The Village Voice

Every year in January I get a package emailed to me by our financial team. In it, there are a myriad of Excel files which detail every possible aspect of our giving for the past year: which months were best…which trends were there…etc. There’s nothing in it about who gave what or details like that, but there is a lot of information about where we stand in terms of our giving at the church.

To be honest, our giving is something I think about three or four times a year when we’re doing some planning, and I am so, so, so, so, glad that we are a church which rarely deals with this subject and only does so from a spiritual (as opposed to guilt-based) perspective.

Anyway, within the package this year was something new - a breakdown of our weekly giving for the past 6 years.

I thought it was very interesting and encouraging, so I thought I’d share it here on the blog:

2002 – $263.43 - Our first year of existence in Mississauga; 3 families
2003 – $521.89 - We launched publicly in Mississauga, and weren’t yet viable
2004 – $978.72 - Things pick up attendance-wise
2005 – $1,023.22 - We reach our upper size number-wise in attendance in Mississauga
2006 – $979.32 - We relocate to Milton with a smaller group and virtually no overhead; saving for our launch
2007 – $2,062.06 - Our first full year of existence here in Milton
2008 – $3,003.91 - This past year

For as much as I hate to gauge the success of anything by looking at money and numbers, I found these numbers super encouraging.

For me, what it shows is that we’ve come from a small group of 3 families who were doing our best to prop up a crazy dream of launching a church, and now we’re at a point where we’re a group of 150 or so who are now helping own this dream to impact Milton in amazing ways.

Very cool stuff.

This week, we’re launching into our first ever mega-series here at The Village.

It’s going to run for fourteen weeks, and I am chomping at the bit to get it started.

Here’s the graphic and the title:

You know you’re doing the right thing with your life when every week from Tuesday to Thursday you have butterflies of anticipation about what your job will bring with it that Sunday.

I truly feel like I was born to pastor one church…The Village Community Church.

Every once in a while, a delivery truck will whizz by my house on it’s way somewhere. Over the course of a month I’ll see FedEx trucks, UPS trucks, Purolator trucks, and one other truck which always leaves me a little baffled.

It’s a non-distinct grey van, and it’s adorned with a full-wrap advertisement for The Children’s Miracle Network, or the Make-a-Wish Foundation, or the Children’s Wish Foundation…one of those organizations.

Now, as I’m telling yo this, note two things: 1) I don’t even know the name of the delivery company (I think it’s Canpar, but I can’t be sure); 2) I don’t know the name of the charity either.

By all accounts, this very noble attempt at promoting a very worthy cause is actually shooting the entire effort in the foot.

By all accounts, this very noble attempt at promoting a very worthy cause is actually shooting the entire effort in the foot.

Why?

Because in promoting the cause, the cause itself became the identity of the company. I see this all the time in churches as well.

They give a lot to missionaries…so they become a missions church
They’re connected to a soup kitchen…so they become a socially-minded group
They have teens in their church…so they build a rec centre for them
Etc., etc.

The list goes on and on.

While these are all great steps, and possibly very effective moves to make, what they symbolize is a group that is willing to divest itself of its main identity in the search for another cause to follow.

Instead of a group promoting a cause and having it become part of who they are…they allow the cause to take over. In every instance this is a very bad idea, and one that is doomed to fail.

Instead of a group promoting a cause and having it become part of who they are…they allow the cause to take over. In every instance this is a very bad idea, and one that is doomed to fail

.

When organizations don’t have enough clarity about who they are and what role they fulfill, they’re sitting ducks for an eventual regression and evaporation.

In churches you see this take shape in the form of entire congregations locked into outdated summer children’s ministries, Sunday morning habits, mid-week scheduling traits, even bussing programs, which are leftovers from decades past.

These all typically started as niche ideas that worked like a charm, but eventually they jumped the boundary of adding to the church’s vision and became the vision itself.

Here’s an interesting link.

I’d be curious to know what your guys’ thoughts are about this.

A touchstone of ours since day one, and something we learned from our sister church - Grace Community, was to always speak in series.

It’s such a part of us now that we don’t even think about it, but I know a lot of people/churches still grapple with the concept.

For us, the reasoning behind it is simple:

-you get a focus for your speaking
-you can easily discern the topics you’ve covering in any given year
-it helps with planning
-each series gives you a sense of newness and excitement
-you’ve got a built-in creativity point and advertising foothold

As a leadership team we always grapple with series topics and lengths, as this is one of those things that often sparks (healthy) disagreement.

One of us will typically speak out of our own experience and discernment and determine Issue A is paramount right now…while someone else will make the exact same claims about Issue B, etc.

