From the Sermon this Morning

For those who were interested, the fun story that was read at the beginning of the message this morning was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Not particularly spiritual, but fun nonetheless.

You can tell the world about your “James” on my personal blog.

An Often Asked Question

I mentioned that we have seen our average attendance grow by 400 over the past few years. Many are already believers who have been sigificantly committed to a previous church. They have many questions about our fellowship, but one comes to the forefront fairly quickly - some form of “how do I give to this church?” or “why don’t you take an offering in worship services?” Our practice for 22 years has been to allow members and friends of Crossroads to discretely drop their contributions to the work of the church into collection boxes at the back of the worship center (or, deliver them to the church office during the week).This choice (which pre-dates my joining the staff) wasn’t made because we considered collections in worship to be wrong or unbiblical and in looking back at the leadership records of that time we find that there were three understandings that lay behind the decision:

• Taking up a collection in the middle of worship was seen as a distraction, often breaking the flow & emphasis of worship.
• People outside the church in the early 1980’s seemed to be very put off by churches and ministries that were “always talking about money.” It was one of the primary spoken excuses the un-churched gave for avoiding church. The same feelings continue to be held by the un-churched today.
• A conviction that offerings were to be “given”, not “taken”.

There were those who were concerned that the church would run out of funds, lay off staff, or have to cut back on missions when donations shriveled up. (Even today we still have some who suggest that we’d get a much more in financial support from a weekly worship offering). Interestingly, a look at the financial records shows that donations to the church increased by 10-20% weekly after the use of collection boxes was implemented.

An earlier statement of ministry convictions included this statement:

 Our ministry is supported by faith in an omnipotent and sufficient God who provides for His church through the faithful financial gifts of its members and friends.  Because we believe that an offering is to be given rather than taken, offering boxes are located by each doorway for the convenience of those who understand their God-given responsibility.

The manner in which people give to the church may change over the years, but that first sentence will remain true in all times. We do talk about money as appropriate, and always let the congregation know if there are financial concerns, believing that God will move through his people — no cajoling, begging or manipulation required.

I suppose that I should note that we do take up one collection monthly as part of our remembrace at the Lord’s Table. As a tangible response in remembrance of God’s great grace and mercy we give to our Benevolence Fund which is used to minister to those in need (a topic for a future post).

Easter Crowds

Like most churches, we had a significantly larger crowd than normal at our weekend services this past Easter weekend. 350 or so celebrated the resurrection “morn” on Saturday evening (as Pastor Jayson says, it was already Easter morning somewhere in the world!) Another 2200 joined us at our three services on Sunday morning. At Easter, much like Christmas, most evangelical churches have a surge in attendance. I’m sure that some of it is due to the nature of the remembrance (special days for Christians), in conjunction with a holiday (more people at home) combined with the “family” element in culture (let’s ALL go to church today). But whatever the reason for the increased attendance we, like most, take pains to make clear the gospel even as we celebrate the reason the news is good - that is, the resurrection!

And, once again, many indicated they they wanted to follow Jesus! Pray with us for lasting fruit from this harvest.

Snapshots?

Snapshots of Crossroads is an experiment. I’ve noticed so many church leaders who are using this technology to communicate about what goes on behind the scenes of their church that I thought it might be helpful to those in our fellowship, or those interested in us. 

Since our relocation to the Eastgate community in Bellevue three years ago we’ve grown almost 40% in worship attendance and it has been more and more difficult to keep everyone current on what we do and why we do it. Hopefully this blog will be one more tool in communicating the stories, strategies, strengths and challenges of our church. I hope to post 2 or 3 times a week about various random topics related to the church. I intend to keep posts short and limit the scope of each one to a single topic.  Comments are allowed and I trust that they will demonstrate Christian love and character.  

I’ve asked the staff to list the questions they seem to encounter most often and I’ll start with those.