Junk Drawer Spirituality

Are Cool Church Names Really That Cool?

I have to admit.  When we first talked about planting a church 2 years ago, I got very excited about the possibility of having a really cool church name.  Naming your church after the street you sit on or your denomination seemed so lame when there are churches named "Paradox" and "Epicenter" down the road.  I wanted the kind of name that only sounds right if it's spoken like Macho Man Randy Savage as he's snapping into a Slim Jim.  

When we first considered the name for our new church we originally landed on the name "Water's Edge."  I liked it because it sounded "edgy."  Unfortunately, a church located about 3 miles south of us thought it was edgy too, and they beat us to it.  So we had to keep looking.  Since Jim really wanted a name that brought to mind the feeling of being on a lake shore, I started searching thesauruses and Google, looking for catchy synonyms.  I stumbled upon "Waterfront."  I was only familiar with the word because of the Marlon Brando movie.  Jim thought it sounded like a real estate development.  But in the end we decided to go with it, naming the church "Waterfront Community Church."  And it was a nice name, but I'll be honest . . . I didn't think it had the same bite and "reach out and grab ya" power of a church name like "Mosaic" or "Mars Hill" (both very large, popular churches).

That was 2 years ago.  And now  "Waterfront" has become a community and a family, not just a name.  And I've begun to realize a few things about church names. . .

Baptism Saturday on the Waterfront

Yesterday, we had our first baptism service at Waterfront.  We had one baptism about this time last year, but this is our first time doing baptisms during our worship service.  Now that we're renting from a place that actually has a place to baptize people, it makes it alittle bit easier.

Anyway, it was awesome!  3 people decided to be baptized and dedicate their lives to following Jesus, and I know of many more people who will be making similar decisions soon.  I've had about a half dozen conversations with other folks in our church who are really close to taking that plunge.  It's amazing how when a few people take that first step, show some bravery, and actually decide to do it, it seems to make it a whole lot easier for other.  I wonder if that's part of the reason why Jesus was baptized - just to make it easier for those who would follow after him and be baptized, themselves.

Well, here are a few pictures from the evening of the brave folks who decided to lead the way at Waterfront.

 

My Yearbook Photos

Alright . . . these aren't ACTUAL yearbook photos, but I had some fun with photoshop last week making these fake yearbook pictures of our Waterfront staff.  It was for our past Saturday service at Waterfront.  In order: Me, Cindy, Jim, and Greg.

     



     

Worshipping Saturday Instead of Sunday

 A few weeks ago, Waterfront went through a fairly significant change.  We have been meeting in Schaumburg High School at 10 AM Sunday mornings since we launched alittle over a year ago.  But after much prayer and consideration we decided to move to a new location and a new time . . . Saturday evening.

Here's what happened.  We loved meeting in the High School, but our rent rates were changing, and the venue was a little large for us . . . so we were looking at other options.  Another local church offered to let us rent their facility for a much better price, and the facility size made much more sense for out needs.  But that meant we had to move to Saturdays since the existing church needed it Sunday mornings.

I was actually a little nervous about making the move to Saturday nights.  I personally loved the idea (I'm more of an evening person than a morning person anyway), but Sunday morning church is such a cultural norm.  I wasn't sure how people would respond.

Well, we've been in our new facility and our new time for 3 weeks now, and let me just say, this was SUCH A GOOD DECISION!!!!  The facility is great.  Perfect size, feel, and atmosphere, for our needs.  But I love the new time, and our people love it too.  So for anyone considering church planting, let me give you five reasons why you might consider doing a Saturday evening service rather than a Sunday service.

New Waterfront Series, "FAQ: Frequently Avoided Questions"

I'm really excited about our message series coming up at Waterfront this month (I don't usually use this blog for Waterfront propaganda purposes, but in this case I'll make an exception because I DO think it's really cool).  We're doing a series starting September 13th called "FAQ: Frequently Avoided Questions."  Here's what it's about: We think every single person has a question deep down inside themselves which, if they could, they would want to ask God.  "What's my purpose," "Why did this happen to me?" "Why didn't this happen?" "Am I going to Heaven?" "Is my husband going to heaven?", etc., etc., etc.

So we wanted to design a message series that looked specifically at the questions people are asking. A little over a month ago, we started handing cards to people at Waterfront that inquired, "If you could ask God anything, what would you ask?"  We got a HUGE response from people asking all kinds of good questions.  So we began choosing topics that we would talk about for our series based on the questions people were asking.

And so this week, we're launching that same question to the community at large . . . "If you could ask God anything, what would you ask him?"  We put up a huge billboard along I-90 asking that question, we're passing out business cards to friends and relatives, we're sending out postcards to the community, and we're directing everyone to a blog site where people can interact with us and ask their own questions . . .

