resources – Salvaged Faith

Imagine the Possiblities

Posted on October 13, 2019Leave a comment

Text | Isaiah 55:6-11; Matthew 14:13-21
Focus Verse | Matthew 14:15-17

A few of you have been around recently as some neighbors have stopped in looking for some financial assistance.
I’ve watched as you have greeted them with kindness and respect and helped them find their way to my office.
I often sit down and visit with these new friends about what is happening in their life and how the church might be able to make an impact on their struggles.

But I have to be honest with you.
When I really listen to their stories, what I feel is overwhelmed.
Because we don’t have the kind of resources in our account to actually make a difference.
Every month I turn away folks who stop in or call and who need $250 for a utility bill…
or $700 to help make rent…
or $45 to fill up their gas tank…
Or rather, I could help one or two people one time, but certainly not the next, or the one after that.

And I started to recognize over a couple of years of providing this emergency assistance on behalf of the church is that many of our neighbors are chronically in need of help.
They have full time work, but they can’t make ends meet because their wages are too low to provide a living for themselves and their families.
Or, an illness or injury have taken them off of the job and they don’t have a backup plan in place.

The other day, a young man came in and needed some help to make rent. He had lost his job due to downsizing and had no savings built up. When he couldn’t immediately find a new opportunity, he got behind on rent.
The day he came in to see me, he had begun a new job, but had not yet received a paycheck. And that day, he had eviction proceedings and had to bring a check for two months’ worth of rent or he would be out.
I personally, and we as a church, don’t have the resources to provide two months of rent for a neighbor in need. I sat there and all I could think of was our own limitation.

Over 100,000 children in Iowa are food insecure – which means they do not have access to three meals a day.
Just under 3,000 people are homeless in our state.
37,000 of our neighbors in Iowa struggle with serious mental illness daily.
Real needs.
Real problems.
Real ministry opportunities.
And we can’t feed all of those kids.
We can’t build houses for all of those homeless neighbors.
We can’t completely turn upside down our mental health infrastructure.
We can only see our own limitations.

In the gospel of Matthew, the disciples are faced with a similar dilemma.
These multitudes that we talked about last week had flocked to the countryside to listen to Jesus… but now it was getting late.
We actually don’t know how many people were there – if you pay close attention to the story, it mentions that 5,000 men were eventually fed… 5,000 – not counting the women and the children.
Let’s pretend for just a moment that there was just one woman or child for every man who was counted… that’s 15,000 people who are hungry, tired, and out there in the middle of the wilderness.
To put that into perspective – the seating capacity for Drake’s Stadium is 14,557.
A stadium full of people are in need.
Right now.
And so the disciples kind of pull Jesus aside and whisper to him.
“Hey friend, you know, we probably can’t keep all of these people here. They are going to need to sleep, they need food, they need shelter and water. Wrap it up so that we can send them on their way.”

You see, they had already looked in their bags and they saw their own limitation.
They couldn’t take care of all of those people.
So send them off.
Bless them, say a prayer, and just hope that they’d find some sustenance somewhere else.

It’s the feeling I have often when I sit and visit with someone who is in some financial need.
I really don’t have what it will take to help you, but I can listen. I can say a prayer and give you this list of resources and hopefully someone out there can make a difference.
Surely, Jesus understand that.

Except…
Well, except Jesus has a totally different plan in mind.
“We don’t need to send them away. You take care of them. You give them something to eat!”

And those disciples, well, they look back in their bags.
“Umm… Jesus. There are twelve of us, and we barely brought enough dinner for ourselves. We’ve got five loaves and two fish. That’s it.”

The disciples saw only their limitation.
They’d already made plans.
They had budgeted and prepared and were doing their best to live and minister within those resources.
They had no capacity to imagine that this unexpected ministry opportunity would arrive on their doorstep.
And when it did, they immediately decided it was impossible.
We can’t do that.
We don’t have the resources.
We don’t have the staff.
We don’t have the bread. Literally.

But as the prophet Isaiah reminds us… God is not bound by our limitations.
God’s plans aren’t our plans.
God’s ways aren’t our ways.
And as Paul writes to the people of Ephesus… God can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.

I think in this moment in the story, Jesus is inviting the disciples…
Jesus is inviting us…
To imagine.
Imagine if we could feed all of those people.
Imagine if we could house all of our neighbors.
Imagine if we could bring mental wellness to our friends and family.
Imagine if we could stretch beyond our own capacity and limitations and tap into the gifts and resources of the divine.

