As we plan out 2015, you should plan to be involved!
Last weekend, we held our very first Vision Casting as a church. We outlined what our call is individually, as a church, and how that call is to play out in our community. It was a challenging weekend to be sure, with more hours spent teaching and learning than not!
During our Vision Outline portion Saturday night, we spelled out two areas we face as a church in 2015: more events, and a potential move. Both of these things have a ton of moving pieces, and we’re all going to have to be on the top of our game if we want to carry the torch well in 2015.
Many account holders on MD|online (located on a tab at the top of this very page) rarely ever use it. But it is here where all these moving pieces will be playing their part throughout this year. So, a committed MD attendee should wisely invest some of their time familiarizing themselves with MD|online. This article is to help you have a little focus each time you log on to MD|online.
Finish Your Profile
MD|online has possibly one of the largest profiles I’ve ever seen. But that’s not to say it isn’t necessary or helpful. It’s not a social network, it’s a church communication platform. The more information it’s able to collect, the better a tool it becomes as we move forward with our initiatives. So plan out some time to fill out as much as you can, particularly the spiritual gifts. This will help our leaders know who has what abilities as we are seeking help in 2015. Not sure what your spiritual gifts are? Talk to an elder. It’s a good conversation to have.
Know the Calendar
All of our MD events (10+ town events this year!!) will be on our calendar once they’re confirmed. That means we’ll need people to sign up to help out on every event.
We are making sure to have our events scheduled out and to the town by the end of January so they can confirm each one. As soon as they’re confirmed, we’ll begin planning now to avoid any last minute rush. That means you’ll have plenty of time to see the needs and plan your schedule accordingly to meet them.
We have three categories of events this year.
- Town-run Events- These are the traditional marketplace events that we’ve attended in the past. They are put on by an organization or sponsors, and we set up our tents and material and attend.
- MD Events- Last year we only had one MD event: Movie Night. This year, we’re bumping it up to five movie nights called “Fourth Friday Movie Nights.” They’ll start in May and run through til September. These are our own events. We’re responsible for finding support and vendors.
- MD-run Glassboro Events- This is where we are the organization running a town event. This is by far the most responsibility we’ve ever encountered with an event to date. We will be responsible for pretty much every aspect of the event. We are looking to run Unity Day, arguably one of the town’s largest events of the year.
This means that, now more than ever, you’ll need to be plugged in to MD|online.
Set Up Recurring Gifts
The last thing we need to talk about regarding our vision and MD|online is giving.
Over the weekend, we announced that in order to maximize the Gospel to our community, a time change should be proposed. If we want to change the time of MD, we also need to change the home of MD. We mentioned that the town has several options lined up for us, but before we do anything, we need to be good stewards of what God has given us.
Missio Dei has always been about using as much of the funds we receive for ministry outside of our bills and in to our community. We have no paid staff, and rent is very affordable in our current location.
We proposed that we would require at least $1500 a month giving increase in order to sustain a move with some wiggle room.
If everyone at MD (estimating average attendance at around 30/week) gave $12.50 more a week (some committed regular attenders give $0), we would be making enough to move right away. Just last weekend, I spent $18 at Wawa for myself and Hannah (and I even forgot her drink!), so we know this is a doable goal for pretty much everyone that attends our service each week. It's unreasonable to be committed and expect others to cover your week's giving that you regularly "forget" at home. We have a solution for that!
The easiest way for you to give and give consistently is by setting up a recurring gift in MD|online. Just log in, click give, and set up a recurring gift. If everyone did that this week, we would be so much closer to maximizing our Gospel efforts in our town.
Never Lose Sight of the Goal
None of this means anything if we lose sight of what’s important. We’ll be posting the notes from our weekend on our website shortly, but Justin taught in his session that we have two main calls for our lives found in Scripture. One is called the Cultural Mandate, that is, to steward our resources well for the Kingdom. The other is the Great Commission, where we are to make disciples of all the nations.
If we lose sight of these two things, all that we do is in vain. So please, don’t just get plugged in to MD|online for the heck of it. Get plugged in so you can steward your time and money well for the kingdom so we can maximize the Gospel this year in Glassboro.