Differencemakers: Golf to God July 7, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Sunday Services, Methods & Strategies, Missional, The Cultural Conversation, DifferenceMakers , add a comment
I love golf and am excited about a successful ministry founded by a professional golfer that is using golf to help others find Jesus on the fairways. This ministry is called “In His Grip” Golf Association, a ministry that teaches churches how to use golf as a way to share the Gospel. Founder Scott Lehman said he got the idea for In His Grip from driving by golf courses on Sunday mornings and seeing men teeing off instead of going to church.
“A lot of Sundays, you go by the golf course and they’re really packed,” Lehman said. “We felt like there was an opportunity to take our faith to the fairways and just meet them (golfers) where they’re at and introduce them to the church and ultimately to Jesus Christ.”
In His Grip holds training workshops for churches and shows them how to host golf tournaments to reach out to men who aren’t active church-goers. Scott said “Golf courses are ideal places to share the Gospel because it takes hours to play a round, and it’s easy to talk while walking along fairways and riding in golf carts”. In His Grip held its first tournament nearly 10 years ago and has hosted about 150 tournaments across the country. Lehman, 46, a golf teaching professional, holds training sessions for churches in different regions of the country. “Our vision is to reach every golfer in every nation,” Lehman said. “Right now we’re seeing a big trend of churches looking to meet people outside the four walls of the church, and this is a strategy to help them do that.”
I love this ministry that is going out to reach those who would not otherwise attend church! They even have a Golfer’s Bible printed that intersperses throughout the biblical text thirty-two full-color pages of inspirational messages teed up to reach the golfer’s heart, plus thirty-two more pages of devotions at the back of this special edition. Check it out!
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.