Last week, when I asked you to think about what kept drawing you back here… what kept you coming back to Immanuel… one of the most frequent answers I heard was that this is home. This is family.
Imagine if we could be a place where people who have no home, have no family, have no support found that, too.

For sure, it’s not in our budget.
It’s not in what we have planned and prepared for ministry.
This plan is far bigger than anything we have the capacity to do right now.
We’ve only got five loaves and two fish.

But we have a ministry opportunity with thousands of people on our doorstep.
So imagine with me…
Dream with me…
What would we do if we weren’t limited by our own resources?

Or to put it another way…
If you were gifted $150,000 to respond to a need, any need that is right in front of us here in Des Moines… what would you do?
Take a minute and dream.
Take a minute and imagine.
If God was starting a miracle right here in Des Moines with our meager fish and loaves… what would God want us to do?
Use the paper in the insert and write down your impossible dream and your wildest imagining… and then in a few minutes I want you to give them up to God with your offering.

Saving and Investing

Posted on October 18, 2015Leave a comment

I stand up here today exhausted, and yet filled with joy and satisfaction.

The past two days, I have been at Ankeny First with a few others from here at the church learning about how to be a better church for our members and our neighbors struggling with addiction, incarceration, mental illness, racism, life in general.

See highlights here: https://storify.com/RightNextDoor/right-next-door-5623dc20f44af4f567e61ee9

But this was not only a conference I attended, it was something I invested my time and energy in for the last nine months as part of the planning team.

And that investment grew and was added to over the past few months until it matured this weekend in 215 people, from 16 states, gathered in a sanctuary to pray, sing, learn, and be changed.

This month, we are exploring John Wesley’s advice to earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.

In The Message last week, I briefly touched on how John Wesley encourages us to truly make all the money we can with our work… as long as it is good for our souls and good for our neighbors.

And today, we are going to talk about what to do with that money… how to make your money do some work for God’s kingdom…. About how we invest our resources, how we save them instead of wasting or hoarding them.

****

Will you pray with me?

****

Our gospel reading this morning tells the story of a man going on a trip who delegates some responsibilities. He gives each of his servants some money to take care of while he’s gone. Two of them get started immediately and put that money to work… and it grows and doubles and multiplies. But the third, buries the money and sits on it. He is afraid to lose it and so he hides it. He hoards it and in doing so, he wastes it.

James Harnish tells two stories in his book, Earn. Save. Give. about children of the Great Depression. One is about Ivy League-educated brothers, Homer and Langley who withdrew from society. In 1947, police were called to their home because someone noticed a smell. They found both brothers dead in the house… one died in his chair, the other had been crushed by a booby trap he’d set for potential robbers. As the house was cleaned out, “the authorities found 130 tons of stuff, mostly junk… fourteen pianos… thousands of books… a dressmaker’s dummy, and part of a Model T Ford.”

The other story he tells is about a woman named Dorothy. She loved flying and served as a pilot during WWII. She worked as a nurse the rest of her career. She gave generously to her church. And when she died, she left $4.7 million to the school where she was trained and left a large gift to her church’s endowment.

One family hoarded their money and possessions out of fear… much like the third servant. The other family saved their money and gave it a purpose.

For our time of confession this morning, think about something in your life that you hoard… that you hold onto out of fear or compulsion. Share what that might be with your neighbor.

****

Are you hoarding God’s gifts? Or are you saving them?

Are you wasting the resources you have been blessed with? Or are you investing them?

This is the question presented to us today as we think about what it means to SAVE all we can.

And Wesley doesn’t go around spouting off this advice because he feels like it… no, he lived it.

He figured out early on, when he was a young pastor and not making much money, that he could live on 28 pounds a year in England. When he got a raise with his work, and as he gradually began to make more money from publishing and speaking, his income grew drastically. He truly was earning all he could and eventually his income reached 1,400 pounds annually – 50x what he had first made.

Yet, he continued to live on 28 pounds a year.

He didn’t see an increase in his salary as an opportunity to buy more stuff or wear nicer clothes – he saw it as an opportunity to save more and give more.

Wesley encourages us to see our income – all of the gifts and resources we have – as something that has a considerable role to play in God’s kingdom.

Yes, we are supposed to take care of ourselves and our family. We need to be well-rested and healthy and safe if we are going to be out there on the front lines working for Jesus.

But we aren’t meant to spend all of God’s gifts on ourselves.

