negative=positive

2 weeks ago a guy named Jason approached me at church. He recognized me from a church that we went to together around 10 years ago. I asked how he ended up at trinity, we talked about how I ended up at trinity, then I asked him what he thought of the place. He told me that he's trying to hand off his responsibilities at another church to start attending trinity regularly. Jason said that what he liked about trinity was that our services were so "simple" and "bare bones".

Last weekend some of us were hanging out at Octane (surprise) and Shaunna was talking about a church that she and Chris had attended with a friend of hers. She said that it felt like a rock concert, with fog machines and laser shows and songs that you couldn't sing along with. Someone said that they liked the fact that trinity sang songs that were "familiar".

Simple, bare bones, familiar. These words would give most pastors night terrors because popular wisdom says that your service has to be a big, unpredictable production to get people my age to come to church. But it seems that this wisdom of how to get 20-30 year olds to get involved is based on what 40-50 year olds think 20-30 year olds want. Given the fact that we are doing well in what is typically the most unchurched demographic, it seems that maybe simple, bare bones, and familiar might be the way to go if you want people like me to come to your church.

i'm proud of trinity.

Addiction pays off

While looking over my church's website bulletin board a couple of months ago I noticed a post about shoes. Our church sponsors a village in Kenya called Joska and in the village there's an orphanage for boys. We send a group over twice a year to help with things like digging wells and building walls and the group brings things like school supplies. The guy who runs the orphanage emailed the church 3 days before our group was leaving with a request for shoes. Finally my addiction would be put to good use!

Jonathan Stancel and I were able to cover the largest sizes from our personal collections and Linda, Lauren and Pam from Wish donated the rest. In all we sent 40 pair of new or barely worn shoes to Kenya. Not just walmart specials, either. These were all exclusive, limited edition Nikes, Reeboks, adidas, you name it.

So out of all my shoes, I'm proudest of these:

My dog is real cute.

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