choose whom to send the postcards to by zip code or radius.

The benefit to this program is that it provides multiple contacts very early on in a timely manner. Also, it will pay for itself which is good since it is $2.88 per new neighbor (versus about .33 cents to just get the names and do your own mailing.

We are also recruiting neighborhood captains from our church who will deliver new neighbor bags to new neighbors using the names we furnish from this service.

Another time to reach people is right after they have had a baby. Unfortunately, while lists can be purchased of "new parents" the minimum quantity required- say 500- makes it cost prohibitive. I am still looking for such a list that does not require minimums.

We're Moving

Pending the approval of a county permit we will have our first Sunday at our new location- Lee Hill Elementary School. Here are some things we are doing to raise awareness about our move in the community.

· We will pray, and pray and pray for the God who can do more than we can even ask or imagine to great things in this move.

· We will encourage one another to blab to all who will listen in our circles of friends, and amongst our relatives, neighbors, and co-workers and invite, invite, invite.

· We will gather to put out 1,000 door hangers at various townhouse developments surrounding the school. As we do so we will be praying for the persons in those developments.
· During February, before Easter and before Mother’s Day we will be mailing out 5,000 invitational postcards to our neighbors in the areas surrounding Lee Hill.

· We will be sending letters to the 1,000 or so persons identified by the “Phones for You Campaign” to inform them of our move and invite them to join us.

· For the six weeks after our move we will place special ads in the Free Lance Star (1 every two weeks) to announce our move and invite persons to join us.

· We will begin running our weekly “New United Methodist Church forming in Massaponax” ad in the Saturday religious section of the Free Lance Star to reach the United Methodists that move to our area.

· We will launch our redesigned website recognizing that for most people seeking a church in our day the first step they will take is to find more information on the web. We want to make a good impression.

· We will begin running monthly ads in the Lee Hill Crier newsletter (the newsletter of the Lee Hill Subdivision).

· We will be obtaining the services of Reaching America. This service identifies new home owners in our mission field and send on our behalf three personalized postcards from New Season Church in the first three weeks to our newest neighbors. We will be asking regular attendees at New Season to volunteer as neighborhood captains and deliver new neighbor bags to these neighbors.

· We have obtained 100 yard signs that will be strategically placed at the entrances/exits of subdivision, at intersections and in retail areas that say New Season Church- Sundays- 10:00 a.m.- Lee Hill Elementary School-www.NewSeasonUMC.org.

New Website Design

Check out the new website for New Season Church. Many thanks to Matt Montoro of Third Stream Music/ Design for his creative ability in making this a reality.

There are many sites out there that will give you some good ideas about how to do church websites (which many churches need). But here are some things we used to help lead us in design.

• We wanted to keep it fairly simple. The tendency is to get too cluttered and try to convey too much information. A person looking at your site will only spend a few seconds to look at it before moving on.
• We wanted to serve two purposes. The prinmary purpose was to provide people who are thinking of attending New Season with a taste of who we are. An ancillary purpose was to provide a place for regular attendees to get info (previous messages, sign up info, etc).
• We recognized that our site had to be taken up a notch because this is the first place people who are searching are going to look before they decide to check out New Season. This is in many respects our first impression.

Like I said you can Google "church website design recommendations" and get all kinds of good advice, these are just some of the things we used to guide us.

Happy RamaHanuKwanzMas Everyone!

In an effort to be politically correct here at ROBBBLOG we want to wish everyone a Happy RamaHanuKwanzMas. Please celebrate with the elves here by singing with us our holiday anthem. Click on the links below.

Traditional Version

Punk Version

What is RamaHanuKwanzMas? (Taken from Wikipedia). It is a portmanteau of the religious holidays Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas. It was coined by Glenn Beck on his radio program as the name of the ultimate politically-correct winter holiday.
RamaHanuKwanzMas has its own song set to the tune of Holly Jolly Christmas. The idea of combining winter holidays precedes Beck's show, but has gained momentum, as shown in a recent Virgin Mobile commercial (Chrismahanukwanzakah) and on The O.C. (Chrismukkah).

What Church Planters and Evangelicals Can Learn from the Lectionary

I will admit that I have been in lectionary recovery now for about five years. We have weekly meetings: "Hi, I'm Robb and I used to be bound by the lectionary" and all God's people said, "Hi Robb!" In a quest for relevance many have turned away from the lectionary mafia to topical teaching. While I believe one can use the lectionary and be relevant and even be topical, it is a lot more work to make the lectionary work.

In this season leading up to Christmas though the lectionary (more correctly the church calendar) can teach people who have moved away from these things from on high a thing or two.

