Last Sunday Gateway started a new series called, “How Do You Know?” I think that this series represents some of what makes Gateway so amazing! It’s a creative series asking the questions that most people really struggle with. Questions like:

• How do you know the Bible isn’t just propaganda?
• How do you know God cares?
• How do you know that Jesus is the only way?
• How do you know you’re right with God?

The past four years have been very rewarding, but not without challenges. I spent almost a year as a Children’s Pastor managing vacant positions at two campuses while we looked for just the right person. We made great strides during that time, but it was long and hard. The last year I’ve managed a vacant student ministry position which has been really hard. Very few weeks went by when I wasn’t gripped by the fear that this might be the week where all the leaders and students decide that they’re done and no longer want to come. But they never did and we’ve actually gained some momentum in some key areas while we’ve been on the pastor search. At a much slower pace than I would have liked, we’ve began building a ministry philosophy where parents are engaged much more intentionally. We’ve got a long way to go, but what we do offer is really good and the team pulling this stuff off really gets it.

Gateway Church has been a such a wonderful home. It’s not been perfect by any means. I’ve been frustrated at time and felt lost at other times. Sometimes I’ve doubted my place on the overall team, but I think that those are just the challenges that any leader faces. What I’ve truly loved about my church is how the mission of the church is being carried out in every aspect of the church and staff. We’re not just creating an environment where people can experience God through the services and programs we create. 30-40% of the staff came to faith at Gateway. I saw significant spiritual growth in my own life because of my involvement on staff. There may be a lot of churches that do certain things a lot better than Gateway, but the things that Gateway does get right, they’re probably some of the most important things of all!

So, here’s to four years! It’s not been easy, but it has been an adventure. I think we’ve laid the groundwork for some really powerful stuff that we’ll get to experience in the next 4-5 years. I’ve never been more proud to serve at a church than I am to serve here at Gateway.

There’s something amazing when you get to be on staff at a church that you’d certainly attend if you weren’t ministry. I’m about to celebrate my 4th year at Gateway and I’m so proud to be at this church.

Two of Gateway’s core values is to be a church for those who are far from God and to place a high value stories. Both of those values were carried out at our Easter services this year.

First of all, the Easter story was told from the perspective of Isaiah. Why Isaiah? Because the prophet foretold the coming of the messiah and the great sacrifice he would make to redeem humanity. This wasn’t done just to offer a fresh and creative Easter story, but because Gateway is a place for doubters and skeptics. A common argument against Christ and his sacrifice is the theory that all the prophecies were written after Jesus’ death in order to validate him. However, the copy of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is scientifically carbon dated to be centuries older than the events in the first century. It’s a great way to introduce the story of Christ’s sacrifice in a way that could be relevant to skeptics and doubters.

Second of all, the Easter story was accompanied by the stories of three people who attend Gateway. There was a story of a man who grew up without a father, was pulled into a lifestyle of anger and violence. There was a story of a woman who struggled with bitterness and anger for years after her mother was murdered by an unknown person. There was a story of a woman who left her family of faith to pursue men, drugs and a lifestyle of dealing and crime. All three stories went the same way, to a place of brokenness and emptiness. However, all three saw that their stories also tied into a greater story that involved Christ and his great sacrifice to bring people back to God.

It was a powerful service of music, art and stories intersecting with God’s Great Story. Below is the promo trailer, I’ll post the video of the service once it’s online.

Easter Promo 2012 from g8waypro on Vimeo.

One of the ways that Gateway does this is training leadership in the “Voice of Gateway.” Just a few weeks ago we sat through a 30 minute refresher in an all-staff meeting. Because we’re attempting to create environments where people who are far from God can come and explore faith, it’s important that we’re all on the same page in the way we communicate. We synchronize our terminology and the way we communicate so that there isn’t confusion to those who attend. Here are some examples:

Gateway Glossary

• Christ-follower: Believer or Christian
• Build into or Invest in: Disciple (verb)
• Came to faith: Saved or born again
• Talk about our faith journey or spiritual life: Evangelism or witness
• Serving trip: Mission trip
• Brokeness: Sin
• Just checking out faith or far from God: Seeker or non-believer
• Truth: Gospel

We even follow a set of values in our communication. Here are a few examples.

