So what’s up?
So what’s going on, Mark?
I’m glad you asked.
This week has been eventful.
Earlier in the week, we got the news that the company is looking into some form of ownership change for all or part of the company. I’ve already written about that.
Today we actually got good news. IT has gotten permission to give an allowance to IT employees who are required to be on-call for support issues. The department will pay up to $75 of our home broadband Internet and cell phone charges. For me that means $40 for Internet access. My cell phone usage for work is minimal and always within my plan.
At church I got the Project Open Door meeting scheduled for next week – we’ll be going over inactive members and how to interview them gently. I had a good Sr. High youth evening last Sunday and a great Youth and Young Adult council meeting on Tuesday. The YAYA council actually reduced the amount of logistical stuff that we go over to focus on the substance and theology of our program. We’re going to be more intentional about linking our activities to our theology in the future.
Hockey – there are 3 games this weekend. I’m going to tonight’s game with Carolyn, and tomorrow night’s game with Carolyn, my sister and a friend of hers. Sunday’s game will get skipped – 3 in a weekend is too much.
Ham Radio – I got voted in as a member of the Delaware Valley Radio Association last week. Last weekend I went to their radio “shack” and got an orientation on the building, antennas, and radios. I’m also nearly finished with the ARRL EC-001 Level 1 Amateur Radio Emergency Communication online class. That class will teach me how to be useful in an emergency (like a flood, hurricane, or other disaster). The class is going really well – my mentor told me that I’m the first student out of the 100 or so that he’s worked with who managed to format all 4 sample emergency messages correctly on the first try.
In the Presbyterian world, things have been busy. We’ve had a presbytery approve a lesbian candidate as ready to receive a call to ministry, we got a young adult candidate for General Assembly Moderator (for the non-presby’s, that means roughly “head Presbyterian”). These actions (particularly the first one) have prompted the expected reaction from the conservative wing of the church. Our General Assembly this June will also be considering a complete re-write of the Rules portion of our constitution.
At my own church we have a congregational meeting this Sunday that will consider a change to the bylaws to loosen up the rules on the number of Elders and their term length. This is intended to allow the church to ordain it’s first Elder under age 18 for a term shorter than 3 years (because the youth probably couldn’t serve a full 3 years).
Life is a roller coaster, but in retrospect it’s been more up than down this week.
Meetings and trip
It’s been another busy week in Mark-land.
Sunday we had the real Sr. High youth group kickoff session. We had fun, got introduced to each other, played around, and ate ice cream. It’s a good group of youth including not one but TWO exchange students.
Monday evening we had the first meeting of the Welcome and Outreach Task Force that I am co-chairing. As I’ve said before our charter is to study visitors, inactive members and the local community and then to make recommendations on what the church could do to create an atmosphere of hospitality and invitation. It was a good meeting – mainly kept to start up tasks and ideas. We have two challenges. First is scheduling meetings – the folks on the team are really busy and it’s hard to find a 1.5 hour time slot that works for everybody. Fortunately I discovered (after some hints from the pastor and another team member) Meet-O-Matic. That should help. The second challenge is that we have one team member who has no Internet access (or inclination to get access). We’ve appointed a team member to be that member’s “Internet buddy”, and we’ve covenanted not to make any decisions via e-mail without getting her input.
The team is very diverse (as diverse as we could get given the congregation’s demographics). We have people who have only been attending our church since last spring and people who have been members for over 25 years. We have a pretty good age spread, and the gender balance is good. The skills and interests of the group members are fairly well balanced, too.
One interesting concept that came from this meeting is the definition of our “mission field” – the land area that we are targeting. The traditional idea was that we serve a 3 mile radius from the church building. However, over 1/2 of the team lives outside of that radius. This means (by extrapolation – and it does work out that way) that a significant percentage of the church membership drives past another Presbyterian church or three (not to mention other denominations) to get to our church. We are thinking that we might have two tiers – the 3-mile “local” tier and a larger area. We decided to add “active members outside the 3-mile radius” to the list of groups studied to see what draws them to drive a distance to be part of our community. We’re also going to be mapping the households using software yet to be determined (Google Maps?).
So that was Monday evening. Did I get a break Tuesday evening? No. Carolyn decided that this was the week to re-seal the driveway while it is still warm enough. (It did need it) So I got home Tuesday evening and it took the two of us just about 1 hour to put a coat on the driveway. She was nice to me Wednesday evening and put the 2nd coat on herself (a thinner coat). I just had to cook dinner.
Tonight is laundry, and then Friday evening I’m going with the Sr. Highs up to Camp Johnsonburg for a quick overnight retreat. We’ll be home about 3pm on Saturday – just in time to see Rutgers play Maryland (my brother’s alma mater) in football.
