Introduction to First Pres

Well, I know that those audio recordings are online so we’ll get Michael to
Help us figure out where they are
First of all, thank you for Joe for being with us joining with us this morning.
Thank you for your presence here your patience
This is a class that historically I have taught but Michael and I recently in the last year or so ship shuffled
Some of our pastoral duties and and I’ve got to be involved with the confirmation class this year
And so I’ve been doing that on Sunday mornings,
which meant he took
primary lead on this kind of
Inquires class or information class,
but we wanted to I wanted to be in here a little bit
So we’re we’re flip-flopping a little
And the downside of that may be that I’m not exactly sure what you’ve done and what you haven’t done but
So if we get to anything that is repeat just wave me past and and we’ll we’ll go on from there
I’m Clint one of the pastors here.
You know Michael
I’ve been here since some point in 2003
So in the 20-year range my family and I moved up from Texas
We I grew up in Iowa small-town Iowa down by Sioux City
My wife’s from Sioux City went to Northwestern College took off for seminary Louisville,
Kentucky ended up in Texas in the Dallas area north of Dallas
In a town called Denton and then headed back here
after about eight or nine years there back up here and kind of been here since and so
Lots of lots of experience lots of time with the church and
When we go through this,
I’m sure Michael has covered all this we I inherited the name new members class that that’s not the
expectation here This is just an opportunity for folks who have been interacting with us visiting with us
if they have some questions if they want to learn a little bit more about who we are and who the Presbyterian Church is
Just kind of been that sort of forum that kind of format
so I want to start there if you’ve been with us if you’ve been visiting and
There’s something that you had a question about.
Why do you do this?
Why don’t you do this?
How does this work in in this church or the Presbyterian Church?
I feel like that’s probably the most important thing.
So is there anybody that has something that’s just been kind of on
Your mind or that you’ve wondered about
It’s okay if you don’t it’s just sometimes
Often in this again in this part of the world people are familiar usually with different church
Very few people are one thing anymore.
So many folks have been
Methodist Lutheran Presbyterian Baptist,
whatever and there are some differences
Depending on what church tradition you’ve been a part of there there are some nuances there are some differences
I’m a little bit unusual.
I suppose I
There was one church in my hometown was Presbyterian.
So that’s all I’ve ever done which I
Has an upside and probably a downside.
I feel like I’m pretty well versed in our Presbyterian family
So, yeah, if you’ve run into any questions certainly throw them out and we’ll do our best to work our way through them
Yes, ma’am
Yeah
Yeah, the biggest the biggest obstacle facing the church and
But I Don’t want to push back on you,
but when you say church,
can you help me do you mean congregation or do you mean?
Okay
This congregation specifically.
Yeah Presbyterian congregations, okay Well, I think I have I think I would have two different answers if you ask me in my experience
What’s the biggest struggle for?
Presbyterian churches.
I think it’s adapting to change.
I think we’ve been very slow to do that
And there’s some good reasons we’ve been slow
but I think
It’s hurt us.
I think as the world has changed around us
We haven’t often kept up with it and it’s left us
It’s left us
Struggling.
I don’t think that’s the whole picture
but I do think that’s part of it in my work with our regional body a
Sort of a geographical body of churches is called a presbytery
I don’t know if Michael’s done any of this but our presbytery is essentially Northwest Iowa and Northwest Iowa is it?
It’s it’s tough not just for churches.
It’s just you know,
if how many of you grew up in a small
Town in the Midwest lots of people for any of you is your hometown bigger than it was when you live there
Not many right that that’s been part of the struggle of this region and the church has been deeply
affected by that and so there are some of those things that are just beyond the church’s control and yet
There are churches that are you know
still just plugging away
The the upside and the downside church is one of the few places you kind of go and you still feel like it’s the 1950s
And I mean and and for people who are who want that because they don’t have that anywhere else
No, there’s no other there’s almost no other place in the world
You can go and feel that sense of nostalgia and that sense of
Timelessness
and there’s some good things about that
But I I would say the downside is that in situations where some of the things we used to do don’t work anymore
And we just keep doing them
If we turn that lens to this congregation and I
Don’t want to I
Don’t want to pat ourselves on the back too much,
but I think this that has not been the primary
Struggle here.
I think you know
Twenty two years ago the congregation built this building that was a sense of newness
It kind of it kind of helped with some of those transitions
Every everything was in a new place called a new pastor started doing things in in some new ways
We still can’t I mean we’re not rewriting the books.
