Group Life this Summer

It has been a month since our Sunday morning schedule change.  The enthusiasm about the worship services has been high.  I believe God has used this to invigorate our corporate worship experience each Sunday.  We continue to pray that God's Spirit would infill our worship services each Sunday.

In the meantime, we need to remember that a very important piece of our strategy for making disciples is group life.  The Adult Bible Fellowships (ABF), the Student Bible Fellowships (SBF), and the Children Bible Fellowships (CBF) are our primary way to engage people in group life.  We need not neglect this because much of the spiritual and numerical growth of our church is directly related to this.

As we approach summer at Calvary, we have a great opportunity to move forward in our vision of being a church that “loves God and loves people.”  Being part of a group where we experience community and where we reach out in loving ways to others is a very key aspect of living out the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30-31).

Because of the nature of summer in the Valley, we are ceasing our Wednesday activities at the church campus (with a couple of exceptions).  This will free up our Adult Bible Fellowships relating to our three services (classic, contemporary and Spanish) to meet beyond Sunday morning.  (ABF’s will continue to meet on Sunday morning).

The purpose of ABF mid-week experiences is (1) to reach out and serve others, and (2) to build community among group members.  The nature, frequency and time for these mid-week experiences will be determined by each ABF.  (The Spanish ABF’s will meet on campus in June and off-campus in July/August).  It will also be up to each ABF to determine how to best include participation from children and youth that relate to them.  Additionally, there will be a summer home group for Middle School students on Tuesdays and for High School students on Wednesdays.

We are excited about these growth opportunities and hope many will take advantage of them.  This is not meant to provide more activity for the sake of activity or more work for ABF leaders.  It is meant as an opportunity to do things that Bible Fellowships are designed to do.  It is hoped that this will also be an opportunity to empower other individuals in the group to give leadership to outreach, fellowship, hosting, etc.

Please be in prayer for this, encourage leaders and groups to take advantage of it and remember that our staff is ready to help and facilitate this.

Pastor Joe Gerault's Change in Staff Role

As several of you know, Pastor Joe Gerault, who has been on the pastoral staff at Calvary for over seventeen years, has had some serious health challenges in recent years.  His condition is called Ataxia and it is a deteriorating illness.  (I posted on this blog about it on January 19:  Joe Gerault's Medical Update).


This condition has made Joe’s job very difficult over the last several months.  As he and I have discussed the progress of this over the last couple of months, at his request, we have agreed that it is best for him to move from a full time role on staff to a part time role.

This agreement has been approved by the personnel committee and it will be effective July 1st.  Joe’s responsibilities will be primarily in the area of pastoral care and will not include most of the administrative responsibilities he has now.  Much of what Joe took care of in the area of administration will now move to James McGinnis (church business administrator), me (as lead pastor) and the rest of the pastoral staff.  We will be transitioning those roles over the next six weeks or so.

This comes in the midst of some slight staff restructuring that was under way already.  I am still visiting one-on-one with staff members before we finalize this restructuring.  Once it is finalized, we will announce it to all and implement it accordingly.  I am working closely with the personnel committee before moving to any implementation of changes.

Please pray for Pastor Joe.  We are so grateful for the great contribution he has made to our church for many years, for his spirit and example in dealing with such a difficult illness, and for his willingness to continue to serve in a new role.

Given the financial environment in the church and the valley, all of these changes call for each of the current staff members to adapt to our job responsibilities.  I am working hard to make sure these changes are equitable across the board and I hope that we will learn how to be more efficient, but more importantly, more effective in mobilizing the church for God's mission.

Please know that we are praying for each staff member.  We would like to count on your prayers also during this transition.  I am confident that the Lord is leading us forward and will continue to lead us as we trust and depend on him.   ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty  (Zech 4:6).

"Living when dying is gain"

"Living when dying is gain" is the title of the eight chapter in David Platt's book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.  In that chapter, Platt treat "the risk and reward of the radical life."  It explores the implications of Jesus words, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:39).

To be on mission with Jesus involves high risk.  His call to the disciples to "heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, and drive out demons" was not a call to a safe and comfortable church huddle.  It is an invitation to go where the diseased, the dying, the despised and the dangerous are.

As our pastoral staff discussed this chapter earlier this week in our staff retreat, we were reminded of the reason Pastor Rolando Aguirre was not with us.  He came back from an exploratory mission trip to Chiapas having contracted Typhoid Fever and was still not well enough to join our retreat this week.  We are grateful that he is recovering well and he is expected to be back behind the pulpit of the Spanish service this Sunday.  Of course, there are lessons that we learned from this incident that will help us take better precautions for future mission trips. 

As I visited in Rolando’s home yesterday, I asked him about his participation for the trip to the Amazon this summer.  Enthusiastically, he said, "I should be ready to go by then."  The trip to the Amazon will offer very similar conditions to the trip he took to Chiapas.  Why is he not staying away from these places that have the risk of disease?  Should this not be a lesson for us to keep our mission trips to “safer” places?

Matthew 10:39 reminds us that to be in the middle of God’s will sometimes involves risking our very lives, not to mention our comfort and safety.  It does not mean that we will be negligent or that we will not take necessary precautions.  But it also does not mean that we will stop going where He has called us to go.

