Archives For family

Why Your Church is Like Rotten Tomatoes

April 24, 2013 — Leave a comment

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2009.One of my favorite apps on my phone is Flixster, which lets me view upcoming movies and trailers. More importantly, before I make the decision on whether to watch the movie, I look at the Rotten Tomatoes score, a percentage of how many other users liked the movie. More than the critical reviews, I know that if other users like the movie, I probably will too.

Why is this important for the church? Because 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising, up 18% since 2007. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted source of brand information with a 70% trust rating, up 15% since 2008. Television ads were trusted by only 47%, down 24% since 2009 (Nielsen, April 2012).

I’ve worked at churches before I that I wouldn’t have attended if I wasn’t employed by them. How many of my friends did I invite there? None. A church can have a ton of formal advertising, but word of mouth trumps it every time. Growing a church is a lot simpler than pastors and theologians make it out to be. The number one way to grow your church in today’s society is to create a church environment that your members enjoy enough that they’ll naturally tell their circle of influence about it, and to create a culture where your members have the mindset to reach out (as opposed to simply reaching in).

We’ve seen this play out at Mt Vernon. Over the past year and a half that I’ve been pastor, 99% of our growth have been family and friends of existing members. Virtually every time our staff discusses a new guest, we discuss the close friend or family member who brought them. Why? Because people trust recommendations of family and friends above all other forms of advertising. A member loves our church enough to bring her mom, who brings her close friend, who tells everyone at work. We’ve grown roughly 20% over the past year, with no formal advertising, no mass mailers, no door-to-door campaigns. It’s simply word of mouth.

The winds of culture are changing. We can continue to fight against it, or find a way to harness the power of it to see the Kingdom advance.

QUESTION: What is your church’s Rotten Tomatoes score? (It’s more important than you think)

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Why You Shouldn’t Raise ‘Good’ Kids (How to Raise Amazing Teenagers While They are Still Toddlers – Part 4)

January 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

12.17.12If your goal in parenting is to raise ‘good’ kids, then your bar is way too low. The world wants ‘good’ kids. As a Christian parent, what makes you any different? I had too many conversations as a youth pastor with parents of teenagers, where they would describe their goal in parenting: they wanted their kids to be ‘good’ kids. By ‘good’ kids, they meant that they wanted their teens to be well behaved, get good grades, get a college education, find a nice spouse, settle down and chase the American dream.

Is that really what we want for our kids? If our kids turn out like the rest of the world, have we really done our job as Christian parents? A third tension that parents face today is raising good kids vs. godly kids. Everyone wants to raise a good kid. For Christian parents, our bar is set much higher. We are to raise godly kids. There’s a subtle but unmistakable difference between the two: good kids are raised to be like the world, godly kids are raised to change the world.

This mindset becomes critical for parents, especially as you direct and manage your kid’s time. A few years ago I was at a church when a Sunday School teacher came up to me and told me that she wasn’t going to be able to teach Sunday School anymore. More than that, she said her family would be dropping out of church for awhile. Why? Because, in her own words, “My 6th grade daughter just made Select Soccer. It’s a traveling league with games on Sundays, and that’s our priority right now.” My heart broke, not because I’m a legalist or think church attendance is mandatory, but because the message that 6th grader was being raised with: church is important, as long as you don’t have anything else going on.

If you want to raise a godly kid, not just a ‘good’ kid, that will mean saying ‘no’ to a lot of ‘good’ opportunities. But remember, your goal is not to raise a kid that will just succeed in this world. Your goal is to raise a kid that will change it through the power of Christ.

image courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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How to Make Sure Your Kid Doesn’t Turn Out to Be a Punk (How to Raise Amazing Teenagers While They are Still Toddlers – Part 3)

January 16, 2013 — 1 Comment

1.16.13You never want to have THAT teenager. You know, the one with the attitude, the permanent scowl, the complete disrespect for all authority (I know I just described around 68% of all teenagers). I’m not just talking about an occasional bad attitude. I’m talking about ‘punk’ kids (that’s the technical term). I worked with punk kids as a youth pastor. I know I’m supposed to like everyone, but I didn’t like them. They were punks. I was happy to see them walk across that graduation stage and become the college pastor’s problem. (They usually took care of the problem themselves and dropped out of church while in college).

Obviously there are several factors that lead to your toddler turning into a punk as a teenager, but here’s one that was common in all the punks I had the “privilege” of working with: they were spoiled rotten. They’d always had everything handed to them. Everything. This leads to the second tension that parents face when raising kids in today’s society:

2. Spoiling vs. Serving. I know you love your kids. That’s not a bad thing. Spoiling them is. I know you may have had a rough childhood and want the best for your kid, but spoiling them only feeds their sense of entitlement and natural narcissism. This will only get worse over time. These are the teenagers who disrespect all authority, including their parents. They’ve grown up hearing that they’re the center of the universe, and after awhile they began to believe it. These are the punk kids.

