Monthly Archives: July 2007

The Kwik-E-Mart Model To Grow The Church

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AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Now, let’s ask the embarrassing question. which is your church more like: the office funny guy repeating something that someone once thought was amusing, or the brilliantly subtle, detailed creation of a physical-world Kwik-E-Mart?

Much of the time, my rants about attention to detail and communicating carefully and responsibly and deliberately, are drowned out by a culture of casualness, spontaneity, free-wheelin’ yada yada yada. Hey, spontaneity and relaxation and freedom are good things, I approve of them. But attention to detail — by people who know what they’re doing — makes a difference, and viewers, visitors, congregants can tell (even if they can’t articulate the difference it makes). I didn’t see Diana Butler Bass when she passed through town (she was here only in father-daughter time), but it sounded as though she was saying similar things: that congregations grow not because you belong to the Single Correct Side of a theo-ideological schism, but because you realize that the work of living as a congregation, as a Body, requires care and attention to detail. People can tell the difference.

Attention to detail. This is something I struggle with every day, and something that’s just as likely to make me run and hide under the covers. And yet it’s something I have to do, and now I’ve taken on a new role as “chairperson” of one of the four new “ministry teams” (translation: small committee with a limited mission) at Holy Moly, it’s something I’ll have to deal with.

I’m kind of worried we’ll fall into the “office funny guy” trap if we’re not careful – we need be mindful about how we go about things.

Not only that, but what we’re doing on the Inviting Committee is learning to pay special attention to how we tell our story to people in the hopes of attracting them to be part of our community. And what we do leads directly to the Welcoming Committee, whose mission is to make sure people feel like coming to us was a good idea and to make it seem like a good idea to come back and all that kind of “Christian Formation” stuff. And that leads to the Nurturing Committee, which I’m also on, and we’re supposed to be taking care of people’s needs and offering various kinds of pastoral care. And finally if people feel really good about becoming part of the community, the Generosity Committee is there to make sure that people give generously of themselves and so forth.

And if we don’t pay attention to detail, this process will get derailed, potential new people will be unhappy or dissatisfied with their experience if they visit us, and we don’t grow. Thanks, AKMA, this actually helps! I’m going to get two blog posts out of this: one here, and one at the Holy Moly site. That is, the Blog of the Church Soon To Be Formerly Known As St Nicholas With The Holy Innocents. We’re planning a discernment period for figuring out which of the 3 choices we’ve identified is the best one. We have to pay careful attention to this and not screw it up.

I totally get how Kwik-E-Mart, that is, 7-11 has paid a lot of attention to detail in their tie-in promotion with The Simpsons movie, as documented in a colorful Flickr set showing the hilarious (and subtle) posters and inside jokes that 7-11 has come up with to make at least one of their stores a spot-on real-life analogue for the Kwik-E-Mart we know and love. They’re showing the love to the trufen, and also to the nonfen who know enough about The Simpsons to get most of the inside jokes in 7-11’s promotion. But not all – no joke is too obscure for 7-11 to have used for one of their posters – in some cases, the reference is to just one episode, that only trufen would recognize (and be able to cite by title, original broadcast date, and guest cast).

What I do not yet get is how to show this love to potential churchfen, so that inviting, welcoming, nurturing, and giving back are one seamless, fulfilling, consistent process. But I’ll be thinking about it this week.

And remember: A Twizzler is not a Sprinkle! A Mounds is not a Sprinkle! A Jolly Rancher is not a Sprinkle!

[tags]The Simpsons, AKMA, Flickr, Kwik-E-Mart, 7/11, Episcopal Church[/tags]

Tagged: 8 Random Facts about Me (Oh Noes! A Meme!)

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Dang it! I got tapped to be chairperson of one of the two ministry teams I joined at Holy Moly today. Actually, I was nominated in a pre-meeting email, and hadn’t responded, thinking “I’ve never been good at this leadership stuff. I’m too disorganized. I don’t want to fail miserably. I’m forever making promises I don’t keep, but people are too kind to say anything.”

And then the readings today…all of them… seemed to be about hearing the call, being a good disciple to a master that passes on the call, and not being wishy-washy. So what could I do?

Besides which, it’s what I was doing informally at the old (now closed) Holy Innocents, but the difference is now there are at least 4 or 5 people working on it.

Okay. Deep breath. Don’t screw this up.

MCGONAGALL

When I call your name you will come
    forth, I shall place the Sorting Hat on
               your head, and you will be sorted into your houses.

Hermione Granger!HERMIONE

Oh, no. OK relax.


RON WEASLEY


Mental that one, I'm telling you.




And now something else I’ve been tapped for, or tagged;  a meme. I’ve never actually participated in a meme before, and frankly I doubt whether I can come up with 8 bloggers to “tag” for it (who haven’t already been tapped), but here’s the rules courtesy of ***Dave :: 8 Random Facts about Me:




    

  1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
    2. 