Jim Elliot who God called to go to the Huaroni people in the jungles of Ecuador said, “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.”  He was beheaded by the Huaorani but the tribe eventually came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Last night I booked the plane ticket for my sixteen-year-old daughter Rachel to go to Panama where she will be in the jungle with the Kuna people.  Why would she give up two weeks of her summer to go to an island where there is no electricity and no running water?  Because she loves God and because she loves the Kuna people.  Is it risky? Yes.  Is it uncomfortable? Yes.  But I could not stop her from going because she understands what it means to “find life” by being willing to give it away.

Neither can we keep Rolando from going on future mission trips.  Neither will we stop going where it is risky and dangerous.  We will learn.  We will take precautions.  But we will “find life” by giving ours away as we go where he sends us.

So How Did it Go? and How Are We Doing So Far?

After our first Sunday in the new schedule, people are asking "how did it go?"  Others are wondering "how are we doing in general?"  

When people ask these questions, they generally mean, "what was our attendance?  how much was the offering? and what kind of enthusiasm was felt as we gathered?"  These things matter because they are, to some extent, signs of vitality or lack of it.  Of course numbers do not tell the whole story of a congregation's vitality.  So we must also be willing to ask deeper questions.  In this post I will deal with the first type of question first and then move to the second type.

May 1, 2011

On our first Sunday of the new schedule we had 284 in the classic (9:30) service, 398 in the contemporary (11:00) service, and 322 in the Spanish language (12:30) service for a total attendance of 1004.   It was one of the top five Sundays in attendance for this calendar year, including Easter.  The classic service attendance was much higher than usual.  The combined contemporary attendance was about normal and the Spanish language service continues to go up.

The offering for this Sunday was $47,585.85.  It is the highest offering for the first Sunday of May in four years.  And although it is just one Sunday, it is consistent with what we have received for the first Sundays of February, March and April of 2011.

Many of the comments received is that there was a new sense of excitement in the worship services.  We thank God for that and we pray that it is His presence that we are experiencing together.

It was observed that the attendees to the contemporary service need to do a better job of filling up the front and middle pews in order to give room for guests and late comers.  We have to leave room for growth! 

In terms of the Bible Fellowships, the report was that attendance was lower than usual in all areas (adults, students and children).  The reason for this maybe because families are still trying to figure out where they are going to fall in the new schedule.  It may also bring to light that some students and children were attending Bible Fellowships while their parents were in worship.  Bible Fellowships are a central part of our disciple-making strategy.  We need vibrant congregational worship but not at the expense of group life.  We expect that this will get sorted out in the next couple of weeks and we hope that families are taking advantage of the opportunity of both: Bible Fellowships and Congregational Worship.

Offering and Attendance in the Last Nine Months

While it has been observed that we are struggling to meet our current budget, it is also important to be aware of our income relative to previous years.  The January 2011 offering was the third lowest offering of any month in four years.  However, the February 2011 offering was the highest February offering in four years.  March 2011 was higher than last year but lower than the previous two years.  April 2011 offering was in line with April 2009, which was the highest April offering in four years.

In terms of total (English and Spanish) worship attendance 2011 is overall the highest attendance year in five years, following very similar patterns to the 2009 attendance.  So our church is showing some growth.  However, in terms of the English services, 2011 attendance is following the same pattern as 2010 which was lower than the previous three years.  This means that our primary growth is taking place in the Spanish service.  While we rejoice with this growth, we believe there can be an upward trend for the English services in the near future.

The Deeper Questions

Beyond the statistics of attendance and offerings, there are deeper questions about the health of our church.  This past Sunday night, the pastoral staff met with representative leaders from all of Calvary's ministries to explore some of these questions.

One of the questions that was posed was how is Calvary doing in the areas of spiritual and relational vitality?

By spiritual vitality we mean, how are the individual members of Calvary and the entire congregation giving evidence of "abiding in Christ" as described in John 15.  In other words, how are we giving evidence that we are seeking God's presence, abiding in the Scriptures, listening to God's voice and obeying Him?

By relational vitality we mean, how are the individual members of Calvary and the entire congregation giving evidence of "loving one another" as also described in John 15.  How are we building community with one another in honest and open relationships?  How are we experiencing relationships of truth and grace among us?  How are we confronting, forgiving and restoring each other?  How are we building relationships with those that do not know Christ in healthy ways that could lead them to faith in Him?

Another way to ask this question is, "How are we loving God and loving people?" (The Great Commandment).

I believe that if we focus on these questions, the attendance numbers and the offerings will be "fruits" of that reality.  They will become secondary issues.  Let us ponder on that in a personal way and at a congregational level.

This month we are considering the "radical: invitation to extreme living" aspect of discipleship.  We don't pretend to have it all together.  We don't assume we will arrive at this instantly.  We just want to acknowledge where Jesus has set the bar for us and then seek him to take us up to that extreme level.  This is a walk of faith!  It is an exciting invitation.  I don't know exactly what all it means for me personally.  I don't know exactly what it means for Calvary. But I want to follow Christ wherever he leads us.

If we take this invitation seriously, Calvary's brightest days are ahead of her.