Why Do We Sing - Reason #1

Last night in choir, we started a new devotional series.  We are studying God's reasons for singing.  It's easy just to do what you do because you that's what you do.  But, we want to step back and more fully understand why God has called us to sing.

We brainstormed on several ideas that came to our minds to get us started.  I have also been searching God's Word for His direct guidance on singing.  Another resource in this study has been some great discussions from a highly respected worship leader, Bob Kauflin.  I have heard him speak several times and am greatly encouraged by what he has to say.  His blog is at www.worshipmatters.com and he's got a lot better stuff to say than I do!

But in compiling notes and thoughts from the Bible, Bob's studies, and our choir-brainstorming session, we have found MANY reasons to sing.  We're going to be looking at these reasons one at a time over the next two months of choir rehearsals.  Here is the one we started with last night.

We should sing because...God commands us to sing!

The longest book of the Bible is not primarily a book of history, teaching, or prophecy, but a book of poems set to music.

If you study the word “sing” and all its variations, you would find over 500 references in the Bible.  And around 50 of them are direct commands to sing to God.

Here are ten of those commands…

Psalm 30:4 – Sing praise to the Lord, you His godly ones, and give thanks to His holy name.

Psalm 33:3 – Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.

Psalm 47:6-7 – Sing praise to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.  For God is the King of all the earth; Sing praises with a skillful psalm.

Psalm 67:4 – Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

Psalm 81:1 – Sing for joy to God our strength; Shout joyfully to the God of Jacob.

Psalm 149:1 – Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, And His praise in the congregation of the godly ones.

Isaiah 12:5 – Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things.

Jeremiah 20:13 – Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord! For He has delivered the soul of the needy one from the hand of evildoers.

Zechariah 2:10 – Sing for joy and be glad, for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst.

James 5:13 – Is anyone among you suffering?  Then he must pray.  Is anyone cheerful?  He is to sing praises.

Obviously, God not only wants us to praise Him.  He wants us to SING our praises to Him.

Another great passage that challenges us regarding singing is Colossians 3:12–17.

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.  Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.  Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.

As God’s followers, we are commanded to put on a heart of love and compassion toward one another.  We are also commanded to teach and admonish one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.  If we are going to be obedient to God’s commands, we must sing!

This is easy for choir members who enjoy singing, but what about people who just don’t like to sing?

A person who doesn’t know the Lord quite frankly doesn’t have a reason to sing.  BUT, as soon as that person receives Jesus Christ and is saved from their sins, they now have the greatest reason ever to sing!  God has given us a song and He wants us to share it.  It's not about whether or not you can sing, it's about whether or not you have a song.

Even if we already liked singing, now that we’re Christians, we have a better reason to keep singing.  And we should have a desire to fully understand God’s purpose for singing.

Just that fact that God has commanded us to sing is enough of a reason right there.  We want to be obedient.  But over the next several weeks we’re going to be looking at some of the reasons why we believe He wants us to sing.

Check back in next week as the discussion continues.

A New Chapter in my Life: Seminary

Today I start a new chapter in my life.  I am going back to school to get a seminary degree.  Megan and I have been praying about this for several months and we feel confident in God's calling for me to do this.  I am excited about getting started.

Many things have been leading us to this decision:
1. Edgewood has been through many changes over the last year.  I have had the privilege of serving on the staff, the board, and the vision team as we work to follow God's leading through a time of transition.  For many of the topics we discussed, I felt very under-equipped to know how to best move forward.  This is where the idea of furthering my education started.

2. My college training was fantastic and I greatly appreciate my time at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri.  My degree is in church music which greatly prepared me for music ministry.  However, I would now like to broaden that education and my abilities to additional areas besides just music.  Even things like being a better pastor to those in the worship ministry would be a huge help.

3. I believe this will greatly enhance the Worship Ministry at Edgewood.  The Biblical training alone will give me a better understanding of God, God's Word, and leading others closer to Him.  I will also take many ministry management classes to help with the administration side of church work.

4.  I am only 28 years old and, Lord willing, want to be in the ministry for the rest of my life.  Hopefully I have a lot of years left to serve and I want to be as effective as possible with every day He gives me.  A four-year study will be well worth it in the long run and will make the rest of my years that much stronger.

