Long time…

It’s been a long time since I last posted and I miss it…

The summer has been a great time of rest, barbecue grills, spending time with my wife and daughter, a refreshing vacation, getting projects done, and keeping up with the services load. The highlight of the summer was a great week in Harbor Springs, MI with family. It was the first time we’ve been able to get away for a full week since our honeymoon. It was wonderful!! Plenty of swimming, lounging, walking, eating, with some fishing, beach time, and iPod time thrown in for good measure. Next summer will be a 2 week trip…can’t wait!

I’ve been kicking around writing a volume policy for Kensington since we had a weekend a few back with pretty rockin’ music and had volume complaints due to the style (volume stuff comes up from time to time, but it is always more prevalent when we have harder rock style material – in this case a Gavin McGraw tune). It always amuses me how much personal preference, or lack thereof, for a certain style of music gets misplaced into the whole “you’re damaging my ears” discussion.

The primary purpose of our volume documents will be to remove the relevancy of the “noise exposure is damaging my hearing” argument from the complaint table. We will always field complaints due to personal preference – not liking a style of music so it is automatically too loud whether it is being run at 95 dB(A) or 80 dB(A). Preference complaints are a fact of life. If you’re trying to be culturally relevant and serve a church as large as ours, you will never please everyone and I’m perfectly fine with that.

I started a rough draft a few weeks ago on this document based on the work of Chris Gille at Willow but tabled it due to vacation. It was brought back to the forefront today when I was forwarded this response card submitted in the past week or two at a weekend service…

“I know I’m right.” Wow.

By the end of the day, I had a rough draft complete. I’m especially proud of the humble, professional, Christ-like nature of my letter that accompanies the actual policy. Once our documents are complete, I will be sure to post it.

I’ll get back into a regular pattern of posting soon…promise.