It was my privilege to attend the graduation ceremonies for Noah’s Ark Christian Preschool this past week. The three year old ceremony was held downstairs and marked their passage to the next grade. The four-year-old graduation was held upstairs in the sanctuary. They dressed in costume to sing songs that go with the Noah’s Ark theme; then they went back to the library and came out with graduation caps to complete their program. Mrs. Maum emceed the whole and I closed in a prayer of blessing upon the graduates and their families. Refreshments capped the evening celebration. I presented flowers to Mrs. Maum to honor her for her leadership for another year and to Mrs. Kraus and Mrs. LaForte for their faithful work as helpers. Mrs. Magda Paashaus also taught in the three year old class for part of this past year until she needed to stop for the birth of her son Andrew. Noah’s Ark Preschool is a great opportunity to help children prepare for school and for life in a loving atmosphere where they also learn basic truths of Christian faith.
On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I rode with Mark and Keely and our grandson Sam down to Haskinville and then to Corning so Sam could meet for the first time my mother, Dorothy Jones, and my wife’s father, Rev. Joseph DeSerio. The trip was made a little more urgent by the fact that my mother’s health has been deteriorating markedly over the past several weeks. Thank you to all of you who are praying for her.
God granted us a blessed day in every way. Everyone was healthy for the day. Sammy made the trip well and charmed everyone with his smile. Both my Mom and JoAnne’s Father were having good days as well. I flashed away with the camera and came away with some memorable shots too. It was an unusual picture-taking day in that we took four-generation pictures on both sides of our family that same day.
I was also glad to be able to see my siblings who are caring for Mom – Phil and MarySue and their spouses. In Corning we also saw JoAnne’s brother Joe, her father’s wife, Lucille, and a family friend, Barb. These were all happy to see Keely and Mark and Sam too.
Tuesday morning as I was eating breakfast on the porch, I had the privilege watching two white crowned sparrows in my lawn. They were beautiful plump taiga (boreal forest) white crowned sparrows. One was hanging out on the brush pile where I stack the kindling brush for next fall. The other was nearby busily eating dandelion seeds from newly closed flowers. It is a treat to see them come through on their migration north.
During our 50th celebration we received many compliments as a church family. Some were for relatively unimportant things. Others for very significant factors. The highest compliment we received, I believe, was from one person who does not often speak publicly. She rose in testimony time and said that she liked our church and was attracted to it because we not only taught the Bible and preached about it but we lived it too. That has to be one of the key characteristics of every good church. Jesus said it was the description of every wise follower of his. Here’s a great article on how to choose a good church. I think the four ideals this author unpacks describe Community Wesleyan in Kirkville too.
I continue to reflect on what made our 50th anniversary celebration so successful. Our district superintendent gave us a great compliment saying that he could not think of another church that had used an anniversary celebration so well to move the church forward. So I want to write down for the sake of others what I believe helped us to make it happen.
Intercede for the celebration
Looking back, I believe that one reason our celebration was blessed was that we have been praying for it for all these 30 months that it has been in process. It has been a frequent topic on the Wednesday intercessors list. It has been a subject for prayer by the pastors in their weekly meetings. It had been a topic for LBA (Local Board of Administration) prayer times too. Our focus has been that we might lift up Jesus in this celebration, that we might celebrate his faithfulness and grow in faith and expectancy for the future. Our prayer was that the 50th celebration would help to launch the church into its next decade well.
Advertise and Invite
This should go without saying but it doesn’t. So many times in the church we have planned and executed excellent programs but failed to advertise them and generate invitations to them. We seem to assume that if we plan a good service, people will hear about it and decide to come. But that is so not true.
Here’s a very thoughtful article on the subject that is well worth thinking about. It’s so easy to get out of the habit that we need reminding from time to time why it is so important.
After our fun celebration, I began thinking, “Why is it important to celebrate? Are there good reasons besides the fun?” I remembered immediately that God must have thought it was important as he taught the OT people to set aside time for feasting and rejoicing. Now, in the glow of our big weekend, I can see some of the reasons.
Celebration motivates people to volunteer and identify with the cause.
The energy of the occasion is catching. People like to be a part of a good purpose in a way that is immediate and tangible. Helping out at a celebration provides a positive emotional feedback to the volunteer, especially when coupled with appropriate appreciation from those being helped. Volunteering in turn helps the volunteer to feel more a part of the organization that they helped.
