Mavis Moon
I live in San Jose, California, and attend San Jose Christian Reformed Church. I work as the IT Director of Pivot Interiors, a Herman Miller office furniture company.
I grew up in the Air Force, where my dad was a chaplain, so I lived in several places during my childhood, including Michigan, Alaska, Washington, Texas, Florida and Arizona. I went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I met my husband Randy.
We have lived in San Jose for over 30 years now. I have 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren who are, of course, the cutest things ever.
Posted in: Recording, Streaming, and Podcasting Worship Services
Thanks, David!
Posted in: Any Churches Conducting Bilingual Worship Service?
Thank you, Joyce. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is a person doing the translation live, speaking into the conference call using his/her cell phone, right? (And a good way for the person to do this is if he/she sits in a different room where the service is being piped in, so he/she can speak into the phone.) Then people who need to hear the translator call into the conference call and listen using earplugs while sitting in the worship space.
Right? Just want to make sure I understand the setup.
Posted in: Any Churches Conducting Bilingual Worship Service?
What good advice, especially focusing on the relationship. Thank you!
Posted in: Any Churches Conducting Bilingual Worship Service?
Thanks for the tip!
Posted in: Any Churches Conducting Bilingual Worship Service?
Hi Karen, good questions. I'm sorry I don't know. Hoping someone else on the network can contribute.
Posted in: Dinner Church or Meal Church?
Thank you!
Posted in: Dinner Church or Meal Church?
Thank you!
Posted in: Dinner Church or Meal Church?
Thank you. I appreciate the details. Good ideas.
Posted in: Do You Automate Your Tithing?
I do automate my tithing. I find it works great -- maybe because I am SO forgetful! I have done an automated monthly donation to our church from back when I was using Quicken for DOS (yes, I'm that old). Back then, it would ask me if I was sure and it always reminded me of Malachi 3:8 “'Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.' 'But you ask, "How are we robbing you?" 'In tithes and offerings.'" (I had to look that up!) It was like Quicken was asking me, "Will you rob God, OR will you send your offering to the church?" :) I send it to the church office each month.
I do automated giving for some other things, too, like some missionary support. What I don't do and haven't figured out completely is automated giving for the special offerings our church does each week. The deacons follow a schedule. If I were organized, I'd look up each week what the offering will be (it's in the bulletin and on the web), but I haven't gotten in that habit. Maybe I could set up an annual amount for each of the organizations or something.
To me, it feels the most like giving my "first fruits" -- I "pay" it just like my other bills, not deciding each month what I might or might not have leftover or what I do or do not feel like giving.
Anyway, automated tithing absolutely works for me!
Posted in: Do You Automate Your Tithing?
Good point - I do just automate my basic giving.
When the offering plate is passed, I still put some cash in the plate and encourage children to do so as well.
Automating the basic amount doesn't preclude doing more. :)
Posted in: Looking for Recommendations for an Adult Small Group Study
Hi Ashley,
I have two things that have worked pretty well for our small group. I find that it is a real challenge to get people to do any "homework" in between meetings. No matter how well-intentioned we/they may be, most of the time no one reads or prepares beforehand. So, I'm always looking for something that will work well and not involve pre-meeting prep (except for the leader).
One thing that has worked well is outlined in this Banner article:
https://www.thebanner.org/tuned-in/2016/06/small-group-suggestion-real-simple
You can see it gives this format:
First third of the meeting:
- Read aloud a passage from the Bible. Eugene Peterson's The Message has chapters broken into nice segments for this purpose.
- Go around the circle, asking if anybody has any questions about the passage. Trust the Holy Spirit to provide an answer from the group members.
- Go around the circle again, asking if the passage struck a meaningful chord and if a new insight arose.
- Repeat as often as time allows.
Second third of the meeting:
- Go around the circle, allowing people to share thoughts from the previous week. Prayer requests are welcome. Those who prefer to say nothing can simply pass.
Last third of the meeting:
- Go around the circle again, this time praying aloud and remembering to pray for those who asked for prayer. Those who prefer not to pray aloud can say "amen" when it's their turn.
A couple of rules:
Food and drink should be simple and affordable for all.
I also had good luck - and good discussions - using the book, 90% of Helping is Just Showing Up by James R. Kok (https://www.amazon.com/90-Helping-Just-Showing-Up/dp/1496113799). Our group read through parts of it at the meetings, and discussed it there. Even without prep, we had good discussions.
Hope that helps!
-- Mavis Moon
Posted in: Thoughts on Easy Worship?
For our replacement of Power Point, our church tried Easy Worship and Pro Presenter by having our "Power Point team" try using them for a couple weeks. We ended up not going with either but instead are using Proclaim. That has turned out to be the easiest to train people on (our team is several people who take turns doing the slides at a service, so no one on that team becomes a "master user"), and the people who create the slides like it, too.
For planning our services, we use Church Planning Center (https://planning.center/). It's working great for the worship leader and pastor and secretary who update it throughout the week. Our volunteers are doing well on it, too. We started small with just the true worship planning team on it, but now we have accounts for all volunteers - sound, power point, praise band members, accompanists, nursery, hospitality elder, deacon who intros and prays about the offering, everything. The secretary offers personal assistance for those who need it. There are a couple people who don't have email, but not too many.
I'm encouraging our secretary to move toward using Church Planning Center for our membership and offering tracking, too. I think it'll be good to have all that in one system.