Wesley writes:

“Do not throw the precious talent into the sea… Do not throw it away in idle expenses, which is just the same as throwing it into the sea. Expend no part of it merely to gratify the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life.”

Wesley wanted his people to invest their resources in the Kingdom of God.

Wesley wants us to put our resources to work.

Sometimes, we act like the last servant, who dug a hole and buried the gifts.

This servant thought about the high standards of his master and didn’t want to disappoint by not doing something perfectly. So the servant did nothing at all.

This is the attitude that infects our minds whenever we see a sign-up sheet for some project at church and we think: Oh, I could never do that…

It’s the hesitation that creeps in when an opportunity to serve comes along and we think: There are so many people better suited for that… they are so much better at it than I might be.

It is also the compulsion that we have to be the best and have the best and look the best. It is the compulsion that causes us to work too much or get involved in too many things or spend all of our time and energy and resources to become the best at our job or at school or a sport so that we aren’t left behind in the dust… so we can be the best.

I understand that, and I find myself there more often that I want to admit.

Fear keeps us from investing in the lives of other people and the Kingdom because we aren’t sure about them, and because we aren’t confident that we are taken care of.

And fear is a powerful thing. There is no denying it.

But the truth is, all of these fears and compulsions keep us keep us from digging deep into relationships that really and truly will save our lives and further the kingdom of God.

So maybe we should be like the first two servants in our gospel lesson from Matthew.

They received (earned) sizeable gifts, talents, resources, and thought… Aha! I know just what to do with this. They got to work and the investment grew and grew and grew until it doubled in size.

They didn’t spend their talents and they didn’t hoard them… they saved them and invested them.

We can save our resources and talents… maybe by not buying that Starbucks, or staying home and eating in more often. We can live a little bit more simply so that we have a little bit more to invest.

Right here at Immanuel, there are tons of opportunities for you to invest your resources in the kingdom of God.

Before we dismiss/As we got started today, Erin McGargill shared with us about one way we can invest time and money to change a child’s story. By reading to children, by placing books in their hands, we are making an investment in their future… and investment that will multiply many times over as their head start allows them to break generational cycles of poverty.

We can also invest in the health of a community by helping to put wells in South Sudan. Our investment of resources means bringing clean water to families, the time saved allows women and children to learn more, it works to combat diseases and creates the conditions for life and life abundant.

Every week there are opportunities to think a little bit less about ourselves and a little bit more about the people God has called us to care for… whether it is teaching Sunday School, or serving meals with CFUM, or sleeping outside in a cardboard box to raise money for homeless youth.

When we live more like the first two servants, we discover that our resources can be used to bring the Kingdom of God to earth, right here, and right now. We discover that our money and our time and our talents have a purpose.

Lives changed, disciples made, the world transformed.

Amen. And Amen.

Building Structures from the ground up

Posted on October 21, 2012Leave a comment

This weekend, I started to unpack boxes of books in my new home office. My large and spacious home office with built-in bookshelves + church office with a wall of shelves just doesn’t quite fit neatly into my new 9′ by 12′ space. Especially since I only have one small bookshelf left over from college.

But I unpacked the books anyways. I needed to see what I had in order to know where it would go. I had piles of theology books, biblical studies, pastoral care, leadership, spirituality… etc. As I thought about the work of my new position, the leadership and ecclesiology books went on said bookshelf and my biblical studies books found a place on the top shelf in my closet (still accessible, but I won’t need them every day.

After looking at the space and what we needed, Brandon is building me a bookcase to sit low and long under the window. I’ll have room for pictures and communion pieces on the top and room for most of the rest of my books underneath. We are hanging shelves for paper and file storage on another wall. We are building the foundations for what I’m going to need to make the most of my space and resources.

As I think about this work as a field coordinator, right now I’m building a lot of foundations, also. I think I have a fairly good idea of what we need and where we are going. I’ve laid out all of the pieces of the puzzle and can see what its going to entail. Now we just need to build the actual structure to hold it.

My job for this time means I’m on the phone and sending emails… alot. I’m seeking out volunteers. I’m building networks of relationships. I’m getting the right people resources in place so that we have a structure to do some amazing work out of. Gradually, it is coming together… but I think it is going to be a lot more work than simply building some shelves =)

GC03: Restructuring and the Four Areas of Focus

Posted on April 2, 2012Leave a comment

Over the past few months, conversations, posts, articles, videos, etc. have been flying around about the Call to Action and the Interim Operational Team proposals for restructuring. As a reserve delegate for General Conference, I probably won’t be someone voting on this, but I’m still going to be there. I am meeting with my delegation and we are looking at all of these pieces together. I did the Call to Action Study with my church. I’m reading as much as I can. And I have to say, I’m not sure how I feel about all of it. Tomorrow I want to talk a little bit about the need for distinction between CtA and the IOT proposals (because they are different things), but for now, I just want to think about the idea of restructuring our general boards and agencies.