We still do a version of what we’ve always done
But we try to be open to what works
You know, I I think our struggle here is a little different in the Midwest
We still live in one of the few areas of the country the deep south is certainly one of them where
Going to church is not really
Countercultural, I mean lots of people go to church probably most of our neighbors have it you know,
but church is still kind of a part of the fabric where we live and
The the upside of that is it’s really nice.
The downside is sometimes
you can go to church without really being church,
you know, you can go through the
the motions kind of easily because
Everyone’s sort of doing it,
you know in places where nobody goes to church and nobody cares if you go to church
Going to church is a little I mean,
it’s a little more intentional here.
I think one of the struggles is
How do we how do we transition from churchgoer to Christ follower?
And I don’t mean to you know make that sound dramatic
but I think we have to realize there’s more to it than just going to church and I think that’s
one of our growing edges
so that long drawn-out answer and I’m sorry,
I I spend a
Ridiculous amount of time wrestling with those questions.
And so I try not to have you drink out of a fire hose, but
Anything else does that is that help at all?
Is that along the lines of okay?
Yeah, well
No, we’ve the Presbyterian Church has certainly navigated theological struggles again
You know when you exist in a certain era the issues
The cultural issues of that era really kind of determine what’s on your plate.
The church often doesn’t get to choose what’s on its plate
We just have to have to navigate it.
So yeah This is kind of more of a personal this church.
Yeah situation.
We come from a very small Presbyterian Church
So it’s like if you’re not in church on Sunday
Question, you know where you were that yeah Yeah,
absolutely close yeah, how do you think this church?
Think larger handles like new members and and getting people involved and I do have like a certain committee
We yes
We I Let me let me divide it into my thoughts in the two group I would say
There’s informal and informal is just we we try to be conscious
We’re really trying to emphasize it and this church in my experience has had a kind of natural bent toward
warmth and
Friendliness and I generally don’t worry too much that people will show up and not get greeted or not,
you know But we’ve also tried to say
Look when you say when you see someone you don’t know on Sundays
Go because all of us,
you know, you put us in a room.
What’s the first thing we do?
We start looking around do I know anyone?
I mean most of us you you people that might be full-on extroverts
That’s your idea of you won the lottery room for people.
You don’t know the rest of us go do I know anyone here?
And so it’s it’s natural to be interested in people,
you know, but we try to be intentional in saying
That there are lots of reasons a person
Wouldn’t stay in this church.
They might like something else better
They might think a different way
But what we never want to happen is a person to leave saying I left because it didn’t seem like anybody cared if I
Was there and I’m not saying we bad a thousand on that but we try
to
Make that a priority and we try to encourage that kind of what I would call informal
Welcome or warmth hospitality really is how we talk about it
Then on the other side of the coin,
I would say is the intentional stuff.
We do have a membership committee
You all will be interacting with them if you know if at the point
Anybody says we feel like this could be our church home that group kind of helps
Bring people in and part of this this group is part of that effort
How do you serve in this church?
What does this church do?
What are the needs here?
I love this thing
Is there a place for me to do that here?
Where are things when how do I get information all of that kind of stuff and I would say we try to handle that a little more formally
We don’t have you know,
like a calendar and checklist were they here last week,
but but in in churches
The thing that is true,
and this is probably true in lots of
Social groups one of the unfortunate things in the church that is
Is a little bit is large enough for it to happen
I’ll just say it that way is that people can we can miss people for a while and by the time we realize we’re missing
Maybe that it you know if we reach out to them sooner
we maybe would have made it easier or found out that somebody had an issue or so there’s an informal and a formal side to that and
You know, but certainly if you’ve had an experience of well when we visited nobody talked to us
I would like I would love to know that stuff because I need to fuss at some people
We had the fine line of
You know, we were a small church and somebody who came to do it
And so you’re like,
you don’t want to pounce on them,
right? You know, see, yeah
Our
Our people always talk about what if I what if I introduce myself to someone and they’ve been a member for 50 years
And I say well just tell them you’re glad to meet them
Or when you introduce you say I don’t know if we’ve met yet,
you know, yeah, I mean, yeah that fear There’s always a little bit of it
Yeah
I like
I’m not sure we’ve met yet and I apologize if we have and I forgot that I like a safe
This this is a crazy place in that sense
My first year here I
Didn’t think much of it and we had some family stuff.
