Wednesday, December 28, 2005

One last Crazy Campaign question

Great blogging, team! I've read your comments with great interest. OK...on to the last of the FAQ's from the campaign.

3. Why was the Crazy Campaign "all about Crossroads"? It sounded like one big non-stop commercial for the church.

This question surfaced more than once during the campaign. I did a whole message entitled "Crazy Church"...and during the Celebration Event we did a few "shameless plugs" for Crossroads. Here's why: I was asking people to make a sizable investment and I wanted them to know what they were investing in.

Most people understand the Crossroads DNA, but many don't. I wanted everyone's "get it factor" to go up. I wanted everyone to understand what Crossroads is all about. Yea, we talked about Crossroads often, but it was intentional. The good news is that Crossroads isn't in love with itself. It's in love with God. We don't exist for ourselves--we exist for God. Our goal has never been to glorify ourselves or even to build a big church. We exist to glorify God and build His Kingdom.

If you were here at Christmas Eve you heard a powerful testimony by Leisa Garcia. When we taped the interview, Leisa spent a lot of time "praising" Crossroads...everything from the greeters to the pastors. It was a no-brainer for us to edit all the "ain't-Crossroads-great" comments from the testimony. Our purpose on Christmas Eve was to point people to Christ.

The Crazy Campaign was a very unique season for us. We did things we normally didn't do. We emphasized some things we had to emphasize. Did we violate any of our Core Values or "take our eyes off the ball" during the 2-3 months? Not in my opinion. And that's why God blessed it.

You can disagree. I'm listening.

Happy New Year!

Pastor Phil

2 Comments:

Blogger BERNIE2 said...

Phil, I am not sure why people thought the crazy campaign "was all about Crossroads." I understood Crossroads to be the main focus but it was very clear that through the Crazy Campaign we would be blessing both the local community and an African community. It excited me when Crossroads choose to make this campaign to help others as well as the church itself. And a big non-stop commercial for a healthy church like Crossroads is more for those who don’t know Jesus than it is for the Church, right?

7:09 AM  
Blogger passionate said...

i had heard horror stories from others who have went through building campaigns at other churches & i was prepared to expect the worst. the stories generally had to do with how the leadership became obsessed with the topic of raising money and spent little time on anything else for the durration of the project. i was impressed with crossroads' approach of handling the subject as a series, then getting back to business as usual. the building project is a huge, welcomed & much needed endevour. of course it requires communication and exhortation for the body to buy into it, and it's reasonable to hear about the vision & progress (or lack of) periodically. the campaign was handled with great class & integrity, as is everything at cr. i think that where it could be construed that the campaign 'was all about cr' could go hand-in-hand with what i believe is some misunderstanding regarding the whole concept of giving. i believe that giving anything to anyone anywhere, as on to & directed by the Lord, is giving indeed. i believe giving to the local church should be balanced with one's giving as a whole. i got lambasted in previous blogs by those fiercly defending cr, regarding the topic of giving to the campaign & to the 'tithe' of the church. this leads me to believe we could use a thorough study of the subject of new testament giving, without respecting traditional sacred cows.

12:24 PM  

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