Willow Creek A2 Conference – David Ireland, Christ Church

Wow — It only gets better! Day Two started off with a tremendous message from Dr. David Ireland, Pastor of David Ireland is a pastor of Christ Church in Montclair, New Jersey that is 80% African American and 20% other, while the local community is about 70% caucasian. This compares to the national average where [...]

Friday Fun Fact About Chicago

I love this city! In fact, I have just celebrated my 20th anniversary of my move here last week. Chicago is the greatest large urban city in the world to live in (IMHO!) and I want to share each week a fun fact about Chicago from the Encyclopedia of Chicago by Janice L. Reiff University [...]

Lionsgate Says Yes To Movies Burned to DVD

I am a big film fan and the reality of first run movies being burned right to DVD is one step closer to reality. Yesterday, independent film studio Lionsgate agreed to have its movies available for burning to DVD the same day the titles are released in stores. Online movie service CinemaNow on Wednesday said [...]

No Perfect People Allowed Here

Although I haven’t posted my thoughts on yesterday’s conference speakers at the Willow Creek A2 conference, I am excited to hear John Burke from Gateway Community Church in Austin Texas speak this morning on “creating a come as you are” culture. Located in Austin, Texas, Gateway Church has a “no perfect people allowed” policy because [...]

Park Service Day is This Saturday

Park Service Day is this Saturday, October 28, 2006. We are expecting more than 700 volunteers from Park Community Church who will be painting, gardening, building, and cleaning – lending a helping hand to our community. This is a fantastic opportunity to invite your friends and co-workers to help renew the city. There is still [...]

The Power of a Short Term Missions Trip

I love to read stories of how a short term mission trip causes life change for the people on that trip.  Read this story about how a weekend mission trip to Honduras sponsored by his church in Bedford Hills in 2002 opened Brock Barrett’s eyes to a new way of reaching out to the needy. [...]

Who Is This Jesus?

Park Community Church is about to start its next series called “Who is this Jesus?,” where we will explore that question using the book of Luke as the basis for our Sunday message series. In preparation, I have been listening to a series by one of my favorite pastors, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill church [...]

Willow Creek A2 Conference – Day One Summary

Wow! What a day of team-building and mind-stretching by some of the best ministry minds in the land. Got to Willow and into the 7,200 seat auditorium in time for some great cross-cultural worship to open up the conference. Then Bill Hybels came out and began to talk about key events in his life that [...]

Acts 2 Conference – Day 1 Preview

We are headed out to the first day of Willow Creek Association’s A2 conference. Designed to be different than the leadership summit, its goal is to change the typical conference learning experience by exploring case studies of five innovative church models — first introduced by their leaders then followed by a lively Q&A by the [...]

Off to the Willow Creek A2 Conference

Tomorrow a few of the Park Community Church team is headed to the Willow Creek Acts 2 conference, including Jackson Crum, Scott Clifton, Jen Cousino and Franklin Woodland, one of our elders.  It is so exciting to do ministry with these folks and the rest of the team.  Each of them has a passion to [...]

Plotz says “Let’s See What the Bible Says”

Got wind of this a while ago and think it is an excellent exercise in understanding 2/3′s of our culture. David PLotz is going to be Blogging the Bible. For those of you who have not discovered it, Slate.com is a very popular news and culture webzine, which leans left on most things. David Plotz, [...]

Family Caregiving 101

With aging parents and in-laws, this is an issue near and dear to me. I am so thankful to come across this post in The Outbox: Many families in America are caught in the double bind of caring for aging parents while still raising children at home. I see the scenario of caregiving needs playing [...]

Adaptive Reuse of a Church

Many buildings and other commercial and organization structures are being made into churches and churches are also being made into residential homes. In Chicago, our church, Park Community Church, is providing an adaptive reuse for a 70,000 square foot warehouse, which will become our permanent church home. See here for the building plans. In Santa [...]

Wolverines are 8-0!

Jesus and Expresso?

Eagle Brook Church in Lino Lakes, Minnesota has designed their new auditorium with theater-style cup holders. “Coffee is such a part of our church culture,” director of operations Scott Anderson said. “If they’re gonna bring it in, they need a place to put it. It was a logistical decision.” However, not everyone is excited about [...]

Chicago Marathon Weekend

Chicago is a sport town and no bigger sports spectacle that the marathon this weekend. With $650,000 in prize money plus the carrot of a $1 million payoff in the new World Marathon Majors series, the 29th Chicago Marathon will be the epicenter of global running this weekend. Top contenders from Kenya, Ethiopia, Japan, Tanzania, [...]

Bo’s Boys Cry the Blues

When I was in college, I had the privilege of serving as a manager for the University of Michigan football team under the coaching of Bo Schembechler. We were all concerned to hear that Bo has been admitted to an Ann Arbor hospital’s cardiac-care unit for observation today after he felt ill at the taping [...]

Park Service Day

In addition to the 12 ministries that we serve at each week, each year Park Community Church mobilizes its congregation to serve the city on a day we call Park Service Day. We gather in the early morning for worship and instructions, then more than 600 people fanned out last year to 40 building / [...]

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