Paul Clark

Now boarding on the red carpet

My wife and I just returned from a week in Maui. The things we saw and the fun we had is another story in itself. What an awesome time away. I took my computer, but did not do any work—only fun stuff like downloading pictures from my camera.

It was a long journey there, sitting more than a few hours in gate areas waiting for boarding. I couldn’t help but smile at how far airlines have gone to try to differentiate their customer base to make extra money. The airline we were traveling on had a red carpet aisle at the turnstile which only elite premiere club members could walk on. They lined up at the red carpet long before boarding began, anxious I guess to take their stroll down the red carpet. They, of course, boarded first.

Then there was the call for “somewhat less” elite members, not quite as elite as the ones getting to walk the red carpet. They boarded second and did not get to walk on the red carpet. Then there was a call for other specially-named groups, none of which included the word, “economy.” All the while my wife and I were sitting there wondering if they would require us to board the plane with a brown paper bag over our head, somehow knowing that we had purchased our tickets on a discount travel website.

I thought about how wonderful the church of Jesus Christ really is. We actually go out of our way to make sure that everybody feels special, that nobody gets preferential treatment over another and that as little as possible, at least within the church, separates the haves from the have-nots. In the sight of God we are all premiere club members. I love the church!

Read James 2 and take special note of v.9, “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” It was a gaudy color of red anyway.

what season of life are you in?

This past week we had an all-day staff meeting for pastors and directors at David Smith's house.  In those meetings we share our 6-month work plans and it's always a strategically important time for us to be together.  Beyond strategy though, it's important because it gets us away from the distractions of the office and together in community.

David did something really unique to get us to open up to each other.  We read the passage from Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 about the various seasons of life.  He then asked each of us to share a word from that passage that sort of describes the season of life that we are going through.  It created a deeper experience of community than we have probably ever had before. 

There were words like harvest, death, laugh, heal, dance--words that described what we are experiencing right now in our life, our home, our ministry or our family.  There were tears and laughter mixed in.  One pastor talked about losing his wife to cancer a couple months ago.  Another pastor announced she was engaged! Net result was we got to know each other better.  Our time of prayer for each other was much more meaningful because we had been given a window into each others lives.

We often say that community is "experiencing life together."  We did that in the 90 or so minutes it took for all of us to share.  It was a great time and we're a stronger staff because of it.  How do you create authentic community on your staff?  I'd love to hear your ideas.

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!