• Christmas does not start the day after Thanksgiving (or worse after Halloween). Instead the weeks after Christmas are a time of preparation (called Advent) where we prepare our hearts to celebrate the great miracle of God "coming to dwell in the neighborhood" as Eugene Peterson puts it. So, when we rush to make sure we sing songs and celebrate Christmas so early what we are really doing is accommodating to culture. If I had it my way we would only sing Charles Wesley's "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" until Christmas Eve :)
  
• Likewise, we do well to do as the Lectionary and Church Calendar reminds us to do and that is recognize that there are twelve days of Christmas culminating in the arrival of thewisemen called "Epiphany". Instead of adding to the stress and culture of consumerism during the time preceding December 25th perhaps it can be a learning moment for churches to cancel all "Christmas" events until the season of Christmas. If you do that I promise you will send some blue hairs and narcissistic baby boomers over the edge.

Well, as we move from what used to work to what works today we do well not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Tradition, symbol, and liturgy still have power today if they are explained and serve to bring people closer to Jesus Christ. Picking up on what one Jewish Rabbi once said, "The lectionary and church calendar were made for man, not man for the church calendar and lectionary." Nonetheless, we can still learn something from them.

You're in My Seat

I cringe when I hear the words "You're in my seat" in the context of church. Most of the time it is said by someone who regularly attends church to someone who is a guest.

By human nature we all tend to sit in the same seat in places we go on a regular basis. This is true whether it be a church or a classroom or a bar. We kind of claim our space. The problem comes when someone sits in "our" seat.

The problem is especially acute in the church. When a regular attendee makes a comment that someone is sitting in "their" seat they show a genuine lack of hospitality. Do we think a guest will return if they are treated in this way? Is this how we would treat someone in our homes? We might stop to think that we might be cooperating with the enemy as we sin and miss an opportunity to practice hospitality like Christ. What if that person you told to get up and move is attending worship for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time. They are already nervous, apprehensive, on edge and scared and here you tell them "you're sitting in my seat." C'mon think McFly!!

In the church no seat is your seat even if your name is on the plaque at the end of a pew for donating it. Are you willing to give up your seat so someone can become connected with God?

Jesus was willing to give up his seat to do so. That's what we celebrate at Chrsitmas. Jesus gave up his seat and came and lived among us so that we could experiecne God's love both in this life and in the life to come.

Location, Location, Location

For a realtor the most important thing is location, location, location. Location is certainly important for a church plant too. New Season Church ended up at Massaponax High School, our local high school. This was the best space available when we were getting ready to launch.

There are some benefits to where we are: there is plenty of room for growth. Most people know where it is. We get access to lighting and a great platform area. We have the best janitor ever in Bill Spradlin. The cost is fairly reasonable.

There are plenty of drawbacks as well. We are at the very bottom of our mission field and out of the drive path direction that most people travel to shop, do business and get to other major roads. The space we have is HUGE. It is far more than we need and it is a detriment because we lose energy when people are so spread out- though we do rope off sections of the auditorium. We do have to load and unload every Sunday (which has plusses and minuses).

I think some things to consider when choosing locations are as follows:

1. Bathe the choice in much prayer.

2. Try to find the place people pass to go shopping, to the movies, and to do business.

3. Find a space that is not too big, but not too small- at least ensure you can expand if you need too.

4. Pick somewhere where the rent is fairly reasonable and where the landlord and the persons you will work with like the janitor are easy to work with.

5. For those who do preview services do them in different places not only to leave your scent but to see how each of the locations work- were the people easy to work with?, what was your attendance like compared to other venues? How did the set up go? And more.

Steve Kropp Concert

Steve Kropp, Celebration Team Leader at New Season Church will be having a CD Release Cocnert this coming Saturday at 7:00 p.m. The concert will be held at Widlerness Community Church. Steve has teamed up with our sound guy at New Season, Matt Monotoro of Third Stream Music for a great new album.

Peaks and Valleys represents songs to live by. Steve's offerings share messages that help people not only endure life by live life to its fullest as Christ atteneded.

Make plans to come out and support Steve.

Christian Business Directories

I like to visit other churches' websites from time to time to check out the latest stuff that other folks are doing in the kingdom. I noticed a lot of churches are now doing these Christian business directories. On their site they will list the businesses of church members or other Christian businesses in the area. The idea being that persons from the church would frequent those businesses. You see the same thing in the yellow pages or on people's business cards when they put the fish logo on it.

About a year ago we had a group come and what to sell us space in a regional directory of Christian businesses and organizations. It was kind of like a yellow pages of Christian businesses and organizations. They delivered these books to churches in the region and Christian bookstores etc.

I told them that we appreciated but were not interested because we at New Season Church were interested in reaching people that had never been to church or stopped going to church. Those kind of people would not be the kind of people getting these books. People in churches or who frequented Christian bookstores would be getting those books. Maybe a good deal for a painter, plumber, or dentist but not for a new church like us. It would be like advertising our church on the Christian radio station- why? Probably 99% of those people have churches and that is great. Why would we be trying to reach them?

