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Are you part of an Expeditionary Force? April 20, 2008

Posted by Steve in : The City, Breaking News, Church, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies, Missional, The Cultural Conversation, DifferenceMakers, Culture and Faith, Faith at Work , add a comment

The Missional Challenge has an excellent article about the local church becoming a Expeditionary Force in the city — take a read…..

Dr. Ray Bakke describes the church as an expeditionary force in The Urban Christian (1987). He views Christians as ministers to their worlds of relationships. For example, a banker who is a Christian doesn’t simply serve at his church by teaching Sunday School or being on the Finance Committee. Instead, he would “identify a mission within the bank, perhaps running a Bible Study with his colleagues or even planning resources to help build up neglected neighborhoods.” (p 132)

Bakke sees several advantages to an urban church which sees itself as an Expeditionary Force, emphasizing its role to “go” on mission into the city:

  1. It legitimizes the call to lay mission
  2. It reaches more widely and follows the urban twenty-four-hour clock
  3. It fulfills the need of specialized urban people to affirm their personal vocations as their ministry

“In this model the pastoral task is to help these members identify, plan for and equip themselves for their diverse ministry opportunities.” (p 132)

Where are you in your vocation as a missionary force?

Can you imagine the missionary force that could be released in every town and neighborhood in America if local churches would begin to see themselves as an expeditionary force? <MORE>

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Family Nights Rock Out! June 7, 2007

Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, Family, Games, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies , add a comment

We had more than 65 adults and kids out for our first family fun night!  It was a great time of community, games, pizaa and friends.  Big thanks to Jeff and Angela Koch, who ran the games and to Sarah Chambers, our in-house resident AWANA games expert….Next week on Wednesday, we are plannnig to separate out the 1-4 year olds from the larger kids which should make it a better experience for all kids……It is GOOD to be a family in this world-class city.  IF you have any comments or suggestions, please email me here.

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Ministry Travel: Ensure the Lowest Fares May 29, 2007

Posted by Steve in : Technology, Methods & Strategies, Tech Tips , add a comment

(Yahoo) Have you ever bought an airline ticket from ministry travel only to see the price fall in the enusing weeks and your frustration rise as you try to manage costs? Now there is something you can do about it. 

Few customers realize it, but many airlines will give refunds if they cut the price after you have bought a ticket. Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest, United and US Airways all offer vouchers for the full price difference — if the price drops $200, you can get a $200 coupon towards a future trip. Others offer vouchers, or cash, after deducting change fees (which can run up to $100).  In industry jargon, it is called a “rollover,” and in most cases it only works if you bought the ticket directly from the airline. (It generally won’t work if you bought them via a Web site such as Expedia.com or Orbitz.com, unless the price drops in the first 24 hours.)

The rollover policies have been in place for decades, but, until recently, it has been tough for consumers to figure out when their flight’s price has changed. The catch is you have to call while the lower price is in effect to get your rollover. That is where a new Web site, Yapta.com, has come up with a clever way to take some of the anxiety out of buying airline tickets.

Yapta, a company run by a former Alaska Airgroup Inc. pricing vice president, was launched May 22. It tracks fares on specific flights you select before or after you buy a ticket. That is an improvement over Web sites that just track markets, but don’t allow you to specify which flights you really want. You can use Yapta before you buy to alert you by email to pricing changes on a particular trip, or let you know if the price drops after you’ve bought a ticket and you’re eligible for a refund. In order to obtain the voucher, you need to phone the airline directly. (You usually can’t snare one online.)  So as you are planning on attending that future multi-site conference, input your preferred flights and when they get to your budgeted level, it will notify you and you can then purchase the tickets.

One woman, who signed up with Yapta to test the site before its launch, paid $800 each for four tickets from San Francisco to Kona, Hawaii. A few days later, she got notification from Yapta that the price had dropped to about $400 per ticket. She called United Airlines and got tickets reissued at the lower price plus four $400 vouchers. “There’s no way I would have been checking sites to see if the price went down,” she said.

Check it out now here.

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Missional Living as Leaders May 12, 2007

Posted by Steve in : Church, Inside Park, Methods & Strategies, Missional, Leader Zone , add a comment

Last night, we gathered 150 of our leaders and celebrated the incredible work that God is doing in and through Park Community Church. One of the highlights was the message given by our Lead Pastor, Jackson Crum, on the need for our leaders to live missionally in the city. Have a listen here.

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2,999 and Counting May 2, 2007

Posted by Steve in : Technology , add a comment

We have a very tech-savvy congregation at Park Community Church in Chicago.We also have a very transient and mobile population who lead very busy lives, thus we have worked hard to provide alternative methods for people to hear the Sunday message. By far the most popular has been our podcasts on I-Tunes. We have seen a huge increase in podcast usage over the last six months, as we have gone from 1,333 downloads in November 2006 (44 per day) to 2,999 downloads in April (100 downloads per day). Way to Go Aaron Stanski and your team who are ‘getting the Gospel out there’!.

According the the Pew Internet and American Life Project, some 12% of internet users   (more…)

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