The blogsite is www.askgodblog.com

Help us out. . .  Get the word out.  We want lots of interaction and lots of questions from people even if you live outside the chicagoland area.  So share this blogsite with friends or anyone you think would love to ask God a question if they could.

Mexico Trip 2009

Late last night I returned home from Tijuana, Mexico, where myself and a group of nine others spent a week building a home for a Mexican family.  It was Waterfront's first official mission trip.  We went with Amor Ministries, an organization based out of San Diego, CA who have built thousands of homes for families such as these for the past 30 years.  About 4 years ago I led a similar trip to Juarez, but I think every time you go on a trip like this, it's unique.  It's hard to talk about everything so let me just hit a few of the highlights.

The Most Impressive Part of the trip:

The family:  On my previous Mexico house building experience, the family was not very involved with our team, and so we never really had the opportunity to get to know them.  What a difference it was with our family last week!  From the first day of our build the mother and her two children interacted with us, joked with us, played with us, worked with us, and became part of our lives.  I couldn't believe how hard this family worked.  Their 10 year old son followed us around all week with his hammer and tool belt helping us build his home.  Rosario, his mother, spent hours with us that first day, filling buckets of sand with a shovel and carrying them up a hill so we could mix them with concrete.  They were so personable and so appreciative, getting to know them really made the whole trip for me.

The Funnest Part:

There were a few moments during the week that we set down our hammers and shovels and just enjoyed ourselves.  Here are the my top three:

1.  Soccer:  Late in the day on day 2, with a brand new soccer ball in hand (given by one of our team members), our Mexican family's daughter asked us to play soccer with her.  So I and two other fellas from our group headed over to a near-by field where a bunch of neighborhood kids joined us for a game of soccer.  We played for about half an hour, and I was pretty whipped by the end, but it was a blast.

2. Water Balloon fight:  On our third day, we brought a bunch of water balloons and had a water balloon fight with a bunch of the kids.  It was alot of fun.

    

3.  Taking our family out to lunch:  On the second day, we decided to go out to lunch with our team to a local restaurant and we invited our family to come with us.  It was awesome.  The food was excellent.  Great tacos, quesadillas and home-made guacamole, and we ate A TON of it.  And we had a fun time visiting with our family.  They talked about that experience for the rest of the week.  The mother was telling all of her neighbors "They just kept ordering food!"    

The Hardest Part:

Day one of the build:  On my previous Mexico experience, I had a team of about 17 or 18 people and we used an electric concrete mixer to make the concrete for the house's foundation.  I still remember that day being really, really difficult.  On THIS trip, we had only 10 people, and we mixed the entire slab of concrete (22 X11) by hand with garden hoes.  It was really hot, it was hard work, we were short-handed by about 2 or 3 people, and it was pretty darn miserable.  We all came home after that first day saying, "That sucked."

But, the following days were easier, and overall, the trip was great.  There will be more to come, but here are a few pictures from the trip. . .

Pin a Tie on a Small Group Leader

Last week,we had a small group fair at Waterfront, advertising our new groups starting up in a few weeks.  And since it was Father's Day, we had the idea that we would ask everyone to give the leader of the small group in which they were interested a necktie.

Actually, they weren't supposed to give them real neckties.  We had cut-out neckties on which they could write down their names and contact info, and then when they left the auditorium, they saw large 24X36 posters of each of our leaders where they could stick their ties.  John McDavitt made the pictures up, and I thought they were brilliant.  Check it out:

Final Day ... Waterfront's First Small Group Session in Review

Today is our official last day of small groups for the Spring session.  We began our first small groups at Waterfront in early February, ran 12 weeks, and now we're coming to a close.

It's been a great semester.  We've seen alot of new people get connected.  We've seen many new people come to a deeper knowledge of God.  And we've all learned some things along the way.

I think in general, our experimental approach at term-based small groups that conclude at semester end has been good.  I'm alittle surprised at the amount of "push-back" we've received from some group members at the idea.  I think after we go through a semester end and semester start, it will seem less scary in the future, but at this stage, there are some who are having a really difficult time conceptualizing what it means for a small group to reach a conclusion and start again.

I've been pleased with the number of new group leaders who have shown interesting branching off to begin new groups next session.  We're seeing some really strong potential for growth and coaching through that.  And recently we've had several people from the outside of our church who've expressed recent interest in participating in Community Life ministry on an internship-type basis.  So potential abounds.

All of that is to say, I'm really excited about where this ministry is headed in our next few seasons.

Waterfront's Global Partners

Ever since the story about Waterfront came out on NBC a few weeks ago, we've been hearing from all kinds of people from all over the country and even outside of the country.  Some people have simply emailed us to express their appreciation and root us on.  Some have emailed wondering how we do what we do.  And many many others have emailed us wanting to help us out in our mission.

