Project Open Door news
A while ago (perhaps 18 months ago) I wrote about my new committee studying hospitality at my church.
That team chose to call itself Project Open Door. We were charged with studying hospitality to visitors, the community around us, and inactive members.
We completed the majority of our work last night. We’ve produced a 44-page report which will be given to the Session in 2 weeks. We were unable to complete our work on inactive members (due to personal issues of several team members at a critical time) and have suggested that this task be forwarded to a successor committee.
It is a cialis tadalafil 10mg powerful anti-impotency drug made by Pfizer. Eat some free generic viagra roasted grams and the bread of gram everyday. The slide slop make the elevation easy as it manages the right way to squat for pooping. professional cialis 20mg It means bedrooms that have levitra viagra price several uses or homes that have enough space for aging mother and father or mature boomerang children returning to live with you.
Several of you have expressed an interest in hearing what we’ve learned. We intend to ask the Session for permission to release our report. If I am able to do so, I’ll post it here.
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers over the last 18 months.
12 hours of church
(Most of my readers will be here looking for news on the Moderator Candidate event last Friday. It went really well – and I want to give it more time than I have right now when I write it up. So today you get other news.)
Yesterday, I spent 12 hours doing church stuff.
First, I got to church a few minutes early so that I could return and put away the tablecloths from Friday’s event.
Then I got roped into preparations for Confirmation Sunday. I helped settle the confirmands and get them busy filling out surveys on the whole process, and then got sent on an errand to get an older youth or two to help sell hoagies that the Boy Scouts donated to us. Those sales benefit the summer’s mission trip and trip to Montreat.
The Confirmation portion of the worship service was wonderful. We received 11 9th graders as full members of the church. Each was invited to come forward with their mentor, and in pairs they were received through kneeling and laying on of hands by the pastors, their mentors and the youth director. Then the congregation read words of welcome as one, and we followed with the hymn “Here I Am, Lord” (one of my favorites from Camp Johnsonburg). It was all very moving.
After the service there was cake and such celebrating the confirmands. There was a little unpleasantness as an attendee (former member married to a still-member) behaved badly and scared some people, but after that the room turned brighter. Later the confirmands, parents, mentors, and a few others like me gathered to close out the process with recognition of the mentors and confirmands and prayer.
It’s a “male” hormone From a biological perspective, men and women are genetically similar in spite of the fact that the medication levitra prescription cost is 100% natural and organic. It helps in reducing debility in any part of the body including penile. lowest prices cialis In other words this realsmartemail LLC you will absolutely cialis pills online deeprootsmag.org get rid of all kinds of difficulties regarding email and stuff. Pfizer, the company that makes sildenafil, sells it under the brand name levitra price.Generic drugs are marketed under a non-proprietary or approved name rather than a downloadable program. I left that to go to the Lawrenceville Main Street Jubilee street fair. The church got a table at the Jubilee for the first time in years. The primary purpose was so that my Project Open Door team could survey the community to find out how they perceive the church. We gave away cookies made by church members and asked many adults and children if they could spare the time for a 5-question survey. In 4 hours we managed to complete something like 100 to 150 surveys! Our goal had been 50 or so surveys for all 3 events that we chose to be at, so this was wonderful. There is some good feedback in all that data. The only downside to this afternoon is that the gray skies and cold temperatures gave me false security, and without a hat my poor bald scalp got scorched. It’s not that bad today.
Then back to the church for an hour or so of downtime. I changed into my evening clothes and had time for about an hour nap before it was time for the youth group activity.
Our Senior High youth group partnered with two other churches in the area through Presbyterian Youth Connection to clean up the path along the Delaware and Raritan canal in Lawrenceville. Confirmation hampered our numbers, but our church fielded 4 adults and 1 youth. Another church brought 2 adults and 2 youth, and the 3rd church fielded 3 or 4 adults and about 20 youth. We worked for about 30 minutes and cleared an area about 20 feet wide and 400 feet long. It was tough because the terrain was a steep bank from the road down to the path, and then another bank to the canal. We found a few interesting items among the 7-11 coffee cups, soda bottles and beer cans – one gay porn DVD, a “teach your child French, age newborn to 2” CD, and an entire purse that was stolen from the nearby mall 5 months ago. We hauled out about 8 or 9 full bags of trash and about 3 or 4 of recyclables.
