Paul Clark

MythBusters is Coming to Fairhaven

This week we begin our fall series, this year entitled, MythBusters.  Our fall campaign is an all-church 6-week series that combines sermons, small group curriculum, video vignettes, dramas, and lots of fun intended to create an experience that 1) increases involvement in small groups(one of our core values) 2) allows the church to grow spiritually through a well-designed biblically-based curriculum and 3) provides the entire church family (children to adults) with a unity-creating common study experience.  It's tons of work, but has been a great experience.  This is the fifth year doing it, and each year seems to get better.  We produce and write all of our own material, vignettes, curriculum, childrens and student material, and media support materials. In previous years we have done: Roadmap for the Journey (a series designed to explore signposts of Christian maturity), Upside Down (a series examining some of the more surprising sayings of Jesus--i.e lose your life to find it) and Downloading the Divine (a series looking at the "I Am" statements of Jesus). Take a look at the MythBusters website and you'll get an idea of what it entails.  As the person in charge of the fall campaign, I coordinate the materials, write the curriculum and promo material, oversee script editing, and plan the communications schedule for the campaign. Lots of other great people are involved in the execution.  As some of the props, video's and curriculum come together this week, I'll post some pictures of them in this space to give you a flavor of what we are doing.  All of our materials are available to other churches for a small production charge through our media department, Hello Media.  Here's an excerpt from one of our promo pieces:

"So... You're minding your own business, sitting in the coffee shop reading your Bible, and someone walks by you, sees your Bible, and starts up a conversation.  After a few minutes of small talk, they proceed to unburden their soul about how their favorite uncle just passed away. They tell you that, although Uncle Bob was decidedly anti-Christian, he was a good guy and lived a good life. They end the conversation with a statement that it’s comforting to know you’ll see your loved ones again on the other side.  Hmmm. How should you respond to that? Because you know plenty of people believe that “everybody goes to a better place.” Could it actually be true? Sounds like a job for MythBusters!

It's a challenge separating truth from fiction, but the MythBusters fall campaign is on its way to clear up the confusion.   For six weeks this fall, starting October 4-5, we’re going on an all-church journey to bust or prove some of the most common “urban legends” about God and faith. We’ll combine David’s sermons, community group experiences, and video vignettes from many of our pastors, to explore some popular beliefs that have taken hold in our culture, but may not be true at all… or might be!   Mark your calendar, make sure you’re in a MythBusters Community Group, and get ready to put some myths to the test!"

 

Outreach Magazine Top 100 Churches

Wow!  We were included in Outreach Magazine's Top 100 Growing Churches just released as a special edition this week. I think we're no. 53, but considering how many churches there are in America, I'm pretty pumped! Since David Smith took over as Senior Pastor we've been on a steady incline, both because of the great transition plan executed by our former Senior Pastor, Pete Schwalm, and because of the vision and leadership skills of David.  The church is growing by the hundreds, because of a strong outreach emphasis, "Reaching 2" and because of the many fine teams of staff and volunteers behind the various ministries.  God is doing some exciting things at Fairhaven Church, and it's an adventure to be a part of it!

6-Month Work Plans

As we do every 6 months, we set today aside to review our 6-month work plans together.  Besides enjoying spending the day with the great pastoral staff we have, this exercise accomplishes many things for us:  it helps us to keep the big picture in mind as we hear all the things that are going on among other pastoral staff and other ministries, it helps us to be inspired by all that God is doing at Fairhaven Church, it gives us concrete and measurable goals which can be used in coaching and accountability, and it helps us to avoid conflicts as we hear what else is happening and can be sure what we are doing fits in with the whole.  It allows David to make sure that the staff is moving in the same direction toward our vision and core values.  It also allows David a chance to personally affirm each staff member, which he does after each one shares their plan.  He is gifted at cultivating good staff relationships and this is a key opportunity to do that.  We always rehearse the question, "What would Fairhaven Church look like if we can accomplish all the goals on these work plans?  It would be awesome!  If you want, take a look at mine as an example of what we do...

Download work_plan_102008.doc

Humility

Yesterday I again had the privilege of preaching, and my topic was Intimacy with God.  You can take a listen if you'd like, but one thing I shared that several people wanted copies of were some suggestions for developing humility.  The idea was that humility is an essential quality if we are going to be a position to experience intimacy with God.  As I developed the idea of humility, I shared this list from the writings of Jeremy Taylor, a 17th century Christian scholar.  Seems they had as much problem with humility as we do...