The solution is to teach your child to serve others at an early age. Better yet, serve alongside them as you serve others together. When my oldest child was just three I took him down to the city bus station. Some of our high schoolers were going down there to hand out bottles of water to the local homeless population that tended to congregate there. My son handed out bottled water right alongside me and the high schoolers. Why? Because I want his earliest memories to be of him serving other people. Serving is how you break the sense of entitlement.

Be intentional. Find a way to serve WITH your child. Don’t just serve your child.

image courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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The Prayer Every Parent Should Pray

January 7, 2013 — Leave a comment

1.7.13In the book of Nehemiah, we see an incredible story of a man determined to accomplish his God-given task, no matter what the obstacles. With the audacious goal of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem (a wall that had been a rubble for the past 100 years), Nehemiah faced opposition on every side from his enemies.

In Nehemiah 6, we catch a glimpse of his focus and determination that led him to accomplish in fifty-two days what had not been accomplished for a century. Towards the end of the project, when the wall was almost completed, Sanballat and other enemies of Nehemiah tried to distract him by getting him down off of his wall. His response should become our prayer:

1 When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates— 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”

But they were scheming to harm me; 3 so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” 4 Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer. Nehemiah 6:1-4

Parents, your children are your wall. They are your great work. You have been given an incredible gift and responsibility from God: to nurture and care for precious souls and to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Don’t let anything distract you from that great work. If you have children in your house, you need to speak this truth as a prayer over them every night after they go to sleep: “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.”

In Biblical Truth, Family Matters, What I'm Teaching , , , , ,
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Why I’m an Unashamed Facebook Stalker

December 18, 2012 — 1 Comment

12.18.12At a recent church function, a new church family came up and gave me a nice compliment. They were impressed that I knew their names and their children’s names. They know that Mt Vernon isn’t a small church. There were several hundred that called Mt Vernon home when I got here, and in 2012, several hundred more have visited. This couple had visited and gotten plugged in within the last few months. They haven’t gotten plugged into a Life Group yet, so they don’t know a lot of people. Yet I know them and their family. They said, “You must have a gift when it comes to names and faces.”

Here’s the secret: I work really, really hard at getting to know names and faces. That’s why I’m an unashamed Facebook stalker. If you’re on Facebook, game over. Our church database (F1) has the ability to add pics next to names in our directory. I’ve personally spent hours and hours adding over 300 new pictures from Facebook to recently attended guests. Why? Because once you know someone’s name, they’re no longer a stranger. They’re family.

Regular attenders expect you to know them, guests don’t. Here’s the easiest way to help a guest become a regular attender. Learn their name. Call them by name the next time they come to church. Once you know their name, they’ll no longer feel like a stranger. They’ll feel like they belong. Game over.

The truth is I’m not a natural with names. If I meet someone face-to-face and learn their name, nine times out of ten I’ll forget it. So I have to work at it. Constantly. My “Mt Vernon Faces” album on iPhoto currently has 513 pictures in it. I’ve got about 85% of those faces locked in. That’s 436 men, women and children I can call by name when they show up at Mt Vernon. That’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it. Every name you know is another soul you can impact for eternity. Work hard at names and faces. It will always pay off.

Image courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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The Power of Knowing a Name

December 17, 2012 — Leave a comment

12.17.12Here’s part of an email our church recently received, “Thank you for making us feel so welcomed, we have been enjoying the church services and my heart is so happy that my children are also enjoying it too!” This is from a family who’s recently attended and has decided to make Mt Vernon their church home. What helped make the difference? We knew their names.

This family came late to our 10:30 service, dropping their kids off and slipping in before anyone could properly greet them. But our staff are highly trained welcoming ninjas. They will not let a new couple go away ungreeted! At the end of the service, while our Worship Pastor was closing out the service, one of our staff informed me that we had a new couple that came in late, but we didn’t know their names. They had kids, however, that they had registered in our children’s environments. Checkmate.

I quickly walked over to our children’s environment, got the names of the kids and the parents when they registered. By the time they came to pick them up, I was ready for them. I greeted them by name and talked with them for about five minutes. They couldn’t get out of our building without two or three other couples coming up and introducing themselves.

Two weeks later, they were back. This time to stay. They’ve found their home at Mt Vernon. Once we knew their name, they were family. Do whatever you have to do to learn someone’s name.

QUESTION: Has knowing someone’s name ever helped you connect someone with your church?

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