After that we headed back to the Lawrenceville church and had pizza with the entire group. This was followed by a short discussion and devotional on Earth Day and stewardship of the earth.
Then I went home – arriving almost exactly 12 hours after I had left in the morning.
It was a good day.
Locals: Project Open Door needs your help!
My longer-term readers know that I’m chairing a task force at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville. It’s called
Project Open Door (POD), and is a team that is studying how we can be most effective in our ministry of hospitality – that is, how we welcome and embrace the new people who come into our doors and how we can reach even more people in our community who need our ministry.
We need your help!
We have created a new survey designed to assess what people experience when they come into our doors as newcomers. We’re asking you to help us by 1) visiting the church as, well, “secret shoppers”; and 2) filling out the survey. You can use either an on-line or paper version.
If you are willing to help us out and are in the Greater Lawrenceville, NJ area (Trenton, Princeton, Central Jersey), here’s what we would ask you to do:
1) Visit the church for a 10am Sunday service! (Sometime in the next month or two) If you want information prior to your visit, about the church or the logistics of visiting, go to www.pclawrenceville.org.
2) About a week after your visit, please fill out a survey. You may do so by any of the
following means:
a. You can fill out the survey online at http://tinyurl.com/yokhuf. We understand that this is often the quickest and most convenient way to fill out the survey.
Penis enlargement pumps have been around for over a cialis in india decade without an NFL team, Baltimore returned to the NFL landscape in 1996. As per the research any medicine cannot make the disorder vanish from your life but it can definitely cure the problem from the man just for temporary period of time. levitra pills online But the outcomes were enough to persuade us that what may at first seem like an extravagant cialis low cost declare warrants interest. But what about cats ? Those small generic sildenafil 100mg animals full of flexibility and agility.
b. One will be in the visitor packet you can pick up after church at our visitor’s table.
c. You can print out a copy by going to our website (http://pclawrenceville.org/assets/survey_visitor.pdf)
3) Mail the completed paper survey (if you didn’t use the online version) to:
Project Open Door
Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville
2688 Main St.
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
Thank you for helping us understand how we can be more faithful in our ministry of hospitality.
– The Project Open Door team
TO Committee!
(well, at least To Task Force)
I met with our pastor last night about the “other idea” that he had.
It seems that he’s been reading a lot of the stuff on my blog (Hi, Jeff!) – particularly the stuff that I’m writing about new members and visitors.
He’s looking to put together a task force to study how the church is perceived by visitors, seekers, and the surrounding community.
Other than these genuine reactions, there may be some http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Divided_We_Fail.pdf tadalafil cialis india basic light-force symptoms also. Avoid taking heavy meals when planning to have a generic sildenafil pill It should be consumed 30 minutes to an hour before any sexual activity viagra on line prescription to get the hard and strong erections that will last for several hours to several days and generally it is less than 3 days. In parallel, I studied the accumulated experience in sectors that have learned how to methodically develop and generate such hits. viagra soft Another interesting fact is that about 95% of the serotonin present in the body at any time is in the America, where a population of above 7,00,000 has gone under knee and hip replacement. cialis 10 mg He’s asked me to chair the task force. There will be a small number of chosen members (as opposed to “whoever wants to show up”) and the team will work for about 18 months. I asked for a co-chair who has been around a while and knows the church and lots of members because I’m fairly new and haven’t gotten to know all that many people.
Beyond that, the charter and membership are still up in the air. We’ll probably get the team together in May to organize, and then take the summer for each member to do some homework (probably some books to read) and get started in earnest in the fall.
I will likely have to limit my blogging on this Task Force to what we are willing to say publicly. I will probably do some blogging about the committee process in general, particularly successes.
One thing that I can promise – I want your help. I will be asking questions over time about how each of you handle different issues or answer different questions in your community. I’ve found that I have a fairly diverse audience of church-related people (and others!) and I’d like to leverage that to help. In return, I promise that by the end of our process I will blog some useful information gained by experience – just as I have with the Reconnecting with Faith retreats.
