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What To Do First to Make a Profit

The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat  ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're  not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director.  Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year.  God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started inve
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True Church Stories - #30

Today I'm telling a true church story in honor of a sweet young woman at our church, Julie Lechner.  Her grandmother died yesterday and she's very down about this loss, as can be expected.  Yesterday I consoled her and prayed with her -- and today I'm going to try and say something to brighten her day.  Being that she absolutely loves the "True Church Stories" and reads all of them I thought I'd write one today in her honor.   Julie, this one's for you.  

Sometimes people call into the church office and ask strange questions.  Anybody who's ever worked at a church can tell you, you never know what you're going to get on the other end of that phone.  I can't even repeat some of the questions people have asked me -- quite honestly they'd be inappropriate to repeat.  But this was a particularly interesting exchange with a surprise ending -- one that had me real embarrassed.

Three things you should know to set up this story:
  • There are a lot of spanish people in Tampa, and at Celebration Church.  (And we're real happy about that!)
  • Our youth perform"human videos" a lot, particularly for the fine arts ministries within the church and for local, regional and national competitions.
  • Sometimes people will call into a church office to see who is preaching on any given Sunday, or to find out what special events are coming up.
So a while back a call came in to the office and here's how it went:

Me:   It's a great day at Celebration Church, can I help you?

Caller:  Yes, I have a few questions about the church...particularly about your service this Sunday.

Me:  "Sure, what would you like to know?

Caller:  Well, I'm wondering if you're going to have a human speaker on Sunday...

[I momentarily wondered if this was a joke but the caller was so serious, I thought that maybe she was talking about a live speaker vs. video conferencing which some churches do for satellites.)

Me:  Yes m'am, we have a human speaker every single Sunday.

Caller:  REALLY??!

[I wondered why she seemed so excited.  Was this truly THAT rare?  Something must be going on in the church world I'm unaware of.]

Me:  Yes, we have a human speaker every Sunday and in addition to that our teens even do human videos!  We are...well, HUMAN!  It's awesome.

I figure if somebody's going to ask me what seems like a unique/interesting/off beat question, I'm gunna answer back in my own unique way.

Caller:  Fantastic!  We'll definitely be there Sunday.  This is something we've been looking for.

Me:  [puzzled]  Okaaaaaaay.  We'll look forward to seeing you here.

Caller:  Great.  Bye now.

Me:  Bye

After hanging up I go into Larry's office and tell him...we're getting a visiting family on Sunday who are simply looking for live humans to minister to them.  Wow...are churches really becoming THAT untouchable?  Well, if Celebration is anything, it's REAL!

Fast forward to Sunday.

A visiting family shows up...they are spanish.   

The wife is the one who was the caller in the above conversation.

They seem to like the service well enough but are confused.

They tell someone they called the church and asked about the speaker and were told we would be having a CUBAN speaker.  My husband preached.  He's obviously not Cuban!

With their accent, I didn't understand them.  I thought they said HUMAN, but they were saying CUBAN.

Oh my stars.
Was my face red!
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