A friend told me not long ago that he feels Good Shepherd is trying really hard to be a "cool" church.

Ouch. With love, but ouch.

It probably hurts so much because there is more than a grain of truth in it. The language we use, the songs we sing, the visuals we display . . . yeah, it's all pretty cool. I sure never thought I'd be able to serve in a church that had all this talent and all this freedom.

But what was unsaid in the "cool church" comment was this: why aren't you trying as hard to be a Spirit-filled church?

Maybe that's why this past Sunday felt different somehow. Yes, we did a Goo Goo Dolls song. Yes, the graphics for Loved are very good. But more than ever before I sensed that all that cool-ness was not an end in itself, but a bridge to something much more important: the love of God. The presence of God and the filling of the Holy Spirit was unmistakable in that room. As were the numbers of people coming to faith as they recognized that God wasn't mad at them; he missed them. (You can hear the sermon here.)

The result of loving correction? Maybe. If so, I'll take it.

Because I'll take Spirit-filled over cool any time.

So we wrapped up Oddballs yesterday.

The series built to the point where we invited the people of the church to make their 2009 Estimates Of Giving -- a financial pledge, to use an older phrase.

Giving to God is the sort of thing that oddballs do while the rest of the world looks on with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy.

The one point of yesterday's talk was this: in the hands of Jesus, for the sake of the kingdom, much more goes out of the basket than what you put in.

But the closing video said it better than any words could have. Here it is:



Do you believe it?

I think you are going to hear something at church this Sunday that you've never heard at church before.

I think.

I'm excited to able to say this thing, I know that.

Oddball. Week 4. 8:30. 10:00. 11:30.

Pathfinder is one of the best things we've ever done.

It's a high-touch, low-threat way of doing small groups around here.

After years of struggling to match people with existing groups or start new groups in an old-fashioned way, we simplified the whole thing. Come to a launch event, get connected to a table full of people with whom you have some common interests, and voila! there's your group for the next six weeks. If at the end of time you're ready to move to something else, so be it. You now know 8-10 people in the church better than you used to.

And people loved it. We started 13 new groups in one night in September (!) involving about 150 people.

Why am I telling you this?

Our next launch event is tomorrow night. Yeah, Wednesday, October 22 at 7:00 in our Multi-Purpose Room. Child care provided. Come in to the church tomorrow and you'll go out 90 minutes later with new friends and a new community.

To register, sign up here.

And you'll see first hand what works.