MCBC by the Numbers

This month's Connecting... newsletter includes a few reflections on the recent Mennonite Church British Columbia annual meeting. In addition, I was interested in some of the statistics that were provided.

As one Emmanuel member pointed out to me, according to MCBC stats, Emmanuel's average 2009 worship attendance of 230 is the third highest among the 31 churches of MCBC.  By total membershp of 265, we are also the third largest church.  Only three churches had a net membership gain for 2009, including Emmanuel with a net gain of 11.  For a list of Emmanuel members who carry MCBC responsibilities, please see the issue of Connecting...which should be out this Sunday!  

Apr 21, 2010 at 10:24 AM

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Planting Change - in worship

At Emmanuel’s annual meeting in January, we received a report from our Middle Age/Young Adult Task Force suggesting some kind of new church plant. Since then, others have been thinking more about what it might mean to plant change within the congregation.

There have been many changes since Emmanuel began as a congregation in 1981 – from rented premises, to building their own, to adding the sanctuary, and then adding a gym. From a single song-leader and pianist to the music teams we have today with piano, guitar, drums, and other instruments. From the occasional use of the screen to project a song to projecting all of our songs as well as an opening slide, sermon points, and illustrations. There have been many many changes over the years!

For this coming Sunday (April 25), some of us have been thinking about planting some change in our morning worship.  The intention is not to try something new just because we've never done it that way before, or just because some other church is doing it that way.  Instead, it's because we realize that many people come to worship distracted--for many, it's a challenge simply to get to church, and even when physically present, their thoughts may still be going in a million directions.  So the intention with these changes is to minimize distractions as much as possible, to help draw all of us into worship and to be prepared to hear God speak to us.

To this end, we're working with an overall worship flow that might be described as a crescendo, where everything builds toward the message.  Part of this flow includes:

- instead of verbally highlighting announcements during the service, there will be highlights projected on screen beforehand
- instead of listing all of the songs in the worship order, we will list some questions that relate to the sermon and leave some space in the bulletin so people can write their own notes
- the music team will begin our time of worship and stay at the front until the sermon to minimize movement to and from the stage - they'll call the children to the front to sing a song with them, and then have the children's feature take place in the Noah's Ark room
- instead of having the team come forward to lead us in a closing song, I will end my sermon with a prayer and words of challenge/sending/benediction to end our worship time
- there will be more music during transitions and also played softly underneath the prayers and Scripture to help provide continuity and keep people engaged

At this point, the plan is simply to try this for one Sunday, and then to reflect on our experience—how will these changes impact us?  will they help to (re-)engage middle- and younger-aged adults?  will they help us to be more focused, or will the changes themselves be a distraction? I’m excited to try something new, and look forward to what God is doing/will do among us!
 

Apr 20, 2010 at 9:22 AM

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I love Jesus better than ice cream

“I love Jesus better than ice cream” the children sang this Easter morning, and that line was in my mind all along as I prepared my sermon.

One of the ice cream stories that I thought of, but didn’t make it into my sermon in the end (and makes a better post script/commentary afterward anyway I think!) is a story I read about a man named John Harrison who tastes ice cream for a living. He’s the chief ice cream taster for Dreyers ice cream, responsible for developing new ice cream flavours (like Dreyers French Silk Slow-Churned Ice Cream that I’ve never had but would like to try some day), he trains ice cream tasters all over America, and his tongue is actually ensured for over $1 million. As an ice cream taster, he always tastes ice cream with a gold-plated spoon because wood, plastic, or other metals leave an after taste. He avoids caffeine, garlic, and spicy foods because they would interfere with his taste buds.

That got me wondering about our spiritual taste buds—whether we lose or damage our taste for spiritual things, whether we allow other things to interfere with our taste even for the good news of Easter. Just like eating too many chocolate bunnies dulls our appetite for dinner, maybe watching too much tv, or spending too much time on the internet, or just generally wanting to go our own way, can dull our longing for God and spiritual connection. That’s a good reason to be deliberate about giving up something for Lent or adding in a deliberate spiritual discipline. Just as John Harrison gives up caffeine so his taste for ice cream is at its best, we can give up something for Lent to sharpen our spiritual taste buds so to speak. And just as he deliberately uses a gold-plated spoon, we can deliberately use a daily quiet time or journaling or some other spiritual discipline.

So during--and now even after Lent--may our spiritual taste buds remain sharp so that we may “taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8). Happy Easter everyone!
 

Apr 4, 2010 at 1:31 PM

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Palm Sunday Revisited

As we were planning for last Sunday's worship, I kept thinking of it as the Sunday with a "cast of thousands" - the string quartet had grown to three times that, the children's feature had the children looking for a donkey all over the congregation, there was a palm branch processional with the Sunday school kids and teachers and parents...it was a wonderful celebration of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem!

Behind the scenes, there were some last minute glitches - like my coming into the sanctuary to find that the group of strings had become so large that they had sidelined the pulpit, but fortunately there was still time to move their chairs over to make room - and like my leading a Sunday school class and preaching that same morning which would have been fine, except that for some strange reason I wasn't able to print my sermon from my laptop so I had to do it from Roberta's computer at the last minute instead.  But none of that took anything away from a very worshipful time - last Sunday was a real highlight which mirrored the very first Palm Sunday with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Apr 1, 2010 at 9:42 AM

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