What Dave and Jon Will Never Tell You...

CCC Will Not Be Feeding the 5,000 This Year...

If you've ever been in a meeting with Dave or Jon, you know that after opening in prayer, the next thing on their agenda is "Where are we winning?"  Happens every time without fail.  And trust me, I love that about those guys and I'm pretty sure the rest of our staff does too.  It's fun to talk about where God is showing up in our personal lives or in our respective ministries.

But as far as I can remember, I've never seen an agenda from those guys that says, "Where are we losing?"  Nope, I've never seen it!  But that's not to say we don't talk about our challenges, because as you can imagine, we've got our share of challenges to work through.  But sharing our wins is much more fun to talk about than our challenges and it's even more fun to share our wins with others than it is our challenges.

So here's another one of those, "What Dave and Jon Will Never Tell You..."

This year CCC will not be feeding the 5,000 at the annual All Church Picnic!  And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but someone had to tell you and I hope you will understand the decision we made.  Here's the e-mail I sent to All Staff earlier this month:

"I’ve heard several people ask about the all church picnic this year and when it will be, so please forgive me for not communicating sooner…

Sad but true, we will not be hosting an all church picnic this year L.  The Lead Team made a decision earlier this year that had to do primarily with finances and our need to remain fiscally responsible.  Despite receiving generous donations from our vendors, the picnic was still a cost to CCC of $12,000 to $15,000 annually.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – this was a difficult but necessary decision in light of our offerings being below our budget ytd and the new expense reimbursement protocols in place."

Bummer, huh?  Definately not a "win" and that's why you probablly haven't heard too much about the picnic (at least not from Dave or Jon).  But on a much brighter note, we are continuing to make wise financial decisions here at CCC so that we can continue to be used by God to help even more people find their way back to Him. 

And just to head things off at the pass, if you hear anything about a picnic that took place at the Shorewood Campus this summer (the same campus I attend), I heard those guys pulled that off for about $300.  Pretty cool, huh?

Getting Started & Baptism

Wow!  I can't believe I'm doing this - blogging.  But for several months now I've come under the influence of my fellow staff talking about Dave's blog and Jon's blog that it's become a bit contagious.  So here I am, blogging for the very first time, only I hope this blog will be different from all the other blogs floating around Community Christian Church.

This blog, fergusonfree, is intended to give everyone who loves Community Christian Church (like I do) a behind the sceens and ferguson-free perspective of how things really work and really get done around here.  You see, I think many of us read Dave or Jon's blog because we love the vision they cast, and the stories they tell of people finding their way back to God, but behind that vision and those stories of changed lives is the story of how it happened, the internal stuggles it took to make it happen and from my perspecitve, how it got paid for.  So while I hope you all continue to tune into their blog sites each week to learn what's happening here at CCC, I hope you'll also check in to this site from time to time for the real story; "What Dave and Jon will never tell you."

So here's my first entry on What Dave and Jon will never tell you...

I just read on Dave's blog that we baptized some 40+ people this past weekend across all eight locations.  I agree, that's awesome!  But did you know that it was Tim Bakker, our Naperville Campus Pastor, who had the idea two years ago to decentralize baptisms to every location?  Yep, it sure was and that was a bit counter culteral at the time.  You see for years we had a monthly gathering at our Naperville Campus called Commitment Celebration.  It took place the 3rd Wednesday of every month.  It worked great for the first several years, but when you get to eight locations, we found that it became a barrier to people getting baptized - either they didn't want to drive to the yellow box, or had to work that night or didn't feel like the yellow box was "home."  So it was Tim Bakker who challenged our culture and the "one church" concept with what we affectionately call a renagade or unsanctioned baptism at the Romeoville Campus (that's while he was the Romeoville Campus Pastor).  But after a severe flogging and tongue lashing by his fellow staff, we all agreed that his idea was brillant and investigated how to buy portable baptistries.

We purchased 4 portable baptistries in 2005 at a cost of $4,000 each.  Yes, it was a lot of money, but if you consider the number of people who have taken their faith public in the last year alone, I think it was well worth it.  And just in case my fellow staff read this and plan to use this against me by purchasing additional baptistires that are not in the budget, let me remind you of our new expense reimbursement procedures (I can't figure out how to put a smilely face here, but it belongs here).