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.

A Really Good Hand

It’s been a while since I have done any blogging, but I think something is going on in my world that is worth starting up again. Curious? I hope so! I am putting a lot of chips down on the table for this one, cause I think I have been dealt an awesome hand.

Sometimes the opportunities in life can be looked at like a poker hand. You look at the situation, you calculate the odds, and decide “Do I fold, or do I play?” Of course this is poker simplified. But with what has been going on at our church here in the Milwaukee area, I feel like I am ready to put a lot of my chips into play.

On leap day 2012, just over a week ago, I was able to walk into what is known as the Paradise Theater in West Allis. An old, rundown theater building of about 31,000+ square feet, with an 1,100 seat auditorium, is the new site of what I believe is something no short of an amazing act of the Lord.

While I won’t go into all the details (unless you’d like to know, which then I would love to share more), I will say that when I first arrived at the building my reaction was “This place is a dump!” You to probably would say the same as you saw the dust, the plaster that needs repair, the lack of bathrooms, chipping paint, etc. etc. But as Paul (our new Campus Pastor) and I walked around, and talked about the future of the building: which is to be the second site of Epikos Church in a few short months, a reality or two started to seep in.

First, the reality that God doesn’t need a clean, pristine building to work in. He can work just fine through a building that not to long ago had flooded basements, a leaking roof, not even close to fire code, was about to be torn down by the city, and that is in the neighborhood of bars and strip clubs. Sounds similar to how we often falsely think we need to be cleaned up and well-rounded on our apologetics to be on mission.

Second, this building in all reality is probably where my children will first go to Sunday school, hear some stories from the Bible from a very early age, and be able to see their father and mother serving the local body of Christian believers. There is a lot at stake here, much more than meets the eye at first, especially for a man who wants to lead his home well towards Christ.

Third (but, I don’t know that I only realized three things), that I want to be all in on this one! Like I said about poker, we have to make a decision “Am I in, or do I fold?” In all that I saw, have heard, and am in discussion about as Susanna (my wonderful bride) and I have started to take on some leadership roles, is that the Lord has dealt Epikos, and I fully believe myself, a GOOD HAND. As I told our small group the other night: This is one of the most exciting things I have ever been a part of, I don’t want to miss out, I WANT TO PUT ALL THE CHIPS ON THE TABLE.

You may not be in Milwaukee, you may never visit Epikos, but I pray that you don’t back down from the good hands. Be bold, be daring, trust that the Lord knows best the plans ahead for you, and lay the chips on the line!

Digging Deep

As kids in Sunday school, so many of us sang a song about the wise man and the foolish man. The former building his house upon the rock, and the later building his house upon the sand.

Was this any of you? Do the actions for the song almost come as muscle reflex even now as the tune plays in your head?

The song draws its basis off of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:24-27. This morning I was reading in the gospel of Luke, chapter six. As I was reading, verses 46-49, the song came up in my head. This is Luke’s account of the same parable. But, for the first time, the lines of the song didn’t fit with what Jesus was saying here. Here in Luke there is an action of the “wise man” that is added in.

In verse 48, the text says: “he is like a man building a house, who DUG DEEP and laid a foundation on the rock” (NASB, emphasis my own).

“Dug Deep” there is no action for that in the song! Rains coming down, floods coming up, but no a shovel digging into the ground action. Does this mean that there is work involved in finding the rock? That we need to dig deep before we build? What does that look like in our life? Does this mean that a “foolish man” is one building on the same plot of land, but who has not dug through the sand to get to the rock?

There are lots of deep implications and questions that come from these two little words (pun intended). Implications for us personally, the church, ministries that we are apart of, etc. This makes the issue so much more that just picking a spot of land and setting up a house, even if it APPEARS to be solid rock (wow, think about that one before you pick out a church).

Dig in so that you can weather the rains coming down and the floods coming up.

How are you digging down, before you build up?

Twitter & The 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

This morning, with my morning coffee, I have been thinking about way I can use twitter as a huge resource in ministry with college students. Of course there are so many ways to use twitter, but this was I little bit different idea (though I don’t know that it is new).

With the popularity of twitter in today’s culture, twitter allows us in ministry (and people in general) to see the heartbeat of culture through the “trending topics” that appears on our twitter home page. This is a list of the top ten most popular topics at that moment. So, if we can see the top topics of right now, how can these be of benefit to me and anyone? …By using this list as a tool in the 6 DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON, of course!!!

The 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon is an idea that any topic can be connected within six relationships to Kevin Bacon. However, on our campus we have subbed out Kevin Bacon and practice at going from anything topic to the gospel within six relationships. An example of this would be using the word coffee (a favorite word of mine), the flow would go like this (you will see this could be made shorter):

Coffee…
Coffee is served in coffee shops,
Coffee shops are on many street corners in cities,
Many street corners also have churches on them,
Churches often have denominations,
Many denominations believe the core Christian message is the gospel of Jesus
What do you think about Jesus?

…while this is a little bit of a “cutting out a lot of small talk” process, it gets us to thinking about how anything can be directed at the gospel. So, as for twitter, what if we were to start looking at the trending topics and start preparing our mind for how to relate those things to the gospel? If those are the topics that are being tweeted about, then those are presumably the topics that will come up in our conversations with people. As I write this, the topics “Teen Choice Awards”, “Red Sox”, and “Hell’s Kitchen” are on the list. Could we find ways to connect the gospel to these?

If you really want to see power and the reality of why twitter topics, as well as other popular internet media, can be such a tool for us, check out the video below. It’s pretty good.

Some people I know laugh at the tech stuff that I am getting into and am trying to learn about. But more and more I am seeing that not only is this the way our culture is going, but that if we can harness these forms of media we will be able to see God’s Kingdom grow.