2012 MAP

Paul Wash, the chair of our Finance Team, gave a thoughtful and detailed presentation of the proposed 2012 MAP on Sunday, November 20, at our Ministry Conference. [It went so well that immediately after we decorated our church for Advent and it looks fabulous!]

The budget is lower by 0.5%. This isn't out of any need to cut the budget as we are on pace to meet our 2011 budget. Rather, the line items better reflect the expenses associated with those designations. We had over-budgeted for some items in our current budget; the 2012 budget corrects those inflated amounts.

Some high points to the budget: our Church Administrator had a positive salary correction in keeping with his position and duties. The Children's budget was increased per the request of the Children's Ministry Team. The Youth budget also increased over the current allotment.

Chairman Wash also provided good news about Calvary's building debt. You may recall that since the 2010 budget, we have allotted around $80,000 to pay down interest and principle. Demonstrating a faithful and wise congregation, Calvary has received additional offerings to go toward paying down principle on the debt. We are well below $600,000 on the note and could possibly lower that to just under $500,000 by the end of 2012. Given where we started just a few years ago, we are making excellent progress to becoming debt free.

We will vote on the Mission Action Plan for 2012 on Sunday at the close of Worship. It is appropriate that this business of the church occurs within the context of worship--certainly we have much to praise our Lord about.

advent begins

Calvary will join churches across the globe to celebrating Advent beginning tomorrow. For this season of expectation, we have decided to utilize N.T. Wright's book Simply Christian. In this book, Wright argues that there are whispers of God throughout the world. Equally powerful is the fact that our spirits long for more than this world can offer. Wright names four aspects of these promises. We seek justice but do not find it here. We long for beauty and catch only glimpses. Community beckons us but we still deal with estrangement. We long for harmony of body, mind and soul yet live in unsettling and anxious times.

Over the next four weeks, our Worship will use as a starting point each of these aspects. Join us as we await the Coming of the King.

Thanksgiving family football

As someone who played football every Thanksgiving weekend at my granny's from 1978 - 1988, I found this piece highly relevant. Hope you enjoy the read.

giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I am truly thankful for Calvary--our community, our neighborhood, and all of God's blessings that are Calvary.

Calvary hosts a recovery ministry, Celebrate Recovery, on Monday nights. I have the privilege of providing some leadership to this on a weekly basis (along with our CR worship leader Stephanie Mettler). After some discussion with our lay leaders, we decided to change up our typical Mon night routine this past Monday.

We had a potluck, along with some Uncle Dan's fixin's, and ate a big family meal in the Welcome Center. As we finished the meal, we offered folks the opportunity to share blessings and name things they were thankful for. It was grace-filled. I am reminded every Monday night at 6:30pm that if Jesus returned, he would be at CR meetings.

Of the many blessings I count this Thanksgiving are to the pilgrims I get to journey with on Mon nights.

Advent Conspiracy

Advent begins on Sunday, November 27. This is the beginning of the Church calendar; we begin with four weeks of expectation and preparation for coming of Christ.

Our adult Sunday School classes will engage in a unified study during Advent. The study is based on the book/movement Advent Conspiracy.

This study seeks to free us from the rampant consumerism that has come to dominate Advent and Christmas. We know this season more for sales and shopping than for the birth of the Savior. Jesus has become an excuse to buy, buy, buy. Advent Conspiracy reminds us why celebrate who we celebrate.

It has four main tenets, which we will study in order one a week: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.

May this liberate us from the idolatry of consumption and return our attention to the Infant Savior.

Calvarians in Lebanon

This comes from Jeremy and Sara Boucher, who are interviewing to work for Kids Alive International in Beirut, Lebanon. Sara sent the following out after their recent interview:

I am full of joy and love for you all as I write this. We are certainly aware of the prayers of the saints as we traveled and had our interview this past weekend. I don't think I realize often enough how God's good hand covers us as we are going...and this weekend I may have gotten a glimpse of that. Bear with me as I try to articulate our weekend!

On Friday we went to Dublin. Thad did great - in fact, he did SUPER great. He suddenly decided the time was ripe for him to stand up and walk all over the house like he's been doing it forever. We said goodbye to sweet Thad and left him in his wonderful grandparent's care on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 to head to Ft. Worth where we met up with Jeremy's aunt and cousin. We stayed up late with them to see Baylor beat OU for the first time in history - it was totally worth it, even if we did only get 4 hours of sleep...