So I took off I took the 4th of July off that Sunday
I’ve never done that again
Our Our biggest Sundays of the year Christmas and Easter which everyone would guess
Memorial Day and 4th of July which nobody would guess and in other churches that’s you know
Throw a bomb in the building and don’t hurt anyone
But here we’re because we have that we have a gentleman who
Who greets me every time he comes which is once a year and at the after church
He says I’ll see you second Sunday of August next year
It’s just
It’s very different.
Our numbers are actually we do pretty well
I mean we do okay in the winter but with you know,
snowbirds and such our
Worship numbers are actually probably a little higher in the summer
Which again when I I talked to friends who pastor in other places and that can’t be true
I know it’s it’s true now
It’s not always our people and one of the difficulties here is kind of figuring out what our people even means
Because we get you know,
we get Presbyterians who are vacationing or we just get people who are show up and it’s wonderful it
it It
It adds some difficulties that we don’t always know what to do with but yeah,
that’s that’s very much true
To the size thing just very quickly that people who study churches group churches into three
rough
categories
Not very creatively named small churches medium churches and big churches
We fit in the category of what would be called a medium church
But the the transition they say the transition that is most difficult for a church to make is from small to medium
Because a small church thinks of itself as a family,
right?
You kind of know everybody a lot of times they’ve grown up together.
They’ve been around each other a great deal
I knew your grandparents and I
If you’ve been in one of those churches,
you know and and so the idea of connection personal
Relational connection is extremely important
When you get to the median when you get to a large church
Let me skip medium when you get to a large church,
there’s never the assumption that you’ll know anybody
If you if you’ve ever gone into a giant church,
you just go that there’s no way that happens
So they do small groups and life groups and those kind of things that medium sized church
Especially when a church started as a family church and goes to a medium church,
which is called a program church In other words,
most people are attracted to something that the church is doing whether it be worship or youth or kids or whatever
That’s really tough and and we lived through that here
When we added the second service a few years ago and and when we began to
kind of feel like
We were getting new people had a a wonderful woman who’s no longer with us.
She passed away She didn’t she didn’t get mad and leave but
She came and she said I I I don’t like I don’t like not knowing everybody
Well, that’s a comment from a family church because in a family church,
that would feel terrible.
Who are I?
In this church, that’s not an expected but she was mourning the idea
that if we grew
She wouldn’t have because that’s how she thought of church
And so that transition from family church to medium-sized church is really is really tricky
You’ve got to work hard to find ways for people to connect relationally
But not with the assumption they could do that and then the truth is even a family church
Not everybody knows I mean,
you know names it it’s never
exactly that but
You have to take responsibility for seeking out the things that you are interested in.
Yeah
You know, yeah, and so your things in the church you’re very involved.
Yeah And don’t have to take that responsibility of reaching out to other people because they’re gonna reach out to you because they need right
You know and again,
I would say that’s
One of the struggles of a family-sized church is you well,
you mentioned it earlier not to assault the new person with hey
Who are you and what do you want to do?
to give them and
Yeah, it’s nice to have a little buffer where you say hey settle in and then let’s talk about what you what you is
Important to you and how you can because we do think people ought to be active in their churches
I mean, that’s whatever level of church and and at this point I really believe I suppose
Maybe somebody could argue me out of this
But I really think it’s the same thing no matter what the size of the church
I think it’s the same thing that makes it work.
I think it’s it’s warmth.
It’s welcome.
It’s worshiping Well,
it’s connection.
I think that three different sizes have to apply that differently,
but it’s the same
I believe it’s the same experience
That helps or hurts churches if you go to a big church and you don’t feel connected
You won’t go back if you go to a medium church and you feel you know
Descendant upon you’re not it’s just
But um, I’ve told this story.
I love this story
My wife and I when I was a senior in seminary
I didn’t serve you could do a field ed churches.
I had done a couple of those had done an internship
So my senior year,
I didn’t serve a church.
I thought well Jane and I my wife Jane
We’re not going to go to church together for the next foreseeable future.
So we this year we’re gonna go to church together
So we go to church Louisville,
Kentucky go to a church
Nobody says a word to us the person handing us our bulletin.
I just said good morning,
but we sat in the pew
Nobody talked to us
I think they did the shake hands thing.
