interesting ideas and developments

Ideas come into my head sort of seasonally. Some stand the test of time and scrutiny, some do not. But here are a new crop of ideas that I am praying about and playing with this Spring.

1. Weekend services Team for York Road.
Jeremiah Herbert and I are the only constants to the three main weekend services at the York Road site. He and I work all three of them. It's not what I expected to work, but it seems to. Lots of things that I thought previously would work, do not work so much so far.

For example, I really thought that we should and could run all three services very differently so that people could choose their weekend service by their favorite music style. Saturday night was laid back and mellow, Sunday 9am was going to be slightly more traditional, and 11am the rockin and rollin high energy thing.

But what happened was, the vast majority seemed to want the high energy variety, and gravitate to that service. So gradually we have moved back toward a service style that is a little more uniform., still with minor differences I chalk it up to another not-so-hot idea.

This Spring, I'd like to really go all out, tweaking our three weekend service to a whole other level of excellence. I think that will mean (among other things) adding at least one more member to the team of Jeremiah and I, who comes to all three services and adds excellence in other areas, such as building management, kid's ministry assistance, and alternative seating . If we are to reach 1600 in weekly attendance by the end of the year, things got to go to a whole new level.

This person would (among other things) help us address our seating challenge by helping provide people with really excellent seating in the foyer, Third Place, and the Third Place annex. He/she would also help run services to run smoothly, and with greater excellence, providing a guiding presence to audio/visuals teams, usher/greeter teams, parking teams, etc.


2. "District elders" Care/Assimilation: Pastor Linda is working on an incredible plan to connect with and minister to people better. The plan is to develop ministry teams that operate by school district, providing a visit to the home of each guest, connecting with attendees at least monthly, celebrating special days, and hospital visitation. Each district would have teams of 'lay pastors' who would provide this kind of care for 5 families.

We hope to develop this plan and roll it out by late Spring. Over the next few weeks, a lot ot work is going into perfecting the plan.

3. Church planting ... in Florida!!

I got an exciting email and call today from a good friend in Florida who is asking for my involvement in planting a church in the Tamba Bay area. I am very excited about this! About a year ago, God put a desire on my heart to be involved in church planting in that area, and I have tried to obediently pray that pray form time to time, asking Him for it. This might be the answer! I am unreasonably over-excited about this possibility.