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We Just Gave Away $229,000!

Last Saturday and Sunday was our Celebration Generosity and one of the most amazing weekends ever in the life of Community!  We gave away our entire weekend offering!!  Yep, we gave away nearly a quarter of a million dollars.  The grand total was just over $229,000!

Last winter we felt like God was calling us to be an even more generous church than ever before.  As we prayed about this it became clear that we were to take one whole weekend and give away our entire offering to some other part of the Jesus mission both locally and around the world.  I am so proud of the people of Community for not only getting behind this, but giving so generously.  Our weekly budget for the Jesus mission is $95,000 and you gave way more than double.  Wow!  Thanks.  Let's continue to become a more and more generous church who follows an extraordinarily generous God!

The Beginning of a Dream...

Sunday night over two hundred of us gathered at the Lincoln Manor in East Aurora for dinner and to dream about how we could better serve this under-resourced community.  This 57,000 square foot facility built by the Masons back in 1922 is one of the dreams that we are exploring.  It has a lot of potential as a community center...but that needs lots of prayer! 

The group that was gathered was mostly people from Community, but also included leaders from Warehouse Church, First Presbyterian and the city of Aurora.  I told the group gathered, "we feel called by God to serve this community and to partner with existing organizations who have been making a difference here for years.  And we need the expertise of business leaders, community leaders and other spiritual leaders to accomplish all that God wants us to accomplish."

The highlight of the evening was hearing from Desiree Guzman (TRAF),  Kirsten Strand (Community 4:12) who have both moved into the neighborhood and then my friend Ed Bahler of the Cornerstone Knowledge Network.  On Monday Ed will be leading us through a visioning session to help us figure out the next steps in making this dream come true.  Pray for us.

Bikers, Darts and the Mission of Jesus

We had a great weekend at Community.  And I'm not even talking about the 25 services at our 9 locations.  I got a couple weeks worth of post from this weekend.  But it all started on Saturday morning at Leadership Community when we were able to share some great news with the leaders that our God was entrusting us with record numbers of people - more than ever before!  And as cool as that was, that was not the highlight.  The highlight was getting to interview Donna and Jeremy who are leading 3C Communities. 

These 3C Communities are not facility-dependent and are not staff-dependent.  They are a lot like a small group, except that this 3C Community becomes your church. Rather than starting a new community (new small group, new campus or new church) to help people find their way back to God; they are trying to redeem the communities of which they are a part.  Their hope is that these communities will one day be at a place where all three C's (celebrate, connect and contribute) are experienced and that their friends will become Christ followers.

Donna loves to ride bikes (read Harleys) and loves bikers.  Most of her biker friends are not interested when she invites them to come to one of our CCC sites.  But when she asked them if they would like to schedule regular rides on Sundays they all said yes!  So every Sunday she will be riding with her biker friends asking God to give her a chance to redeem that community and help her friends find their way back to God.  Donna believes that her greatest opportunity is that as a need arises she offers to pray with and for her friends.  She believes that will provide the way to more significant conversations and perhaps one day a community of bikers who are practicing the 3C's.

Jeremy has a bunch of friends that love throwing darts in a local bar.  They like Jeremy and are more than willing to talk about spiritual things.  But they have not shown any interest in walking though the doors of a church.  So Jeremy is asking God to redeem the community that is he already a part of and he hopes to help his friends find their way back to God.  Jeremy doesn't just wait for spiritual topics to come up.  Because he is very interested in spiritual things, it seems appropriate for him to talk about this with his friends - so he brings it up. He believes that through intentional conversations that they will grow and learn together and perhaps his buddies at the bar could become a group that practices the 3C's.

As we fulfill the great commission we can either create brand new communities or we can redeem the communities of which we are a part.

Keeping Score & Dashboards

I just finished up an article for the Christian Standard titled, "Golf Scores & Dashboards: Keeping Track of How the Church is Doing".  It is basically a rant about how most churches only keep score by attendance and offering. While those are important numbers, they certainly don't tell the whole story or all that church leaders need to know about Jesus being formed in the life of the people of their church.  At Community and through our NewThing Network we have developed a dashboard (that we are still working to get right) that goes beyond attendance and offering and keeps track of the following:

• 3C Christ Followers:  We want to know how many people and the percentage of our people who are growing in the spiritual experiences of celebrating (weekly part of our celebration service), connecting (doing life together in a small group) and contributing (giving of their giftedness in service and of their finances)?   If I could only have one indicator on our dashboard this would be the one!  This gauge tells me more about the spiritual health of a person than any other indicator.

