Summer Reading 2009

Now that my classes are finished for the spring I've got a bit more time to do some reading for both professional development and fun/relaxation. Several of these books have been on my shelf for months. Several of them I've started, but never finished because other things were a higher priority. I read Story when I was an undergrad, but …

Newest Staff Member – Zak Lampert

I'm really excited that Zak Lampert is going to be joining the arts team at Schweitzer in a full-time position as the Media Coordinator & Modern Worship Leader. I've known Zak since he was in high school and he's an amazing young man. He was the first PA who worked in the media office when I was hired and it's …

Clarity in Communication

It's unbelievable how important clarity is in communication. Too often churches communicate to the insiders in their congregations without any thought about how it impacts guests or infrequent attendees. This morning in our ministry staff meeting we discussed plans for how we're reworking Wednesday nights in the fall. This impacts almost every ministry in the church in some way. As …

Guest Blogger: Kem Meyer – Less Clutter, Less Noise Blog Tour

Kem Meyer, communication director  from Granger Community Church is doing a blog tour for her book, Less Clutter, Less Noise. It's a great read and will seriously impact the way you think about communication in the church or any setting. I've got a copy to give away to one lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post. Most churches …

Five Spring Lessons

I've learned a lot this spring. Not all of the lessons have been fun, but they're all important. I thought I'd share a bit what's been going on in my life. Lesson One: I don't have time to take two classes. Last spring I did fine with two classes, but as the courses get more difficult and my pastoral role …

Q 2009 – Initial Thoughts

I've been in Austin this week for Q, a conference that brings together leaders to discuss how the church, culture, future and Gospel all relate. The event brings together people from numerous spheres of influence, slightly more than half were primarily connected to the church. Over the course of three days we heard 18 minute presentations on topics ranging from …

Easter 2009

Finally feeling somewhat recovered from the insanity that is Holy Week and Easter around here. I stupidly added up how much I've been here and last Wednesday to today involved more than 80 hours. Yikes! Thursday – Sunday involved five different worship experiences at six different times. Over the course of the weekend we had several firsts. It was our …

Rebuilding New Orleans – Spring Break Mission Trip

I spent last week with a group from the Schweitzer college ministry doing hurricane recovery work in the New Orleans area. We worked with Northshore Disaster Recovery to do the work along with students from several other schools in Missouri. We worked with nearly 100 college students rebuilding houses destroyed by Katrina. Our group worked on putting up vinyl siding, …

Eric Cartman & Cultural Attitudes

Last night at The Green Room we continued our series about prayer talking about how we find rest in Christ and how when we find that rest we take on the attitude of Christ as described by Paul in Philippians 2. This is in contrast to the attitudes of our culture. I had a lot of fun in expressing the …

Talking about Dating

At The Green Room we're wrapping up a series about dating this weekend. It's been a great couple of weeks talking about relationships. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts from the past two weeks of messages about having healthy relationships. The first week we covered knowing yourself and knowing God. This past weekend we talked about tips …

Communication Shifts Part 4: Stopping & Starting & Changing

So after much evaluation and conversation we decided that we needed to make some changes to the way we communicate. This involved making some tough calls about what would stay, what would go away, and what would change. Stopping: The biggest change in our communication was the stopping of our weekly newsletter. The newsletter had been our primary communication channel …

Communication Shifts Part 3: Evaluation

We learned four main things when we started to actually evaluate our communication. 1. The process we had in place was painful for everybody. Event promotion required several forms and talking to numerous people. If somebody got left out of the loop an event didn't end up someplace (web site, bulletin, newsletter, preworship slides, etc). The communication team was frustrated …