You walk into a room, and in the corner is a crowd of teens stealing looks at you and talking in hushed tones. Three of four of them look your way and break out laughing, trying to hold back, but not trying very hard. Awkward. The banner of Christianity is to love God and love others, yet our tendency is to love ourselves and not care about others. It is not that we hate other people, we just have a hard time actively loving them. In a church setting, or when you are hosting an event like the Preaching Rally,
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When I worked in Stillwater, planning the Men’s Advance meals was like planning for a World War II battle. We had charts and graphs, purchase lists and runner routes, restockers and servers galore. It seemed like every man in our church was enlisted on the food team. And it worked. It worked well. It worked efficiently. The guests ate hot, good food. And it was fast. Really fast. Have you ever tried to herd 1,700 men? Even if there’s food at the other end, it still takes a lot of time to move that many people anywhere! One of the
Read more →Temecula, California is a beautiful place to live, but all that beauty comes at a cost: city ordinances. Any new construction requires all sorts of red tape. Our five acre strip of land was a possible habitat for the kangaroo rat. An environmental study and a few thousand dollars later, we were approved to build on our land. Ordinances. California is known for its earthquakes, so sheer panels are required almost everywhere. Around doorways, the nails are supposed to be one to two inches apart. By the time the nails are in, there’s no more wood left! Ordinances. Other ordinances
Read more →Oh man. The church is a dump, literally. And it is the morning of the Preaching Rally. In just a couple hours, hundreds of guests would be here. There’s trash scattered everywhere outside. Apparently, someone had come the night before and destroyed the place, dumping trash bags, flinging papers, flooding the front yard with the church’s hose and spraying graffiti everywhere. It was a mess. When my mom arrived at church, she seemed unconcerned. As the family freak-outer, she was uncharacteristically calm. She got right to work. She grabbed a black trash bag, picking it up with both hands. She
Read more →While the website is helpful, it is not our primary communication tool. Our mailings are our biggest outreach tool. Our guests refer to the mailings more than the emails or Preaching Rally website. I am no social media guru. In fact, I have a barely-running Twitter account that I still do not know how to use well, and I am active on exactly zero other social media sites. But I am smart enough to realize that my way is not the best way to promote an event. People live on social media, and I know I should go to where
Read more →Things I Hate I should not hate things, but I do. I am weird–I keep an Evernote list. I hate lots of random things: over-baked chocolate chip cookies, showers running out of hot water, wet towels, and filling out forms over and over again. I go to doctor’s offices, dentists, and sometimes different divisions within the same company and have to fill out the same information over and over. I think, “Come on… Don’t you have this information already? Why do I have to fill this dumb form out again?!” I am a terrible person, I know. I should be
Read more →WHY We Have a Website You do not HAVE to have a website for your event, but it IS a nice feature. Here are a few reasons why we chose to create a website for our Preaching Rally: It’s not much work. Really, it’s not a whole lot of work to set up. It takes a lot less effort than one might think. You can quickly build it yourself (below, I show you how to do it in about 20 minutes), or you can hire out the work. There are paid and free options for website hosting, but to get
Read more →Be honest… Do you judge a book by its cover? I do. I’ll admit it. I judge things every day based on what I see. If you are honest, you will agree that you do, too. I judge books, movies, posters, flyers, and people. Every day. In one glance. Our eyes bring images into our minds, and our minds associate the images with something. Here’s what I mean about images/opinions coming to mind… What does a homeless person look like? (take time to picture him in your mind. There. Hey! You’re so judgmental!) What clothes do the people from the
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What do toilet plungers, bacon soda, hissing lizards, and frozen mayonnaise have in common? Preaching Rally games, of course! Having silly games is crucial to the Preaching Rally. Without the chance to loosen up, have fun and laugh together, attendees would not return to the Preaching Rally. Lest we think games are somehow non-spiritual, or playing games at a preaching event is diminishing the importance, consider the following thoughts on why we include games at our Preaching Rally: They are simple. We do not do over-the-top crazy games. Instead, we keep them simple. No game lasts more than 20 minutes,
Read more →One of the terms I unashamedly ripped off of Stillwater’s Men’s Advance is the team leaders–or chiefs. The Preaching Rally is divided into several different areas, listed below. A chief is designated over each area and is given the responsibility and authority to do as much as possible to make his or her area run smoothly. Registration Oversee “PR_Master” spreadsheet of all potential churches attending Track number of registered attendees Call through list for potential attendees Collect funds and updated information from churches that attend Report pre-PR and post-PR numbers to RR Hospitality Greet each guest Distribute booklets,
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