Most important Sunday of the year?

I work at a church. If you don't care about a local church then you can skip this post. If you do I think you will at least have some thoughts to consider afterwards.

Which Sunday is the most important Sunday of the year for a church?

Most of us would naturally say Easter Sunday, right?

I would agree if I'm asking the question from a Theological perspective then yes, Easter Sunday is the most important.

What if the question is asked from a Missional perspective? Which Sunday is most important in a Church's effort to do what Jesus asked us to do..."Make Disciples"?

I would venture to say that the Sunday After Easter is more important in the life of a local church than Easter is. I have to give credit where credit is due. I didn't always believe this, but after spending a few years around some fantastic church leaders especially Don Wilson (ccvonline.com), I have come to understand this principle

If you work at a church and just finished a Good Friday, Sunrise, and extra services you probably don't want to read this. Go ahead and go back to Facebook it will be OK. My timing isn't that great on this one- most of us just spent so much time and energy making Easter AWESOME we can't imagine next weekend much less a weekend with energy and excitement. Trust me I know I took a nap yesterday and another one today...Easter makes me tired.

But what about all the people who came to your church this Easter?

What if they come back?

Will they find the JV team on display?

What are you doing this week to make them want to come back?

Too often as I interact with church leaders, both paid and volunteers, who look at the week after Easter as a coast week. Let's do the minimum and hope no one notices. I completely understand that you can't run the engine of your church at 7,000 rpm week in and week out, but trust me when I say that the weeks after a huge effort like Easter are not the weeks to let the engine idle. Next year do this for me, actually for the people far from God in your community, figure out the lowest months for Church attendance in your community. Let's say it's, February, then that should be your idle month. Not April. April seems to be a universal and natural growth period for churches. The trick is to figure out ways to make April even bigger, not February, the key to church growth is maximizing the big months and making them bigger.

This week at the church I serve we are kicking off a new series called The Story. Easter was a preview for The Story. Our hope and prayer is that some of the folks who dropped in for Easter are compelled to come back this next week and experience God in a powerful way surrounded in a welcoming environment. You can get some info on The Story here:
http://thestoryflag.com/
http://www.thestory.com/home

If a middle aged father of two who hasn't been to church in 4 years came to your church Easter weekend, how will you get him to come back this week?

If you define success as making all of your church people happy on Easter then you probably won't prioritize the family that only comes 2 or 3 times a year. What if at Easter you did things in such a way you actually motivated them to check out what happens at your church the other 48 weeks a year? The way I look at is that we can't really gauge the effectiveness of our Easter efforts until next Sunday when we see who comes back.

What will you do this week to capture the momentum God granted you yesterday?

Sabbatical Part 1

At the church I serve at there is a policy in place that a Pastor on staff for 7 years must take an 8 week sabbatical. Today my sabbatical ended. I wanted to share a few experiences and funny stories from my time away now that its over.

I started my sabbatical on May 15, by taking my wife, Kristi, to San Francisco for 5 days. It was a great trip to get away. We stayed at a boutique hotel across the street from Fisherman's Warf. We did all the tourist type stuff you hear about in San Fran. We went to Alcatraz (in the rain no less), we rode bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge. We rode cable cars, we ate at local restaurants, we found an Irish pub and tried their "world famous" Irish coffee. It was an awesome way to begin a season of rest and renewal.

After all these years of marriage and ministry it was incredible to spend time with my wife and realize we both still enjoy each other's company. If you said I could go to a new city and explore it for a few days, I wouldn't pick anyone else on this planet to accompany me. I'm pretty sure, she'd still pick me as well. I will never forget my first trip to San Francisco and the incredible woman who made the trip wonderful and adventurous.

The trip itself really didn't feel like anything other than a cool vacation. What was really bizarre was coming home from a trip like that and not going back to work. I didn't even check my work email....weird. I began to think about work a couple of times that first week home and realized that the church was pretty successful before I showed up and would probably continue on after I leave, it could manage without my incredible gift and contribution for a few weeks.

I never found myself longing to be back at the office. Don't get me wrong I love my job, and I really love the people I'm surrounded by each and every day at CCV. They are a great church I worship with each and every day. I had a few plans for work related projects during my sabbatical. Pretty quickly I realized that if someone wants to do work projects they shouldn't take a sabbatical when their wife is off work and their 3 kids are out of school. So I found myself putting the work projects on the back burner.

One funny story from our San Francisco trip: Our first night in town we wanted something local to eat, but everything was packed. We finally found ourselves at the Boudin Sourdough Bread Factory. They have a sweet restaurant upstairs- so we get our table buzzer from the hostess and begin our wait for a table to open up. A fine-looking gentleman and his male companion (if you know what I mean) come walking up the stairs holding hands {Quick aside- it didn't bother me at all that these two "friends" chose to interlock their fingers while pursuing dinner that night, I was prepared for the "sights" of San Francisco and promised myself I wouldn't stare too long if anything weird starting happening} …back to the story- I see these walk up and I look away to practice my promise of not staring...when I realize one of the guys is staring at me. I look over and my friend is looking right at me. At that moment I do what any other guy would do if a guy were looking at him (outside of San Francisco) I give him the "hey what's up dude?" head nod.
Well lets just say in San Francisco the "hey what's up dude" head nod, is a secret code for, "why don't you look me over like a piece of meat 3 or 4 times.

I have to be honest I didn't really expect to be checked out in such an obvious manner. I'm used to people checking me out being a bit more subtle. Kristi thought is was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Especially the way my face turned red, and I had no idea what to do. She said I looked like a big cuddly teddy-bear, to that little bitty skinny fella.

More sabbatical learning and experiences to follow.