• Non-Self-Promotional: We don’t make ourselves or Gateway the hero of the story, only God
• Showing, not telling: We tell stories and give examples rather than tell people what to think
• Hype-Free: We don’t beat around the bush, especially if the subject isn’t pleasant.
• Educated: There are more Master degrees in the audience than many other places, so we must get our facts, references and such right.
• Socratic: Ask questions, even in your writing. Draw in the audience by the questions we ask.
• Funny to be serious: Be playful with the audience. Build credibility. Dont’ say something funny just for the sake of being funny, but so that you can say something serious.

I’ve never seen anything like this at any other church. I have known churches to have a design and style guide, but nothing around the organization’s voice. I thought I’d share in case there are some that would find this really helpful.

This year is totally different. This year the Christmas Eve services are very community focused with a target to connect with families. It’s a whimsical production that the whole family is going to love including dance, music, people flying through the air and even a little bit of comedy. We’re promoting the services very heavy throughout the community, so I expect we’ll see a lot of new faces! Check out the promo below:

Imagine Christmas 2010 from Gateway Church on Vimeo.

With the system and process that we have in place, it’s very important that we keep all the files nice and tidy so that when a class or dedication comes up, everything is easily accessible. I thought I’d give you a sneak peak into how we store all the files pertinent to our process. For the past two years, I’ve kept these files neat and orderly, but not in a convenient place for anyone but me. Yeah, they’ve been sitting on my desktop. If I’m being totally honest, the fact that these are sitting on my desktop is what inspired this entire series. On Saturday after finishing our most recent Child Dedication, I finally decided that it was time to move the files off my computer and onto the church’s server. However, I figured that I’d write this series before placing all the files on the server for safe keeping. I know, it doesn’t totally make sense, but that’s the way my mind works.

So, in my Child Dedication folder, I have four sub-folders.

Child Dedication Service, Media, Prep for Child Dedication Class and Service Files. I just hit one at a time for you.

Child Dedication Service Folder

This one is pretty simple. It has three documents in it. The first document is the Service Outline. These are my notes for my short talk. The second document is a service schedule. I make modification to it for every dedication and pass it out the the musicians, staff, and volunteers. It has timelines and cues for the service. The third document is an outline for dedications that I might do in someone’s home. It’s one document that I need to develop further.

Media Folder

The media folder currently holds three songs that I use for the slideshows. I picked all three of these songs two years ago and to this day haven’t found any songs I like better (but I am on the lookout for new songs). “This Very Moment” is a song by a guy in our church that I’ve used several times. “In My Arms” is a great song by plumb and “Little Wonders” is from Rob Thomas. They’re all here because when I’m making my slideshow, I don’t want to have to search through my entire computer to find one of these songs.

Prep for Child Dedication Class Folder

This is my quick, go to folder for the Prep for Child Dedication Class. I’d be lying to you if I told you that all the handouts and my notes were always printed out the Thursday before Sunday’s class. Probably if I didn’t keep all my files on my own computer, someone would have done this for me. Needless to say, my version of the handout as well as the parent handout is in this folder which I can quickly print out. In addition is a video I made of a class two years ago (it’s posted on this site on one of my earlier posts about Child Dedication. I’ve hung onto this video for other staff or volunteers who need to know what is said or need to prepare for leading their own class.

Service Files Folder

The final folder in my Child Dedication file system is the Service Files Folder. In it is a folder for each Child Dedication I’ve done in the past two years. Within each dated folder is one excel spreadsheet and two more folders. The excel spreadsheet is a copy of the google spreadsheet I wrote about yesterday. Although I keep the file in the cloud, I also download a copy to put in the folder for offline storage so it is with all the other files associated with that service. One of the folders are of dedication pics. Every picture that parents send to me are in this folder. I put them here until I need to upload them to Animoto for the slideshow, but I’m also a digital pack rat. I never throw away these pictures. The last folder is the Dedication Slideshow. I’ll upload the pictures to Animoto and let it mix a slideshow with one of the songs from the media folder. I’ll usually do the “one click remix” to see if I like the remix better than the original. I might even use the pictures with another song just to see if I like it better. Every slideshow that Animoto makes is unique. Once I find my winner, I purchase the high resolution video and download it to this folder.