Also, should we really be encouraging Christians to be shopping at the businesses of other Christians exclusively? Does that not indeed hamper our witness? Do we run the risk of constructing a Christian ghetto where we only buy Christian goods and services and send our kids to Christian schools? My opinion is that we ought to be engaging the world. We are to be IN the world but not OF the world.

5 Years Later

We remember now five years later.

George Barna takes a look at the impact 9.11 had on spirituality and worship attendance in this article.

I remember the great surge in worship attendance in the church I was serving. And, I remember all the talk about what an opportunity the church had to be the church and help people to cope with this tragedy.

What happened? Not much, according to Barna. The upsurge in attendance and religious interest has dwindled. Attendance is back to pre-9.11 numbers. Persons are reading their Bibles and praying the same they were before the attacks.

Maybe the answer is not God bless America but America bless God!

Diana is 30!

My beautiful wife is now the big 30! Most people would say she still looks like she is 23. People say I look like I am forty three and want to know why Diana is holding hands with her dad! Just kidding. The 30 milestone was a milestone I hit about a year and a half ago. We celebrated Diana's turning 30 at the Old Town Steak and Seafood last night. It was great!!

Diana and I first met at Randolph-Macon College when she was just 18 and we were engaged in three months and married about five years later (though initially she relentlessly pursued me after a while she kept kicking me to the curb and I kept showing up so she finally decided she just had to marry me). Back when we first met we knew everything and now age and wisdom has taught us we know little.

Happy birthday Diana it has been a good twelve years and a blessing to be part of your life.

Church Marketing 101

I just finished Richard Reising's Church Marketing 101 and wanted to share some highlight followed by comments. Quotes are in italics, my comments in regular type.

p. 13 You cannot find the answer to growth for your church in mimicking what growing churches do- you are more likely to find it in what they are.
This has been said time and time again by different people and is of course true. But I like how he puts it. It is not by copying methods but by mimicking values, vision, and spiritual DNA that growing churches should be emulated.

p. 23 Marketing is the management of perception.
This is a simple definition of what marketing is. If we are going to introduce people to Jesus Christ then we need to change the perception many have of the church (boring, after your money, irrelevant etc) so that the church is not a stumbling block only the gospel.

p. 36 What is it about you that would make them think that you have the answer and would welcome them in? What sets your church apart?
This fits in to one of the questions Adam Hamilton says to ask yourself and answer. Why do people need this church? The other two- why do people need Jesus and why do people need the church?

p. 100 Chances are, every church in your community could double in size and you would still find less than 20% population in church on Sunday. Avoid the temptation of being stingy with souls. They don't belong to your church, they are God's.
Amen! We need to be building the kingdom and not fiefdoms! Instead of worrying about the church down the road reaching all the people you can't or won't reach and stealing your people know that the harvest is plentiful.

p. 143 Know the difference between true needs and felt needs. The real bottom line need is belonging to Christ, but people's perceived need is always something less spiritual.
Sometimes we have to gain an entrance and an audience by addressing felt needs first. Even then the Gospel has something to say to felt needs- handling money, a better marriage, more fruitful relationships. In the end though we keep our eye on helping persons address their greatest need- Jesus Christ.

A Classic Duel Between Good and Evil

It is not Armageddon and it is not the allies versus the axis- it is the good guy Boston Red Sox versus those other guys from New York.

Those over priced underachievers from New York will make their way to Fenway Park for three games including a double header on Friday. Come Tuesday the Red Sox will hopefully be back in first place as they erase New York's two game lead in the AL East. The Sox remain two back in the wildcard race too.

Will New York be able to buy themselves another World Series this year? Or, will they continue to underachieve like in recent years? I will root for the good guy underdogs. If the Sox don't make it this year I will root for ABNY (Anybody But New York).

Now, don't get me wrong Jesus even loves the Yankees and their fans.

Here is a shout for the good guys!! Go Sox!!!

Learning to Ride a Bike and Following God

A little less than a week ago Robert our 4 year old said he wanted the training wheels off his bike. So, I have been trying to teach him how to ride without training wheels. He is not there yet but soon will be.

I was reminded in one of our practice sessions how much learning to ride a bike is like following Jesus.

