Thanks for Coming, Please Come Again…

There is a lot a excitement about the Paradise theater opening as our second site for Epikos Church. Excitement within the church for sure, and I am sure within the community of West Allis also.

In a book that Pastor Paul, the West Allis campus pastor, and I have been reading there is a lot of talk about about “Assimilation Rate” or the idea of moving people from first-time-guests to regular-attenders. We want people not just come once, but to come again, and again, and again. Because as this book (Fusion by Nelson Searcy) states:

“Encouraging people to stick around our churches is not about making our auditoriums full and our numbers impressive, it’s about leading them to faith in Jesus, through the Spirit’s prompting.”

So, I have been thinking about how with the launch at the Paradise on the horizon, we may see a lot of guests come to Epikos, but what will the “assimilation rate” look like? In deeper exploration of this I had to ask myself the question: Why would someone come to Epikos at the Paradise? Some possible possibilities…

• Alex is interested in seeing what all the construction of the old building is about.
• Rachel lives down the street and curious about the church with a weird Greek name.
• Frank remembers going to the theater in the 60′s thought it’d be fun to check out the old building
• Luke met one of the pastors at a local happening earlier and though the pastor was kind of cool.
• Sue is looking for a new and different church in the area, one for her and the kids.
• Erica got invited by a co-worker who goes to the church.
• Sam visited the other site once, but this site is way closer to home.
• and the list goes on…

But the question in my mind becomes: how do you get these persons to desire to come back again, to get involved, to learn more about Christ? Or, rather, why make them desire to come back again? Why should I desire to work hard to see them desire to come back?

As the above quote showed, we don’t desire to have people come back to our church in order to fill the seats so that we can count them. Instead we desire returning guest to see the Spirit prompt people in His time to make a decision to surrender their life to Christ, and eventually the deeper involvement so the process can go full circle.

However, these thoughts really stir in me a gut check, a deep challenge, a questioning of what my motives and heart level beliefs are on why ministry happens and why I place myself in the role of participating in ministry.

Soul Song

I just recently finished Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, and in the last pages there was a question that was interesting. I’ll get to that in a second, but first a comment or two for those that haven’t read this book.

If you get a chance, Blue Like Jazz is worth “giving a go” (as they say here in Australia). If you are thinking “not practical enough”, ok you are right. If it’s not theological enough, this is probably true too. But, the purpose to pick this one up (it’s a quick read, unless your heart really gets caught up in reflecting on what is going on in your life) is because I think that Miller is earthing out some thoughts/feelings that are often in my head/heart (and possibly yours too) that are often too hard to vocalize. If you think that you won’t get ANYTHING out of this, you than are probably one who needs to read it, and let yourself at least listen to the voice of a man that I think is opening up with some interesting thoughts.

So, as for this question. In the last chapter Miller wraps things up in a few ways (though I don’t know if all of his lose ends are tied-up here). Don, as I have been calling him the last few days, explains the idea of the Christian Spirituality being like Jazz, it is something we feel. While, I am not totally sold on the analogy and still processing through it (there is a whole lot of fact and thought in our faith as well), I must admit that there is a whole lot of feeling in our faith that we often don’t think about. Things like love, isolation (emotionally and physically); faith, church, etc. are all things that emotionally I don’t know that I check in with enough. Or with these emotions, as I did a lot of learning last summer, and as see Don pointing out a lot, we oppress them often with our minds. I’m not talking about getting rid of fact, but when we have a strong emotion towards something does our mind say “that’s bad, shameful, embarrassing, don’t talk about it, and for sure don’t embrace it!” That can often be the case for me. So that’s where Don’s other wrap-up, his question got me to really think.

The very last paragraph of the book, Don asks the question: “What song will you sing when your soul gets set free?” There is a lot of the book that needs to be read in order to fully understand this question. Much of it has to do with Jazz and how he and his friends are all singing a song, not the same exact song, but songs that are about knowing Jesus. But it has really made me ask a further question, a question that I want to be honest in, not artificial, not superficial, and one that will at some points sound like the blues. The question is: What is the song my soul from Jesus, what is it singing right now? Often times I go though the hours of the day, and I don’t even think about this. I need to; hopefully tomorrow this question will resound in me that I might look to my heart for the answer.

What about you? What is the song in your soul from Jesus, what is it singing right now?

Books, books, books… and everything…

So, I like to read… I have no idea why this is, how it happened, or why it would matter to you (if there is any “you’s” out there actually reading this). Just now my roommate and I just got done joking about the amount of books I have started, how many I have bounced between just today alone, and how if I get frustrated with a book by this afternoon, than I will probably just start reading another book.

So, what is this point… what do I gain from these books? Am I gaining anything?

One of my few books that I am reading right now is Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. It’s been on my list to read for a while and the main reason is solely for the hype that has surrounded the book (at least the hype that surrounded it a few years ago when I put the book on my list). It’s such a strange book, and totally contradicts everything I am reading in another book I am reading (Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book). But Don’s thoughts, or ways of thinking are interesting, and I guess that is the point. Most of the book seems to have no rational process (I tried to “systematically skim” as Adler instructs and this proved to be impossible, to me at least), I mean the last chapter I read was Miller’s brain on why penguin’s way of laying eggs and the birth of babies makes him think of Jesus. Weird.

But, will Blue Like Jazz get me thinking about God? Will it increase my knowledge of anything? I don’t know. I guess we will wait and see. Does this book, which seems to be a comocozy at times, look to better me in some way? What will I pull away from it? I guess I have to ask this about every book. Apparently, to a guy like Miller and what he learned from a documentary on the penguins, we should be looking to pull something away from everything. This seems to add to the “everything is spiritual” idea. Is this truthful? Does it honor God?

I don’t know. Much of this is probably useless blabber, and well, I am probably contributing to the thing about blogs that sort of annoys me and so many people. But maybe I will be come refined in time. Maybe I will look back and say “what was I thinking when I blogged that?” Or, maybe not. Maybe this will encourage me to add other, random, yet more benificial thoughts on here. But, maybe not. We will see.