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4 Ways to Make Your Environments Attractive

February 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

Environments

“Do you create a compelling place that people want to return to the next week?

The most important thing we can do to create a place people want to come back to is make sure our environment are amazing. It’s numero uno, there isn’t anything bigger, and it’s never 2nd place to anything! The environment is the place people are going. It’s the smells the smell, the sounds they hear, the things they see, and the people they interact with. It’s the parking lot, the front doors, the hallway and the classrooms.

Simply put, the environment is EVERYTHING someone experiences when they visit you. Everything. This isn’t a Children’s Ministry truth, this is a church-wide element. Here are 4 ways to make your environments better!

1. Make it Noisy. Music matters. It’s only bad if it’s missing, too loud, or too quiet. Think of grocery stores, doctors offices, and being on hold with an operator. Music calms, it’s setups something important, and it paints the walls of the mind.

2. Make it Easy. Do we make it easy for parents to get into our spaces, and do we make it quick? I’ve been in some amazingly beautiful hallways that had such an unorganized check-in process that you’d never notice how pretty those walls were. If parents can’t find where to go, and how to get there quickly, then they won’t be happy. Just think of your first time somewhere new. You want in and you want out, and you want to do both of them as fast as possible!

3. Make it Fun. A great environment should include the sound of someone laughing, and I’m not talking the evil Disney movie villain laughing. It should be a fun place to be. For you it may be a play structure, or maybe a fun bus stop bench at check-in, or video games setup somewhere. Fun alone won’t do much good, but fun can be the entry door to get kids to keep dragging their parents back to church.

4. Make it Safe. Would you like every parent to know that you love their child? Then work hard to create a safe and secure environment. Background checks, pick-up receipts, locked doors during service time, and security at every exit are just the basics. If you’re not doing these things, and more, then you’re not speaking a parents love language.

 

I Corinthians 9:22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 

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Friday Bag #12

August 17, 2012 — Leave a comment

The Friday Bag

 

Words of Advice for a Newbie Leader // “I am consistently asked about the beginning days of a leadership position. In my opinion, the opening days of any job are some of the most important. Apparently others think so also.”

Fathers, Stop Stealing from your Children // “Who are the criminals? Absent fathers.”

Summer Productivity Slump? // “Thanks to the warmer weather, workplace productivity tumbles about 20% in the summer, according to a recent survey of 600 workers by Captivate Network.”

 

View from the ISS at Night // Every frame in this video is a photograph taken from the International Space Station. All credit goes to the crews on board the ISS.

View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

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The Friday Bag #7

July 13, 2012 — Leave a comment

Fake Love, Fake War: Why So Many Men are Addicted to Internet Porn and Video Games – “You know the guy I’m talking about. He spends hours into the night playing video games and surfing for pornography. He fears he’s a loser. And he has no idea just how much of a loser he is. For some time now, studies have shown us that porn and gaming can become compulsive and addicting. What we too often don’t recognize, though, is why.”

The Best Sermon I’ve Ever Heard on Marriage – “My reaction to what the President said probably wasn’t that different from yours. I thought that what he said was outrageous. I thought that citing Jesus as if He were in support of sexual immorality was blasphemous. But I also thought, there’s really nothing new here.”

Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All – “This method handles just about everything that’s hard to talk about and can be used for small, medium, large, and even huge, difficult topics.”

I think leadership comes from integrity – that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity.
Scott Berkun

…and now let us lighten the mood a little.

Star Wars Action Figures Recreate Iconic Images

Ali_StarWars

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A Fourth of July Reminder that Nothing Compares to Knowing Christ

July 4, 2012 — Leave a comment

The day we celebrate Freedom. We as a nation here in the USA, will spend our day grilling hamburgers, hanging out with friends, exploding fireworks, and enjoying the long dog days of Summer.

At church this weekend, or perhaps at church in the coming weekend, you will watch a video about how “Freedom is a Gift” and we should be thankful for it.  We will love the reminders of how blessed we are to live in such a great country, how fortunate we are for others willing to lay down their lives for our everyday freedoms, and how good it feels to live in a country founded by men willing to stand up for what they believed. I’m right there with you waving my red, white, and blue. I love this country.

It’s also on this great day of freedom that I’m reminded of the words of Paul.

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. Galatians 5:1

This is a great verse (albiet completely out-of-context as it applies to the 4th of July), but I’m also reminded that nothing we celebrate today compares to knowing Christ.

Philippians 3 (MSG)

7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.

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Addicted to Sadness

May 29, 2012 — 1 Comment

 

There is a great, yet overplayed, song out by Goyte right now (and this cover video is so much less creepy than the original music video.) In the song “Somebody that I used to know” there is one line that always reminds me of me.

“You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness,”

While I haven’t had my heart broken by a girl in 20 years, there are some forms of being sad that I can definitely relate to. Some pretty terrible addictions, and one really good one.

  1. Sadness that gets me more attention. I’ll go ahead and admit it. There are times that I like to share bad news. It’s purely attention-getting and I love it. I want the hands on my shoulders, the promises of praying for me, and the potential that they buy me lunch.
  2. Sadness that gives me an excuse to be a jerk. It’s nice to know that there are things that can happen to me, that make it easy for those I love to be gracious with me. But many times, I like to take it farther than I should. I’ll use it as an excuse to push the envelope of being jerky to a whole new level (and I’m talking about a really big envelope of jerkiness.)
  3. Sadness that forces me to Gods Word. Can I get super-spiritual? There have been moments of discouragement that have brought me to a place that all I want to do is read Christ’ words to me. It pushes me towards a God that cares for me in all seasons. There are reminders in scripture that I need my soul, mind, and heart to hear.

The thing with all forms of sadness, and the things that take me there; is that I can’t stay there. I’ve got to put some symbolic pavement under my feet and keep moving. It’s time to stop the addictions to sadness, and instead use the season as the change that God has intended it to be.

 

2 Corinthians 12:9

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

 

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