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Re-hallowing Halloween

Angels replace mischief with message

Candy-dispensing homeowners in Belleville, Ontario, expect heavenly visitors again this fall. Along with Yoda, Pokemon, and the usual goblins, a host of angels will appear on Halloween night.

The town’s 19 evangelical churches will sponsor “Touched by an Angel” for a third year. We dispatch the children of church families in costume to deliver cards reading “God cares for you and wants to touch your life.” This allows children whose parents struggle with Halloween to collect some candy and spread the word at the same time.

While the children ring the doorbell, parents are asked to stand curbside and pray quietly for the people who live there. We tell the children to say, “I have a message for you,” and hand them the card. We remind them not to say “trick or treat,” because angels don’t trick.

The project has grown to include an angel float in the Christmas parade, where the kids gave out 5,000 cards with candies attached, and a community Christmas play, “Angels on a Mission.”

The kids have a blast, and we believe we’ve had spiritual impact.

—Tim DayBelleville Evangelical FellowshipBelleville, Ontario

You know you need a vacation when …

You visit the hospital and envy the patients.
People ask if you’ve been sick and you answer, “Not yet.”
You turn down a sabbatical because you can’t decide what to do with the time off.
You can’t remember the chorus of “Jesus Loves Me.”
You consider a six-week sermon series on the text: “Jesus withdrew to a lonely place.”
You attend meetings you know will be boring just to get some rest.

—Joe McKeever, Kenner, Louisiana

Currents

Marriage lessons. Florida now requires high schools to teach marriage skills. The state also discounts license fees if couples take a four-hour prep course. Fewer divorces is the goal. Across the U.S., clergy in 100+ communities are joining Marriage Savers, marrying couples only after they complete counseling. (Trend Letter, 3/18/99)
Busters delay comeback. Churchgoers vamoose after graduation. Attendance is lowest in their 20s but usually rises as they age. Busters are resisting the return, despite “religious” interest. Also female participation declined slowly in this decade. Overall attendance held steady at 41% per week in 1998. (Barna Research Group, Mar. 1999)
Y2K fuels building fever. Construction on religious facilities reached its highest point in three decades, totaling 6 billion dollars last year. A similar trend was reported at Y1K, as church building marked the last turn of the millennium. (Houston Chronicle, cited by AFR, Feb. 1999)
Giving is up. It’s too early to tell if the slight upturn in church contributions is a trend or only a bump in a 30-year decline. Members averaged 2.58% in 1996, the newest figures available. Still, it’s better than 1992’s all-time low of 2.04%. (empty tomb, inc.)

Getting IT Started

How to buy “multimedia.”

The pastor of a church averaging 200 in worship had decided to forget multimedia after receiving a bid of more than $10,000. He made one more phone call. Josh Lyon of Dallas-based Shepherd ministries installed a system for less than half the first bid.

“Don’t buy all the bells and whistles. Start low and work up,” Lyon says. “Grow into your system.”

Spend $3,200 to $5,200 on the projector. Buy SVGA to start. XGA may strain your budget.
Ask for a side-by-side demonstration. A 1,000-lumen projector should produce a brighter image than a 500-lumen machine, but the lesser one may have the better picture. The best test: “Which one looks better?”
More pixels mean a sharper image—1.5 million pixels (light dots) for first time buyers.
If you want use your computer and VCR, ask the sales rep how they will communicate with the projector. Many have a built-in interface. Makers call them “data projectors.” You can switch video sources by remote.
Save on the screen. Glass-beaded screens produce fuzzy images for side-angle viewers. A plain screen or white wall works better.
The best placement for your projector is mounted on a pole suspended from the ceiling about 20 feet in front of the screen. Distances greater than 30 feet cost more money, up to $1,000 for a “long-throw” lens.

Most churches won’t be ready to upgrade before the operators learn to use all the features of the first system.

My PC

Online Study Sites Cited

Click on these winners in our CHRISTIANITY ONLINE awards:

www.gospelcom.net Gospel Communications Network, home to 100+ ministry sites, also features Bible Gateway, a multi-translation searchable Bible.
www.goshen.com Goshen’s most trafficked feature is its Bible study tools.
www.khouse.org/blueletter The Blue Letter Bible features 1.1 million links from the Bible to 85,000 pages of concordances, lexicons, dictionaries, and commentaries.