1. Never allow the blessings of God in your life to become reasons to think highly of yourself.
2. If you are honest enough to recognize your own faults, do not be offended if others do the same.
3. Nurture a fondness for doing good things in secret.
4. Never say anything that will provoke the complements of others.  In other words, don’t fish for compliments.
5. When you are slighted by someone, do not allow any anger to take hold.
6. Take an active part in praising others, or genuinely affirm the good things in others.
7. Be pleased by the success of others.
8. Be forgiving of and patient with the weaknesses of others.
9. Do not excuse or make excuses for your own mistakes, but openly acknowledge them.
10. Give God thanks for your own faults and weaknesses, as God’s method of making you humble.

Connecting Guests by the Numbers

I gladly spent the morning today working with our Director of Connecting Ministries, Pam Walker, and one of her incredible key volunteers, mapping out a path for understanding and measuring our effectiveness in connecting new people to Fairhaven Church.  Those few hours flew by as we dissected what we are doing and pieced together the process that we want to use in connecting people, and the tools and strategy we will use to measure how well we are doing.

Incidentally, our volunteer called five or six large churches to inquire as to whether they have a clearly defined process and if so, is it effective.  She drew a big flat zero.  The author of Effectiveness by the Numbers suggests that most churches fail to track their effectiveness in assimilation, which has been true of us, and was true of the churches we contacted. Why is that? It seems to me that if we really want to grow we have to do two things well: 1) reach out to those who are not followers of Jesus, and 2) retain the people God sovereignly brings through our doors.  If we can do those two things well, then assuming the Gospel has the power that St. Paul says it has, we will see our church grow.

Our approach will focus on identifying several key ideas:  Who is a guest?  How and when do they come onto our radar? How do we define assimilation? What is our current process, and where are the holes? What tools will we need to employ to measure our effectiveness? What data will we need to collect and how will it be collected?  How will we report the data and how will we use it? How will we get buy-in from the ministries?  What will be the benefit of this effort for the church at large and the ministries individually? It's been an awesome discussion and we have a clear path mapped out, which will be presented to the Executive Team next week. I love working with talented people who want to think and act strategically, and I can't wait to get this process launched!

CLA Conference 2009

I found out yesterday that I will be presenting a seminar at the 2009 Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA) Conference in Atlanta.  The CLA is addressing issues that are important to church executives and administrators.  On Monday, David Fletcher will host an all-day XP presentation, while day two will include various seminars on "big rock" issues important in church management. It will be a great two-day opportunity for executive pastors and administrators, not to mention the lineup of great speakers. So as the budgeting cycle approaches, be sure to leave room for a conference or two that will help build your skills and challenge your heart.

Solving the Fall Communications Wars

This past weekend we hosted our second Fall Kickoff. If you're church is like mine, there's a rush for available communication channels as September approaches. Every ministry has a message to get out, registrations to take and volunteers to recruit. In years past, it's been a battle to see who gets the airtime. It's frustrating because there are so many ministries going on and the need for each of them to reach their target audience is legitimate.

We've found an event that has seemed to satisfy everyone and has been very effective in accomplishing the ministry's goals. We bring all the ministries together in our multipurpose room, giving each one a booth, electric, signage, and whatever supporting print material they need, and for two consecutive weeks, we make every effort to get the congregation to walk through and take care of their fall ministry needs. Each booth is staffed by enthusiastic ministry volunteers who are anxious to share their passion with anyone who gets close to their table. It's been a great event, thanks mostly to Shelley Dulaney, our Pastor of First Impressions, and her awesome volunteer crew. They make it warm, friendly, relaxed, and running over with free Saxby's coffee. Most ministries come out of the event with the volunteers they needed and all their registrations completed, although there's still a ton of that done online through what we call, Common Ground.

Our media dept, HelloMedia, also publishes a 24-page Fall Kickoff booklet that outlines all the ministries kicking off in the fall, with calendars, registration forms, dates and times, and some unique stories. We pass that out to the congregation the week before the Fall Kickoff, so that people have time to go through it beforehand. Then we have extra copies available during the two weeks of the event. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a pdf for you to see in case your interested.

So at least for the present, we've solved the fall recruitment and communications wars. And the added benefit is, we hear people walking through saying, "I had no idea we have a ministry to the homeless." or, "I didn't know we have a group just for widows.", or "I'm sure glad we have a social action ministry." In a big church, lots of people aren't even aware of all that goes on!