Here's a cool story. . . Last week, we received a box in the mail.  It was from an 83 year old woman who lives in Connecticut.  She said that she saw the story on NBC about Waterfront and what we're doing in our community, and she was so moved that she wanted to help out in the best way she knew how.

So first, she wrote us a check. . . for $1,000 . . . deignated to help us fund the operations expenses of our church.  AMAZING!  But that's not what was in the box.  What was in the box were about 3 or 4 dozen beautifully hand-knitted caps for babies, which she knitted herself after seeing our braodcast.  She said, "I don't know how you can use these but this is what I have to give."  Jim shared this story with our church on Sunday, and I think every person in that room in Schuamburg, IL felt a special bond with an 83 year old woman in Connecticut whom we've never met.  And there are dozens of others who have stepped up and committed to finance our church as well.    

March Madness and Community

It's that time of year again.  All the teams have been selected.  People are filling out their brackets, starting office pools, placing bets, buying plain tickets, wishing and hoping their team will make it to the Final Four.

It's March Madness Time!

And since I'm always up for experimenting with new forms of community, we openned up a Waterfront Hoops Tournament Challenge to our entire church this morning.  It's all online at Yahoo Sports.  You just go there, enter the password and make your tournament picks.  But it's a way for a person who is not in a small group or who is largely unconnected with our church to take a baby-step toward connecting in a very non-threatening way.  Hope people respond.  I think elements of community can happen with these sorts of things.

And if you're a reader of this blog and want to join in the fun, you're more than welcome.  Just go to http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/, click "join a Group," and enter our group ID# 36097 and password: waterfrontcc.

    

Are We Crazy????

That's the question the Catalyst Conference blog asked about my church after seeing the NBC news peice that came out on Friday: "Waterfront Community Church is a bunch of Crazies! They're giving away 100% of their weekend offering to help the poor and people in need!"

The comments on this blog are simply awesome!  I love the simplicity of the very first post in the comment section from John (Human3rror): "yes.  they are nuts."  Can't argue with the facts I guess :)

Waterfront's NBC Nightly News Spot

Waterfront Community Church was featured on NBC NIghtly News Friday evening, February 27th.  Here is the news peice that aired

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

and here is some additional footage that did not air.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Waterfront is On NBC TONIGHT!!!!

I'm pretty sure this is it . . . We've waited for a few weeks.  We thought we were going to be on 2 weeks ago.  We got bumped, but it's all good.  No hard feelings.  But tonight I think we're finlly going to be on . . . 5:30 . . . NBC . . . Brian Wiliampalooza.

Set your DVRs and Tivos to stun.

A Few Videos I've Been Working On

A few years ago, I started doing alittle bit of video editing . . . just for fun, with a second-rate editing software, but it's something I've really enjoyed learning.  I've done a few projects over the past few years, but this last week I've had the opportunity to work on two projects that were pretty fun.  One was a promotional video for a couple at our church named Chris and Dawn Johnson, who lead a trip to Mexico with Amor Ministries to build houses for Mexican families.

The second video is a recap of our Wednesday evening baptism from this past week.  We wanted to create a short video to give our church family who couldn't make it an opportunity to gather the feel of the event, and hopefully help more people feel comfortable about possibly taking a similar spiritual step in their own lives.  Of course, now, that I finished the product, I realized that I got the date wrong on the opening scene . . . should be 2009, not 2008.  Oh well.   

Milestone At Waterfront

Last night, two very important milestones happened at Waterfront.  First, we experienced our very first baptism.  It was really amazing.  We set up a portable baptismal in the home of one of our church leaders, and filled it up with a garden hose that ran through a portable heating system.  Basically took all day to set up, which was more than alittle bit of a pain.  But the end result was awesome.  A single mom who first came to our church because she saw an article about us in the paper 3 months ago, was baptized and took a major step in her relationship with Christ.  And dude, we had that house packed!  There were probably 50-60 people from our church there cheering her on.  It was great!

Then right afterward, we began our first night of small groups.  Again . . . awesome.  We had 3 small groups meeting in this house (a fourth and fifth will meet on Sundays and the sixth meets in Romeoville), and every group had many clearly engaged and excited people.  I was leading my small group for people who are new to the whole faith and Christianity thing, and we had nine people show up in that group (I call it Square 1).  And it was just cool.

Two very important things happened for us as a church in one night.  And I'm still riding the excitement of that.

Waterfront Community Life

This is a big week for the Community Life ministry at Waterfront.  I'm really excited that we're launching 3 (maybe 4) more small groups this week.  We had 2 small groups going already.  So by next week, I haven't done the math yet, but we should have a pretty high percentage of our Sunday adult attendees connected (which is really exciting).