—COMPUTING TODAY (Mar/Apr 1999)

INNOVATION

Direct Deposit Tithing

Churches hope automatic offerings will reduce seasonal dips

Will offering plates become obsolete? If electronic giving catches on, maybe so.

More than 600 churches have signed up for a direct debit transfer program offered by Minneapolis-based Lutheran Brotherhood. The question now is, will givers use it?

Debit contributions started as a brainstorm during a snowstorm. “We had three or four weekends of very bad weather,” said Nathan Dungan, a Brotherhood staffer who was a leader in a Pennsylvania congregation at the time. “We had no one in church and nothing in the offering plates. We never caught up that year.”

Dungan led his church to start automated giving. Regular contributors agreed to have a specific amount de-ducted from their checking accounts each month, the same way many people pay insurance premiums or loan payments. One-third of that church’s collections are now automated.

Taking the plan nationwide, Dungan called it “Simply Giving.” Churches are joining charities and Christian media, already leaders among non-profit users. About 5 percent of all U.S. churches use electronic transfer.

Dungan expects up to 1,500 churches to join his program by year’s end. Trinity Lutheran Church in Edwardsville, Illinois, joined in January. So far, however, only 20 of 700 givers have signed up.

“I like the idea,” said Dot Martin, the congregation’s financial secretary. “I think direct debit will grow as people become more comfortable with it.”

VIDEO TO GO

Sermon Starters in a Box

You have the projector. Your congregation is prepped. Now, what do you show? Movie clips are one option. Here’s another: videos made for worship.

Produced for the GenX ministry of First Baptist Church of Los Altos, California, these 3-5 minute vignettes are excellent openers. Each tape has ten segments: comedy, music video (of sorts), and street-side interviews. They ask tough questions of real people—”What does your life mean? How do you connect with God?” The answers are gripping.

Producer Travis Reed says his purpose is not to shock, but to reach his generation. “It’s not about turning your hat backwards or even how you speak. It’s about learning to communicate. We want to give older church leaders tools to do it.”

No VBS highlights here; this is professional. $19.99 per tape plus $5.00 S&H. Highway Productions, 1-800-693-4449, www.highway.org

GOT IT?

Video Visionary

Why the handwriting should be on the wall

A Japanese manufacturer was asked by his North American counterpart, “What is the best language in which to do business?” The man responded, “My customer’s language.”

We must learn to speak the language of the place where we are, and that necessitates architecture that speaks different languages of form.

In today’s electronic world, church architecture must come to terms with screens. To be sure, this is not the first time that architects have had to deal with screens. The Protestant Reformers took out the screens that separated priests from the people and put up the pulpit, which elevated the preaching of the Word.

Perhaps the best way to look at screens today is to see them as an updated version of stained-glass windows. The screen is the window of the postmodern age. It is where the stories of the faith are taught and told. It is where people of today are learning about God and life and the Bible.

It took 40 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the church sanctuary. We can’t afford to wait that long to get the screen and the computer into our ministries. Students who work or play on home computers already expect it (interactive technology) as a learning tool.

—Leonard Sweet in Sweet’s Soul Cafe (1998, Vol. 3, No. 5-6)

Summer Reading List

Season’s refreshing

We’ve found a stream of books on prayer, formation, and spiritual disciplines. Now is a good time to dip into these waters. Sample some recent releases.

Soul Keeping by Howard Baker (NavPress, 1998)
How to Pray by Ronnie Floyd (Word, 1999)
The Transforming Power of Prayer by James Houston (NavPress, 1999)
The River Within by Jeff Imbach (NavPress, 1998)
Awake My Soul by Timothy Jones (Doubleday, 1999)
Prayer that Shapes the Future by Brad Long and Doug McMurry (Zondervan, 1999)
The Unchained Soul by Calvin Miller (Bethany House, 1998)
A Life of Prayer by St. Teresa of Avila, ed. by James Houston (Bethany House, 1998)
The Glorious Pursuit by Gary L. Thomas (NavPress, 1998)