There are the basic thoughts of what led us to this decision.  Multnomah Biblical Seminary is in Portland and has very strong, Biblically-based programs.  They have an extension campus in Bellevue (about 20 minutes from us) and also offer some online classes.  I will also need to spend a few weeks a year at the Portland campus to complete all the necessary requirements.

My degree will be a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies with an Emphasis in Ministry Management.  I feel my strongest spiritual gift is in administration and I want to continue to develop and strengthen that gift.  If taken full-time, this is a 2-year degree.  But since I will need to break it up to continue working at Edgewood, it will take me roughly 4 years.  For this semester that starts today, I am taking a Foundations Intro Class, an Old Testament Class (focusing on Isaiah to Malachi), and a New Testament Class (focusing on the Gospels and Hebrews-Revelation).  I've got lots of reading to do =).

I would appreciate your prayers as I get started on this new endeavor.  We are four months away from the due date of our baby boy and things are going to get busy real fast.  I'm excited about deepening my personal relationship with the Lord during these classes, but also want to keep a good balance in life of family/ministry/school.  Pray for my sanity =).

Christmas at Edgewood, 2011

Edgewood has an ongoing tradition of putting on a big Christmas production every year.  It is a great time of the year when guests are open to visiting churches to hear the Christmas story.  And it is an amazing opportunity for the church to reach out to the community.

However, over the last few years, we have noticed a pretty strong decline in attendance.  And, even worse, we haven't seen hardly anyone coming to know Christ through these productions.  The Christmas program has been referred to as one of our biggest outreaches of the year...but recently it hasn't been reaching many.  So this brought us to great prayers and discussions for how to move forward this year.

We had a great planning team that was open to God's leading.  This team came up with the following purpose statement for this year's program:

"We want our community to experience the love of God, the wonder of Jesus’ birth, and the significance of a relationship with Him."

After much prayerful discussion, we felt led to bring in World Class Illusionist, Brock Gill.  Brock also did two school assemblies to share a positive message in the school and to invite them to the full show at Edgewood the next day.  This proved to be an amazing way to connect with and reach out to our community.

I believe due mostly to the connection with these schools, our attendance (combined from two shows) was close to 700 as compared to 500 from the year before.  And we estimate that half of our attendance was made up of guests.  Brock was extremely impressive with his illusions and even better with his Gospel presentation.  He had a great connection with our audience and at least TEN people responded to receive Christ.  TEN!

That is where our joy comes....not in "an impressive show" or "high attendance" but in changed lives.  Ten lives are changed forever by what God did through this show.  We are very grateful!

Assimilation Strategy

Tonight we had a great meeting at Edgewood to talk about our new assimilation process. This was a result of several months of intense prayer, research, and discussion on this topic. We wanted to share the strategy with the church tonight and plan to launch this new process THIS Sunday, the 20th.

Here are the notes from what we discussed. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for this process. We'll be evaluating as we go and definitely want to make this as strong as possible.  Any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Edgewood Mission Statement:
We live to honor God, to be equipped, to serve and to see lives transformed by the message and person of Jesus Christ.

Introduction
By our research, we've found that in the first seven minutes of contact with our church, our first-time guests already know whether or not they are coming back. They’ve decided whether or not they’re coming back before the service even begins!

Everything speaks to first-time guests…everything. No detail can be ignored.
 
When someone decides they're going to visit a church for the first time, the enemy is going to do everything he can to try to stop them.  They will sleep in later than they hoped, the kids will spill their breakfast, the dogs will make a mess, etc. etc.  When they finally make it to the church, we have to work extra hard to overcome their already stressful morning.  We must go that extra mile to help them feel welcomed and comfortable at our church.

The Assimilation System is built around a three-step process:
1. Turn a first-time guest into a second-time guest.
2. Turn a second-time guest into a regular attender.
3. Turn a regular attender into a fully developing member.

Sounds simple enough...but how do you do that?  Well....

