christmas traditions

Last night we had an event called Fusion Christmas which was a Christmas party for our fusion groups and an unveiling of our new types of groups that are beginning in January.  (Shannon’s got a breakdown if you want to find out more) It was a lot of fun and lots of great food, but the best thing that went down last night was our traditional Christmas Carol Karaoke, or as we call it Caroloke.  Which is awesome.  I started this several years back when I was college pastor and its stuck and now all the ministries are doing it.  We do them along with a really cheesy video (from ace karaoke) that has the bouncing ball prompter and everything, that is as funny as the people singing due to all the cheesiness.  It’s a lot of fun, especially if you get the right people up there.  Just thought I’d pass the idea along.

so many stories…

Saturday we gave away 1200 bikes, 500 40lb boxes of food (with turkeys) and about a 1000 toys and its was gone within 2 hours.  People started lining up around 7p the night before and sleeping along the sidewalks “like teens waiting for concert tickets,” said the reporter from the Mobile Press.  Of course we’ve already heard a ton of great stories but I’d like to share one that really stuck out to me.  A lady, who had 4 kids, showed up expecting to only get 1  bike per family and she thought that only one of her kids would get a Christmas this year.  The group that helped her to her car said she cried the whole way because they where rolling 4 bikes and she was crying because now all of her kids would have an amazing Christmas.  There are so many great stories, maybe I’ll share a few as they come in. Here are a few pics…

bikes everywhere

Here are a few pics of the auditorium this weekend with about 200 bikes hanging everywhere. Marcus did a good job on these pics.

(You can’t really tell from these, but the back wall of the stage is covered in tricycles.)

the best christmas ever

We set up three nights and one Saturday morning to be assembly times for the 1200 bikes that we’re giving away this weekend.  We didn’t that much time at all, tons of people showed up on the first night and all the bikes were put together.  Amazing.  How crazy is that.  Here’s the highlight video I put together for this past weekend.

My boy Marcus got some great shots also, check them out here.  The distribution is this Saturday, I’ll post some pics this weekend… its gonna be awesome. 

secret shopping

I had this weekend off so I decided to stop by a local church in our area that seems to have it going on and learn some things.  There aren’t many churches in my area experiencing rapid growth or doing things out of the box so my list was small when deciding what church to visit. So  I started at the top of the list and was sadly disappointed.

It turns out its a typical traditional church with a few cosmetic touches that give the perception its progressive.  I have a whole list of things that could be better, but lets not get into those.  However I did pick up a few things that I’d like to share, first off I realized just how blessed I am at Bay to have the freedom and resources to create in excellence.  The other thing I learned is the importance of first impressions and outward perceptions.  And it can work both ways, from the outside your church can be viewed as one thing and when someone walks in the door either their presumptions are confirmed and they are blown away or they are disappointed to the place of not ever wanting to walk back in.  I think its important that we market who we are, not who we want to be or who we plan to become one day.  It’s important to find out what the community thinks of our churches, to see how the people we are ministering to views our church and either work to change that in their eyes or work to become what they already think, if that perception is better than you actually are.

Last note, I loved secret shopping and will probably do it again the next time I can break away, I’ve made a list of local churches to visit. As a matter of fact, I may be looking for a secret shopper to come through Bay soon and give me a list of what we should be doing better if anyone is interested leave it in a comment.

merry christmas baldwin county

Ok, most of you guys heard this yesterday but its worth repeating.  Merry Christmas Baldwin County is our annual Christmas outreach to families in our area that can’t afford Christmas dinner or gifts for their kids.  Every year we give out a 40 lb box of food per family and a big box of toys for every kid in their family, this year we are gonna do a lot more.  We’ve struck a deal with Huffy bikes to be able to giveaway 1200 bikes… yea you read it right… 1200.  Thats a whole lot of bikes (and we get to assemble all 1200, that’ll be fun).  They are broken down by size so every age kid will be able to get one, there even some tricycles in there.  The deal we got was $25 bucks a bike, so we are encouraging our church family to give other kids a great Christmas by buying a few of these and even getting their own kids involved in raising money.  We’re still working on the logistics of how we are going to distribute all of these without chaos… but chaos may be inevitable.  We are still doing the box of food for each family as well.  This is going to be a great Christmas for so many kids in our community. 

this is big…

At Bay, we typically try to do everything big, but we are about to out do ourselves.  Every Christmas we have an event called Merry Christmas Baldwin County (not the best name I know) where we give out hundreds of boxes of food and thousands of toys to families that can’t afford them.  The doors open at 7am and every year the line starts forming around 3am and it seems to always be the coldest day of the year.  Before the morning is over close to a thousand families come through the line and the families of Bay walk the boxes and gifts to their car for them and spend a minute praying with them.  It’s one of the best things we do every year and this year its going to be huge.  I can’t really say a whole lot yet because we haven’t let the cat out of the bag about the details, but I can say its huge.  Honestly I’d venture out to say it’s unheard of especially by a church our size.  We’ve had several meetings discussing the details and every time it gets me so excited to think that my family gets to be part of making this the best Christmas ever for a lot of kids in our county.  This weekend I’ll be able to post the details!

agape

Sunday night we had an Agape, which is a huge worship concert we have every 3 to 4 months.  It was awesome, the band played about 10 songs (includeing Yes You Have by Leeland, which was flippin’ amazing)  and we incorporated several videos and a short talk.  The offerings at Agape always go to missions, and for this one we chose to give it to an orphanage that we work very close with in Zambia.  Below is a video that I put together after our trip earlier this year, we used it Sunday night during Agape…