Most people who know me would say that I’m not someone tied to the past. If something isn’t working – by all means, scrap it and start afresh. I often work by trial and error until we find just the right fit. I like to take risks and push the envelope and be bold. So the fact that I’m a little uneasy with all of the change proposed here means something.

I’ve had a few people ask me pointedly in the past month what I think about all of this restructuring. Here is my first response:

I’m still pretty torn. I think there are some benefits to the ways they want to realign the boards and agencies, but talking with the boards and agencies folks, they have already made significant cuts and some of the ways they benefit the church would be severely restricted by having to cut more. I worry about our continued GBCS presence in the capital. I worry about whether we will have the resources in place to support the local churches if we diminish any more GBHEM and GBOD and the like. I understand the $ benefit to a smaller board, but think the diverse representation in so many places is one of the awesome things about the church and wonder if we couldn’t use technology and more web conferencing to cut back on some of the cost. I worry that with only a 15 member board, we just will not have a diverse representation of the United Methodist Church as a whole. I’m not necessarily worried about power consolidation or anything like that – but I would HATE to be on that board – that is a lot of responsibility and time, for such a small group to be overseeing all of the boards and agencies in that way. On the other hand, our own local church just consolidated all of our committees into one church board and its working just fine.
That probably doesn’t help.. does it? lol.

My friend Gary’s response: Katie, help the Church think beyond either/or options. Thanks

*sigh* Gary… I belatedly, and with great humility and not a small amount of uneasiness accept your challenge.

And as I think more about that restructure our own church just did, what I realized is that when we did so because we didn’t have enough people who could sustain that large of a leadership structure. To have four required committees that needed 6 people + our ministry committees of education, worship, outreach… that would be 6×7= 42 people!!! Not to include the chair of our council and our lay leader. We average 50 in worship on a Sunday. And so our large leadership structure certainly involved people, but people also felt like they were simply filling holes. There was a lack of engagment. Our structure was too big. I’m not sure that with a global membership of 11-12 million has large problem with a leadership board and agency structure that involves around 650 lay and clergy representatives on boards/agencies.

Second, we did consolidate our work around three primary goals for our congregation. Which sounds a lot like consolidating around the four areas of focus. But we did so and have actually funneled MORE money into those three teams in our local church. They have more to work with now than they did in their respective disjointed committees. If we truly want those three things to be the focus of the life of our church, then we have to put our money where our mouth is. It feels like the restructure proposals are in order to save money to be sent somewhere else – to local churches perhaps, to reduce apportionments so resources stay on the local level, who knows – to be honest I haven’t seen anything about WHERE the extra resources will come from or WHERE they will go. That seems like an important piece of the puzzle that is missing.

I completely understand restructuring for missional reasons to help us refocus our attention on the four areas of focus that we as a global church have named as important: global heath, ministry with the poor, new places for new people and revitalizing existing congregations, and developing (young) leaders. But have we actually given these four areas of focus time to settle in with our churches yet? And will a restructure help us to focus on them if we do so at the expense of diverse and abundant representation (when we have so many capable and talented people we can use in our global church) and with cuts to the funding for said ministries. In fact, we might be chopping the legs out from underneath ourselves if we do not provide the resources in people and dollars and institutional weight behind those four areas of focus.

So if I’m thinking both/and, I want to ask the questions:

What would a restructured church look like with larger boards than the proposal entails?
What could it accomplish with the resources to really make a difference?
What kinds of bold risks could our boards and agencies take if they felt like we as the church trusted them and didn’t see them as an excessive growth that needed to be trimmed away?
What would we say to the world if we not only realign our church around these four areas of focus, but back it with our time, energy and resources?

I’m not saying that vital congregations are not important… in fact, the other materials we have been given by IOT and the Council of Bishops and the Connectional Table and Call to Action all seem to point to the idea that we need to develop more young leaders and create new places for new people and that a vital congregation is defined by its fruits – which includes its participation in the redemption of the world (global health and poverty seem to fit here). If we continue to focus on these four areas and put both our larger institutional AND local resources towards this focus, I think we are heading in the right direction.

cut and paste liturgy of JOY!