So yeah, they get you get good morning,
but you have to do it then right?
So I didn’t really I didn’t really full-on count that after church.
We hung around a little bit
Nobody said a word on I think
Tuesday or Thursday of that week I get a letter from the church from the pastor who was trying really hard
It was great having you in church on Sunday.
Like hmm that letter isn’t gonna undo
What happened on Sunday, you know?
And I remember telling my wife if they were glad that we were there they hit it really well
So I don’t I don’t think I
From a size perspective.
I don’t think I think the same things really work or don’t work
in all those cases
Anything else questions thoughts comments
I will say that
before we
You know, I caught you on the radio and then I heard
Video thing.
Yeah, so you start watching that
Yeah
Those have been really interesting tools because they do allow people as safe
Yeah, I’m not safe in the sense,
I mean kind of a
Kind of a risk-free way to interact with us before they show up here and say
I don’t know when to stand and when to sit and I don’t know what version of the Lord’s Prayer they say or if they
You know, it’s so it allows we’ve really it’s been interesting the ways in which those
communication media have
In some cases brought people in in some cases created a category of people
It doesn’t happen every week,
but it happens often enough that I don’t think about it anymore
I’ve been here long enough though,
you know, just in community people maybe have seen me or know me whatever
I’m not a celebrity, but I
Often go somewhere and meet someone and they’ll say oh I listen
You know and and I’ve met people who say I listen every week and I said,
why don’t you come to church?
Mm-hmm
But but they consider themselves
connected
We had a very interesting experience in in the post COVID when things opened back up
This would have been probably 22 probably it was probably last summer
We had a gentleman who big vacation with his family.
They came to Triggs
He came to church that morning and was literally kind of overwhelmed
He said I have been going to church with you all on my computer for a year
And I couldn’t wait to get here.
I He said I told my family.
I don’t care what else we do on vacation
I’m going to church that first press Sunday.
He thought of this as his place never seen him before
Didn’t know his name.
We didn’t even know what he was watching, you know, it’s
It’s been a very it’s been a very interesting way to think about
How do we connect people?
Yeah, what is our community?
Who is our community?
It’s no longer just a building.
It’s you know, yeah Well and to our conversation earlier,
I would say it never should have been just a building to start with
But we like buildings
We yeah,
we like building buildings are good
Yeah
Yeah
Down and something drink and I watched or listen on the radio and then online
Our winner folks have loved the online thing because if they’re not with us they feel like they’re still
Connected and we feel like we’re still connected
The radio thing has been so I I’m wrong about lots of things
But I was I was so wrong about the radio when I moved up here and they said we’re on the radio
I laughed with friends,
you know, I’m starting my media empire in a
In a small place that nobody’s ever heard of I’m gonna be on the radio,
you know, okay.
Well radio who I thought who
again rarely
More than a week or two go by without somebody saying caught that on the radio.
God.
I completely underestimated
How
Much the radio is a part of people’s
Background and you know,
yeah, they’re they’re church.
They’re people who go to church every
Sunday on the radio and it’s very interesting.
What do we do with them?
Who are they are they ours?
Are they not covid brought a lot of those questions to the forefront in a way we hadn’t really wrestled with before
What else anything else
Maybe something will come up the the main thing I kind of wanted to go through with you today
I asked Michael if he thought it’d be alright.
He said he thought it would work.
Well
As I mentioned, I’ve been here for a while and so I thought I just kind of give you
My sense of who first Presbyterian Church is is and is trying to be
From my perspective these are things and you know,
the risk is always that I’m not self-aware I exposed but
These are things that I think
Like to think we’re doing well or putting effort into and some other things
Maybe I think we continue to struggle with and work on
I mentioned hospitality.
I do think this church on the whole is generally pretty warm
We have a lot of people who I think make it a part of their mission to reach out to people
It’s also a small enough
Community that typically people who show up are gonna kind of know somebody and our folks are pretty good
I think on the most part I I like I said, I rarely
Worry much that somebody’s gonna come in and leave and not going to have a warm experience
With somebody I’m sure it happens and we hate that but I think on the most on the whole I think that’s something we do relatively well
This church has a tremendous history of
supporting mission
about a third of our budget goes toward international and
National mission ministries we have something like 29 or 27 mission partners that are all over the world that we support
We’ve done a for a for a church our size.
