Details to remember for your first worship service

Yes, the title is overly-long Google linkbait. But one thing I have been astonished with is just how many details there are that need remembered to plan for the first (or for that matter, any) worship service at a church plant. So, without any further ado, here’s my running list. I’ll update it as I remember more things.

Music-related

  • Worship leader & musicians
  • Sound equipment
  • Sound technician
  • Recording gear to record sermon
  • CD for playing before/after service
  • Words for the songs (either song sheets, hymnals, or overhead projection)
  • Lapel/wireless microphone for pastor

Giving-related

  • Collection plates/buckets/box/whatever
  • Ushers
  • Counters
  • Treasurer
  • Budget
  • Receipts (donors will want receipts!)

Service-related

  • Bulletin
  • Communion service

Children’s ministries

  • Nursery workers
  • Children’s church workers (if you have it)
  • Sunday school teachers (ditto)

Etc

  • Security
  • Clean-up crew
  • Set-up crew (if you’re packing in/out)

What items do you have to add?

Selecting music for an inaugural service

We’re going to have our first worship team practice for Imago tonight, which means I need to have music selected for our first service. Selecting church music is normally a bit of a challenge, but selecting music to kick off a whole new church? Intimidating. I’ll need to pick a mix of old hymns and some more modern stuff; I’m thinking of some Chris Tomlin and maybe Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. Any ideas? Feel free to leave them in the comments. I’ll post the list when I get it finalized.

Wrapping things up

Today is my last work day for the year. Thanks to a day of vacation tomorrow and a generous holiday schedule from my employer, I will be able to enjoy the better part of two weeks away from the office. Not that it’ll be slow during that time… we leave Saturday to visit my family in Wisconsin. It will be so good to have everyone back together… Rebecca gets back from Panama on Saturday. Oh, and I’m also very ready to be allowed to dig into the massive pile of cookies that Becky has been making over the past couple of weeks. I think her goal this year was to make so many cookies that she could take them up to my family’s place and still have cookies left at the end of the visit. I’ll bet she achieved it.

Lots of other blogs do Top 10 lists at the end of the year, proclaiming their best new albums or movies or books or the like. I don’t think I’ll be doing that here. First of all, I doubt I’ve bought 10 CDs all year. And I haven’t watched too many movies, either. I may do a book roundup, though - I’m probably gonna be over 80 books for the year, maybe I can do a retrospective.

After reading the above two paragraphs, I’m amazed that content like this keeps anyone coming back to this blog. :-) Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.

Building a worship team

One of my big initial tasks for Imago Christi is to figure out the worship team situation. Music is going to be an important part of our church “feel”. I had to select a word carefully there. Music won’t be the most important part of the church, not by a long shot. Nor will it be the most important part of the worship service. But music sets the tone, the “feel”, for the service and the congregation. Our music at Imago needs to draw from both ancient and modern, to be current musically while capturing the richness of two millenia of church tradition, wisdom, and teaching.

With that mental framework in place I start to look for musicians and vocalists. In the end I picture a small band; drums, a guitar or two, keyboard, bass, and a few vocals. But we’ll start smaller than that. It looks like our inaugural service will be keys, (conga) drums, and maybe an acoustic guitar. Three of us on vocals. We’ll see where it goes from there. I’m a lousy recruiter. I hate asking people to do things. I want people who are self-motivated and want to participate on the team. When God brings them, we’ll add them in. Am I being naive about this?

First practice is Thursday night. I can’t wait.

Contentment

I was reading Psalm 131 this morning and was struck by the picture of contentment painted in its three short verses:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.

With two small girls at our house, this picture is a familiar one. When Laura snuggles up on my wife’s lap, she is the picture of contentment. She’s not worried about things “too great and marvelous” - she just wants to rest and to feel the love of her mother. She is secure in the arms of one who she knows loves her, will care for her, and will keep her safe. So she sits quietly, peaceful in the knowledge that she’s in good hands, and content.

As God’s people our hope and contentment is in the Lord. He can handle the great and marvelous things. I want to focus on resting in Him and trusting His goodness today.

'Tis the season to be jolly and joyous...

Christmas shopping is complete. The Christmas program is over. We’ve received a bunch of Christmas cards already. We still haven’t gotten any sent. Apologies in advance to organized friends like Stephanie and the Hollands. It’s not that we don’t appreciate you thinking of us and sending us the pictures. We do, really. We’re just not organized enough to get our own sent out this year. When I was growing up it was the family joke that we would send out a New Year’s letter, because our Christmas letter always went out really late. I think this Hubbs household might have to do the same thing.