Sunday I’ll have church in the morning. I’m attending an adult forum on what makes Presbyterians different from other denominations. I have homework to do – matching the names, dates, and a short summary of the Confessions. Sunday evening the church is doing the first ever Jazz Vespers. The youth are attending together, and I’m probably going to bring Carolyn along too.
Who was it that said “You can sleep when you’re dead.”?
It’s Friday afternoon, it must be time for a roundup
You may be wondering why I do these on Friday afternoons. You see – my employer does something called Summer Hours between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Employees who choose to take advantage of the program work an extra hour Monday through Thursday and go home at noon on Friday.
I do not choose to take advantage of Summer Hours, so the place is quiet on Friday afternoons. I have time to write a little on break.
Work
I had a good conversation about career paths and discovery and discernment with my boss this week. This is probably setting off alarm bells in most of your minds, but we have a really good rapport (we’ve worked together since about 1996) and I fully trust her to be discrete. There are benefits to both sides in being open and honest with your boss, and we plan to make good use of them. I can’t say more here. I’m glad that it went well.
I had a medium-sized project go live today. It was a bumpy installation – caused mainly by a consultant who doesn’t know our setup and change management package. It’s not his fault – everybody has a hard time the first time. Once we got the issues worked out all is running correctly. I have another one going live soon, and a third larger project going live at the end of the month (with pieces continuing to be worked on into September).
I am getting a brand-new laptop at some point in the next few weeks. They’re here, but I’m a low priority replacement (others have broken systems or are new employees working on “loaner” PCs).
Work has been generally busy. In the last 2 weeks I’ve had an overwhelming number of problems, issues, and small requests. It’s like everybody decided to hold them until the last week of July and then dump them all on me at once. I think I’m through most of them, but the workload did increase for no apparent reason temporarily.
Weekend
This weekend is a bit active. My parents are coming over on Saturday evening and we are headed out to see a Trenton Thunder baseball game. The Thunder are the AA affiliates of the NY Yankees and have been playing in Trenton since 1994. Our seats are behind the 1st base side dugout and I think they’re the 2nd row behind the dugout (or maybe the first row).
Then on Sunday I head up to Camp Johnsonburg for check-in for the last week of regular camp. I’m going to be in charge of medical form paperwork this week due to my friend Jill’s vacation – she is usually the person doing the job. It’s looking to be a bit warm. I think there are lots of kids from my church going this week, but I’m so far away from the actual check-in tables that I probably won’t see them. This isn’t my last visit for a long time – I’m also planning to attend the Youth Worker Training on September 7, and I’ll be chaperone when my church’s Sr. Highs attend the camp Sr. High Retreat in November.
Church
We’ve finally got the Welcome and Outreach Task Force started. We have 8 members with 2 outstanding invitations. For the month of August, we’re doing optional reading assignments on our topic. I’m reading The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church by Reggie McNeal. In September we’ll get everybody together face to face and really get started.
The Youth Director came all the way to Bristol for lunch earlier this week. We talked about my career search and the upcoming Confirmation Class. He had lots of good input on the career discussion. For the Confirmation Class, he’s asking how he can get me involved without overbooking my time. At this point it looks like I will end up being the Cat-Herder for the group of mentors assigned to the confirmands. That’s an easy assignment – a bit of work up front but after that just keeping people on schedule and watching for problems. I’m also probably going to teach a few lessons – probably polity and beyond that we’ll see. I really want to be involved in this process because the youth that I know who are the right age are really great!
All other areas of my life are fine at the moment.
Have a good weekend!
Another Roundup
I’d like to apologize to my readers for the lack of deeply thoughtful articles of late. Life and work are a bit busy at the moment and I only have time for these roundups.
Work
I’m on the old laptop, reloaded from scratch. I’ve been told today that I’m getting a new one in the next few weeks. Given that this one was nearly top of the line when we bought it in 2000 or 2001 – it’s time. Company culture issues aren’t touching me as much as they had been a while back. One of the “problem children” has resigned and another in a different state has been told that her job is moving to my location by spring and her department reorganized. Given that and a few other things I can’t mention here it’s unlikely that she’ll be here by then. It’s unfortunate when people lose their jobs, but in some cases it’s necessary – anybody who consistently and willfully provides negative productivity (not only are they not productive, they make others less productive) needs to go.
Church
I had a good meeting with with the Youth and Young Adult council this week. We’re getting ready for the new year. We talked a lot about the philosophy of how we lead/schedule the group and some possible changes. The one thing that was a common thread was consistency – that each weekly meeting follow the same pattern and that we choose simple and meaningful as opposed to trying to do a major production each week. This follows the trend in Youth Ministry nationally to move away from the “let’s bring in new converts” blockbuster events of the 80’s and 90’s and for most the over-30 crowd in the council represents a step back to what they experienced as a youth. We’re also talking about changing the names of the groups. Right now they are CHAOS (Christians Hanging Around On Sunday) for the Senior Highs and WILDLIFE (which is an acronym nobody can remember off the top of their heads) for the Junior Highs. The youth director wants to de-emphasize the chaotic aspects of the names and I agree. We’re going to see what the youth want early this fall.