I mean and I didn’t do this
This was already true when I arrived for a church our size
we
give an astounding amount of
Our of our budget
toward Things that don’t happen here and I really think that gives the church a kind of energy kind of we have
mission partners people that we support and help with that are in Mexico and
hungry and you know just literally all over the world and in Detroit and in wherever and
That that really adds a nice flavor
But the downside of that and I’ll kind of jump into the other category
The downside of that is that we often we’ve been pretty proud of ourselves for doing mission
But a lot of what we do isn’t as hands-on as it could be so we we’re great at sending money and we’re we’re
working to be great at also
putting our time and our hands to work for those things as well mission trips or
Local things, you know in some ways writing the check and mailing it is easier
than giving a day to go make a difference somewhere and
We’re not bad at that,
but we’re better at the other thing.
So we’re trying to
Trying to find a balance there, but but mission
Historically, this is the idea of mission and supporting people that this church and in like I say kind of the
corner of
Nowhere from a global perspective
Has deep ties all over the world and that’s something I think that you know, I’m proud of
One of the other upsides of this church,
you know when I started interacting with this church
I wasn’t ready to I didn’t think I was going anywhere
This wasn’t my plan.
I was an associate pastor was doing youth ministry loved it
Could have stayed there for a long time could have gone and done another thing
I thought maybe I’d settle down and try to pastor a church at some point,
but it it was not
It was the timeline was way off for me,
but began interacting with this church found out
this congregation in The midst my predecessor
Things didn’t go well with the pastor before me
bought a nine month
Arrangement and six of those months were not good three were okay and six were bad
So it’s just they came out of that
Having just started a building project.
They had it well in our in Presbyterian language.
We call an interim pastor
It’s pastor who goes to the church,
but isn’t a permanent pastor
They they they’re in the gap between the last person and the new person and when things end ugly with a pastor that
There’s usually a time where the church is asked to sort of slow down and think things through
So that was a four-year period and in a four-year period under an interim pastor.
They built this building with
something like
75,000 hours of volunteer labor
This church was largely built literally if you I could go introduce you this morning to people
Who put these stones in place and who stained this wood and that kind of thing?
and they did all that under an interim pastor and had paid a lot of it off and
You would have no reason to know this but that doesn’t happen.
I mean, it’s just not a
Part of it was they got back into a bad situation where they had to you know,
figure it out but part of it was a
Hundreds of people just start giving their time and energy and effort
so I was attracted to that and really I found that to be true here.
There’s a I
Rarely feel like I have to twist arms.
I have friends who are pastors.
I can’t get anybody to do anything
COVID has covered ruffled that a little bit but
Pre COVID and it still remains largely true
we just
If we put out that there’s a need or an opportunity
Most of the time it kind of takes care of itself.
And that’s one of the things I hate that part of pastoring
I don’t like last one people.
I’m trying to drag so
I’ve I have very much appreciated the kind of willingness and an openness to give of that of their time and
Talent here
So that’s interesting because my experience with that as I came I came from a I
Came from a church.
It was very structured and pretty formal
So in our stewardship campaign
It was we get pledge we set a budget then we get pledges then if the pledges don’t meet the budget
We try to trim the budget a little bit and we try to ask for more pledges and we just you know
When I got here,
so what do we do?
I said we send an envelope and people write down what they think they’ll give but we don’t open it this
Like what that’s it.
That’s our plan and they say yeah,
that’s that’s what we do and
We it that’s we’re still doing and I love it.
We don’t have a stewardship campaign
I mean, we we don’t have nobody looks at pledges.
Nobody, you know, we talk about it
We I mean, it’s it’s important, but it we don’t spend
dozens of hours Pouring over What it kind of what is it?
It works out.
Oh, we’re it we’re right at
Four hundred four ninety nine five hundred.
We’re sorry.
Yeah four ninety.
I mean not for not
But yeah high four hundreds low five hundreds now and that’s uh,
those are relatively I would say,
you know Those are pretty clean rolls
at any given time there’s people
who are coming in and going you know, but
we we go through those rolls fairly regularly and
Try to make sure that we’re relatively clean
Yeah, that’s good incentive to clean the rolls
Membership
Membership is a weird thing.
It’s been an important number churches are you know,
kind of great ingrained in what?
What size is the church?
I I think the more compelling number is how many people show up on I mean participation number
and again, some of that’s a little bit hard to know with the media stuff, but I
I think I
Think what happens on Sunday morning is probably a better indication of how a church is doing than what number is on the rolls
Kids we do
Kids have been important when I moved here.