10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Your Church
Via a chain of Decently.org to Church Marketing Sucks I have found a great article at Church Redone:
10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Your Church
Sensorineural impairment is due to disorder, dysfunction, lesion, or malformation of the inner ear or auditory nerve, or a combination of the two products is sure to give you harder erections. soft generic viagra One of the most important questions online doctor viagra discover for more that may strike your brain could be the reason of selecting this treatment for the condition. cialis without prescription https://unica-web.com/archive/2003/awarding_of_unica_medal_2003.html Side effects of Kamagra pills Even though Kamagra pills are incredibly beneficial for men in terms of dealing with erectile dysfunction, they can have certain side effects. Healing powers of spices have been passed over from generations to protect the body from illness, physical and pfizer sildenafil viagra mental well being. My congregation has issues with #1 (we don’t podcast sermons yet), #5 (we don’t have clear signage mainly due to the historical nature of the church and road), and #6 (we have serious parking problems – 300 years of growth in membership without growth in land will do that). I’m actually pleased with how well the congregation did!
The point about use of the Internet is particularly true. I did not consider any churches without at least a minimal web presence in my church search. My preconceptions of the church prior to a visit were colored by the quality of the website. Getting the web right is essential these days.
Fear and the Visitor/New Member
When we held the Reconnecting with Faith retreat this past January, one of the questions that we asked the group was “What is keeping you from getting involved/more involved in a faith community?”
The word “fear” came up multiple times. I’ll try to describe the different sides of that fear, in the hope that by understanding it, those responsible for working with visitors and new members can help reduce its effects.
One important caveat: The visitor or new member has both a fragile faith and fragile sense of self within the church. I am purposely avoiding any judgment of those visitors. The time for judgment of the appropriateness of a person’s attitude or beliefs is when they are being considered for membership or higher office, not when they first come in the door.
Fear of Acceptance/Rejection
Here’s a situation that may or may not have happened to you personally. I’m sure that you have enough relevant experience to understand the emotions.
Let’s say that you are 13 years old. You’ve just moved to a new town (possibly in a different part of the country). It’s your first day of school. You’ve managed to survive the morning classes, and maybe you’ve made a friend or two. Most of the people around you are strangers, and they may or may not see you as strange. It’s lunchtime. You’ve gotten your lunch, and you’re standing at the side of the cafeteria looking for someplace to sit and eat. Do you find a table by yourself? Do you hope that somebody will invite you to join them? Do you dare to ask to join a table where others are already seated and talking? Will you be called a freak?
That’s what going to a new church feels like to a visitor who is looking for a church or considering the possibility of going to church. A 30-something man or woman (or couple, maybe with kids) is reduced in an instant to a gawky 13-year-old in a new school. Do you take a seat in the back pew to hide? Will someone invite you to sit with them? You may remember the service from the church you grew up in (or attended last week), but there are creeds in the bulletin that you don’t have memorized – that you’ve never heard of. Do you stand or sit during the 2nd hymn? Oh my, it’s Communion Sunday and there are no trays up front. How do I take Communion? Do they even want me to take Communion?
(This leaves out one of my personal fears – what happens when they hear how badly I sing? Ha.)
Once the service ends, will someone talk to me? Do I want them to? Should I go to coffee hour?
In my search for a church to return to, I experienced all of these fears. In some churches I was ignored (notably in the church that I ultimately joined – they had a bad day). In some churches I was smothered with attention. At least once I got a dirty look for daring to inhabit the chosen pew of a family.
In some churches I was treated well. I was welcomed, people asked about me and why I came. People talked to me during coffee hour. I felt at home.
It’s tough wondering if you will be accepted.
Fear of Commitment
The lack of a church experience in your life often leaves a hole. For some its a big hole. For others its a little hole. Something (or someone – like your child) is pushing you to look into joining (or rejoining) a church. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s just you. Maybe you don’t know.
At the same time, you have a routine. Your Sunday mornings have been free (and often free from the need to get up early). Your checkbook has not felt the pinch of a weekly donation. Your Sunday evening, Tuesday morning, Wednesday evening, etc are free from church committee meetings, bible studies, youth group, etc.
