Ruth Shinness' Visit

I have uploaded a few pictures from Sunday morning. We made history of a sorts as it was the first time the worship team wore jeans.

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Fall Fun Fest

I have posted some pictures from our Fun Fest last Saturday. They are unedited.

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Amazing Wildlife

I am continually amazed by the variety of wildlife I see outside my office window. The most fun was the day a hawk sat on top of one of the park benches trying to catch the squirrel underneath the bench. I have seen fox, coyote, hawks, and deer.

For the last week this turkey has been hanging around.

Are We Really Telling Peple About DPC?

We are trying to figure out ways to make ourselves known in the community. Last night the Fall Fest team drew up some plans for announcing the event.

I always have a sneaking suspicion we aren't really making a serious enough investment in getting the word out. Vince Antonucci's blog article verifies my suspicion. Read about what his church did to announce their two new locations below. (They are a multi-site church.)

Click to find out more about Forefront.



Ideas 4 Church Planters
from vinceantonucci.com by Vince Antonucci

Hey,

I'm assuming that some who are reading this are future church planters. We launched 2 new campuses this week, so I thought I'd share some of what we did to try and make it a "successful" launch. Hopefully you'll be able to steal some of these ideas (in fact, we stole many of them ourselves). So here's a random list of some of what we did:

1. Had our Launch Team(s) meet once, then twice a month. In these meetings we did vision casting, praying, strategizing, honoring, etc.

2. We did several absolutely free car washes in the community. We accepted no donations. We gave each person a free bottle of water with a Forefront label, and a free frisbee that said "Forefront is coming!"

3. We did donut dropoffs. People on the Launch Team chose businesses, and hospital emergency rooms, and schools - and then once a week (or more) dropped off one or two dozen donuts to the employees of that place, with a "Forefront is coming!" sticker on the box. Some people did this with pizza's instead of donuts.

4. We did a bunch of block parties, where we had our Launch Team invite all their neighbors over for a party. Some set up screens and borrowed our projector and showed a movie at night for families. At these block parties some just discreetly tried to have conversations about the new campus. Others made short announcements that they were a part of a new church startup and to see them if you had questions.

5. We handed out water bottles all over the place. We had Forefront labels on them.

6. We sent a series of 3 postcards to 57,000 homes in the vicinity of our new Sunday morning campus. (These cards did NOT land on the days they were supposed to. That really stunk.)

7. We did radio ads on four secular rock stations and ESPN radio for the week before launch, and the week after launch. The ad played about 5 or 6 times per station, per day. (So about 1,000 ads over two weeks.)

8. We had our people put about 15,000 doorhangers on the homes around the vicinity of our Tuesday night campus.

9. We did 240 days of prayer, where each day we had at least one person who "owned" praying for the launch(es) for that day. This person committed to spend as much time as possible praying (fervantly) for the launch(es).

10. We followed those 240 days with 240 hours of prayer, where we had at least one person praying every minute for 10 straight days. We had calendars where people signed up for round-the-clock praying. (Got this idea from Acts 1-2, sort of via Mark Batterson, where the Christians pray "constantly" from Passover-ish to Pentecost (10 days) and then ... Pentecost happens.)

11. We had lots of people fast for the new campus(es), some for up to ten days.

We did more stuff, but that's most of it (and all I can think of right now).

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Deeper

I am starting a new blog called Deeper.

The intention is to catalyze readers to read the Bible on a regular basis. It is not yet ready for the public. But, would you check it out and make suggestions on its content? I will come up with a new layout eventually, but that will come later.

Deeper

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Servant Evangelism

Over the last year or so we have done several "servant evangelism" projects. For example, we gave away pumpkins at the corner of Dodge Park Road and 16 1/2 Mile Road. We passed out winter survival kits at last year's Sterling Christmas. Memorial Day we gave away all kinds of food.

Why do we do it? Listen to Steve Sjogren, the originator of servant evangelism, talk about it:


By the way, I have been invited by the city to share the invocation at Sterling Christmas again. This time I was told we weren't allowed to pass out anything. I pushed back and he said he would check further. Pray that we will be able to provide our winter survival kits again.

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Purpose?

Are you trying to figure out the "why" of your life? Do you know your purpose?

Here are some thoughts to help you think about it from the man who wrote the bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life.

Living A Life of Purpose

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Genius At Work

My undergraduate degree from Anderson University is in Sacred Music. I played trumpet in those days. Sang a bit, too. The school required me to take piano lessons in order to pass a music proficiency requirement. I never passed the piano part. My official transcript makes note of the fact that I just can't play piano.

This video clip from the tonight show is humbling. Ethan is 5 years old. You will be amazed at his ability. Watch to the end.



Thanks to Pastor Gary Kendall for directing me to this.