Tomorrow night, we have a big kick off for our Wedenesday night groups, and Sunday we have one (possibly 2) group(s) that will meet after the service.  It's a pretty exciting time at Waterfront. 

Baptisms!

Since I've moved  to Chicago, and because of the nature of the various positions I've held at churches, I have had the opportunity to experience a number of people being baptized. Baptisms are maybe my favorite "worship" element that we do as a church.  So I'm really excited that next week, we get to celebrate our first two baptisms at Waterfront.  It's going to be alot of fun!  Pray for us, and the two people taking this step in faith. 

The Couples Group At Waterfront

I'm really excited about all of our small groups starting up next week at Waterfront, and one of the groups that is very exciting to me is our couples group.  Jim and Sheri Mueller are leading this small group, going through the book Love and Respect by Emmerson Eggerichs.  It'll be a great group.

But I'm not sure everyone knows just how blessed we are by these two leaders.  Jim and Sheri not only lead a couples group at Waterfront, but they also are the principle architects and founders of a Christian non-profit marriage ministry called Growthtrac, which helps provide marriage resources for couples.  They also mentor and counsel married and engaged couples on a regular basis.  In fact, yesterday, the Chicago Tribune wrote an article about pre-marital counseling, and they featured Growthtrac and the great work the Muellers do.  It is not a usual thing for a church of our size and relative youth to be blessed with marriage experts and leaders of the Mueller's caliber, but we are.  I'm very excited for this group and ministry! 

"Being" The Church

I don't think I've really mentioned it here before, but I have been very impressed by the churches that have consistantly stepped up to the plate to help us out, especially when such help didn't benefit them at all.  So let me give a brief "shout out" to a few of the churches who have been really awesome to Waterfront.

Community Christian Church: Many of our people came from CCC including myself, Jim, and Greg (the 3 staff guys), and the relationship we have continued to have with them has been priceless. . .

Waterfront on NBC Nightly News (The Brian Williams One)

The press has been pretty good to Waterfront since we began only 3 months ago.  First, we had some very generous articles and radio interviews come out right around the time we launched Waterfront in October.  Soon after, the Chicago Tribune did a pretty lengthy article on us.  Then the Associated Press came out and wrote an article about Waterfront, which showed up in every news outlet from USA Today and The Chicago Sun-Times to the Amarillo Globe News in Amarillo, TX (my hometown).  That helped spread Waterfront's story nationally.  And then THIS morning, 'NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams' came out with a camera to do a story on us for their national evening news show (Brian Williams didn't personally come out of course, but one of their correspondants from New York did).

It's been a wild experience with the media attention we've received.  Manya Brachear, the Chicago Trib writer who did the story on us has interviewed the Dalai Lama for goodness sakes . . . and she wrote a story on us.  The NBC correspondant who talked with us today, Jeff Rossen, was leaving our interview this afternoon to go do an interview with Governor Rod Blogojevich before covering his impeachment trials tomorrow for MSNBC.  It's nuts!  And I'm very, very grateful.  I think it's a testament to Waterfont's (and Jim's) vision that so many people have wanted to hear this story told. 

But it's happened so fast, and we're SOOOOO young as a church, that I honestly sometimes feel alittle guilty about the attention.  I think: "This is great, but we've only been here a few months.  We're still trying to figure all this financial stuff out ourselves, and trying to get to know our people, and we only have 100+ people . . ."  But maybe that's OK.  I know the media attention we're receiving is short-lived, our 15-minutes of fame (if you want to call it that) will dry up soon enough.  But it's been a good reminder that what we're doing really can show Jesus' love in a unique way.  At the very least it's free marketing to the people in our community we're trying to reach, and hopefully we're giving some people a new way to think about church and helping break the ice for a few people whose faith has grown cold. 

Christianity Today Article On Waterfront

Since the Tribune article on Waterfront came out this week we've seen a few others pick up the story, including Christianity Today.  Here's a short article about Waterfront in CT.

Waterfront Article in The Chicago Tribune

This morning, the Chicago Tribune wrote up an article on Waterfront Community Church.  It's a great article and well-written.  The "Tribune" has a daily circulation of 566,827. Check out the article here.

Waterfront Interview on K-Love and Air-One

This morning, Jim Semradek, our Waterfront Lead Pastor, recorded a radio interview with the national Christian radio station, K-Love.  It's a short, 30 second interview but it will be played nationwide on all K-Love stations throughout the day on November 10th.  Then, there will be a series of follow-up interviews with Jim on Klove.com and their sister station Air1.com.  I'll update my blog when I get more info about the interview, but keep your ears peeled for Waterfront Community Church in the next few weeks if you're a K-Love listener.

