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I have finally found a permanent home for my blog. I was able import all my entries from my old MT blog and had to copy and paste the ones from this one....SO, i lost all of your wonderful comments (except for a few that i was able to salvage)! I am so sorry for losing all your fantastic thoughts. i feel like such a loser.

be sure to add this one to your RSS readers, bookmarks and such....i'll be there for good. i promise!

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How big is your church...

So often we "count" the people that show up to "church" on sunday mornings as people who are part of our community. question is posed: why don't we count the people who are actually connected to our community through the web of relationships?

Example, in our faith community, we have anywhere from 60 - 80 people showing up to a worship gathering. so, from this we say that our church is about 60-80 people "big." When really, we have about 60-80 poeple who are (hopefully) redemptively living lives with a number of other poeple in their personal lives. CAN THIS MEANS THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED TO OUR COMMUNITY. Can it be that they are part of our church because they are in relationships with people in our faith community?

If yes, can you see the amazing perspective this puts on our understanding of people's value to the congregation? We only count poeple when they show up on Sunday mornings to "church." But, isn't "church" = community? So we "count" the people that are connected to our community through the web of relationships that flow from our community.

Let's just say our 60 people have relationships with only 5 people. That means our congretation is touching the lives of 300 people! can we be open to say that we have 300 people in our community?! This is not a way to make me feel better about the "size" of our church, but rather a means to show that each person's ministry and role in the community "counts." its not just the stuff done from the pulpit that counts. each person's "ministry" (i.e. redemptive relationships) count for the kingdom of God....

hmm....

Concert Pics

We hosted our first local concert at the well saturday night. it seemed like an amazing success. we had about 100+ people show up (i would guess there were about 25 poeple from our church - the rest were from the community) and hands down, most of the ones i talked to just raved about our space. they were so excited about telling their friends about our place and inviting them back to see more shows there. we were so pleased with the opportunity to simply be a blessing to our community by giving them a place to come and "be" and have a place to hear a couple good local bands. there were some great relationships there were started, rekindled and continued from this time.

i met one girl who wanted to use our space to do a benefit for a mobile soup kitchen. apparently her and a friend have purchased a bus and are gutting it out, building a kitchen in it and then are going to use it to pass out meals to those who are needy. what an amazing idea! I want to try and get a group of people to help her out and take part in this with her.

anyways, here are a few pics of the show...



Yes, that is a telephone he is singing into. This is Chris Achibald, the lead of Illinois and his phone creates an amazingly cool sound. you've gotta come hear this band next week.




this is the band Eastern Conference Champions

Bored this weekend?

If you live in the Philly area and are looking for something to do, might i suggest a good local concert? Our church, the well, is hosting our first concert this saturday night at 8:00 pm. Illinois and Eastern Conference Champtions are the main bands. Both are really talented. Illinois has quite a unique sound. Head to their website to hear some of their stuff. For the record both of these bands are not "christian bands"... There is a $5.00 cover charge, but that gets you some good music, all the coffee you can drink, and a place to hang for a few hours on a saturday night.

Here is the ad i created for this concert and a few others coming up...

The American Front Porch

From The Cultural Significance of the American Front Porch

The American front porch further represented the ideal of community in America. For the front porch existed as a zone between the public and private, an area that could be shared between the sanctity of the home and the community outside. It was an area where interaction with the community could take place.

Some good thought for what we are doing in our churches and our need to create some front porch spaces to invite people into our communities of faith.

The Four Spaces of Belonging

This is my summary of Myers' four spaces of belonging...

My Description of these Spaces as taken from the book:

Public (12 ft. +)
- Give us a safe place to be known and accepted and find belonging.

Social (4 – 12 ft)
- Snapshots of who we are
- Safe selection for us to decide who we would like to grow a “deeper” with relationship
- Allow us to share an authentic definition of who we are.

Personal (18 inches – 4 ft)
- Sharing of Private Information
- Close Friends

Intimate (0 – 18 inches)
- “Naked yet unashamed”
- One person can only have a few of these

“All belonging is significant. Healthy community – the goal of humankind has sought since the beginning – is achieved when we hold harmonious connections within all four spaces. Harmony means more public belongings that social. More social than personal. And very few intimate." (p. 51)

Upcoming Class with Joe Myers - A Search to Belong

I am getting ready for a class at Biblical Seminary next with. It will be taught by Joseph Myers author of "Search To Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups." (My dad is actually joining me for this class, he's a pastor at North Suburban Ev. Free Church in Deerfield, IL - he's auditing it!) This was a great book for me and has really influenced a lot in the spaces we are seeking to create at The Well. The class is two full days Feb, a bunch of online stuff and phone calls and then two more days in April.

Biblical has wireless in the classrooms so that means i will be blogging a lot of my notes from our class time and discussion. For now, i am rereading his book,

"I've often heard ministers say to their congregations, 'We're glad you're here. But if you really want to know what it is like to be part of our congregation, participate in a small group.' The implication is that small groups are the best - is not the only - way to build authentic community....small groups do not accomplish the promise of fulfilling all facets of a person's search for community. Small groups deliver only one or two specific kinds of connection. A person's search for community is more complex than this....For the record, I am not against small groups. I am acutally very much in favor of them. But i am against small groups being used and marketed as the "end all" solution for answering the individual's search to belong. Perhaps this was best expressed by the participant in a small group's roundtable who observed "it is too small to think just small group.

He goes on to say that poeple sense belonging on four different levels:
- Public
- Social
- Personal
- Intimate

Small groups usually only focus on the personal and intimate. In churches, when we focus so much on saying that the personal and intimate are the most important. we minimize the public and social and mistakingly "say" that those who sense belonging this way is illliegimate.

Being a long time small group guy who loves the personal and intimate, this is a challange and poses a lot of questions...i am looking forward to 12 hours a day with a small group of poeple (8-10 students last i heard) and a couple really smart guys...