Posted on December 7, 20101 Comment

I am definately a cut and paste liturgical writer. I don’t have the time and energy most days to do the good hard creative work it takes to listen for God speaking and to craft liturgy. And there are other people out there who do it so much better than I do!

There are a few places that I typically turn for inspiration – the favorite of mine being Thom M. Shuman (TMS). Another favorite haunt is the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Discipleship and the Worship Planning Helps there. I use hymns and turn them into responsive readings. We sing. We pray. We make liturgy happen.

But sometimes, those pieces need to be all woven together. Sometimes a bit of this and a chunk of that speaks to me.

Recently, a colleague Sean McRoberts and I created a communion liturgy using the basic liturgy in the Hymnal, but incorporating the Charles Wesley classic: O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing. And when it came up as a possibility for music this Sunday as we think about the gift of JOY we await at Advent… I had to throw that into the mix, too.

So, here it is… in its fullness. The cut and paste liturgy of JOY!

Prayer of Confession

Ever Present Peace, you came to save us, but that is so hard to remember in this hectic season. Our impatience for Christmas to arrive gets in the way of listening to our children singing in their rooms. We let the blinking lights blind us to your quiet presence in a noisy world. We get so caught up in the stories of violence, we cannot hear your voice reminding us not to be afraid.

As you poured out your mercy on all who have gone before us, shower us with grace and forgiveness. Then, our eyes will be opened to all your wonders, our ears will echo with the anthems of the angels, and our emptiness will be filled with the life gifted to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. (TMS)

Words of Assurance

Dear ones of God, this is the good news: God comes to us to bring the healing of hope, the joy of justice into our hearts.
We need wait no longer. We will go and tell everyone what we have seen and heard! Thanks be to God. Amen. (TMS)

In Christ, your head, you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven;

Anticipate your heaven below, and own that love is heaven.

The Great Thanksgiving

The God who is coming to us be with you!
And also with you!
Lift your hearts to the One who turns barren deserts into seas of grace.
We lift them to the Lord!
Beloved of God, let us come to the table with songs of joy on our lips. (TMS, adapted)

O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace!

It is right to give you thanks and praise,
Great God of the Coming Dawn,
for in each new day you surprise the earth with splendor.
Your Spirit moves across the face of the waters and brings forth life.

At the dawn of all things in a garden you worked the earth.

Elbow deep in mud you fashioned us, gifted us, gave us work to do.
Made from the earth, Made by your hand,
We forgot who we were

We forgot who you were

and we tried to remake ourselves.

We rejected your love and fell into sin and death.

Yet even in our darkness you continued to speak light and life.

…And so we come to live on the edge of your new and promised day.

[We come to wait for your Son Jesus Christ our Lord]

[His] coming was announced by wilderness prophets
and [he] arrived to the song of angels
in the choir stall of a manger.
In Jesus you not only took our name but our flesh.
He was the One promised
He announced the new day and the acceptable year
When blind folks would see
And poor folks would rejoice
When captives would be set free
And the oppressed would once more walk upright in liberty.

In stories he spoke of waiting bridesmaids and prodigal sons,
With tears and compassion he brought a dead man to life
and gave a woman at a well the living water she sought.
With anger he overturned tables and challenged the powerful.
On the cross he revealed the power of weakness
and in the emptiness of the tomb
he gave us a glimpse of your tomorrow
that does not end in death. (AJ – see note at bottom)

He speaks, and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive;
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe.
He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free;
his blood can make the foulest clean; his blood availed for me.

On the night when he was betrayed
he sat at a table with his friends.
He took bread, blessed it, broke it, served it to them, and said,

“Take this. Eat it. It is my body, given for you. Do this to remember me.”

In the same way he took the cup,
Blessed it, served it to them, and said,
“Drink from this every one of you.

This is my blood poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin.

Do this to remember me.”

And so we remember.

And so we offer our praise and thanks and our very selves
As a holy and living sacrifice in union with Christ’s offering for us.
[We offer our lives as he remembered that he offered his for our own.] (AJ)

I felt my Lord’s atoning blood close to my soul applied;
Me, me he loved, the Son of God, for me, for me he died!

May the gift of your Spirit, Advent’s Hope and Peace,

be poured out on the simple gifts of the bread and the cup,

and on those who come simply to find healing and hope.

And when we have been fed by your surprising grace
and filled with your peace, may we go forth to the world,
where our weak hands will become calloused by compassion;
where we will bend our feeble knees, reaching down to lift up the fallen;

where we will become fountains of living water for those parched by the wilderness of their lives.