We woke up at 4am to head to the airport and catch our 6:30am flight out of DFW. The airport was already crowded with Thanksgiving travelers. We got to sit next to a sweet little 12 month old and her grandma on the plane and she did great. We made our connection no problem and arrived in Chicago right on time. A van had been scheduled to pick us up and we found it just fine - this van also had 2 other passengers who would be dropped off in Indiana near where we were. Okay, so here's where I said, "Okay, really??" The van was all but held together with bungee cords and duct tape!! I felt like I was back in our '85 landcruiser in Ethiopia...ahh memories :) To get my mind off the duct tape and my doubts about this vehicles road-worthiness, I asked the lady in front of me where she had just come from. She just let out a "don't get me started" kind of sigh and said (in accordance with her sigh) "Don't get me started!" haha! She had been in like 8 different states within the past 8 hours moving her recently graduated son into his new apartment in NYC. She got on the phone and Jeremy and I talked and generally let our eyes go blank from fatigue, when she turned around after her phone conversation and said, "Now what are you guys doing up here?" We explained about our interview with KAI and she just got so excited!! She asked if she could pray for us right then and there and as she prayed her voice rose in excitement - I can only imagine what the other guys in the van must have thought! It was awesome! She shared her story with us after she finished interceding for us and man, what a story. I'll share the depth of it with you later, but long story short, she has been tested and tried and has loved God all the more through it and for it!

We got to our hotel and collapsed for a few hours and then grabbed dinner.

Monday morning we woke up feeling just so refreshed. Thank you for your prayers!! We went down to the lobby and waited for Cambria and Gordon to show up. Cambria is our contact person at Kids Alive and Gordon is the Human Resources/Office Administrator. Cambria walked in first followed shortly by Gordon and we all sat down for breakfast at the hotel. It was great just getting to meet them! It was such easy conversation and good fellowship - the formal interview wouldn't be till later in the morning. After breakfast we headed over to the Kids Alive office where we met all the staff (there were probably 15-20 staff at the office - accountants, receptionist, assistants, church liaisons, missionary liaisons, etc) - it was full of energy and packed out! They're talking about building an addition because Kids Alive is exploding and they need more staff to keep up with the growing work load! What a great "problem" to have :). We got to participate in office prayer time when everyone stepped out of their door into the hall to share prayer requests and praises and seek God together. We got to meet the president of Kids Alive and he reminded me so much of my dad! ha :) Our formal interview began after prayer time and we stepped into Cambria's office. She asked us several questions, ranging from our salvation experience, our experience cross-culturally, to things that stress us out and how we handle those stresses...After we finished these questions, Gordon shared with us the three responses we could receive from the psychologist. The first is Not Recommended, the second is Recommend with Reservation (requiring counseling prior to going on the field), and the third is Recommend. Gordon told us the psychologist wrote "Highly" in front of Recommend - looks like we made a 4th option!! :) Our interviewers told us we would have an answer in 2 weeks - but to please go ahead and start writing our fundraising letters so we can get those out as soon as they give approval!! WOOHOO!

So, minus the tiny little 1% reservation I have to saying, "WE'RE IN!", we're pretty much in :) We felt so comfortable with everyone we met. We learned more about the organization and got to put faces to names. Cambria talked $$ with us after our formal interview and asked when we'd like to go - we said June would be ideal. It looks like for a family we'll have start up costs of around $10,000 that would be a one-time amount apart from our monthly needs, then around $3,500/month that we would need commitments for. 100% of our fundraising is required prior to leaving for the field. We need 50% of our fundraising before we can make reservations for missions training before we go. We aren't scared of these numbers - God has always, always, ALWAYS gone above and beyond when we seek Him! We have felt his guidance and his grace over us in this specifically since we decided to move to Waco. We are confident he will continue to take care of us and carry out His purpose in us throughout this process.