Week 2 On the Waterfront

We just completed our second Sunday with Waterfront Community Church yesterday, and we had a great day.  Church planting is one of those enterprises that, on the one hand has the potential to create alot of anxiety over the unknown, but on the other hand, there have been so many churches that have been planted in the past and so much has been studied and written about church planting that we have a fairly accurate estimate of what we can expect from week to week.  It's actually quite comforting.  Prior to week one, based on the level of marketing that we were doing, I estimated that we would have somewhere around 250 attenders.  We had 238, so I was pretty close.  Church planting experts say that number will drop dramatically the second week and the goal is to keep more than 50% of your first week's attendaance.  We met that goal on Sunday with an attendence of 126.  So according to the "experts" we're doing good.

But here's the stuff the experts don't talk about.  We really honored God on Sunday.  Here's something Jim Mueller, one of our Core Team members, wrote to us this morning: "Yesterday morning while, overlooking the auditorium, I thought, 'We are on holy ground.'  I was struck with a powerful, 'God is here' feeling."  It kinda makes you realize that as important as the numbers and expert calculations are, and even though we want a high attendence every week and will continue to get as many people in the door as we can, we serve an audience of one every Sunday.  Can't wait til next week. 

Web Discussions and Articles On Waterfront

We're starting to see a few more articles and web discussions pop up on he internet about Waterfront.  I'm really interested in the conversations Waterfront is generating.  It’s amazing to me how Waterfront seems to make alot more sense to people who aren’t very connected to church than it does to church “veterans.” You ask an unchurched person how they’d feel if there was a church trying to give it’s money away, and they’re really supportive and say things like “Why don’t all churches do that? I’d go to a church like that.”. . . but pastors and church leaders have a harder time “getting it” it seems.  Hard to understand.  But I love the fact that it's getting talked about, and I actually also love the fact that people are pushing back on it, and asking tough questions.  It forces us to continually think things through.

Here's a link to a blog discussion on a website for Christian leaders called Monday Morning Insight and a link to another article written about our church.

Waterfront Article In "The Daily Herald"

Today, there was an article in the Daily Herald, a Suburban Chicago newspaper featuring Waterfront and our mission.  It's interesting to hear this columnists interpretation of our church from her perspective on Sunday, and there are some VERY interesting comments about our church below the article from people who read it. . . these comments include people who are excited about our church's model and people who are very skeptical that a church would actually want to help it's community.  I love the fact that this church is getting people talking.  Here's a link to the article. 

Waterfront Weekend Generosity

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a great opportunity this weekend at Waterfront to help a single mother in the commmunity of Schaumburg through an organization called Fellowship Housing.  This was not only our launch weekend, but this was also our first opporunity as a church to give all of our Sunday offerings away.  I just recieved word, that from the 238 people in attendence this weekend including kids, we collected $4,318!  That's what we collected from a room full of first-time attenders and visitors, most of whom probably didn't come prepared to give today!  The generosity revolution has begun. 

Waterfront Launch!!

This morning, Waterfront Community Church, the church plant I and many friends (now my family) have been working on for the past 7 or 8 months, launched to the public in Schaumburg, IL.  What an amazing morning.  From the moment I pulled up and met Greg in Schaumburg at 6:45 this morning to get the trailer, I had a smile on my face, and it didn't leave all day.  We just had fun today!  All of our teams that have been building for the last few months did outstanding this morning.  Everyone came prepared and ready to serve, and everything went really smoothly with very few hiccups.  At the end of the day, we counted 238 people come through our doors, and we recieved many response cards.  I talked with many, many people who were planning on coming back next week!  All in all, we had a great morning. 

And maybe the best part of the experience, beyond the numbers of people who showed up, the great preaching by Jim or the outstanding musical job by our worship team, was the fact that we had the opportunity to collect an offering today that was going to benefit a single mom in Schaumburg through an organization called Fellowship Housing.  For the first time, we got to give all of our money away!  She's a mom who grew up in the projects of West Chicago and has been trying to raise a ten year old child with Cerebral Palsy on her own.  I'm not yet sure how much we collected, but It feels so good to love somebody in that way.  Here are some pictures of the morning.  Thanks to all of you who've been praying for me the last few months.  Keep it up, because things are just beginning.

    

 

Waterfront On The Radio

Well, we're just a few days from launching Waterfront Community Church (October 19th BABY!!!!!), and we've been hitting the streets trying to spread the word about this innovative new church we're beginning.  This afternoon, our pastor, Jim Semradek, was interviewed on Moody radio, which was broadcast all over Chicago.  Jim did a REALLY good job!  You can click on this link to listen to the interview and find out alittle more about our church.     

First Waterfront Sunday in Schaumburg High School

This morning, we held our first Waterfront "service" in Schaumburg High School, the new home for Waterfront Community Church.  It was a long morning between driving from Aurora in the wee early hours, hitching up the trailer, unloading all the equipment, running the service, etc.  But it went great!  Way better than I expected.  There are bugs we have to work out, but we learned alot today, and things went relatively smooth despite it being our first time in a new facility with all new equipment.  This thing's happening dude!