Starting the first week of January we’ll be kicking off our first ever mega-series - 14 weeks long!

To give us an anchor in this area we’ve decided to go back and forth, series by series, from a topical approach to an exegetical approach (i.e. a series based on a topic or idea…to a series based solely on a particular book of the Bible)

Well, we just wrapped up Sex and the Suburbs (which was topical), and now we’re headed into the new year with an eye on a particular book of the Bible.

In this case, Genesis.

Starting the first week of January we’ll be kicking off our first ever mega-series - 14 weeks long!

We’ll be covering creation/evoluton, good/evil, God/man, Noah/flood, and then tracing the origins of our life and faith down through the 50 chapters of Genesis.

Should be a good one.

Consider yourself invited.

-I loved the rotating party idea. I really did. Having 25 people in your house for an hour, and then having another group come for the next hour was really cool.
-Carlos, Melanie, and of course, my wife Angie, and Mat’s wife Myriam (our hosts) did an awesome job getting everything lined up.
-Like I said on Thursday night, we just wanted to have a party which reflected the ideals of the church - a simple time where we could personally connect and hang out
-I never knew that sausage rolls could be so filling…and so good as leftovers the next day
-The most common score in the Rob or Mat? Trivia Game we had…11 out of 15 (several people stumbled on which one of us won speed skating competitons as a youth [Mat] and which one of us was on the high school quiz show Reach For The Top [Me])
-I tell you, if you haven’t connected with a church yet in Milton…and ours didn’t tickle your fancy for whatever reason…then check out Milton Bible Church. Honestly, they give us their building about once a month for various events, and I couldn’t imagine more gracious hosts.
-I think the mark that we have a humble group of people at The Village is that during the presentation of the door prizes everyone was trying to give theirs to someone else who they felt deserved it more…good on you, guys

So, it appears as if GM and Chrysler are tanking and need help from the government.

I feel for them.

I really do.

On a spiritual level, I feel like I tanked about 15 years ago…the day I cried out to God and asked for a ‘bailout’, so to speak.

Corny, I know…but I had to say it.

On a more…umm, practical…level, I can also empathize with bailouts in another way as well.

You see, for the first 3-4 years of our church-starting endeavors in Mississauga we were a poor group of people.

You see, for the first 3-4 years of our church-starting endeavors in Mississauga we were a poor group of people. We had always wanted to be self-supporting ASAP, so we were leery of receiving too much help from our parent organization -Grace Brethren Canada.

However, they were great with us, and mainly helped out by defraying my salary for years.

As we moved to Milton though, and started fresh as The Village Community Church, we did so with a much stronger financial footing.

Or so we thought.

At the end of the first calendar year of the church’s existence (Sept-Dec), we had really kicked the doors off of our launch.

It was awesome.

However, with all of that impact came a very big outlay of expenses…an outlay we couldn’t cover by year-end (when we needed to X out our books and clear the ledger sheet).

With all of that impact came a very big outlay of expenses…an outlay we couldn’t cover by year-end

This wasn’t good.

From out of the blue though, GBC swooped in and helped us out with the few thousand dollars we needed (we weren’t in the 17 billion range, FYI), and we were good to go.

However, in order to receive it we placed some restraints on ourselves that we determined to not break if it was ever within our power.

1. We wouldn’t spend money we didn’t have…period.

2. We would always budget liberally and spend conservatively.

What I mean is that we would increase certain areas of our budgeting beyond what we expected to pay, simply because we knew something always came up…and we would still only spend on things that our leadership team considered ‘needs’

3. We would always develop two budgets…a need-based one, and a wish-based one.

These have become known as our working budget and our dream budget, and what we have found is that we cover the needs faithfully now, and every 2-3 months or so we prioritize something from the wish list (i.e. new equipment, ad pushes) and go ahead to purchase it. We’re still incredibly frugal with things, but having the two bounadries in place in the form of these budgets helps a lot.

4. We determined to give away 10% of all of our finances to needy people (missions, etc.), and then increase that percentage by 1-3% every year.

Since we’ve made this move we have never once been in need of finances. Not once.

With these things in place I think we’ve been on a lot firmer foundation, financially speaking…and here’s hoping GM and the rest can make some similar changes as they wade into the world of bailouts as well.