As I described in my blog post yesterday, we have a two part registration. One is for the Prep for Child Dedication Class and the other is for the actual dedication. The first registration is a Google form focused on getting information about the parents, family and situation where the second is a Fellowship One registration focused on getting information about the children being dedicated.

The first form is feeds to a google spreadsheet that is always live. After classes have passed, we just edit the “class selections” to new dates or put “Classes are TBD, but we’ll contact you as soon as they’ve been scheduled.” This way we always have a place for parents to sign up. Nothing bothers me more than a note saying, “registration is not yet open, come back later.” With this alway live form, parents can sign up and know that they’ll be taken care of once we get our dates set. This google spreadsheet is shared with my staff, so they can always see how many have signed up for a class.

Once all the classes happen, I will literally cut and paste all the data from those who attended one of the classes to a new google spreadsheet exactly how it appears on the original spreadsheet. Those who didn’t show up to a class will remain on the original spreadsheet so that they will be contacted the next time a class happens. I will clean up the document a little and add a few extra columns like “registered for dedication, Pics and table/prayer leader.”

I will add a new page to this spreadsheet calling it emails. I will cut and paste all the emails of moms and dads from the first page and put them on this page. I will probably have to send out 2-3 emails to all the parents who attended a class, so I can just copy and paste all the emails from this page and paste them into my email editor.

Once I’ve sent all the parents links to the actual dedication registration, I just wait for registrations and pictures to come in. Once they register, I put a “yes” in the “registered for dedication column.” Once they send pictures, I put a “yes” in the “Pics” column. Oh, I almost forgot. I also type in the name of the prayer leader sitting at their table at the child dedication class in the “table/prayer leader.” Parents are busy, so it usually takes 7 to 10 days for all the parents to do these things, so every few days I might emails parents reminding them to register or send pics. Many parents register but forget to send pics, so it requires extra emails.

Once registrations begin coming in through Fellowship One, I’ll run report M6017E. This report gives me the final bit of information I’ll need for the dedication. I’ll paste these registrations to a new page on my google spreadsheet. This page contains all the data pertinent to the actual dedication. These are the people who have attended the class and have registered (and hopefully sent their pictures). Since registrations trickle in, I’ll add them to the page line by line as they come in every few days.

On this page, I’ll add a few columns in the front like “Assignment, Round, Verse and Meaning.” The “Assignment” is the prayer leader who will pray for that family/child (It isn’t always the prayer leader who sat at their table at the class). The “Round” column tells me what round that family will come up for prayer in the service. The “Verse and Meaning” columns are were we put the meanings of their names and a verse that goes with their name/meaning (which will also go on their certificate).

For the actual service, I’ll usually sort this page by round and assignment showing the full name of the child, meaning, and both parent names. I’ll give this to all my prayer leaders so that they know in what order they’ll be praying with families as well as have a little cheat sheet with the names, meanings, verses and parent names.

I’ll also make one more modified version of this page (adding an extra page to the spreadsheet) creating a check-in sheet that a volunteer or staff member will use as families are checking in. I rarely have any no-shows for a child dedication, but I want to know who isn’t here if thats the case.

Last of all, I typically have one last sheet with the names and phone numbers of all my prayer leaders for quick and easy reference.

So to review, my master dedication spreadsheet has the following pages:

• Prep for Dedication registrations (copied from the google form) with added columns for registration, pics and table leaders
• Dedication roster made from registrations that came in through Fellowship One with added columns for assignment, round, verse and name meaning
• Email addresses of those who attended the class
• Email addresses of prayer leaders
• Email addresses of those who registered (I forgot to mention this one)
• Check-in roster to mark off families as they come in

The beauty of all of this is that google docs are sharable. I have some staff that refer to the document to know how many books to order. I have other volunteer leaders who access the document to begin looking up meanings of names and coming up with verses. I have a graphic artist who access the page to see kid’s names and verses to create the certificates.