We feel our assimilation process needs to improve in these three areas:

1. We must be EXCELLENT in how we handle guests in their first 7 minutes on our campus.
- Customer Service Approach - We want our greeters/ushers to go the extra mile in helping our guests find what they need and feel comfortable at Edgewood.
- Greeters/Welcome Center/Ushers - We want these existing teams to understand the value of their ministry.  Also, these volunteers are all part of one big team working together toward the same goal.
- Parking Lot Team - This is a team we'd like to get started in order to help guests find a spot to park and know how to enter our confusing building.  We are currently looking for a volunteer to coordinate this, please let us know if you're interested.
- Coffee Fellowship - Our research has shown that guests' stress level is immediately dropped when they're standing behind a cup of coffee or have a donut in their hands.  We are going to work toward having coffee/snacks available before both services in order to help with this.  Our Sunday school classes currently volunteer for this, but we are looking for a coordinator to help keep this ministry consistent from one week to the next.
- Signage - Our building is confusing to navigate.  Later this week, new signs will be installed for the sole purpose of helping visitors know where to go.  They will label the South Entrance, the Auditorium, and Adult/Youth/Kids classrooms.

2. We need to be more efficient in getting contact information from guests in order to follow-up.
- Connection Cards - For this to work, every single person in the service needs to fill these out.  This will greatly encourage our guests to fill them out.  Without contact information, we can't do any type of follow-up.  These cards will also be used to challenge our regular attenders to grow spiritually.
- Follow Up Team - Dave Anderson is going to coordinate a Monday Response Team to send e-mails and HANDWRITE cards thanking guests for joining us.

3. We want to provide more opportunities and easy access to small groups, fellowship events, and service opportunities.
- People will not stay at a church long if they do not develop relationships.  We believe small groups and fellowship events will be the best avenue for those relationship to develop.  We will do our best to schedule as many of these as possible.  Allowing guests to join us in service opportunities also allows them to have ownership that Edgewood is now "their" church.

Other items that we discussed at the meeting.
1. In order to collect the connection cards, the offering will now be at the end of the service.
2. The Welcome Center must remain strictly focused on visitors. Signups for ministries and events will take place through the connection cards.
3. The ushers will be handing out EDGEWOOD pens (for the next two weeks) with the bulletins in order to strongly encourage everyone to fill out the connection cards.  After the next two weeks, we will make sure they're available in a basket in the back and inside the pew racks.
4. The ushers will encourage each person (not just each family) to take a bulletin.  This will allow for each and every individual to fill out the card and make personal responses.
5. Because our parking lot fills up so quickly, we strongly encourage regular attenders to park on the far side of the parking lot or even across the street at the Elementary School.  We've gotta save our close spots for our guests.

Closing Quotes
"It doesn’t matter how well you preach or how talented your worship team is—if newcomers do not find relationships and take on responsibility within the church, they will not stay long."

Matthew 25:29 “To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given…but from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” God will never give you more than you are prepared to receive.

"The Kingdom only grows by one person at a time. Focus on the one God sends you, and the one will turn into many."

This is definitely a church-wide process and in order to pull it off with great success, it's going to take all of us working together....all of us going that extra mile.  Little things can make a HUGE difference.  We want to do our part and we are very excited to see what God's going to do!

Time to catch up

Many things have been happening since the last time I wrote on here.  I can't believe I didn't add one post throughout August, September and October!  It's time to catch up....

Edgewood has many things to be excited about right now.  We just got to celebrate the fact that we are now completely debt free. That is a huge relief and reason to celebrate as a church. 

The new vision/direction that I talked about on here in July is in FULL swing and things are going well.  .  In addition to all of those changes, we as a staff have been working hard at preparing an improved "assimilation" process.  We are looking at better ways to help people move through the process of "just visiting" to making Edgewood their home.  One interesting statistic that we found during our research...did you know that most people have decided whether or not they will come back to a church after their first SEVEN minutes on that church campus?  Seven minutes...that's before the service even starts!  Visitors notice everything and they have many times made up their minds about our church before the music even begins.  That sure changes our perspective on things and how we approach our guests!  We're finishing up some details for this strategy with the goal of launching this new plan on Sunday, November 20.  I invite any of you Edgewood readers to come join us in the sanctuary for a meeting on Monday, November 14th, at 7:00pm.  Dave and I are going to present these plans and share ways that the whole church can get involved.