Celebration generates creativity.
We found that the combination of workers thinking together and the challenge of a focused task that they strongly believed in generated much creativity. All kinds of new ideas were spawned in the past few months and many of them were used. One of the biggest examples was the sanctuary makeover. The idea of preparing for the future helped set a climate for change. The creative idea of dividing the front wall between paint and paneling instead of all paneling was accepted by a huge majority. The new design’s decorative flexibility became evident at the 50th as the background of the cross became purple to complement the purple and gold color scheme of the celebration. Enlarging the vestibule and moving the doors to the center created an entrance so natural that it seems like it always should have been like that. For another example, we had done slide shows before on the big screen but never with the music embedded and narration overlaid. Anne Kipping and JoAnne Jones went as far as they could and then called in Josh Basile to put it all together. A third example was the spontaneous recreation of the church sign landscaping by Cindy Centner and Vicki Hilliges. All these examples made it obvious that creativity just happens as we celebrate.
Celebration calls forth profound praise to God.
Sometimes our praises seem rather ordinary, habitual and dutiful. That’s certainly much superior to a lack of praise, but there is more.
What a great weekend we have enjoyed here at Community Wesleyan. There was a tremendous joy evident in all the events. Beginning with the hugs of surprise reunions at the parsonage open house, continuing amid the happy chatter of the delightfully fancy Meet N’ Greet reception, and throughout the service of thanksgiving on Saturday evening, joy abounded. Looking back, I’m so glad we added the Saturday events. I estimate at least 120 enjoyed the praise and thanksgiving time. It gave much more time to peruse the meticulously collected photo albums and bulletin boards telling our church’s story. It also gave time to try to guess who went with which baby pictures. I wonder if anyone guessed that early grade school picture was me. I also think it added greatly to the anticipation of Sunday.
Sunday’s Celebration events were climactic in every way. The coffee and cookie time was grander than ever and enjoyed by many. In service, who can forget the heart for winning others to Jesus of our aging founding pastor, Rev. Tom Boghosian as he urged us on. The music was stirring especially the rousing chorus of “Look What the Lord Has Done,” the grand piano, organ and reunion choir rendition of “To God Be the Glory,” the Sign Choir’s moving “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” the bell choir’s fresh reminder, “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands”, and Dave Schwarz’s challenge with “Find Us Faithful.” Like our two services, the celebration was a mix of traditional and contemporary elements. At the suggestion of Dick Rugar, we used this day to also receive new members, of whom he was one. Another one, Nancy Collins, gave her testimony. A very well put together slide show summarized our church’s history and ministry very well. District Superintendent Wayne Wager Sr.’s message on Jubilee, a Time to Realign was both a warning and an encouragement to us to take advantage of this crucial time in our history to seek the kind of renewal that will return us to our original passion for souls.
What a blessing also to hear Pastor Eric’s official announcement that our goal of 50 ministries in the past 30 months had been exceeded. We praise God for enabling this. And since we want that spirit to continue, we hope many will send out one of the special postcards we made. That is our next outreach and service ministry.
In hindsight, one of the wisest decisions we made was to use a caterer and have the dinner at church. The turnout was tremendous. The downstairs was arranged to seat about 220 and some seats were used twice. The program was fun yet helped us reflect on the history of our church. The reminisces from former pastors Wolfe and Crandall and testimonies from Fran Filmer and Steven Sgroi gave us good perspectives too. JoAnne’s song, “Keep the Flame Burning” that we sang at the close of both the service and the dinner program seemed to sum it all up so well.
There are so many to thank for making it all possible. Pastor Wager was impressed with the planning we had done. I was personally blessed by all those who pitched in the last few days to put on finishing touches. There were set-up volunteers swarming the place for days ahead. Volunteers worked on at least 4 picture related projects constantly during that last week. Gardeners totally redid the church sign garden. People were practicing music and sign and bells whenever they could find a spot to do so. Then after it was all over, volunteers were cleaning up for hours. I say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped bring it all together.
As our celebration continues, I continue to reflect on the planning that has led up to our celebration. I was thinking about things that we could have done better. That is part of evaluating any major effort.
Budget specifically for the celebration.
