Outside the Program

Hillcrest serves in the community most Wednesday evenings during the year, and while there's much to be excited about with this program, some Hillcresters serve in the community outside of the program, in their own unique way and time. Part of my challenge is finding these stories and then communicating them to the rest of our church as a way of encouragement- you don't have to be with us on a Wednesday night to join us in our mission. One of these stories came my way a couple weeks ago:

This week we purchased 10 used coats and 12 new pairs of knit gloves to distribute to students involved (with an after school program). In addition we crocheted 30 stocking caps that have been distributed to students who have come without a hat.

I so enjoy these stories. If you're a Hillcrester (or even if you're not!) who's up to some good, drop a line and let us know!

Church Hiding Places

All of my kids probably feel like our church facility is a second home for them (they run around like it is, anyways) and recently my first grader discovered a new hideout with his buddy. Here's a recap of the convo:

Riley: "Dad, Jamie and I have a secret hideout at church."

Me: "Where's that?"

Riley: "(forgetting that it's a secret hideout) oh, it's the place where Pastor Doug pushes people under water"

Me: "you mean the baptismal tank?"

Riley: "if that's where Pastor Doug pushes people under water. By the way, have you ever pused people under water?"

Me: "Yes, a few".

Riley: "(laughing) you've pushed people under water?!? Why?!?"

Me: "it's called baptism, and (realizing I'm going to have a hard time explaining this to a 1st grader) it's something that people who follow Jesus do when they want to show other people that they follow Jesus (save your inditments of my heresy or incomplete explanation of baptism)

Riley: "(laughing again) well I know lots of people who follow Jesus who haven't been pushed under water . . ."

True, true.

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas from Hillcrest's staff!

Do what I say, . . .

Another quote from McManus from Master Leaders: if you’re a leader, you cannot tolerate the discontinuity between what someone says and what that person does, if the two don’t match. I cannot tolerate it when we pretend we care about a world drowning in poverty and disease and yet do nothing about it. We say all that, and then nothing in our culture and in our values reflects those concerns. I just don’t have any tolerance for that (115).

This quote struck me it was honestly the rationale for Hillcrest's Wednesday Night Service. If we say that we’re a church that values serving, the community, and being a place that the community would miss, then we’d had to take some tangible steps into demonstrating that value, and not just being content with saying it. And that doesn’t mean that we’ll always have to have a program like Wednesday Night Service in order to model that value, or that people that don’t participate in Wednesday Night Service don’t model that value, both of those statements miss the point. It does mean that sometimes you do have to do things in order to bring alignment between what you believe and what you do, what you value and how you behave.

The Spiritual Gift of Cleaning Bathrooms

There's been a recent movement in churches to help people discover their strengths, their talents, and their spiritual gifts, with the hope that if people knew what they liked to do and what they were good at doing, than they would have more to contribute in terms of volunteering at church. Often, a church would have people working in children's ministries who had signed up years ago because of guilt or because their own children were in it, but they had no real interest in children (they liked their own children, just not other people's kids) and they weren't good at it, but they would stick it out because they thought that what a good Christian did. So the strengths/talents/spiritual gift movement was designed to help people discover what God had gifted them to do and then place them in opportunities where they could do those very things. It's a movement that has some wonderful positive things associated with it, and many volunteers now serve in roles that are better fits with who they are as people, and our children's ministries are better places because for the most part, the volunteers want to be there because they enjoy it, not because they have to.

For all of the good that's come from that, though, is that no one has yet to discover the spiritual gift of bathroom cleaning. The strength of chair stacking. The hidden talent of floor mopping. I think that the more specialized we've made spiritual gifts, the more we think that those acts of service are better left for people who have that spiritual gift. Trouble is, you can't really find that. I know, you can make an argument that 'acts of service' is a spiritual gift, but if that's the case, it operates more like the gift of evangelism, where some may have the gift, but all are called to do it. There may be people who prefer to serve in ways such as stacking chairs or setting up tables (and do it better and with more joy), but each of is called to do those things.

I think Erwin McManus, quoted by George Barna in Master Leaders, sums it up nice when he says this: Somewhere along the way, I began admiring people who have that kind of humility. I wanted to be like them and longed to become that kind of person. And then, on a practical level, I thought, look, I don’t know how to be humble, but I know how to do humble things. So I’m just going to fake it. I’m just going to take out the garbage and stack the chairs and clean the floors and scrub some toilets. That’s what all the people I really admire do, and maybe, eventually, it will translate into who I am. I think we have to actually love humility. And that’s how you can begin to know if you’re moving in that direction: when you love people who live lives of humility, people who are self-effacing, and people who are differential (126).

Saving the community money

Came across this the other day.

It's an interesting concept- a church donating community service hours to its community and the local and state governments actually being able to calculate how much those efforts saved them in real dollars.

I'm not sure what Hillcrest's impact would be, but a conservative estimate (Wednesday nights, mentoring, reading buddies) for Hillcresters would be over 3,200 hours a year. At minimum wage, that's over a $23,000.

E-mentoring

Came across this in Argus the other day. For those who can't make it to a school to physically mentor, this looks to be a promising option. Plus, kudos to LSS for 'out of the box' thinking on how to engage mentors with students in Sioux Falls' bedroom communities.

On a related note, Cleveland held an appreciation lunch for its mentors today. Of the 12 mentors who were there, 10 are from from Hillcrest. Very cool. The mentoring coordinator took pictures so I'll post those later if I can (Most of the mentees were all smiles for the picture their mentor. My mentee, true to form, did not smile, but gave a grumpy face!).

A Real Team Effort

We laucned our official partnership with Land of a 1000 Hills Coffee this past Sunday, and there's lot of neat things happening with that, but one of the things that most excites me is the real team effort it required to pull off this switch. Among the team's contributions

• proceeds from the fall craft fair helped purchase the coffee equipment; the craft fair is organized annually by Marti; in addition, this year Vicki recruited the many volunteers needed to pull off this event so that we had proceeds that go to equipment purchase
• when buying our own own equipment, Doug and Lee reserached local options, online options, pricing, specs, and a host of other issues and got us the best equipment, the most equipment, at the best prices
• someone had to detach the old equipment and install the new stuff, thanks to Greg for that work
• a ministry such as this requires week to week management and a passion for teh potential good this change can do in Rwanda. Nancy has this and oversees the ministry, and kicked off this past Sunday handling coffee sales and donations.
• we needed to communicate the change to the church, why we're making the change, and Doug and Joslyn played key roles here
• our coffee ministry team is made up of 8 people inclding Nancy and Larry, Deb and BJ, Greg and Julie, and Doug and Karen, who make and provide the coffee each week; they have played key roles with this switch as well.

I probably overlooked some folks, but personally, so much of what has been good about this switch has been that it's been a real team effort, and something that the team has been excited about.

Bell Ringing

Ringing bells last night for 'the army'. Of course, we rang on the first cold night in over a month, but good times still.