Great Church Website

I have had a couple people mention church web sites that have evites where members can invite friends to a specific church activity with a few simple mouse clicks. My search led me to a great church website: National Community Church in Washington, D.C. They have two campuses...one at Union Station. You can check out the site, but I wanted to share from their "Our values" page. Wow...good stuff.

Our Values

NCC's twelve core values are part of the DNA of National Community Church. They are both descriptive and prescriptive of who we are as a church:

• Expect the unexpected
• Irrelevance is irreverence
• Love people when they least expect it and least deserve it
• Playing it safe is risky
• Pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on you
• Everyone is invaluable and irreplaceable
• Everything is an experiment
• You cannot out give God
• Maturity does not equal conformity
• Go the extra mile
• It's never too late to be who you might have been
• Do it right and do it big

The one that really caught my attention was "Everything is an experiment". I had lunch with my good friend Steve Hammond a few weeks ago (Steve is lead pastor at Mosaic Arlington). He was talking about how they try to practice this philosophy at Mosaic. He pointed out that business knows how to change to stay with the times, but too often the Church thinks the only way to things in the 'way it has always been done.' We were sitting at Shady Oaks BBQ. Steve pointed out that it was basically a 'Spring Creek BBQ on steroids'. Somebody made it more of a sit down feel instead of cafeteria style, put a little more money into the decor, increased service at the table and charged a little more for what they do...they adapted. Why is it that the church has such a hard time with this? I personally a very low need for adventure, but I have definitely seen the advantages of living life with the 'everything is an experiment' attitude.

I guess I could stay on my soapbox a little longer, but I'll step down now. (especially for the 'younger crowd' who doesn't have time to read my 'near book length' blog postings). But this is one attitude I hope we can foster at the Vine Fellowship. We serve a creative God who gives creative ideas to His people...if we are not afraid to try them. Will we sometimes 'miss it' and try a stupid idea instead of a God idea? Yep! That's why it's an 'experiment'...if we miss it we try something else. We we find a God idea, we go with it.

All of this in my search for information on how to add evite to our church web page. If you know how to do the evite thing, please contact me. Thanks.

- Rob