What Dave and Jon Will Never Tell You...

A True Driving Experience

I was having dinner a while back with a relative of mine - he's an atheist and loves to engage me in "religious" conversation any chance he gets.  At Christmas, he'll take a shot at me by saying something like, "So, how's business these days?  Raking it in are you?"  Other times, he'll keep the focus on money and go into a hysterical monologue where he plays the role of preacher and sounds something like "Open up your hearts!  Open up your minds!  Open up your wallets!"  Ha, ha, ha.  If my relative would ever step foot inside Community Christian Church, he'd be pleasantly surprised to know that Giving Back to God sounds nothing like that.

Don't get me wrong, I like my relative, I enjoy his company, and I'm praying for him daily to find his way back to God.  Two weeks ago he was over to my house for dinner and parked his brand new car (very, very expensive car) on my driveway.  I told him not to!  I said, "I think you should park it on the street so it doesn't get scratched."  Guess what?  He didn't listen (kinda like he doesn't listen when I talk God with him) and my oldest son accidentally ran his bike into the back panel.  Bummer!

Anyway, since we were on the subject of cars, he was fishing for information about our church, what our staff gets paid, what Dave gets paid and what kind of car Dave drives.  You see, he was figuring that Dave gets paid a ton of money (which he doesn't) and drives an expensive car like his.  And if he could verify that through me, then that would validate his belief about Pastors and Churches being only interested in people's money. What a great setup for me!  I smiled at my wife who was sitting at the table with us and I proceeded to answer his questions.  And I totally flustered him when I got to share that Dave drives a red, 1994 Toyota Paseo!  You should of seen the look of disbelief on his face!  But its true.  Check it out - quite a humbling driving experience!

But this week I got a bit nervous, I heard Dave was considering getting a different car.  I thought, "Oh great, he's probably gonna get some snazzy new car like Tim Sutherland or Eric Metcalf :). That's all I needed in light of my conversation with my relative.

But fortunately and staying true to his humble personality, Dave is considering a new set of wheels, but I've got nothing to worry about if he does.  Here's what Dave won't tell you - he's considering a downgrade to a 1992 Pontiac Grand Am - Green.  I love you Dave!  Thanks for leading by example!  Your choice in cars may just be the thing that helps my relative find his way back to God.

Drive on!

STOP THE HARASSMENT

About two years ago, CCC got into a rhythm of intentionally inviting as many of our friends, family and neighbors to attend a series strategically placed when most people are inclined to attend church -

• Back to school season in the fall and
• Just before Easter in the spring. 

And I must say, being intentional about inviting others to join us these two times a year has done wonders in terms of expanding God's Kingdom.  Each season, we've experienced an increase in our weekly attendance of 18-22% - that's about 600-1000 new attenders each season!  Wow!  And these are not just numbers for numbers sake, these are real people taking their first steps towards finding their way back to God.

This year, Ignite coincides with the grand opening of the addition to our Naperville Campus - the Yellow Box.  We spent the last year designing and building this space to accommodate an additional 1,000+ adults, students and children.  Kudos to Lee Messersmith and Janet Miller who worked many extended hours to get this building completed in time for Ignite.  As it stands, we have our temporary occupancy permit and we are set to welcome hundreds of new attenders on September 15th/16th!   

Today we had an All Staff meeting in the theater of this new space (it's really cool) and concluded by spending time praying that God will use this space to help even more people find their way back to Him.

The post card depicted on the right is one of 5 different cards mailed out to some 50,000 homes within a five mile radius of the Yellow Box.  In total, some 250,000 post cards will have been mailed announcing the grand opening of Box as well as promoting our Ignite series, Soul Cravings.

This mass mail marketing strategy still proves effective - it will likely draw some 500 people to the grand opening of the new facility.

OK, everything I just told you is what you'd expect to hear from Dave or Jon, so here's the dirt.  This mass mail marketing strategy also draws some negative responses from the community.  In fact, as I type, Sue Smith, our Administrative Catalyst and overseer of the office, just stopped by my desk and Dave's desk to share with us a call that just came in from an angry recipient of our third postcard.  Dave's response, "This is good news...it means it's working." 

I've come to learn that you should worry when you don't get any negative feedback (at least that's what Dave keeps telling me)...it likely means we haven't communicated enough.  If that's true, then we should be really pleased with the post card another resident hand-delivered to us last week with a handwritten note, "You can stop the mailings - you won't!  Please STOP the HARASSMENT!  Not interested. Thank you."

I hope you'll join me in prayer for the ones who says they are "not interested, thank you" because one thing I have learned is that the ones who are most vocally opposed are the same ones God is working on the most.

Who Is This Joe Craveman Really?

The other day I overheard Dave Ferguson talking about Joe Craveman making a special appearance on You Tube - something along the lines of 25,000 hits in just a few days.  Wow!  In case you missed it, it seems as if Joe Craveman has become an overnight sensation promoting a place called Community Christian Church.  I encourage you to check out Joe's blog site at www.joecraveman.com.

I recently went to Joe's site - I was curious to know if he and Dave Ferguson were in cahoots on the promotion of the church.  I really couldn't tell for sure...Joe's a pretty secretive guy when it comes to his affiliations and upbringing.  But after further investigation, I found a possible connection between Joe Craveman and Dave Ferguson on the Community Christian Church website. I can't say for sure, and you can bet Dave Ferguson will never tell you, so you decide for yourself - see if you notice any resemblence between Joe Craveman and one of the characters that appears in something CCC calls the NEXT Campaign video.  Here's the link http://www.communitychristian.org/explore/enext.html and would love to hear from you.

Things I Wish We Didn't Do

If you had a chance to attend a Celebration Service at Community Christian Church this past weekend, you know we were wrapping up our series, Things I Wish Jesus Never Said with a Big Idea titled, "Go Sell Your Possessions."  Our Lead Pastor, Dave Ferguson was filmed in San Pablo City, Phillipines where we recently started a new church called Front Line Minitries. 

Front Line Ministries www.frontlinemissions.com was founded by Jeff Pessina, who after accepting Christ, sold all his possessions and began helping people find their way back to God in the Phillipines. 

Two things about this Big Idea that Dave Ferguson will never tell you:

1. Do you remember the Communion part of the message?  We gave you the impression that Dave was in the Phillipines, didn't we?  Sorry, he wasnt.  We shot that part of the message back home in Naperville after we figured out how we wanted to wrap up the message.  But Dave did a good job of wearing the same clothes and our media team did a good job blurring the background so that you couldn't tell the difference.  Sorry to have to tell you the truth, but Dave wasn't going to.

2. Another thing that Dave will never tell you is about the fake dollar bill we gave everyone.  Remember it?  It's how he wrapped up the message in the communion moment. We asked everyone to write down the "one thing" that stands between you and following Jesus completely.   For some it was money, for others, it was something entirely different. 

Well, that wasn't the first fake dollar bill we printed.  The first draft of the fake dollar bill was pretty much the real deal...a perfect photocopy of our U.S. currency ...until our Finance Director, David Girdwood, said, "Uhhh guys, I'm pretty sure its illegal to photocopy currency."  To which the rest of us said, "Oh...didn't know that.  I guess we better start over."  But don't worry, we only printed a few dozen before we stopped the process and I'm pretty sure we shredded them too.

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).