  2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
    3. 

  3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
    4. 

  4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
    5. 

  5. Don’t forget to leave them each a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
    6. 





ARGGGHHH. All those team-building exercises I’ve endured over the years at work are rising up in my throat like that one bad clam you get in a bucket o’ steamers. But here goes.


FACT: I have a birthmark about the size of a 50-cent piece on my right ankle. I’ve never bothered to ask anyone about taking it off, and in fact I don’t notice it unless someone points it out and asks if it’s a burn.


HABIT: I sing and talk baby talk to my cat. Lately, the dialect has changed to LOLcat.


FACT: I am related to John Carver, first governor of the Plymouth Colony. Pop’s middle name was Carver for this reason. My many-times-great uncle would be horrified that I’ve “gone over” to Canterbury, so to speak.


HABIT: I pick at the dry skin on my fingers and seem to be unable to completely break myself of the habit. However, it gets better in times of low stress, and worsens when I’ve got something hanging over me. It helps to drink plenty of water and use hand lotions.


FACT: I rarely wear makeup anymore. But I keep buying the good stuff from Just for Redheads, possibly because of an underlying belief that just by having it, it works somehow.


FACT: English was almost my second language. As a toddler,  I spoke Spanish with the neighborhood kids, and broke into it whenever telling Mom that something exciting happened over at the Rivera house.


HABIT: I stay up late and sleep in as much as humanly possible before running around the next morning,  getting some semblance of clothes on suitable for work. If I go to bed early, I lie awake for several hours. This may have something to do with the fact that I used to sit up reading comic books under the covers with a flashlight ’til the wee hours. Nothing racy, mind you – I was partial to Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, and Mickey and Goofy. Gawrsh!


FACT:  I was a Job’s Daughter, and won something called the Librarian’s Award one term. This was because as Librarian I had to give some kind of inspiring talk, report, or read an essay every two weeks at the regular meetings. Usually, these were goofy comic routines meant to entertain the other girls – I once demonstrated how to fly a kite, for example, which worked out great in spite of the fact we were indoors at the time.  The Saturday of “Grand Bethel Visitation,” however, I gave a “weepie” report about a recent visit to the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital and Burn Unit, and I profiled one of the kids I met there. When I gave the report, I had ’em cryin’ in the aisles. All the girls were blubbering and sobbing something awful – it was quite the big finish for my term as Librarian. Somebody published my report in the Shrine newsletter, and the rest was history. That was my big literary moment. After I went to college, Mom knocked the arm off my trophy when it fell over during housecleaning. I was in Bethel 5 in Utah, and just to show you what a small world it is, I know the guy that’s Associate Grand Guardian on that website – he works for/with my brother-in-law. Hi, Larry! You clean up pretty good!


I should have added I generally run late to everything, because I just realized I’d been tagged for this “8 random things” meme.  And after such a random post, too.


Sorry about this, you lot, you’re tagged for the next round:


    

  1. My husband David
    2. 

  2. Holly Mullen
    3. 

  3.  Doris
    4. 

  4. Kuri
    5. 

  5. Dennis
    6. 

  6. Annie Mole
    7. 

  7. The Braid Blog (yes, another blog I write, but it’ll be an interesting exercise)
    8. 

  8. Joey
    9. 



[tags]8 Things, meme, Job’s Daughters, random[/tags]

					

		
		
	

				
					
	

		

						
			
						
					
			Boing Boing: What it takes to bring you Fiji water

						

						

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Boing Boing: What it takes to bring you Fiji water


 Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles’ journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation–which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each bottle of Fiji Water. The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity–something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from “one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth,” as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze (…)


My personal experience with Fiji Water: I had been aware of the product on the periphery of my “stuff that’s available to buy” vision, but had one of those “bonding” moments with it after a truly awesome massage. This was in the days immediately after Mom died, and I went to this place in Salt Lake that promised a  nice experience with hot lava rocks and scented oils.


Oh, boy, howdy, that massage was a spiritual experience. I won’t say it was a spiritual awakening, because it actually put me to sleep for a few minutes near the end… and since I hadn’t slept in days, that was saying something. I floated out of the massage place afterwards, promising to drink plenty of water, and since I actually had a raging thirst, bought a bottle of Fiji Water from the nearest place I could find, a little espresso-snack shop attached to the local chain bookstore. And it was very soft in the mouth and refreshing, especially compared to Salt Lake’s extemely hard water.  I fell a little in love with it that day, but that was because of the massage. It may have flushed a lot of toxins, too.


That said, I won’t be buying imported water again, because there’s no justifying buying it based on the description above, no matter how clean the taste and soft the mouthfeel. That goes for Fiji Water, Panna water (the stuff I had to find for Synergy Brass Quintet when they performed concerts at Holy Innocents),  or anything of that ilk. I don’t think there’s any reason to stop purchasing imported foods, because that to me is different – but water is water.