Just a reminder, Waterfront officially launches our church to the public October 19th!  Say a prayer or invite a friend . . . or both!

What I Hope Never Happens To Waterfront's Trailer

I heard this story on another blog a few months ago.  There's a church in Atlanta Georgia called Kinetic Church.  They're a relatively new church plant much like us, and like us, they store all of their church equipment in a trailer.  They pull the trailer up to a movie theater every Sunday morning, unload their equipment, and then load it back up after service and store the trailer away during the week.

Well, sometime this year, somebody stole their trailer. . . and all of the church equipment inside.  It was tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and just like that . . . it was gone.  It's a scary thought that the same thing could happen to us too.  All of the time and money we've invested in collecting the stuff that will help make our church experience a reality could be gone in the blink of an eye.  But what this church did in response was sort of funny . . .

2 Corinthians Series, 12:11-21

This passage summarize the charges Paul's detrators made toward him throughout this letter and Paul's responses.  People said, "Paul is a nobody."  Paul responded, "Perhaps; but I know I'm not inferior to the so-called 'super-apostles" (v. 11).  People said, "Paul is undistinguished, ungifted, and unqualified."  Paul replied, "You've seen my apostolic proof: signs, wonders, miracles" (v. 12).  People said, "Paul doesn't really care about us because he wouldn't take payment for his services."  Paul said with sarcastic brilliance, "I did not make myself a burden to you by taking your money.  Please FORGIVE ME for failing to sponge on you" (v. 13; this is Plummer's translation, which I think captures Paul's sentiment well).

It is with respect to this final point that I would like to elaborate.  Paul continues his thought in v. 14 with a statement that has stuck in my mind for the past week.  Paul says, "Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you because WHAT I WANT IS NOT YOUR POSSESSIONS BUT YOU!" (v. 14)

New Waterfront Logo

What do you think?

Waterfront's New Website

Waterfront Community Church has a new website.  We had a real basic site going for awhile which worked at the time, but now we have the real deal.  At least I think it looks nice.  Check it out and tell me what you think.

www.waterfrontcc.com

Whirlwind Weekend

It has been a while since I've posted, but it's because I've had a crazy last 4 days.  Last time I posted, I was about to begin the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek, and it was a great conference.  Over the course of Thursday and Friday, I heard from Bill Hybels, Craig Groeschel, Wendy Kopp (the founder of Teach for America), Chuck Colson, Efrem Smith, John Burke . . . the list goes on.  I think the highlight for me was Craig Groeschel's message on "it."  He talked about the fact that some churches and some leaders have "it'" (meaning some sort of special spiritual something) and some don't.  And "it" is something we can all have, but it's also something we can lose without even realizing it.

Friday afternoon I picked up my buddy Daniel, a friend of mine from Colorado.  I showed him around town alittle Friday evening, played some Guitar Hero, and then we met with a couple in downtown Naperville at a restaurant called The Sullivan Steakhouse.  This place was amazing.  Wonderful steaks and a great atmosphere.

Saturday, Daniel and I took the train into Chicago and I spent the day walking around the Loop, Grant Park, Millennium Park, Michigan Ave., eating at Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, viewing the city from the top of the Hancock building, taking the Redline to Wrigley and watching the Cubs lose (the heart of the Chicago experience), having dinner at The Tuscany Restaurant, and taking a cab back to Union Station and riding the train back home.  We covered alot of ground in one day (Here's a link to the photo album with the pictures)!

Sunday, we got up early and drove up to Schaumburg for Waterfront's 3rd Sunday Worship service at the Community Rec Center.  It was a great morning!  God definitely showed up big.  So overall, it was a fantastic weekend, although it was pretty busy.        

Leadership Summit 2008

Today and Tomorrow I am going to be at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington IL, at a conference called Leadership Summit.  It's an annual leadership conference that brings in a bunch of high-end speakers and leaders from around the world, pastors, business leaders, professors, etc (last year, Colin Powell spoke at the Summit).  It's a huge event, with 100,000 people in attendance nationwide.  Last year I went to my first Summit at a satellite host site in Naperville, when I was doing my Leadership Residency at Community Christian.  This year, the Waterfront staff decided to go to the one in Barrington, and I'm currently seated on ground level, center aisle, of a 7000 seat auditorium, 11 rows from the stage.  I'd say we got some pretty decent seats!

Bill Hybels is about to get up to speak so I'll keep you updated over the next few days. 

