The family

Over to the right

There’s a new link in the “church planting friends” list over on the right. Kris & Andrea Stephens are essentially re-planting Heritage Bible Church in Riverside, about 30 minutes north of us. They have a small core to start with but some significant challenges as well. Come help them!

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

… and God answered prayer! We planned a Christmas Eve outreach, but the forecast was for rain. Wednesday morning I was praying for God to slow the storm or split the storm. Wednesday afternoon the radar looked grim. We arrived Wednesday night and it started to rain. Less than 10 minutes later it stopped completely, and the rest of the night was clear. People were out and about, and we were able to distribute dozens of evangelistic booklets and church invitation cards!

Merry Christmas from all of us at GBC! I’d love to write a year-end review, but Sunday is calling. Thank you for all of your prayers for the ministry here.

An Evangelical Call to Strategic Focus

“Turning now to the long run, the next 40 years, I’d suggest a strategic emphasis on schools, media, and cities…. You don’t change a national culture without a strong base in cities. It’s not accidental that the apostle Paul began his major ministry activities in Antioch, then the third largest city in the Roman Empire. He sent epistles to residents of the empire’s large cities: Rome, Corinth, Ephesus.”

Marvin Olasky, “Schools, Media, Cities” (World, November 29/December 6, 2008)

Fiscal Policy vs. Ministry Opportunity

Riverside County is receiving 49 million dollars from the housing rescue bill passed last summer. Only Miami/Dade and Chicago are receiving more. The county board of supervisors has come up with a plan to use the money to purchase and resell foreclosed homes, boost homebuyer assistance programs, and more. Is this wise fiscal policy on either the federal or local level? Can I suggest that in one sense the Christian’s answer should be: “I don’t really care”?

Fiscal policy matters – but moping (or rejoicing) over policy decisions can distract us from the real questions: “How is our community changing? What are the ramifications of this for ministry? How do these changes provide fresh opportunities for ministry?” It is not wrong to evaluate and analyze the decisions politicians are making as they seek to stabilize our economy. But let’s make sure we stay focused on the main questions. Every time cultural, political, or economic changes sweep across our country, they bring both challenges and new opportunities for ministry. Let’s pray for God’s strength to be seen in new ways through the challenges, and God’s glory to be spread in exciting ways through the opportunities.

You Do Not Know What Your Life Will Be Like Tomorrow

Six months ago I posted on this blog with the title: “Why $4.69 Is Poison for Menifee.” I linked to another article, where a local blogger noted that gas prices around $5 a gallon mean that “Menifee is not that attractive anymore” because the commute is so costly. We’re at $1.77 now – what an astonishing difference 6 months make!

“You Are Where You Live”

Seven years ago I had the privilege of spending a summer studying church planting and demographics (and getting paid to do it!). Some of that was ‘published’ on a minor scale, including a guide to demographics for church planters. It was fun and helped fuel my fire for church planting. Today I get to tell you that all of my research from back then is essentially worthless (except for a few core principles to help church planters not be misled by demographics data). But the free tools available today are just astonishing compared to what I had back then. I’m sure dozens more could be added to this list, but here are a couple of samples:

• Claritas’ “You Are Where You Live” tool has 66 distinct “life-style types” that can be used to characterize most Americans. Enter a zip code, and they’ll tell you the top 5 “types” in that zip code.
• City-Data.com and Homefair’s City Data Report compile an overwhelming amount of data for cities and zip codes.
• Realty sites often have interesting info – like Realtor.com’s “Find a Neighborhood”

That summer I also had access to Microsoft’s corporate mapping software (MapPoint – $300). Since then I’ve often longed for one MapPoint feature in particular. You could choose a point and then ask MapPoint to show you how far you could drive in a certain number of minutes from that point. In other words, you could pick a hypothetical church location, and find out exactly which people live within a 25-minute drive of that location. MapPoint provided a detailed map, much more helpful than the simplistic radius circles we often use. If any of you know about a website that will do this for free, please let me know!

With all of the free tools available today, it is much easier for church planters to do extensive preliminary research. Never forget, however, that websites can never compare to the value of spending a few days “on the ground” in your target area! Save your pennies for a good long survey trip.

A Little Update

Would you please pray for the Wilkinsons loan to go through? The loan was supposed to fund last Monday – the same day the loan company went out of business. It has been passed on to another company, and could well be finalized by the end of this week. But until then D&H are ‘homeless’ (staying with a family in our church).

Please pray also for the Lord to give the Trues wisdom and provision. The lab work has been very slow for him for the last few weeks.

We had a good Sunday, though some people weren’t too thrilled with my assertion that Jesus and His disciples had an actual lamb at the ‘Last Supper’ (contra da Vinci!). I’ve learned so much studying the Passover, Jesus’ last Passover, and the Lord’s Supper.

Random stuff: The mothers of three adults in our church have passed away in the last three weeks. Major financial problems persist. We’ve had lots of visitors recently, though few of them ’sticking.’ Pastor Eric and I are working on an evangelism plan for 2009 (this is interesting). I’m not necessarily looking forward to the discussion about foreknowledge in Institute this week. I turned 31 and David turned 33 last week. I’m looking forward to the possibility of having email on my phone, possibly by the end of this week. Dr. Berg’s Essential Virtues is profitable. After a lengthy losing streak, my team has won the last two church picnic football games. (as you can tell, I can’t manage to pull off an eloquent or philosophical post today!)