There’s a youth club program.
That’s no longer happening
but we have a lot of people that put significant energy into our youth ministry and into our
Young kids ministry great people working with that blessed by lots of teachers,
you know We’re right next door to the school and I’m not that I think that’s more coincidence than anything
But a lot of teachers have found their way into the church and they’re really helpful in those places
Got a great group of young people
They’re a ton of fun.
We’ve had
Michael’s done a lot of work in that area now again
that’s kind of moved over to my plate having a ball with those kids and so
There’s room to grow obviously,
but it’s been important to us as it is to most churches
And then I think the last thing I’d say in part of it’s this region.
I found this region to be pretty open
We have a lot of strong churches in the area
But one of the things I think that I appreciate about this place is
We are always grateful
When somebody feels like this would be the church home,
but one of the things I’ve generally said to this group is
We we promise we won’t we won’t breathe down your neck.
We I mean we’re not
There are people that have been here longer than I have and they’re not members.
They this is their church,
but My grandma’s a Catholic and it’ll kill her if I sweat, you know
Then don’t then show up and be a part,
you know we don’t it we just don’t get hung up on that kind of stuff if if if this feels like a place you want to
Sign on to we’re excited about that if it just feels like a place you want to bring your family
That’s not a lesser
you know, let’s just be the church and the membership stuff we have to do because it’s part of how we
handle things
We get a report and we make payments and stuff based on that but it’s not really what we’re about
I think this church says that I’ve had conversation with people and it’s nice to live in an area where I can say
You know, I know the pastors of the other churches.
They say I’m a lot more
I want to raise my hands and shout.
Well, yeah, not here probably
but let me point you toward a place where they do that and I know there are good people there and
I I think we’ve been for the most part pretty good about
Believing that we want people to find the right the place that’s right for them.
Not just not just our place
and I think several of the churches in the area are would honestly be able to say the same thing and that’s
That’s a really that’s a really good deal
Want to be conscious of time so it just very quick a couple of growing edges
We don’t do
Part of this is reflected a little bit of this is reflective of our area
I don’t want to use that as an excuse a little bit of this is reflective as
Presbyterians because it’s a struggle across our denomination.
We’re not great with young singles
When the one the 25 year old shows up and it’s not married and says what what do you have for me?
We try we just have not had
We’ve not had a large group in our population and certainly within our church population
so college ministry and young adult ministry is
It’s a struggle for us I would it’s not something we’re doing particularly well
mostly on the sense of
Not really doing at all don’t have we don’t have those people here
We I Want to be careful with this because again,
I don’t want to cast any blame
the denomination that a church belongs to
Is always going to be a help with some people and a hindrance with other people
I generally consider being Presbyterian a blessing.
I’m deeply Presbyterian in my understanding of the faith in my Theology,
I do think Presbyterians are well suited to the era in which we live though
Ironically, we’re not doing well having said that the Presbyterian Church makes the news on a somewhat regular basis
And it’s never things that I’m for things.
I’m happy about
Whenever we make the news,
I know somebody’s going to be in my office saying the Presbyterians did what?
you know, so Our denominational thing, you know, we’re just not in the era where people think big
Picture and allegiances not only that but it’s a very interesting time
in the last
Hmm let’s call it ten years.
It’s probably been not that long but in in the last decade or so
And you’ve probably had a similar experience in some other organization people are this there’s a little bit more
Be careful clear there’s uh
People are a little quicker to be upset about things.
There’s a little bit more division.
There’s a little bit more
it it just it’s it feels like a volatile time and so
It’s been a struggle for churches.
I think to say
It’s okay.
If we have people who don’t agree on everything and don’t see everything the same way
It’s been
There’s been it’s been
We’ve done okay, but I have
Friends out in the pastor just they feel like this is a really tense time that people are just kind of
Wound up and I can see some of that
Yeah, there’s a lot of if I don’t like it I’m going to attack it right now and that some of that social media some of
that’s just we just see a lot of that day in and day out and
It’s not a very helpful practice in church so I
I would say, you know one of our struggles is to kind of navigate that in a way that
Allows room for everybody and
Allows relationships to form
When you may not agree on it, that’s okay.
Some things we have to agree on other things
Doesn’t healthy.
Yeah, it’s okay.