Scrambling

This Sunday, we have another Waterfront worship gathering, but the place we've been for the past month is unavailable ths weekend.  So we've been scrambling trying to get another place lined up for this Sunday.  Now we're 4 days away, and we're still not totally sure where we'll be.  YIKES!  Should be alright though.  We reserved a really cool spot at the Schaumburg Parks District this afternoon in case our #1 choice (to actually meet in the High School . . . cross your fingers) falls through.  Ahhh. . . the joys of church planting.  I need an antacid. 

Waterfront's First Small Group!

Last night, we started our first small group for Waterfront Community Church!  What a great night.  We had 8 people there, all of us laughing and sharing together, and discussing the vision of our small group ministry at Waterfront.  I can't wait til next week!

2 Corinthians Series, 8:1-6

Since I've joined the staff at Waterfront, a church plant that's trying to give away all of it's Sunday morning offerings, I've been thinking pretty hard about the subject of generosity.  I've been thinking about how important it is, how often I fail at living generously, how difficult it is, how large of a responsibility it is.  When it comes to generosity, I find that it's always a challenge.  And there are always plenty of examples of people I can look up to who model generosity much better than I do.

That's the way Paul begins this section of his letter to the Corinthians.  In an effort to convince the Corinthian church to give more of their resources, Paul begins by comparing them directly to the churches in Macedonia.  These churches were apparently the "Sugar Daddies" of the early Christian movement. . . they didn't have much money, but they gave tremendous amounts to the Jerusalem churches, who were suffering from a famine.  Paul says, "In the midst of a very severe trial, their overwhelming joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.  For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability" (vv. 2-3).  That's generosity!  It's ironic. . . 

Universal Giving

For the last few days you may have noticed on the right side of my blog a little widget called "Universal Giving."  In the spirit of Waterfront Community Church, our little church plant modeling generosity in a new way, I thought it might be appropriate to add this application to my blog.  You can put in a particular focus (i.e., children, education, environment) and/or a location, and it will take you to a variety of international organizations to whom you can give for a variety of needs.

Here's my little disclaimer.  I don't know anything about any of these organizations and so I am not personally endorsing any of them.  I just thought it would be cool to give my readers an extra opportunity to give of you're so inclined.  But please, if you find an organization you think might be interesting, research the organizations yourself, and donate at your own risk.  Thanks!  

Loving People Through Generosity

I just finished editing together our latest Waterfront video, starring Chris and Dawn Johnson.  A few months ago, we gave our people some money to give back to their community somehow.  And last week, we asked people to pick a way that they might tangibly show love toward someone they cared about.  The Johnson's made it all one project and made it a pretty cool story.  Click this link to download it:

Download chris_and_dawn.wmv

Great Weekend On The Waterfront

This Sunday, we had our first Sunday morning worship service for Waterfront Community Church.  No, we didn't move up our launch date.  We're still planning on launching on October 19th, but we've started meeting together as a team and worshiping together every other Sunday.  It's also been the first big "invite your friends" day we've had since the very first few dessert meetings 4 or 5 months ago.

We had a great day.  There were 50+ people who came including those who've been on our team since the beginning and people who just showed up and were checking it out for the first time.  We heard from several people who definitely sensed the presence of God in that place.  It was super simple . . . met in a lady's living room.  But there was definitely something special about it.  It felt like Waterfront.       

St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Schaumburg

This morning I visited St. Peter's Lutheran Churchin Schaumburg.  It is a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church on Schaumburg road between Rozelle and Meachem.  It was a beautiful church.  I went to the 11:00 am contemporary service, and you could tell that it was very family oriented-- there were young couples and older couples and children.  It seemed to me to be a pretty healthy mix.  The facility was pristine.  There were alot of really nice things about this church, and it sort of made me nostalgic of my past experiences in more traditionally styled churches.  It was a nice morning overall. 

Generosity Conversations Part 1

A few weeks ago at one of our Waterfront Community Church launch team meetings, we handed out $800.  Really!  We took about $800, split it up into different sized bills and then passed it around in a basket to every one of them and challenged them to give that money away.  Some people got 50s, some got 20s, some got 10s.  This is all designed to help people understand generosity better as we try love God and people well with our money as a church.

This week, Greg (our arts guy) and I started following up with some of those folks from the meeting, and we started a multi-part video conversation about generosity.  Check out part 1 of this series co-starring yours truly :)!

Waterfront Dessert Meeting: May 10

Tonight we had our third dessert gathering in Wheaton (our fifth if you count the dessert meetings we had in Texas and Colorado).  What a great night!  There were between 25 and 30 people who came.  Many of the people there were from the Schaumburg area, and we had several new faces there as well. 

The challenge ths evening was to love God and people well by beginning a generosity revolution in our communities.  We gave away a total of $800 tonight. . . that's right $800. . . to the people who came.  Some got $20, some got $50, some got $100.  But the challenge was that they would take that money and use it in some way that they thought would help them love God well or love people well over the next 2 weeks, so that they would begin to catch the heart of Waterfront Community Church.  The generosity revolution has begun!

