1000 Awesome Vounteers

My head continues to spin from last night’s Volunteer Appreciation/Christmas Eve Signup/Training Dinner. (Catchy name ugh?) We had over 800 RSVPs and then over 1000 showed up!!  As you can see from this picture of Craig (Hope’s Senior Pastor), it was a packed gym.  You could feel the excitement in the air as we prepare to enter into a new phase of ministry here at Hope.  We will hold our Christmas Eve services (9 total) in our new sanctuary on December 22-24. 

Last night was a little crazy as we served all these folks — the kitchen crew was awesome.  When Jennifer (our cooking Queen!) heard that we had 800 RSVPs, she wisely planned for 1000.  The menu included delicious soups (seafood gumbo, chicken tortilla and vegetable beef), a wonderful caesar salad and a great assortment of desserts.

Here are some of the highlights from the evening:

1. The food!
2. Seeing the volunteers lined up to sign up for the Christmas Eve services as greeters, info hosts, elf crew (bathroom clean-up duty), outside coneheads (parking crew), inside coneheads (ushers), fire extinguisher team (safety first for the candlelighting), children’s ministry, etc….
3. Craig’s great words of encouragement to all these faithful volunteers.  His talk focused on a recent vacation he took with his family to Disney World.   He reflected on what we can learn about serving others from Disney’s commitment to all their guests.  (See previous post on Disney and a great read Be Our Guest)  He cast the vision with excellence as usual.  In speaking of the “Disney Magic” he pointed us to the even more magical message that we communicate here — the life-changing message of Christ.
4. The training sessions we had with the various teams went well.
5. The tours of the new lobby and sanctuary was a real treat for these volunteers.
6. Seeing the tour groups standing on the stage and praying for God’s work in this new sacred space.

What a great evening. 

The Lure of the Web

            

I am starting to get a few more people who come to our new member class –Introducing Hope — who have found us or at least first checked us out through our web site.  Just 2 or 3 years ago our web site —how can I say this — sucked!  We had a do over, and it is not perfect, but it is much better.  And we are striving to keep it up-to-date.  I ran across a reference to an article in USA Today at MondayMorningInsight.  Check out what they have to say about shopping for a church on the web—–

Across the country, fall is high season for “church shopping,” as people in search of a new faith community to call home set about the task of finding one. But that doesn’t mean they’re showing up, singing hymns, shaking hands and sampling doughnuts at a different church each week.

Instead, observers say, they’re visiting church websites and evaluating congregations — often without having actually met anyone at the church. And that has some church people worried that the practice of faith is getting ever more impersonal — and consequently less powerful — in an age driven by efficiency and impatience.

Church shoppers “used to have to go to the service, sit in the back row and watch,” says Tom Bandy, president of EasumBandy & Associates, a church consultancy. “The website has just replaced that. The color schemes, the formatting, the language, the music — those things powerfully reveal who they (in the church) want to come there and who’s going to be accepted there.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Assimilation - Connecting into the Life of the Church

Mark Waltz at Granger Community Church just blogged about an article in Outreach Magazine in which he participated in a discussion regarding assimilation. It is worth checking out. Read Mark’s take on it at his blog, Because People Matter and then check out the article — Rules of Engagement

Dang! It looks like Mark has made the front cover!!!! Looking Good!!!

But doesn’t this picture say “Cover Photo” better than the one above? Especially since this is “Elvis Week”!