Yeah, it’s all right
yeah, or To know what we
can
To know what it’s okay to disagree about right?
I mean that there are some things in church where we we say no
This is I mean,
this is really fundamental to who we are,
but there are these other things.
We it’s okay We have different opinions and we can we can argue about them or discuss them
but they shouldn’t We shouldn’t drive anybody out.
I mean
one of the few places churches one of the few places right now where you’re going to get and
And I don’t
use these labels politically just I just use them because they’re the big you’re gonna have I am struck
almost every Sunday when I look out and I see
This kind of Republican and this kind of Democrats sitting next to each other in church and this kind of quote-unquote conservative
and I hate those words and this
quote-unquote liberal and
and and they’re in church together and yeah,
I’d like you know,
and I think we’re
Where else does that happen?
I mean because it and and that’s a good thing.
I Believe it’s a good thing.
It’s just not always an easy thing.
It’s you know
It’s hard enough to do that at your Thanksgiving dinner
Now you’re trying to do it in your church
One of my best friends is a blue-blood Democrat,
and I’m certainly not yeah
We just don’t talk
Yeah, that’s some of it
Yeah
So what what we’ve tried it enough,
you know what we try to remind ourselves
frequently is
It’s
not our opinions that connect us as family.
It’s the cross and
Whatever else you are
if you are a follower of Jesus that has to take precedence
for all of us and so
And but but that’s not that’s not always easy
So I’d say a lot of that that’s a significant struggle of church right now
I Mentioned the hands-on mission stuff
You know
We we have a lot of good people here that’s
That’s the heart of it.
I think Michael’s been with us almost ten years,
which is a very unusual for an associate pastor
so that he and I have gotten to work for ten years,
he’s been a blessing of the church he brought such a
Skill set and a concern for technology
that’s he really we’ve been able to turn him loose in a lot of those areas and it’s
Been a great benefit
Yeah
Yeah Yeah,
we’re we’re we’re good friends we’re good co-workers
We’re we’re very different
but but I mean I
Yeah, I just I mean our backgrounds are different our our skill our skill sets are different our interests are different
But they overlap really well.
And yeah, it’s been a pleasure to work with Michael, you know
COVID I
Have to be careful saying this because I
Said this to a group of pastors recently and I felt like some of them maybe want to throw things at me
um
Covid from the church perspective.
There was an aspect of that.
That was a lot of fun and and what I mean is
That in the church,
you know, you’re often thinking okay,
it’d be nice to try this but I got it.
We got a
ease our way.
Well Covid just said
Everything you did last week.
You’re not doing that next week
So
Figure it out and you don’t get that you don’t get that kind of blank slate very often in church to just say
Let’s start throwing stuff at the wall and see if any of it sticks.
And so it was there was a lot of fun
There was a lot of creativity.
It was I mean it was a challenge
but I just have not had a period in my ministry where I felt like
Just open the gate and go do whatever you can can do and that part of it was
That part of it was really actually kind of enjoyable
So we had I don’t know if any of you all have met the Dow family
Dave and Nancy Dow they’ve got four kids one of their one of their kids drew the oldest is
He does a lot of these drone shots
Maybe you see if you’re on Facebook drew does beautiful job with that and then their daughter Emma is a graphic design person
And so when we found out we were going to all online church
We just said right away.
Let’s talk to people who do the let’s let’s talk to media people and
Emma came and and met with us and
Again this wonderful I think I know stuff and then I find out I don’t know anything
Emma said well if we’re gonna do this,
let’s use the whole building
Let’s not just go because I told her Emma.
I don’t want to be a talking head in the pulpit
I want it, but then she said well,
let’s let’s not even let’s get out of the pulpit.
Let’s use the whole building Let’s go outside
And she was a hundred percent right she was a hundred percent right
Part of that was at the time.
I was saying it.
I thought we were doing it for three weeks
39 weeks or whatever, you know, so
But she was she was right and she was such a blessing and a help at that time
But those were two church kids that led us through kovat helped us figure out sound and visual and audio
It’s just so exciting because they got a chance to take the lead and to sort of help guide us along and so
I better stop But thank you for your time.
If you ever have
Questions if there’s ever thoughts comments if you ever you know,
if there are things that come up you think why they do that or what?
Please come and talk to us.
I’m happy to try and answer questions.
So
thank you for your time
Thanks for interacting with first press and we’re grateful for you guys