Operation Generosity: CCC style

Two Sundays ago, Community Christian Church in Chicagoland took a bold step in generosity that seems to be becoming more and more familiar.  Some of you might remember my post about Hillside Christian Church in Amarillo, Texas.  They just had a service a few weeks ago where they gave $100,000 back to the the congregation so that they would give it back to the community somehow.  It was pretty cool.  CCC did something similar two Sundays ago.  They had been building generosity teams to contribute to four specific needs (a village in Uganda, a Barangay in the Philippines, church planting, and an underprivelaged neighborhood in East Aurora, IL).

The result from the weekend was that CCC took in $230,000 to be redistibuted to one of these four teams-- that's about $130,000 more than they normally take in for general fund giving.  And here is the most significant stat in my opinion.  CCC had 137 first-time givers.  The average per Sunday is about 10!  You can read more about it here

I think this is really encouraging news for Waterfront Community Church's plan to give it's offerings away every Sunday.  There is definitely something about that pure generosity, helping real people in need, that motivates people to be generous like nothing else can.  We're going to do some amazing things with this church!  Aaron Monts' blog has an interesting discussion going on about our church.  Check it out!  

First Baptist Fun in Golden Colorado

It was an awesome day at First Baptist, Golden in Colorado yesterday.  It was a beautiful day, around 60 degrees, the sun was shining.  Got up early and made the drive down to Golden from Fort Collins (alittle over an hour).  I preached the sermon that morning on 2 Kings 7, the story of the Lepers who storm the Aramean camp (which is kinda how i feel as a church-planter).  It was a fun message.

Some friends from Centennial Lutheran Church came up to see me at the Baptist church that morning too, and we all met up for lunch after the service down in Littleton.  That night I gave a presentation about Waterfront Community Church to a room-full of about 60 people at First B.  Had alot of great conversations and got to catch up with quite a few folks whilst charing the vision for our church.

Afterward, I stuck around and visited the "Underground" College minsitry.  Ironically, Underground is a minsitry that I had started when I was the college pastor at that church.  Still going strong under Tim Gabrielson's leadership.

By the way, the above picture is a picture I took from Lookout Mountain overlooking the city of Golden.  If you squint you can see downtown Denver in the top right corner of the picture.   

Things To Do In Denver When You're a Church Planter

So here's my time in Denver so far.  Arrived late Thursday.  Met with the Korthuises and Golikes in the morning Friday.  Met Dan Breuch for lunch, Tim Gabrielson for coffee, and then I went to the Versaws for Dinner.  After dinner, I drove to Thirnton and watched a few episodes of the Simpsons at Quinn Daly's house, and stayed there for the night.  This morning, I got up, drove back to Golden and met with Tom and Judy Harmon for Breakfast.  Then I went to John Vance's apartment with a few of his friends and spent a few hours over there watching the NFl draft.  Then I drove up to Fort Collins to spend some time with Daniel and Holly Bort, and stay at their place.  I'm waking up early in the morning to drive back down to Golden to preach the sermon at Frist Baptist.

Needless to say, it's a great week and weekend, but I'm gonna be buched by the time I leave on Tuesday.

Washington Ave. Christian Church

Just had a meeting with an old friend, Jim Shelbourne, the Senior Pastor at Washington Avenue Christian Church in Amarillo.  Jim was my children's minister when I was growing up and we've been able to stay in touch after all those years.  I was just telling him about Waterfront Community Church, what we're trying to do up in Schaumburg, and how we want to be a church that gives all it's Sunday morning offerings away.  right away he told me about the great work his church is doing with a local ministry in town.  I think he said it was a food pantry.  But let me tell you, without giving you the dollar amount they give to this ministry, let me just say I was blown away!  What a generous church, and God is doing some great things through them because of it.  Way to go WACC!

On the Waterfront in Amarillo, TX

Today, I was out sharing our vision for Waterfront Community Church in Amarillo, TX.  This morning, I attended Hillside Christian Church and gave about a five minute presentation of our church to a Sunday School class of about 100 people.  Next week, they're taking a special offering for Waterfront and passing around a signup sheet to be on our prayerlist.

This evening, we hosted a dessert gathering at my parent's house.  We had 26 people here, folks my parent's knew, people my brother knew, friends, family friends, all kinds of people.  We had a great time.  Got a chance to reconnect with alot of people and share the vision of our church to the group.  And what was really special, everyone gathered around and laid hands on me (and the rest of the team in spirit), and prayed for me and sent me off.  It was an awesome evening.  We're building support for Waterfront across the nation!

Here are some pictures from the dessert gathering: