New watch

So on a Sunday a few weeks ago I took my watch off to not cause a glare with the spotlight. I sat it down in the chair where my murse goes. Typically, at the end of church one of my kids goes in, stuffs everything into my murse, hauls it out to me and then off we go. Unfortunately for me, my watch never made it and it was left. When I returned it had been taken and it was not in the lost and found for the theater.

Thus begins the search for a new watch for me...
Being a nerd, I sorely appreciate precision. I have had watches that are off by a second or two every day...that is unacceptable to me. My previous watch was a Casio that synced with the atomic clock out of Denver, Colorado three times every day. That is the kind of precision I can really get behind!

So after looking into them, it appears there are not that many watches that sync with the atomic clock. It just seems strange to me since it is so easy to do. Citizen makes a gorgeous eco drive Skyhawk watch that syncs but I don't have that kind of disposable income. The only other watches I could find were Casios. They have some big ugly ones that are all plastic and lcd but they also have some nicer looking watches that still synchronize. So I pulled the trigger on a new Casio with actual hands on it.

And it will synchronize with the atomic clock!

Community...

My post on churches that say they are there to benefit their community and yet don't seem to have any involvement seems to have struck a chord. There were some responses to that post and I wanted to blog about one of the churches here. Ocean Hills Community Church goes out to serve their community with no strings attached. They have sponsored seminars and fed others. Keep up the good work, Ocean Hills!

Laying it out there...

I'm sorry, I have not updated Dean's blog (looking at it, I see I haven't finished the wiring from a couple months ago!) and the message blog in a while. I seem to go through a roller coaster of emotion and effort based on the status of my back. Basically it has been getting worse recently and what ends up is I take whatever medication I have available early in the day so I can get through work or church or wherever I am expected and I end up end so much pain in the evenings that I was unable to blog or update other blogs or anything like that. I'm beginning to feel a bit better with a change to my meds so I can blog and I'll be updating the podcasts but it may go out to lunch for a while again and I thought you all should know...I'm not trying to ignore my responsibilities but I find myself out of energy.

Serving our Community

This is a phrase that is often placed on church web sites. I've gone through a ton of church web sites reading about them and examining their site to see if there is something they are doing that we can use to make ours better. Almost to a church, the phrase

Serving our Community

is there. That makes me dig deeper. I want to know how they are serving the community. Maybe get some ideas of what we can do for the community. So they list their things...they have various bible studies for men, women and kids. They have a group that talks about missionaries the church supports around the world and usually they have a group that prays. And all of those are great things, but where are they serving their community? It seems like they are serving those folk that attend the church. Meeting the needs of the congregation who come from nearby, but what are they doing specifically to serve the community? It seems to me they feel that just having a presence in the community is akin to serving. Is that true? By just existing and helping a couple hundred people on a Sunday are they serving?

Last Sunday

I talked last about speaking on tithing in church and starting the conversation. Well, after that first talk, it was reiterated to me how low on funds we are and I was told to just

share my heart

so I did.

I feel very strongly that I do not want to get in the way of God's Holy Spirit working in peoples' lives, but I also feel that it is only fair RCCers, those that attend our gatherings, are made aware of the situation of the church. The situation is rather dire having not met budget in many months and behind in paying our lead pastor by thousands of dollars. I shared all of that on Sunday and I hope I did not turn anybody off, but rather they understood that this was my heart and I wanted them to know.

I didn't receive much feedback from Sunday, but without my producer I was very busy when we were done cleaning up and putting the gear away, so I couldn't listen to much.

Well, I did it...

I spoke about tithing last week. I began the conversation as it were. It took quite some time to get through the material but the end result was a solid introduction to the idea of tithing. We read 2 Timothy 5:18 together

Give a bonus to leaders who do a good job, especially the ones who work hard at preaching and teaching. Scripture tells us, "Don't muzzle a working ox" and "A worker deserves his pay."

and it really illustrates the point to me that we should be paying our leaders. There were some problems though. It seems when I told people that I am a strictly unpaid volunteer and have no stake in their tithing decision they got the wrong idea. Rather than realize they are abusing the leadership of the church by not paying them as scripture says, some got the impression that everyone in leadership should be unpaid volunteers rather than be paid by the church.

And it was mentioned to be that there is another type of giving...guilt-driven. Some people feel bad for what they've done through the week or feel bad for some situation the church is in and so they give a bit to feel better. I think I need to teach on this again. I'm encouraged to speak my heart, but the reality is my heart is frustrated. It feels almost like I continue to push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down before I make the top. By now a lot of regulars have heard about tithing in many different ways and their decision to tithe or not is something they are not going to change.

There are some who think we need to concentrate on new members and advertise that we are available for them to come and check out if they want. That just seems like we are encouraging a consumer mentality of church when we are trying so hard to just be real. I just don't know where that leaves us. We certainly can't continue to even exist at this level let alone move forward with our plans to expand what we're doing. People are getting tired, others have thrown everything they own into making this work and we're near the end. If we lost RCC I just wouldn't know where I could attend church.

I guess that's what I have to share in church tomorrow. Thanks for listening. :-)

Teaching on tithing

Tomorrow we are starting a new series where we teach on tithing during the worship experience as well as have our normal teaching on You Might be a Pharisee If...

I am being given the opportunity to teach about tithing mostly because nobody can use the excuse that I have an interest in teaching about it. I am concerned only because people tend to get antsy when we are talking about money. But it is clear that we have not been doing a good job about teaching proper stewardship. We have not met our budget in quite a few months which leaves us in a very bad position with our bills. Because of that we need to teach what stewardship means.

One month

My wife informed me that this is the one month anniversary of the last time I posted.

Pathetic!

I can't believe it has been this long! I'm sorry, I'll try to finish the car buying story very soon.