I just read this great blog post by Bob Franquiz. He talks about a strategy that his church has been using to make Mother’s Day one of their biggest outreach days of the year. Read the post for the complete strategy, but in essence they do free Mother’s day portraits on that day.

I actually had something else in mind to do for Mother’s day, but I think this is a better idea. As I was thinking about it, it wouldn’t have to be too complicated or even expensive.

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I recently moved my blog, Modern Ekklesia, over from Blogger to WordPress, and I wanted to share a little about my journey so that you’ll know what to expect in case you want to do it as well.

So here’s what happened:

On my new blog, I wanted to go with a self-hosted solution for the options that are available. After evaluating some of the options, I decided to go with Dreamhost, and all the posts were moved over. There were a few things that didn’t survive the journey very well, though.

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A few weeks ago, on Easter weekend, we launched a children’s church program. If you want to launch one, here are some things to keep in mind, as well as some lessons we’ve learned since starting.

1. Determine the purpose. This is the most important thing you could figure out. Why do you want to start one? Is it because they’re popular these days? And by the way, to grow your church is not the right reason.

We wanted to start one because we noticed that there were many guests coming with young children, and they weren’t able to concentrate or even be in the service because they were so distracted with their kids. As a pastor, I could see the families having to leave the service because their kids started acting up.

“What about a mother’s/parent’s room,” you ask?

We’ve tried that. Parents aren’t able to concentrate when they’re in the same room with their kids. It just doesn’t work well at all. Many of these families never return as a result. So our bottom line reason for starting is because we wanted to provide an experience so that our guests could relax, take in the message, and be spoken to by God.

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I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the new features of ModernEkklesia, so you can know what’s going on, and why we moved over to WordPress.

1. Along the top right of the black bar we have some places where you can subscribe and connect. So there’s a link to subscribe via email, rss, or connect through Twitter.

2. Along the right sidebar are some graphics of a few things. The first is of Standard Theme. That’s the WordPress theme we’re using on ModernEkklesia now. Below that are a couple of essential “apps” of ChurchMetrics.com and YouVersion.com. Below that you’ll see ”Recent Posts” and “Most Popular Posts” that are automatically generated.

3. The “Blast From the Past” tab is an archive of all the posts ever written. So you can click on a month, and all the posts for that month will appear.

4. At the bottom of each post is something called “Related Posts.” They are also automatically generated based upon the content of each post. This is a pretty nice feature.

Those are some of the most obvious things. Under the hood there are some that are quite important as well.

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ModernEkklesia now has a new look! After being on Blogger for 1.5 years, I’m happy to announce that we’re now on WordPress, and we’ve gotten a facelift.

It’s actually been up for about the past two weeks. I hadn’t officially announced it yet because I was still tweaking some stuff and trying to get some stuff to be perfect. Alas, it’s a continuing journey.

So if you’re one of those that always reads this through email or rss, I invite you to check out the site (www.modernekklesia.com) and take a look. Let me know what you think. In this post I solicited your help and responses in helping me to get the new look, and you guys showed up. So thanks! I ended up going with a blend of your recommendations.

So as a special thank you for your help I’d like to do something that I’m really excited about: give away a free book! It’s not just any book. It’s a book that is not even for sale yet, and won’t hit the book shelves until June. Pretty cool, huh? How did I get it? Well, you see, there was a guy named Tony who said he found a van full of books in the back of a warehouse and thought it wouldn’t be a big deal if he….ok, i’m just kidding, of course. Some pre-release versions were sent out to some bloggers.

The book is called “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.” It’s valued at $16.19 on Amazon.com, but you can get it for free here.

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First of all, if you can’t write out your discipleship process on one page in a few sentences, it’s probably because you don’t have one, or it’s way too complicated then it needs to be.

Here are some benefits, though, of taking the time to develop and write one out:

1. It will bring you (as the pastor) clarity. Every leader should take the time to think through their discipleship strategy. Write it down on paper. What’s the first step that happens when someone comes to your church? Think it through. What would be the next link on the chain?

As pastors we often want to talk about discipleship, but if you’re not clear on the process your church has, assuming it has one, then there’s no way your church will ever be clear about it.

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Ok, so I know that title sounds a bit dramatic and pompous. I agree with you. But this past easter weekend we did just that. Let me share with you what happened.

Let me first say that last year I wrote a post called “When the Big Project Fails,” in which I detail an experience in which we bombed completely as a church and had less than average attendance. And you can read about our experience last easter here.

For this past Easter we did most of the same things as in our big last series last year. We did the Facebook ads. We had a banner outside our church.

We did do two things differently, though. And let me just say before I share what they were, that I don’t know how much this had to do with it. When dealing with some of these issues I think we have to walk and talk with much humility because ultimately we’re dealing with spiritual issues in which God is in control. So I hesitate to point to anything that our church “did” as the specific reason for growth. I’ll just share the facts of what we did and did not do.

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