In addition to the assimilation process, I'm absolutely PUMPED UP about our Christmas program this year.  We are bringing in World Class Illusionist, Brock Gill to highlight the show.  This is going to be a Christmas program like we've never seen before!  That's coming up on December 10th at 3:00 and 7:00.

Our "vision" team that met throughout the summer has continued meeting in order to evaluate our progress and to work on other church issues.  We're currently evaluating the structure of our Elder Board and wanting to make sure it's setup in the most effective way.  Lots of good things going on there.

On the personal side, a LOT has been going on as well.  It has been a privilege serving on the Edgewood staff, the elder board, and the vision team.  But through all the challenges over the last year, I have many times felt "under-equipped" in knowing how to handle these situations.  I have also realized that my education and background has been strictly in music and music ministry.  I haven't had much training in church ministry as a whole.  So, I have been praying hard about the possibility of going back to school.  I believe a seminary education would be very beneficial.  It would greatly enhance the ministries that I am already involved in and would give me a wider set of knowledge for things to come as well.  Multnomah Seminary in Portland has a Bellevue extension campus and I am strongly considering going there to get a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies.  This would include many great Bible classes as well as a variety of ministry management classes....all of which would be hugely profitable to me.

As a family, we are feeling really comfortable in our schedules right now.  Megan has been able to continue with her job, but they've allowed her to work only two days a week.  That has continued to give us a steady income, but make it where she can be home with Madelyn more.  Megan and I have also both recently gotten involved teaching music lessons at a studio near our house.  It is extremely convenient, adds a few more hours of work/pay each week, and has been an enjoyable place to meet some new people.  So...I have been feeling that we've been in a great groove recently...working hard, but enjoying life.

And...then comes a little surprise =).....

We just recently found out that Megan is pregnant again!  Madelyn will be one in March and then will become a big sister in May.  Keep the diapers coming!  Even though this was a little sooner than we expected, we are excited about adding another little one to our family.  We should find out whether it's a boy or girl right around Christmas.

So...you can see why I haven't written in awhile.  There is a LOT going on right now.  It was time for an update...so there ya go!  I'll try not to wait three months to write again.

I'd appreciate your prayers as we continue plowing ahead ...

For the church....I believe the next couple months are going to be very exciting.  Pray that the new assimilation process and the Christmas program will both be powerful opportunities to help new people connect with our church. 

For our family...pray for Megan and the new baby, and pray that if it's God's will, He will make this opportunity to go to seminary become a reality.

I'm EXCITED about the new direction at Edgewood!

I just wanted to share how excited I am about the upcoming changes and new direction at Edgewood.  If you missed the announcement this morning, here is the video...

I have struggled with a sense of "comfort" at our church for a long time.  What I mean by that is I feel we are too comfortable within our four walls.  As a whole, we are too content in coming Sunday morning, enjoying a good service together, and going home.  Sunday mornings are important, don't get me wrong, but I think who we are as a church should be reflected through our lives EVERY day of the week.  It should change the way we act, change the way we spend our time, change the way we spend our money, change the way we deal with those around us, etc., etc.  Dave Anderson's new role as the "Pastor of Missional Living" is a HUGE step toward that direction.  We are wanting to put a stronger emphasis for each church member to grow individually in order to reach people outside the church through our daily lives.  While that is a huge mindset change, here are a few practical ways that Dave will help us work toward that goal:

1. Small Groups
2. Discipleship/Mentoring
3. Evangelism
4. Outreach Events

I am a firm believer in small groups and I'm excited that we will have someone overseeing and pushing this important ministry.  Megan and I have had the privilege of being a part of the 20's/30's small group for the last year.  Through this group, I have gotten more out of the Sunday morning sermons than ever before, I have met new people and developed stronger relationships, I have felt the support of a great group of people, and we have been involved in several mission-minded projects together as well.  To be honest, this small group is one of my favorite things that I'm involved in.  I love it and I'm thrilled that more people will be able to experience this type of setting in the very near future.