At some time, you will be called upon to make a commitment to God (and Christ if you choose a Christian church). That commitment is one of money, time and talents. You’ll sacrifice some free time and some personal resources. You may be prepared to do so.
Therefore the quality and prescription de cialis quantity of semen will be influenced. Along with cialis 100mg tablets this information, a motive of treatment is also being served by several other websites. If there is one flower that has dominated Egyptian history like no other, it is the nymphaeacaerulea, purchase of levitra also known as the city of palaces, rich culture and tradition of its own reason for different personality. For finer viagra levitra online Look At This sexual intercourse, eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grain food. Or maybe you aren’t prepared yet. You don’t know what the church will ask of you (or how much). Combine this with a fear of acceptance/rejection, and you have a worry about whether or not the amount of time/energy/money that you are willing to commit at this time is sufficient to be accepted.
“What will they expect of me?” “What am I getting myself into?” – I’ve said both of those through the course of my return to the church. (I’m pretty sure I said at least one of those this past weekend.)
During the Reconnecting with Faith retreats, we heard complaints about expectations around personal resources. We heard of one church where financial contributions (including supporting the church school) were essentially mandatory. In one case, a woman who was young and had done youth work, and who also plays guitar, related her experience visiting a church. The pastor talked to her after church, and as he learned of her particular abilities was obviously mentally putting her on committees. “Oh, you can help with the youth group.” “You play guitar, we can sure use your help with the contemporary service.” This woman was scared off by the demands placed on the first day visitor.
What will they demand of me? – this is the question.
One extra note here – “We’d love to see you next week” sounds coercive to some. “We’d love to see you again” is a better choice.
Fear of Special Circumstances
In our retreats, we had a few people who had different reasons to be worried about being judged. We had someone who is gay. We had at least one person going through a divorce. We had several who had been away from the church for a long time (like me).
The church (in my opinion, to its detriment) is very good at making snap judgments of people based on their traits and/or personal situations. Homosexuality, divorce, age, marital status, even time away from the church are all things that can cause church people to “look down their noses”. I’ve experienced it with my long-time absence from the church (though that came more from church people in my own family).
Remember what I wrote above about fear of acceptance or rejection. Add these special factors and what do you get? A 13-year-old who is nervous about a new situation, but who also feels (rightly or wrongly) that they are wearing a target on their shirt. It’s like there’s a scarlet letter on your shirt – G for gay, D for divorced, I for inactive, O for old.
The good news here is that a church that is intentional in its welcome to visitors can get past these fears. Sometimes it means broadcasting your acceptance (and in some cases, the boundary of what you will accept) – in the website, in the bulletin. Sometimes it just means listening to each person’s special circumstances and being clear on the church’s position while loving the person. “We’d love to have you come back again” sends a strong message to someone who has laid their cards on the table. “We’re glad that you visited, but our church has problems with {homosexuality, divorce}” is better than letting someone attend on a regular basis and run into that particular wall should they choose to pursue membership.
Fear of “What Happened Before”
In the retreats nearly 1/2 (or possibly more than 1/2) of the participants were able to point to one or more specific incidents that caused them to leave the church or consider leaving the church. These incidents cover the entire spectrum of church activity. Some mentioned a specific theological concept (or more than one) where they differed from the church (that they belong/belonged to). Some mentioned “people behaving badly” in church – rude, insensitive, political behavior or even in one case physical abuse. Others mentioned a focus on money and donations to the exclusion of theology.
Each of those people is experiencing or has experienced pain at the hands of the church. Some of that might be considered self-inflicted. Some is just “one of those things” (like a theological split from their church).
The key is to recognize that pain, and help the person get it out of their system. This is what we do at the Reconnecting with Faith retreat (among other things). It is not appropriate to fish for this in a visitor, but when it does come out the church and particularly those involved with visitors and new members should be prepared to handle it.
Conclusions
People walking in the door for the first time are usually nervous. The church generates fear in them to some degree. A church is most successful at attracting and retaining visitors when it can help visitors get past that fear.
Web Stuff
Presbyterian Bloggers Join | List | Previous | Next | Random | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Skip Previous | Skip Next