The youth director also asked me if I wanted to help lead the Confirmation Class. This year is the first year doing the class for 9th grade youth (it had been 8th grade, and last year there was no class due to the switch). I’m honored to be asked, a little uncertain about my ability and the strength of my faith being sufficient, and probably nearly overbooked already. The Welcome and Outreach Task Force is about to get started, I’ll still be working with the Senior Highs weekly and attending the YAYA council once a month, and the confirmation class is every other week for 8 months plus 3 weekend retreats (one just overnight). I’ve asked the youth director to lay out time expectations, and perhaps I can be a guest speaker on topics that I know well (polity would be one, and I’m sure that there are a few others).
The Lawrenceville church and a Princeton church (I think it’s Nassau Presbyterian) are putting together a new young adult event called Theology On Tap. It’s the 2nd Thursday of each month (starting September) in the Yankee Doodle Tap Room of the Nassau Inn in Princeton at 8pm. The idea is for 20’s/30’s somethings to get together and share a drink (alcohol optional), fellowship, and talk about theology. You can find more information HERE, or in the Theolodoodle group on Facebook. I barely qualify by age, but it’s intriguing enough to me that I’ll probably attend at least the first session.
The youth director also told me a freaky coincidence story. He was at Triennium 2 weeks ago, sitting with a woman minister friend of his. She was working on a sermon. On the table she had laid out a Bible, some books, a few printed e-mails, and one printed blog post. My director asked, “Can I look at that?” and picked up the blog post. You’ve probably guessed by now – it was one of mine (either from here or a comment elsewhere). He started laughing and when she asked why he explained: “This is one of my adult advisors.” Since Triennium was attended by youth from all over the world, he claims that I’m now internationally famous! Somehow I doubt that, but I’m glad that folks are finding worth in my ramblings.
Life
All is well, but we’re so busy with other people’s events (family, camp, church) that we’re neglecting work around the house. The outdoor trim needs to be painted, the garden needs weeding badly, and the driveway needs to be sealed. We need to decide whether or not to pay someone to do some of these things (we can afford to) or to stop our commitments and just get it done.
We also need to be sure that we get some downtime.
Another Clump of Church
I find that my church-related events tend to clump. In April, I had Youth Sunday on the same day as the Earth Day presentation by the Environmental Stewardship committee.
I’m in the middle of a clump now.
This past weekend was devoted to the Silent Auction fundraiser for the Youth Mission trip to Louisiana. We received 80-something donations of goods and services (babysitting, music for a dinner party, etc), and on Sunday night during a rainstorm (remnants of Tropical Storm Barry) we raised $3,400.
Next weekend is devoted to the All-Church retreat at Camp Johnsonburg. We’ll be there from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. Carolyn and I (mostly I) will be serving as “native guides” for the trip due to our current and prior involvement with camp and the number of first-time visitors in the group.
I got a gift from God this week in the form of the co-chair for the Welcome and Outreach Task Force. Jill Cifelli has been serving the church as Interim Associate for Pastoral Ministry along with Nolan Huizenga this past year while the church searched for the new Associate Pastor. Jill’s responsibilities included the new member process. She is leaving that position at the end of the month when the new Associate starts, and will be going back onto the session. She will also be my co-chair and the liaison to the session from the task force. Jill is one of the first few people that I talked to at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville about joining, and I if I’m remembering correctly every conversation that I’ve had with her has included laughter. I’m really looking forward to this.
To that end, we are meeting with the pastor on Thursday to tie up some loose ends for the task force. We still have to nail down the rest of the membership (we have one solid member, but the rest of the team is just a list of possible names at this point), and work out the beginning activities.
Things should quiet down after next weekend.
Work is also a bit busy this week, so don’t be surprised if I don’t get a chance to write much.
Need Help – Invitational culture and evangelism
I need your help.
The Task Force on Welcome and Outreach that I mentioned previously will be meeting soon (later this month, probably). We’d like to come up with 5-8 books on our topic for the team members to read this summer and report back to the group. This is part 1 of the education phase.
Our charter calls for surveying visitors on their visit experience, surveying the community for their impressions of the church and spiritual needs, and then making recommendations to the session. The recommendations are supposed to cover creating a culture of hospitality and invitational evangelism.
Do you have any book suggestions? I have a handle on what it feels like to BE a visitor, but I’m really stuck on how to survey the community. Books on invitational evangelism and books on a culture of hospitality would be very useful.
Thanks for your help! Please leave suggestions in the comments. If you can’t get the comments to work, e-mail me at the address behind the link in the left-hand menu.
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.
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.
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