• Baptisms – We also want to know how many people are making commitments to become Christ Followers.  This was something that was counted in the book of Acts and it counts today, so we count it.  This will give you the best indicator of your churches evangelistic temperature.

• Leaders – We also want to know how many people are apprentice leaders, leaders and coaches?  This may be unique to the culture of Community but I think it is absolutely critical.  This tells you how many small groups you have (leaders); how many potential small groups you have (apprentice leaders) and what your leadership development pipeline looks like.  The strength and depth of your leadership tells you how soon you can reproduce a new site or church. Why?  Because it’s leaders that facilitate all the small groups for kids, students and adults.

• Artists - We want to know how many artists we have at Community.  When we use the term artist, we are using it in a very broad sense to include worship leaders, vocalists, musicians, actors, dancers, painters, videographers, sound and light technicians, etc.  Just like with leaders, the strength and depth of your artists tells you how soon you can reproduce a new site or church.  Why?  Because it is the artists that create and lead all large group worship and celebration events.

• Services & Sites – I want to know that we are reproducing at all levels.  I want to know how many services we do on a weekly basis.  When we started Community we only had one service at one site.  Today we have over 25 services at nine different sites.  I want to watch that gauge too.

We know what we want to watch - but the hard part is getting good and consistent data.  So we are still working on this both at Community and in our NewThing.  Thoughts?

Belonging Before Believing

We baptized 362 people last year at Community. Guess how many of them I baptized? I baptized less than a dozen of the 362 them. Do you know who baptized the most people at our church last year? Small group leaders and small group participants.  The vast majority of the people who made a commitment to follow Christ asked their small group leader or someone in their small group to baptize them. Why? It was within the context and experience of community that these people came to belief. This is indicative of a spiritual shift that has been taking place over the last decade - spiritually searching people need to belong before they believe.

New Record Attendance - 19 Years In A Row!

It was a little over 19 years ago that we started Community by knocking on the doors of people who didn't go to church in an effort to listen to what they needed and discover how our church could best serve them.  And after last weekend, for 19 years in a row every Easter God has sent us more people than the year before. Wow!  Our attendance this past Easter saw an increase of more than 500 over last year.  A new record.  And our total attendance for the month of March is up by over 1000 over last March.  Thank you God for trusting us with all these people.  We promise to do our best to help them find their way back to you.

What Are Life's Toughest Questions?

If you could ask God one question and know that He would answer, what would it be?  Got it?  Then send us your question by clicking on Life's Toughest Question. We are designing a whole series that will consist of your questions for God.

I bet every person reading this blog has had the experience at some time of going to church and thinking to yourself, "this just doesn't apply to me."  Well, here is your chance to actually pick the BIG IDEA for our upcoming series Life's Toughest Questions. 

For those of you that are numbers people

For those of you that are numbers people...  I was checking the attendance for the month of March at Community in 2008 versus 2007 and found some very encouraging news!  We are averaging 843 more people this year than we did last year...and we still have Easter to look forward to this weekend!  We will definitely be up by more than 1000 in overall attendance in 2008.

And for those of you who are not numbers people - just remember that everyone of those numbers is a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker or family member who is finding their way back to God!

What A Woman Needs...

This weekend we finished up our series Crazy Little Thing Called Love and The Big Idea was Crazy Love.  We have spent the last three weeks in Ephesians 5 talking first about the Crazy Cycle; then what a man needs - Crazy Respect and finally today what a woman needs - Crazy Love.  It has been a phenomenal series with a great response.  So far we are averaging about 900 more people this year during the month of March than last year!  Good stuff!!

But the real highlight for me was that this weekend I got to teach with my wife Sue.  She did a phenomenal job and heard from a lot of people, "you finally got the right Ferguson up there!"  We sold out of CD's not only for this weekend, but also the whole series.  I have also had requests for the manuscript of the talk that Sue and I did so if you would like to download it, click HERE.

Daddy Daughter Dance

This is the 2nd Annual Daddy-Daughter Dance sponsored by our Community-Romeoville campus and the Institute for Community.  The Children's & Arts Center was turned into an under the sea theme and we had a great turn out.  Congrats to the Romeoville team and the IFC team on a great event for the community.  Good stuff!!