Tuesdays are for Bethlehem Ramblings

Quick Hits

It is too bad Jason Campbell isn’t going to be back next year because he is showing that he is a good QB. It is going to be a bummer watching him win with another franchise.

The Wizards are a mess. 5 straight losses by 11 combined points! We lose our beloved owner and it all goes to pot.

Baklava is the most underrated holiday treat

My three year old can operate my iTouch like nobody’s business. I think he could easily outperform most people over the age of 50 on it.

Do you think Jesus actually spent time as a carpenter? This has been on my mind all week. We don’t know if Joseph was around to really teach him the trade or if Joseph was even any good. If Joseph was a bad carpenter would Jesus have been a bad carpenter as well?

Vision, Facilities and Staffing

Yesterday I spent the day working again with Auxano, the visioning process experts, that we have partnered with for a 6 month visioning journey. They have been fabulous and I highly recommend them to any church looking to better discover and integrate their unique into the life of their church.

As part of our talk yesterday about vision casting and integration we talked about how our vision as a church should directly inform our facilities and staffing. This seems like a no brainer, but how many churches have facilities and staff that don’t line up with their vision or with any vision? In the year I have been at DCC my thinking on staffing and facilities has already really changed. We aren’t sure exactly where this visioning process is leading us, but in order to be the kind of missional church God is calling us to I have a sense that we are going to need to be very adaptable and fluid. We can’t be too top heavy with facilities or staffing. We don’t want long term debt. We don’t want to over commit ourselves to anything that might hinder our ability to quickly respond to a vision God might give us. I have a strong feeling that within the next two years we need to be debt free and in a significantly stronger financial position to be ready for the vision God is going to give us.

But, the difficult piece in accomplishing this is going to be resisting the urges to try and be like everyone else. I already have found myself fighting the urges to try and raise money to hire more staff, to borrow money to improve our facility, and to dream of a building we can build. This is especially hard because we own land that will be completely paid off in less than a year, have plans for a building, and embarked on a first capital campaign before I arrived. But even with all these pieces our vision must drive any decisions we make regarding building, what to do with our land, or any staff we add.

That was a beautiful clarifying moment for me.

Back from Bethlehem

Sunday night at DCC we hosted a Night in Bethlehem and what a great night it was. This family event put out by Group Publishing is almost a mini-VBS with a full production event for families. Sometimes meeting in a warehouse has its advantages as we were able to breakdown our whole set up and transform the warehouse into the streets of Bethlehem. What was really great about the event was that it was an opportunity for families to go through the activity together and share a Christmas experience. For our church it allowed families with older children or people without children to serve the families of our church. It was all really beautiful and my wife gets huge props for organizing all of it.