Somehow we thought when we did the yearly budget a year ago that the cost of our celebration would get absorbed here and there in the budget. But as the year progressed and the celebration got closer, the committee could see that it was a big mistake not to ask for a specific budget line for the celebration itself. Fortunately for the celebration, this was one of those years where we needed to do a mid-year budget revision; so even though we were cutting the budget total, the finance committee carved out a line item for the celebration in the revised budget. Sooner or later, and especially in a tight budget year, subcommittees for promotion or dinner or remembrances, etc. are going to need money.
Appoint not only sub-committee or area leaders, but recruit assistants too.
We discovered as the celebration neared that our leadership cadre was too thin. We were like a basketball team with only 5 players and no one to substitute when someone was injured or needed a rest. One team leader couple was doing double duty in two areas. While it was barely tolerable because the time frames of major involvement were staggered, it was definitely not ideal. Another leader had family circumstances arise that required more attention. Since that area had no assistant leader and very few team members, some work inevitably fell upon other sub-groups. When leaders are overloaded, the whole project suffers and workers can get a sour taste from overwork. Hindsight says we should have recruited assistant leaders so that each team had some back-up in case of emergency. I think I could have been more helpful in recruiting additional sub-team members. I left that to committee heads.
Use social media to advertise
We decided as part of the build-up to the 50th anniversary to put the pastor on Facebook and create a Facebook page for the church. We did not realize when we did it that this medium would quickly become one of our best means of getting the word out about activities. If we had started sooner, we would have had more time to build up our Facebook following for the church’s page. Of course, we also created website pages for the 50th and the pastor blogged about it as well. However, we did not assign enough writers. We created the internet vehicles but had trouble getting sufficient new content online to maximize our exposure. Ideally we needed at least two volunteers specifically writing for the web and Facebook. Then, I think we needed additional means to link Facebook, the webpages, and the pastor’s blog. We were on the right track, but in hindsight, we could have been much more effective with a few changes.
Recruit more photographers
We had assigned a photographer for a formal picture of guests, but we had not assigned photogrphers for informal pictures. I wish we had. When we asked later for pictures that had been taken at the celebration, there were not nearly as many as we expected.
The preparations have been exhausting, but the result is clearly worth it. Many people have pitched in to accomplish a prodigious amount of work in the last week in preparation for this weekend at Community Wesleyan.
Makeover fever hits the sign garden
Cindy Center took on some of the outside gardening and asked Vicki Hilleges to help. Vicki in turn recruited her daughter Nicole and husband Doug to finish the complete redo of the landscaping surrounding our church sign. It looks awesome. Cindy and Vicki also resurrected the old planter between the pines, the first time it has been plated since I have been pastor here. Mike and Pat had lots of help in setting up for the dinner and it looks gorgeous with everything in purple and gold. Fran recruited help too and the Meet and Greet reception tables were a visual treat as well as being loaded with goodies. Here at the parsonage, JoAnne had help in preparing for the open house from Mikayla, Kim O. and Kathy Dunn.
Picture mother lode discovered
A picture treasure trove was discovered just this past Sunday. Suddenly the history drawer had more pictures and notebooks in it than it had in years. This required a huge amount of hustle to resort pictures for the slideshow, fill more photo albums, and prepare the rest for appropriate filing. JoAnne headed up this effort with help from many. To Amy LaForte fell the task of actually putting the mounds of pictures into photo albums. Judy Pazdzierski and JoAnne created the photo record for 50 4 50 Ministries. JoAnne supplied the pictures and write-ups and Judy did the scrap-booking. The third photo project has been the slide show. Anne Kipping and JoAnne were working hard on it but discovered they needed a PowerPoint expert to help bring their whole vision together. Josh Basile joined their effort and supplied the expertise and the finishing touches.
First evening of celebration is a big success
Nothing like hugs from friends — Many hugs at the parsonage open house this afternoon and at the meet and greet time at church afterward. Saw many I have not seen in years. Many are returning tomorrow. Founding pastor, Rev. Tom Boghosian and his wife and former pastor Rev. Ed Crandall and Lois were here. In addition to these, tomorrow we expect to see Rev and Mrs. Wolfe and our D.S., Rev. Wayne Wager and his wife. After the conversation time the concert/praise and testimony time was attended by more than one hundred people. It was a joyful time.