For Fundraising, I do have a few networking questions for you all. I know that many businesses (and even individuals) like to give charitably before year's end for tax exemptions. If any of you know people in our church who are business owners or might be able to give generously towards our one-time $10,000, please let us know so we can sit down with them and/or write them a letter. Of course, if they want to support us monthly, that would be fantastic, too! :)

After our time at the Kids Alive office we went straight back to the airport to fly home to our sweet little boy who we missed so much! We had some rough turbulence when we were coming into the DFW area due to the storms and I kept saying, "God, you're not done with us yet!" I said that throughout our stormy drive home at midnight and thanked God when we got back home and saw our adorable son with his footie PJ's on and hiney in the air in his crib...Jeremy's parents graciously brought him home last night and spent the night so we could have our kiddo with us this morning :).

We are newly in awe of our great big God! Forgive us, Lord, when we make you look like us. Forgive us, Lord, when we apply our limitations to You, who are limitless. Give us humble hearts and servant hands. Increase our faith and help us to do everything you ask.

Thank you for walking with us!

Jeremy & Sara

Christians in the city

Follow this link to a good article in this month's Christianity Today. The author provides a solid biblical narrative for urban ministry going from exodus to exile to expectation [and so close to Advent!].

the profitability of affordable housing, #1

When I served on Trenton's City Council, and before, I had the opportunity to deal with housing developers. Most of these, particularly in Trenton, built affordable housing.

There were a number of reasons for this. Trenton had become the repository for economically challenged folks within the County following the post-WWII housing boom and the Eisenhower era road building. Princetonians talked a good game about social justice and high-minded ideals but their zoning, tax and planning structures spoke more truthfully; they wanted to talk about poor people, not live next to them. Trenton has far more than its share of affordable housing in the City.

Another reason for this beyond municipality policy was State policy. The State of NJ has a Coalition on Affordable Housing [COAH for short] that mandates that a % of new housing development include affordable housing [affordable being defined by a complex formula utilizing median income and local housing costs among other variables]. COAH also allowed for municipalities to "sell" their obligations to other municipalities. Trenton fed at this trough early and often.

For instance, Hopewell township, a wealthier community than even Princeton, was required some years ago to build a certain number of units of affordable housing to go along with additional market rate housing that had been built within the municipality. Instead of actually building that housing, Hopewell sent a fat check (usually $65,000.00 per unit) and its affordable housing obligation to Trenton. Hopewell made out by not having to build affordable units within their homogeneous community and not having to provide those commensurate services (social, school, fire, police). Trenton made out because they had few revenue sources and could bundle these checks to provide offsets for developers. This short-term gain never lasted as the City had to provide additional services and poverty became more concentrated.

After much public outcry, COAH did change this practice somewhat. As well, Trenton realized that these checks cost more than they paid out and stopped taking them. The damage had been done as poverty was concentrated in Trenton while good jobs increasingly resided in suburban and exurban locales.

Again, affordable housing was the name of the game in Trenton. And of all the developers I knew, the only millionaires were those that developed affordable housing. And why not, most of the units built had massive public subsidies backing them--either from the State, other local municipalities paying Trenton to build their mandated units or even federal $. Developer XYZ would propose building a 100 unit housing project, get a $100,000 per unit subsidy, finance $50,000 with private financing, get the municipality to market the project to prospective buyers (if it's homeownership) and sell those units for $85,000 per. There's a built in profit of $35,000 per unit and if they can keep the costs down, or self-finance, they make more per unit. And I haven't even gotten into PILOTs (payments in lieu of [property] taxes) which can last for 20 years.

This may seem a rather lengthy excursus on affordable housing, and perhaps misplaced on a pastor's blog, but part 2 of this subject should make this discourse a bit more germane to Waco.

Happy All Saints Day

Last night was Halloween of course, which comes from All Hallows Eve. Halloween originated as a result of the Roman Catholic holiday of All Saints Day. All Hallows Eve was the night before the holy day; medieval ecclesiastics postulated that the holy day would bind evil spirits. Those evil spirits would therefore engage in double the mayhem the day/night before.

I suppose the candy and costume companies could not find a way to grossly commercialize All Saints Day, and instead settled for Halloween. Or, maybe the medieval ecclesiastics were correct after all.

If you do not feel saintly, do not fear. Tomorrow is All Soul's Day on the Church calendar.