Convictions About Worship - What are Yours? February 18, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, Sunday Services, Methods & Strategies, The Arts in the City, Music That Moves , add a commentI recently came across this list of Saddleback Church’s 12 Convictions about Worship and have been thinking a lot about worship in the Park Community Church context as we get ready to move into a new building and begin to explore potential how multi-site locations might further the work that God is doing in our midst.
Here is what Rick Warren says about their worship convictions:
Jesus’ ministry attracted enormous crowds. The Bible tells us that crowds followed him wherever he went. I believe that a Christ-like ministry still attracts crowds today. You don’t need gimmicks. You don’t need to compromise your convictions. You don’t need to water down your message. If you minister to people the way Jesus did, they’ll want to be around your ministry like they did his.
But how do you develop a worship service that’ll minister to those crowds each weekend? It’s important that you figure out why you do what you do before you figure out what your worship service will include. At Saddleback, 12 convictions determine how we minister to the crowds on the weekends. Here’s why we do what we do in our worship services.
1. Only believers can truly worship God.
2. You don’t need a building to worship God.
3. There is no correct style of worship.
4. While unbelievers can’t worship, they can watch believers worship.
5. Worship is a powerful witness to unbelievers if God’s presence is felt and the message is understandable.
6. God expects us to be sensitive to the fears, hang-ups, and the needs of unbelievers when they are present in our worship services.
7. Worship services do not have to be shallow to be evangelistic, and the message does not have to be compromised. It just has to be understandable.
8. The needs of believers and unbelievers often overlap.
9. It’s best to specialize your services according to purpose.
10. A service geared toward non-believers is meant to supplement personal evangelism, not replace it.
11. There is no standard way to design an evangelistic worship service.
12. It takes unselfish mature believers to offer an evangelistic worship service. This is the most important of all.
Here are the original posts with supporting thoughts by Rick Warren at pastors.com here and here. He goes more in-depth into each of his points in the articles, which are well worth reading. What do you think? What are your convictions about worship as we seek to introduce the God of the universe to all people in Chicago?
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.
Bob Lupton at Park on Sunday April 27, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, Church, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies, Missional , add a comment
We are so excited to have Bob Lupton speaking at all three of Park’s church services this Sunday, April 29, 2007 on “Seeking Shalom in the City”, addressing the issue of our response to gentrification in the city, as we continue our series “Missional Living”.
As Park continues to expand, and looks at reaching more and more people as part of our goal to reach one percent of Chicago (30,000 people) in the years to come, we need to come to grips with gentrification and its impact on the well-being of the city of Chicago. Bob speaks from 34 years of experience as a Christian real estate developer and an active member of the CCDA.
Invite a Friend via E-vite here.
Bob Lupton is a Christian community developer and an entrepreneur who brings together communities of resource with communities of need, and has invested more than 34 years of his life in inner-city Atlanta. (more…)