One last thing. If parents attend the class, but decide that they can’t attend the dedication, I mark their row red on the first sheet. I do the same if they go through the whole registration process and don’t show up for the dedication. I’ll let these families know when the next dedication is scheduled and as we get closer to that date, I can open up this spreadsheet and contact them giving them links to the next dedication registration. It’s important to me that people don’t fall through the cracks. If you don’t have a system for everything, people who don’t fit in one category or another will get missed.

It’s a pretty good system that works when everyone does what they’re supposed to do. It’s taken us a lot of dedications to refine this process, but for now, it’s working.

We used to be overwhelmed by questions about child dedication or child baptism which prompted me to put every bit of information a parent might need to know about what we believe and do on our website. Click here to visit our dedication page. Currently it isn’t very pretty, but it’s functional. I’ve trained our receptionists, admins or anyone else who might get emails and phone calls about dedication to direct people to the dedication page on our website. From here, families can lean what we do, why we do it and register for the next available class.

Registration for Child Dedication is a two step process for most families. Let me explain what I mean. Attending a Prep for Child Dedication Class is required to participate in Child Dedication. So, on the website they are directed to register for a class (I usually offer 3 classes for convenience). However, I usually have one or two families who have already attended the class, but want to dedicate new children. I usually don’t require them to attend the class again, but send them a link to the registration for the actual dedication (I’ll get into the diference later).

I’ve found that it is easiest to create a google form for people to register for a dedication class. I’ve used both google forms as well as Fellowship One registrations and have found the google form to be most efficient. Essentially, I can always have one form active. Once a class is over, I can remove it from the choices of classes to attend. If I’ve just finished a series of classes and don’t yet have dates for future classes, I can still keep the form live, but change the choices to “put me on the list and contact me once you have firm dates.” Because google forms populate a google spreadsheet, I can go in and edit classes they want to attend later. I can also share the form with others on my team as well as volunteers. Last of all, google forms timestamps submissions, so I can know when people registered. It really does everything I need and is incredibly simple.

Here are the questions I ask on the form:

• Mother/Guardian Name
• Mother/Guardian Phone
• Mother/Guardian Email
• Father/Guardian Name
• Father/Guardian Phone
• Father/Guardian Email
• Address/City/State/Zip
• What class do you plan to attend?
• How long have you attended Gateway?
• Are you in a small group?
• Please describe your family. Who lives at home? What’s the spiritual environment in your home?
• What is your reason/motivation for having your child dedicated?
• Name of first child being dedicated
• Name of second child being dedicated
• Name of third child being dedicated

All this information helps me know who is going to attend the classes, what the spiritual/family environment is like and how to prepare for the classes. During the class I actually have every parent in attendance write down their name, email and phone number. Sometimes I have parents just show up for the class, so it is important that I grab their information during the class. I always create an event in Fellowship One and make the parents as having attended so I can run reports on parents who have attended the class.

After each class, I can email parents who signed up but didn’t attend a class to make plans to attend the next class. Also, I can use the list of those who actually attended the class and send them a link to the registration for the actual dedication. This registration is a Fellowship One registration that is specifically for the kid(s) being dedicated. Many of these kids are very young, so they’re not actually in Fellowship One yet, so I like it that the parents are putting them in so birthdate and all are correct. I typically have a link to this registration on a page on the ministry site that is hidden from the blog navigation. I don’t want people to accidentally find this page because I want people to attend the class before registering for the dedication. So, I’ll send the link to the registration page to everyone who has attended the class and to those who have attended previous classes.

Here are the questions I ask on this registration:

(Fellowship One already gathers information like family, gender, age, DOB and such, so I don’t have to ask those questions)

• Full Name
• Phonetic spelling of child’s full name (spell it like it sounds)
• Mother/Guardian
• Mother/Guardian Phone
• Mother/Guardian Email
• Father/Guardian
• Father/Guardian Phone
• Father/Guardian Email
• How many will be attending the Child Dedication service

So, that is the registration process I follow which gives me all the information I need. Tomorrow I’ll talk about how I process and store the information from the registration process.