Tasks for this week: baking cookies. Well, that’s mostly Becky. She has baked so many cookies this last week already. Toll House cookies. Chocolate Espresso cookies. O’Henry bars. Chocolate chip cookie dough balls. I know the Chex Mix is coming up yet this week. She has a schedule for every day divided up into morning, afternoon, and evening, with baking tasks laid out appropriately so that she can finish before we head to Wisconsin on Saturday. I am impressed, as usual, with her organizational determination.

Other tasks for this week: Wrapping presents. Just because they’re all bought doesn’t mean they’re ready for Christmas. We’ll load up the coffee table downstairs with all the wrapping implements and then turn something on the TV. I’m thinking it’ll be more Heroes. I never watched Heroes when it started last year on TV, and once I got behind, I knew it was no use trying to start in the middle. So I got Season 1 and we’ve been saving it until we had time. Now with the writer’s strike and no new shows to watch, it’s the perfect time. We watched five episodes over the weekend. Totally hooked. If not Heroes, it’ll be time to break out the Muppet Christmas Carol. It is pretty much a yearly tradition - who can fail to love Kermit as Bob Crachit and Michael Caine as Mr. Scrooge? So much fun.

I’m taking Friday off work to get a head start on the holidays. Then we pack and head off to see the family. Lots to do between now and then, though. After all, it’s only one more week ’til Christmas.

Christmas shopping complete in record time

Usually I’m the guy who is out shopping on December 23rd, if not December 24th, to finish up all my Christmas shopping. But not this year! Thanks to the wonders of amazon.com and other online retailers, my Christmas shopping has been complete for almost a week now. OK, ignore that one thing I need to pick up for my sister… but yeah, everything is bought and in the care of US Mail or UPS, making its way to my house in time to be wrapped and transported to Wisconsin for Christmas.

I should really be careful with this - now I’ve set my performance bar pretty high for next year! :-)

If I were from England, I'd be unhappy

Becky and I were wandering the toy shelves at our local Target store recently, finishing up some Christmas shopping for the girls. On one shelf I saw this little set of dolls:

A couple of thoughts came to mind: first, how quaint! This reminds me of something out of the early 20th century, all nicely culturally stereotyped in ethnic garb. I am surprised that the PC police haven’t come down on it. But then I looked a little closer, and noticed this particular doll, which you can still make out even with the fuzzy picture quality from my camera phone:

Notice anything wrong? Yep, the doll is supposed to represent England, but she’s wearing Scottish plaid. If I were from England, I’d be unhappy. Obviously, somebody from Target (or whoever in China designs their toys) doesn’t realize that Scotland /= England. Ah well, a geography lesson for another day.

Bullet Points for a Friday Morning

  • I’ve stuck you, my blog readers, with far too many links this week and not enough other stuff. Now, that being said, they are all good links. You’ll find good stuff if you visit them.
  • Finally thinking about Christmas shopping. I think it’s gonna be a Amazon year. I have some good book ideas for almost everybody.
  • Chatted with Ryan for a while yesterday and it’s interesting to see us progressing remarkably parallel paths of theological thought and reading. Makes me wonder what it was in our common upbringing that’s moving us that way.
  • In the same chat conversation there were enough ideas come up to give me an outline for one of those books that I’d love to write but keep lamenting I never have the time for. I really should make an effort.
  • Tonight we’re doing Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Becky’s been looking forward to steak all week. Hooray for Christmas bonuses!
  • Church plant update: the lease agreement for the building was signed yesterday. Assuming the other party signs it (which they should), we’re officially in the building and will be starting January 5. Awesome and scary at the same time.
  • You know, if you go back to the real definition of awesome, something that inspires “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like”, then the scary part I juxtaposed in the previous bullet is pretty much redundant.

The travails of travel

Dear Delta Airlines,

I can’t decide whether to be mad with you or not. I was definitely not pleased with a 2.5 hour delay in Cedar Rapids and a missed connection + 1.5 hour delay in Atlanta. But I was happy with how easy it was to get booked onto the later flight, and the first-class seat was nice, given that I had to sit in it for an hour on the ground before we ever took off.

Hoping for better luck on the way home, Chris

Dear National Car Rental,

I’m not sure why my reservation was with you instead of Hertz, but it was really lame that your employee was still there at 1:30 a.m. but told me you were closed and I couldn’t get my car.

Hoping to not deal with you again, Chris

Dear Hertz,

Thanks for staying open past your posted 1 a.m. closing time. I wish I could’ve gotten a nav system in the car, but the map worked OK.

Your loyal customer, Chris

Dear Hilton Savannah Desoto,

I was so glad you still had my room reserved when I showed up at 2:30 a.m. The bed was comfortable, too, Five hours in it was definitely not long enough. And kudos on the free wi-fi. Here’s a hint: if you use the same SSID throughout the building and just vary the channel, it makes it less hassle connecting as I move around the building.

Feeling bad for bringing up such a minor point, Chris