Then, when sorrow and sighing have been chased away from us,

and we gather with all generations around your Table in heaven,

everlasting joy will be our song, and gracious hope will be our refrain,

as we sing to you through all eternity, God in Community, Holy in One. (TMS)

Glory to God, and praise and love be ever, ever given,

By saints below and saints above, the church in earth and heaven.

The Lord’s Prayer

Sharing the Bread and the Cup

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Benediction

Jesus! The name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease;
‘tis music in the sinner’s ears, ‘tis life, and health, and peace.

My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.

(AJ – Written by Alex Joyner. Advent Great Thanksgiving – Copyright General Board of Discipleship. www.GBOD.org Used by permission.)

Plug into these resources

Posted on May 18, 2010Leave a comment

I have a few go-to websites and resources for church work. And I thought I’d share and encourage you to list your own in the comments! (These come in no particular order)

1) The Text This Week (http://www.textweek.com/): This is a lectionary resource that has a wonderful compilation of prayers, commentaries, articles, music, and ponderings from all over the world.

2) Lectionary Liturgies (http://lectionaryliturgies.blogspot.com/) I actually first connected with Thom Shuman’s work through Text Week, but since then I have added him to my blog reader. I think that he has wonderful prayers that always seem to hit in the right spot with where my preaching is headed for the week. I also appreciate the communion liturgy and try to weave bits and pieces together with our congregational prayer of thanksgiving.

3) Jan Richardson’s art (http://www.janrichardson.com/) I think her pieces are beautiful and she has been working on a lectionary series also at http://paintedprayerbook.com/ She now is allowing churches and organizations to use individual pieces through a licensing agreement.

4) Stock Exchange (http://www.sxc.hu/) – It sounds like a sketchy website, but this is the absolute best resource for stock photography for FREE that I have found. Amateur photographers post their work to be used for a variety of different applications and I have discovered some amazing pictures here. Most of my blog pics come from this site. Most pictures have standard restrictions that just say that your work can’t be sold unless the photographer grants permisison to do so, but the images can be used for logos, illustration, pamphlets, etc. I use the pictures for slide shows, photo montages, website work… its fabulous.

5) Expression Engine (http://expressionengine.com/) – This is the company our church website is through. They have fantastic customer support, a very simple publishing engine, and wonderful templates. As a non-profit we pay about $10/month for hosting and support… which includes email addresses hosted through our site. I think it is a fantastic investment.

6) The Work of the People (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/) – Awesome visual liturgy resources. My suggestion – buy the 10 for $50 membership pack. We got resources that lasted us all year long for only $50, which amazingly allowed us to get the entire Lenten Series (6 videos, stills, loops) as ONE of our 10. Unbelieveable value.

spring cleaning

Posted on March 3, 20092 Comments

Our church office is getting some early spring cleaning. It is a useable space, but it would be more useful if it were organized a bit better and had proper mailboxes and the resources were labeled… and it would be more comfortable if we painted the bland walls and took down the horrid curtains (sorry to whoever put them up)

Today, I threw a lot of stuff away. Like 5 year old cokesbury catalogues, an invoice for candle oil from 1993!, etc.

What I also found were lots of old resources, that I’m sure cost a lot of money in their time. Things like a confirmation cirriculum from 1995, and a 12-week spiritual gifts church wide plan from about the same time, and 20 year old guidelines for ministry, and this youth group stuff called “ONLINE” which, I’m sure back in 1992 sounded way awesome, but in 2009 looks pretty lame.

I haven’t tossed them yet. It pains me to throw away the old cassette and video tapes and the binders full of pages and the projector sheets. But, seriously, are we really going to use them again? No. Do they appeal to a contemporary audience? absolutely not. Is there anything worth saving within them? MAYBE.

I did look through them. And does it make sense to throw away the guidelines for ministry when we have new guidelines for 2009-2012? Partially no, but partially yes. There are things that have changed in how we concieve of ministry in 20 years. There are also really good concepts in the spiritual gifts inventory stuff that could easily be adapted for a more contemporary presentation – but unfortunately, there are only three of the actual inventories to determine spiritual gifts in the binder. We probably can’t order from the same old cirriculum – so if we have to order new inventories, will we have to buy a whole new cirriculum? probably. *sigh*

The garbage gets picked up on Wednesday mornings. And I’m going to predict right now that we will be sending most of those binders out to the curb.