Support Groups

Our church has a ministry called Grace Life that is basically support/recovery groups for various addictions and troubling life experiences. It's a great ministry, but few people use it. Today, the minister in charge was talking about his frustration in getting our church aware and accepting of it. He mentioned that he had advertised in the paper and various other outlets, and received little to no response.
His desire was to see "Grace Life" mentioned from the pulpit. He mentioned that after informally mentioning Grace Life to several people, they had no idea what it was. I wanted to interject that it was probably because the name of the ministry was changed within the last 6 months from Celebrate Recovery. When CR was first introduced to our church, it received tons of publicity and was the focus of a 6-week sermon series. But there was not much publicity over the name change or focus change.
So with this desire to see Grace Life mentioned more, they hoped to create more word-of-mouth advertising. This can be extremely effective, but only if people can put a face to what the ministry does. If you just give people words, then they can't visualize anything. But if you show them a changed life and attach that to the words Grace Life, then people will remember it, be able to talk about it, and recommend it to people who might be struggling with the same issues. JM

Thoughts Down

I need to just download some thoughts before I lose them. I'll expand on them later.
1. Easter Worship
2. My Easter Sunday
3. Noah's Amazing Ability To Stay Awake
4. Crucible
5. Mother's Day Message
6. Spiritual Accountability And Intimacy
7. Crossroads Easter Worship
More on these later. JM

Half Full

You can look at things positively or negatively. Perry Noble is the pastor of an incredible church in Anderson, SC. Sometimes I wonder about his sensitivity, though. They wrote about his church in the local paper the day before Easter. Everything in it seems positive. But he casts a negative spin on it. Pretty odd. Especially since he calls the journalists lazy and spreading half-truths. JM

Diet

Well for the first time in my life, I'm going to try to go on a diet. I'd like to lose like 8 pounds, but mainly I just want to eat and live healthier. I should do fairly well because I'm a big discipline and rules person, I just need to establish some rules. JM

Matthew 15:1-9

Wow. This passage is rather timely. Last year at the SBC, they passed a non-binding resolution opposing the manufacture and consumption of alcohol. Since then, the SBC has been quietly pursuing consumers of alcohol within the SBC. I think it's sad that we stand so staunchly against alcohol when it's not an evil in and of itself. Baptists are known for not drinking. I guess that's good. But, I take great issue with the idea that alcohol somehow makes a person a lesser candidate for SBC scholarships or funds from state conventions to subsidize loans.
I personally cannot stand the taste of alcohol. My wife used to drink some on occasion, but she no longer does so. Nevertheless, if it comes down to me having to sign something saying that I will never consume alchol because it is evil, then I won't do it.
Instead of focusing so much attention on saying alcohol is bad, what if we spent that time figuring out better ways to reach our communities. They don't care what we self-righteously say about alcohol. They care about their daily lives. When all we do is debate things that don't relate to that, we become less and less relevant and relegate ourselves to being an artifact of antiquity. JM

Funerals

I'm about to run sound for a funeral. I've thought a lot about planning out my funeral, but that seems awfully morbid. I just don't want to have a lame funeral. JM

Our Dying Days

My dad is having surgery tomorrow. He was diagnosed with parkinson's disease 14 years ago and will be having the first of two surgeries as part of a sub-thalamic deep brain stimulation procedure. It's not really a risky surgery or anything, but it is brain surgery and he will be in there for about 5 hours or so.
I talked to my dad tonight on the phone and he told me something that I can only remember him telling me 2 other times: "I love you." I know my father loves me, but most of his life his shyness and inability to embrace his emotions has prevented him from telling me. The first time that I can really remember him saying it is when I was a junior in college.
I'm not sure if it's because of that, but I tell my wife and my kids that I love them at least 10 times a day. I want them to know it, and for them to remember me saying it.
JM

Take What They Give You

So many churches and organizations are looking for publicity and marketing ideas, but they don't know where to find it. I just ran across one for my community (south metro Atlanta). The local paper now lets you upload user submitted videos to their site. I'm going to video our Easter egg hunt coming up this week and see if I can upload it. It should be fairly easy to edit.
Cool idea by the local paper to use youtube to host the videos. JM

Matthew 14:34-36

What are you known for? When you show up, what do people think of you?
When Jesus showed up, everybody knew that people were going to get healed. Jesus had the power/ability to heal, and the compassion to heal.
I wonder what I'm known for. I mean, I know people think that I'm funny, and that I think a lot, but I'm not sure what people would think when I showed up. Hopefully, they could feel open to share things with me and feel that I would be able to help them. JM

Matthew 14:24-33

I love that Jesus cares about us even when we get ourselves into trouble. A lot of times we bring our own demise on ourselves through poor choices, hasty decisions, or just lack of foresight. But Jesus still cares. We might still get a good talking too, and we'll probably still have to deal with the consequences, but Jesus cares enough to reach out his hand and save us. It would be easier to watch us drown, and we brought it on ourselves, but he cares so much that he wants to help us. JM