The importance of mentoring has been discussed on here before when I talked about being a multi-generational church.  It will be great to see more connections there as well.  Evangelism and outreach events were purposely listed as two separate headings.  Evangelism refers to more personal training and encouragement to share our faith in our every day lives.  Outreach events are church-wide events that Dave will be organizing with the intentions of reaching out to our community.  There are lots of possibilities here!  I am very excited about this new position for Dave and am praying for God to move through Dave in powerful ways.

And what about this?  Chuck Orr leading Student Ministries AND the Shannon Bullock/Sabrina Orr Team for Children's Ministries????  Wow!  I can't think of anybody that I'd rather have in these positions than those three.  They are absolutely amazing people who have strong hearts for the Lord, strong hearts for Edgewood, and strong hearts for kids/youth!  Any one of them would have been a great boost...but all three together? Wow!  God has truly provided amazing people for these roles!

While the responsibilities for Jerry and I will stay practically the same, I believe we will both sense a renewed passion and fresh excitement for our roles on this team.  We've got some details to work through over this next month, but we're pumped about kicking this into full gear on September 1st. 

The Board will officially vote on this plan at the August 18th meeting.  We'd love to hear your feedback before then.  What excites you most about this plan?  Are there any questions you have that would help clarify the goals or thoughts of these ideas?  Feel free to add them here on the blog, or contact one of the Elders or Staff.  We'd love to hear from you.

Be praying for us, be praying for God's clear direction as we get started, be praying about where you'd like to plug in to serve with us, and be praying for God to move in amazing ways.  We're looking forward to seeing what He's going to do this fall and throughout the year!

Father's Day

Today I have the opportunity to celebrate my first Father's Day.  I really wanted to share this entire story at our service this morning, but was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get through it.  Turns out even my abbreviated version was a little too hard for me to get through.  The love a daddy has for his own children is amazing and it completely overwhelmed me again during the first service.

I've shared some of this on the blog already, but here is the whole story that I wanted to share this morning....

On the evening of March 20, our church gathered together for our Annual Meeting.  However, Megan and I missed that meeting because that is the night that we welcomed little Madelyn into the world.  She was born on Sunday night and then on Monday, they decided we should stay another day at the hospital to make sure she was doing okay.  On Tuesday, they felt she was moving along well enough to send her home.  We were excited about taking her home and enjoyed showing her the house, her new room, and the closet full of clothes (that were all too big for her =).

Then, on Wednesday, we went right back to the doctor for her first checkup.  In my mind, I’m thinking this is going to be fun.  We put her in a cute outfit for her first doctor’s appointment and I even brought the camera with me and took some pictures.  I was expecting a quick, "she looks great" and we'd be on our way.

But our attitude pretty quickly changed when the doctor came in.  He looked at her chart and just stared at Madelyn for a few minutes.  She had dropped below 5lbs, she hadn’t been interested in eating enough, she was struggling to keep her temperature up, some of her blood levels were off, and she was showing signs of jaundice.  The doctor was very concerned about her, so he sent us to get some more lab work done.  We went over to the hospital and had tears in our eyes as we watched them drain two test tubes worth of blood out of her foot. 

That is a day I will probably never forget.  For whatever reason, that was the day I realized how strong the love is between a father and his own child.  When I thought there could be something wrong with our little baby, my heart just broke.  I had never felt that kind of love before.

You can see why I would have had a hard time telling that story this morning.  I wanted to share it then, but even now through the blog, to encourage all of our dads to reignite that love you have for your kids.  God has placed each of us in an amazing role to have a HUGE impact on our children.  I know that my three months of daddy-hood experience is only scratching the surface in my understanding of being a Dad.  But, I have found out very quickly that it is such a privilege and such a responsibility.

And, by the way, we took Madelyn back to the doctor the next day and she was already showing signs of improvement.  When I heard that news, I breathed the biggest sigh of relief ever.   We were so grateful that she was going to be okay.

This experience also gave me just a small glimpse of understanding into the love our Heavenly Father has for His children. Wow!  Sure gives you a new perspective for how much we are loved!

As you’re celebrating Father's Day today, I pray you can fall in love with your kids and your family all over again and thank God for the blessings you have in your life. 

You'd never guess who picked out this shirt for her =).