-Sex and the Suburbs is now history…sad to see it go

-I had 14 pages full of notes for today…I was pretty jacked up about the topic: Sadness & Struggles

-I tell you, diving into Guilt, Abuse & Affairs is not fun topical stuff to explore for the week leading up to a Sunday

-For the first time since we launched, I choked back tears while speaking…it was during my main point for the Abuse section where I said (in response to abuse victims feeling guilty for the offenses) ‘It’s not you fault’…when I sat down to play the clip from Good Will Hunting which drove the point home, I was really emotional

-Our attendance was down a fair bit today…with the subject matter at hand though, that’s to be expected

-People really rocked the First Christmas campaign and provided a Christmas for dozens of people who are spending their ‘First Christmas’ out of the Halton Women’s Shelter…the lobby looked like Santa’s Workshop

-I’m really looking forward to next week’s Christmas Service…the kids will be in with us, and it should be fun

-Pastor’s House Party is this week as well…Woo Hoo!

Because of who I am and the calling which I have in life (to start a church from scratch), I must admit that I always empathize and side with those with who have entrepenurial spirits.

When I see a new restaurant…I desperately want it to succeed
When I hear of a new home-based business…I always hope it doesn’t take too much out of the person running it
And, when I hear of a new store opening…I am always fascinated by how it merges into the culture here in Milton and how it shapes the consumer landscape

As you can tell, I’m kind of a nerd.

Anyway, over the past two days I’ve seen right across the entrepenurial spectrum here in Milton, as I’ve visited two places which really taught me a lesson in leadership and evolution.

One spot I visited was a local eating establishment (which shall remain nameless) which has had a rough go of it for sure. There have been false starts, ups and downs, ownership changes, etc. Now, the right team is in place, the right owner is on-board, and internally, things are good.

However, when I was there a few days ago I was struck by the fact that the core business ideal which drives the retaurant (i.e. the specific menu) was being discarded in favor of more of a floating menu where you could get what you wanted at different times.

No longer was this a ‘________ place’ (i.e. burger place, mexican place, dessert place…), it was now a ‘______ place’ early in the morning, a ‘_______ place’ during the day, and then a ‘________ place’ for the late night crowd.

In short, the restaurant determined that it’s core audience was not catching on here in Milton, so they decided to become a restaurant which catered to everyone at different times.

While I admire their spunk and effort, I’ve got to tell you one word popped to mind while I was sitting there: desperation.

While I admire their spunk and effort, I’ve got to tell you one word popped to mind while I was sitting there: desperation.

All of their efforts are noble enough, but they really smacked of a lack of a driving vision, and they were now grasping at straws trying to make anything work.

Now, compare this to another spot I visited this week. This is a retail outlet which has a strong local following here in town, but was definitely getting swallowed up by all of the recent growth. Larger retailers in the same field have moved in, and they have carved up the market share big-time.

This place was always staffed by ultra-friendly people, but in a word, the place was, well, dingy.

This place was always staffed by ultra-friendly people, but in a word, the place was, well, dingy. No effort was ever made to keep it up because the core crowd simply wanted the service, they didn’t care about the bells and whistles.

Well, those gravy train days of being the only sheriff in town have ended, and now that the competition has set such a high bar for cleanliness, service and ease of shopping, these guys were quite honestly getting murdered.

So, I ended up swinging by there yesterday, and what do I see?

Well, for one, they’ve halved the size of their store in order to trim their expenses. When I asked the manager about the move he told me that they wanted to save money, and in fact, they still have the exact same number of products on the shelf for half of the overhead cost.

Think a change was in order?

As I looked around some more, I noticed that the inventory had completely turned over as well. Evidently the retailer had decided that the status quo needed to change a bit, and they adapted accordingly.

So, what’s the difference between desperation and survival?

When I went to pay for my stuff, I realized that they still had the great service; they still had the best prices; and now, they had the upkeep needed to compete with the big boys.

I left, got in the car, and felt my heart warmed by a word much different than ‘desperation’: survival.

I empathize with survivors on every level, and these guys were adpating in order to make things happen.

So, what’s the difference between desperation and survival?

Is it having success and doing things right?
Is it making the right changes at the right time?
Is it doing your homework and staying ahead of the game?

No. I think what differentiates between Business A and Business B is one thing: a defined dream.

I think what differentiates between Business A and Business B is one thing: a defined dream.

Business A is running around trying to do everything it can to stay afloat…but it has no purpose or vision driving it.

Meanwhile, Business B is working off of a set model and plan…and it is now making changes to keep that foundation secure in a changing market.

I think there’s a lot to learn there for the church in this situation.

How many things do we chase as magic cures regardless of our core vision? How many ideas pop up in our minds, and how do we know which ones to pursue? And finally, how secure are we in who we are and who God has called us to be when things take a momentary dip?

Desperation and survival are two very different things…and I think that God honors one much more than the other.

Desperation and survival are two very different things…and I think that God honors one much more than the other.

It’s our job to figure out which one’s driving us.