Tag Archives: church

The Gospel According to Chopin

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Earlier this month I was taking a seminary class at Luther Seminary with John Roberto of Lifelong Faith Associates. During one of the classes, he showed us what may be the best TED video I’ve ever seen. It could be titled, “The Gospel According to Chopin” (by the way, I am in no way a classical music person, which illustrates the point even better). Watch it below… my thoughts follow.

Some intersections with the gospel & theology:

  • Discipleship is more like teaching the piano than passing on information en masse. Think about how kids learn to play the piano: a parent or a teacher sits down on the bench next to them one-on-one. They aren’t invited into a class when they hit a certain age and are expected to learn to play the piano.
  • We can “live into” realities that are not present.
  • Vision must be big & not incremental. Moving from 3% to 4% is not visionary. We should strive for 100%.
  • Stop emphasizing every note, but think about the long line from b to e
  • When other people’s eyes are not shining, who am I being to cause that? Not, what is wrong with them?
  • Our job is to awaken the possibilities in others
  • The conductor never speaks but engages all
  • We must believe in the outcome
  • One-buttock playing = passionate, consuming, internalized
  • His face showed he cared and was passionate.

What takeaways did you have from the video?

The Perfect Church Email Solution?

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So, I thought this would be easy. I’m looking for a church email list management solution that I thought would be pretty simple. But apparently the features I want aren’t that easy to find. Here’s what I’m looking for:

  • The ability to send emails to different segments of a master list (youth, prayer requests, announcements, etc.)
  • An opt-in form online for subscribers with the ability to have users choose from multiple subscription lists and manage their preferences in one place
  • Here’s where I’m having trouble:
    • The ability to send a message to a list segment (i.e. youth only) from my email. I don’t want to have to log in and do a huge HTML email template thing. So, I want to send an email to something like HopeLutheranRandomYouthEmailString@email.com and it automatically initiates an email to everyone in the youth segment of my list.
    • The ability to add people who are allowed to do the above. I want the secretary, the lady who manages our prayer chain, and the youth intern to be able to send out emails to their lists as well.

With all the advanced email marketing solutions out there, I figured this would be no problem. In fact, I don’t really even need a fancy HTML newsletter. I just want to get information out to the appropriate groups. I’ve researched the following options and they don’t work for whatever reason:

  • LISTServ – This is really the solution I am probably looking for, but it’s kinda complex and expensive. I’m still unsure if it has the ease of use for subscribers to manage their preferences, too.
  • MailChimp – Everyone I talk to who has used MailChimp loves it, but it won’t do what I want. I love their subscription forms and user management. It would be easy for anyone to subscribe to and manage different email lists. The problem is that there is no way to send from email directly to a list without logging into the MailChimp website.
  • ListBox – This almost had what I wanted, but there was no way for users to add themselves to multiple lists at one time. Each separate list needed a new form to be filled out.
  • JangoMail – I think this might do what I want, but it’s a bit pricey compared to the others.

I feel like I’m looking in all the wrong places. Surely there’s a way to do what I want to do for a reasonable price. For the amount of functionality a service like MailChimp offers at a great price, I really don’t want to pay through the nose for the simple features I’m looking for.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

The Church and the Rich Young Ruler

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I’m going to be preaching later this fall, and the gospel text for that Sunday includes Mark 10:17-23. In an initial reading of the passage, I couldn’t help but wonder if today we need to be reading the passage something like this:

As Jesus started on his way, a pastor ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must our church do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these we have kept since we were young.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing your church lacks,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because his church had large buildings, many full-time staff, and valuable land.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

Is this one of the things this text is saying to us today?

In the ELCA, congregations take in almost $2 billion in giving annually and have around $20 billion in assets, presumably mostly in real estate. Should some of our congregations start selling off their assets?