1. There comes a time when we have to take the training wheels off and begin to practice big boy/ girl faith and move beyond "I follow Jesus because it makes my life better" to "I follow Jesus because he is the way that makes the most sense out of this world and because of the challenge he lays on my life."
2. It is not enough to just take the training wheels off. You have to try to ride. I am continuing to unfold just how utterly ridiculous we Christians have been in thinking if someone just prays the magic formula (sinners prayer/ Romans Road, 4 Spiritual Laws) that this is the end of it. While all those things are O.K. at the proper time and are necessary they are not the end but the beginning.
3. Sometimes we will fall off. We will have times when we follow Jesus and we fall flat on our faces. But just as we learn not to turn the handlebars too fast one way and to watch where we are going when riding a bike so we learn in these times of our faith to trust God and keep our eye on him.
4. There will be times in our faith when we feel like we can ride for miles and miles with no hands. These are the seasons of fruit. Still, we have to watch for the pothole in the road of life or the bus running the stop sign or we might become the roadkill of a peace and prosperity Gospel. Even in the good times we have to trust, stay focused, and know who holds our future.
5. We need mentors to teach us how to ride a bike and what it means to follow Jesus. Yes, some to keep us from falling, to keep us steady, to give us a push when we need it and someone to dust off our blessed assurances when we fall and encourage us to get back on.

Are you ready for the Tour de Faith?

Milk Shake Update

Since I am becoming the milk shake aficionado of Fredericksburg I found another good shake! Try Arby's new creamsicle shake. If you like creamsicles then you will love this shake. When I let Robert have a try he did not want to give it back!!

God's Will

Having been trained at a Presbyterian Seminary there was much talk about God's will. Or, as they called it God's providence. It seems to me that one of our struggles is to operate within God's will. But how?

An easy answer to how to be in God's will is to say live by the Bible. But the Bible is not an owners manual but rather a book open to interpretations. For sure we can all agree that there are black and white things in the Bible that are clearly within or outside of God's will. For example, it is God's will that persons would love God and their neighbor. That is a pretty safe statement. Or, it is God's will that we would not murder. For then we would be outside of God's will. I think we can agree on that.

What about when it comes those issues of everyday life though and determining God's direction (will) for one's life? Questions like should I take the new job? Should I move my family? Do I get the new car or the new used car? Do I take my boyfriend back again after he has cheated on me? Do I tell someone the truth though it will hurt them?

We can bring scripture to bear on some of these questions. Of course, we would have to know what the scripture says about some of these issues or at least where to look. We might pray and ask for God's direction (doors to open or close, the whisper of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, what others are saying ((community)), whether it will bring honor to God?).

In the end, trying to figure out God's will is like most of this journey that we are on with Jesus- it is a challenge. We will know whether we have gone the right way by the fruit produced. Or, maybe there are different paths to be taken that all could be part of God's will. But, that is for another post.

So, go make sense out of and follow God's will for your life.

The Oprah"ization" of Church

Have we turned church into a glorified Oprah Winfrey show only leaving out the special gift under the seat or the new car giveaways?

If you look out Oprah's audience you mostly see women. I guess this is expected since women are Oprah's bread and butter- her demographic. Because women are who Oprah is trying to reach the show is feminized. Oprah used to have the innocuous "Get in Touch with Your Spirit" segment and she loves to feature touchy feely novels for her book club like "The Notebook" and other such books that make us men just cringe. And this is all good for Oprah. She ain't no dummy!

But have we Oprah"ized" church? Have we made it uncomfortable for men. In all three churches where I have served I have watched as women sat in the worship space while their husbands stayed home. Why?

I don't pretend to have all the answers but maybe it is because we have feminized church to the point that we have made it uncomfortable for men and it is now man law that men will not come to a sissy church.

Here are a few examples:

• We love to talk about having a relationship with Jesus. I know very few men who are digging the hard work and baggage of another relationship- much less with another dude. But men love the challenge of a journey.
• We decorate our churches with pink and lavender curtains and plush and frilly furniture with mauve carpet. Yeah, that is real inviting for a man.
• Then we gather around the fellowship hall or the morning circle and we say "o.k. we are going to pray now. Hold the hand of the person next to you." Yuck! Who wants to hold the hand the big hairy hand of the old guy next to you or the little hand of the piano player. This is sometimes hard for a man who has trouble holding his wife's hand on a regular basis.

Oh well you get the picture. I have been guilty of making men do some of these things. I repent today men. In our effort to reach the lost let us remember the men.

Hand Spun Milk Shakes

Has anyone tried the new hand spun milk shakes at Chick-Fil-A? Diana got the cookies and cream one a week ago or so and it was really, really good. They even have whip cream and a cherry on top. Last night we ate at Chick-Fil-A and we got a cookies and cream milk shake and a chocolate one. While the chocoloate was very good the cookies and cream was still the best.

And about Chick-Fil-A. Ain't that a good business model. It is clean. It is fast. The people that help you are courteous. The food is good and is different (not a nasty old burger from under the heat lamp). I think Chick-Fil-A also creates an environment that is family friendly and while it could make a gajillion if it stayed open on Sundays it doesn't.

It seems to me the church can learn something from Chick-Fil-A. We can take away some principles (cleanliness, hospitality, offering good soul food, being different ((an alternative to the thinking of the world)), and an environement for people to be fed by God's Spirit so that people want to come back and kids throw temper tantrums when they can't go to church!)