Random Questions I Answered This Week

In my Executive Pastor role I answer questions each week ranging from biblical interpretation, theological nuances, and Christian practice to the more mundane organizational administrative (administrivia?) questions. Here’s a sampling of the latter:

• How many can be seated in the Worship Center? Currently there are 900 chairs set up.
• What is the square footage of the facility? 99,900 square feet. Trivia note: walking from the front reception desk to the back doors covers one-twelth of a mile.
• How many computers are in the facility? Including servers (and excluding laptops), at least 60. That includes the computers that run the heating/cooling system, key card system, email, and webserver.
• How many paid staff? 52 full and part-time pastors, ministers, directors, interns and various support staff. Most are listed here and here.
• Are we still looking for additional ministry staff? Yes. We are in an active search process for a Worship leader, a Junior High Director, and a College Director. Related question: Does CBC have an “open positions” list? Yes, on our website.
• How many volunteers are involved in church ministries? Just about everyone else? At least that is a goal! 
• Is it true that Crossroads uses a cell-phone jammer? No. Some carriers just don’t get great reception in parts of our building.

What questions do you have? Put one in a comment or drop me an email (tjack@cbccross.org).

Yellow. Cards. And. You. Fill. Them. Out. Please!

At just about every worship service at Crossroads we will call attention to a very simple piece of cardstock … the multi-purpose Crossroads communication card, commonly known as the “Yellow Card” … which is inside the weekly copy of Crossroads Today. We ask everyone in attendance to complete a card weekly (actually, you only need to fill in your name if nothing has changed). And we promise, your information is collected for our use only.

Why is this card so helpful to us? Let me count some of the ways:

1. It lets our ministry teams know you were here! And that is important to us on so many levels. With over 2000 people attending CBC we just are not always able to notice who might be sitting in worship. And worship is important to us.
2. It helps us capture address changes and other information. And we seem to have lots of address and information changes!
3. It is a means of requesting information about CBC membership, baptism or various ministry programs.
4. It is a means of communicating to the staff team. We may be in the e-age and we certainly get our share of comments and questions via email but there are a surprising number of people who still like to communicate using a writing implement. And we read every card, passing them on to the most appropriate ministry team.
5. We also encourage you to jot down anything you would like our ministry teams to be praying about. Every request received is actually prayed for by a prayer team each Sunday morning before the services are over! We also distribute the prayer requests to the staff and elders every week.

So … help us serve you … don’t be afraid … complete the yellow card every week.

 

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.

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.