ECCU Blog

When I visited the Rock Church in San Diego a few years ago, the first person I met was their receptionist. After she greeted me, I asked her to tell me what they were all about. “We’re a do something church,” she quickly replied. Are they ever! A year ago they invested the equivalent of 100 full-time people (235,000 volunteer hours) serving their city.

How do they do it? Next month, Senior Pastor Miles McPherson and his team will tell their story at the Do Something Church Summit on Friday, March 8. To see and hear more about the Summit, watch this video trailer:

To get more of an idea of what the Rock Church has learned by getting serious about serving, I emailed a few questions to Miles. Here’s what he said.

MBG: San Diego has experienced the love of Jesus through the Rock Church. How have people in the city responded to that love?

Miles: The volunteer work of the people of the Rock has fostered many relationships and partnerships with community-based organizations. Once they see that we are there to serve, ongoing partnerships are fostered that result in continued open doors for service.

MBG: What are some hurdles pastors typically face when presenting their congregations with the vision of becoming a Do Something Church?

Miles: Pastors will feel burdened to organize all of the ministries with their staff, feeling like it can get messy using volunteers to lead the efforts, but this is the beauty of the model. There are so many high capacity volunteers waiting for the chance to get in the game. If their efforts were unleashed, the amount of ministry they could accomplish would grow exponentially.

MBG: What’s one significant way that being a Do Something Church has changed the Rock Church?

Miles: It has created a culture of service among our congregation. People are now trained to look for and address practical problems facing the people of our community instead of just walking by and praying for them.

MBG: Besides a customized plan for their churches, what are a couple major takeaways people can expect by attending the Summit?

Miles: They can expect to take away a whole new philosophy on outreach. The Summit will provide them with a complete plan of action for how to launch dozens of volunteer-led ministries in their church. They’ll be equipped to plan church-wide community service events in partnership with community leaders—including their city’s mayor. And they’ll take away new resources and tips to expand their reach through technology. This is going to be an event you don’t want to miss!

To learn more or register for the Summit, visit dosomethingchurch.org/summit. Cost is $99 per person, which includes a Thursday-evening dinner reception.

Have you discovered that serving your community opens doors for the gospel? Please comment and let us know how.

God’s glory is the manifestation of all that God is—His divine attributes of holiness, grace, judgment, eternality, omniscience, and love, to name a few. To acknowledge God’s glory is to come to a greater understanding of who He is, to grasp a glimpse of His beauty, brilliance, effulgence, and radiance. 

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints… (Ephesians 1:18)

To glorify God is to reflect on and give back the glory He has revealed to us—in His Word, in His creation, and in our own hearts. At its core, giving God glory must start with ascribing to God all that He is.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

1 Chronicles 16 gives us a beautiful tutorial, a worship guide, of how we give God glory. It is by no means exhaustive—it will take eternity and beyond to give God all the glory due his name—but it’s a wonderful start, and the essential foundation for the fulfillment of the Pauline command: Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

How do we give God glory?

Sing. Beautiful, worshipful songs are a gift of God. Music fills heaven today and will be an all-encompassing part of our heavenly experience. Sing to the Lord, all the earth; Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day (v. 23). 

Tell. Giving God glory means we tell of His divine attributes and the immeasurable sacrifice of His Son to all who will listen. If you are Tim Tebow or Albert Pujols, you tell everyone on national television of God’s grace and faithfulness every chance you get. The rest of us may not have a celebrity spotlight on us, but others are watching. And we can speak of His love, His faithfulness in our lives, at every opportunity. Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples (v. 24). 

Praise. We give God glory by praising Him for all He is and that He has done. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him, Strength and joy are in His place (vv. 25–27). 

Sacrificial Giving. Beyond our weekly offerings at church, giving calls for sacrificing to God things that we would, in our honest moments, rather keep for ourselves. (Like taking credit for things God is actually doing—pretty much every good thing.) At the heart of what “glory” means is this principle: We glorify God by giving Him all the credit due Him. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him(vv. 28-29b). 

Worship. God tells us that even His inanimate creation worships Him. If inanimate rocks and oceans and trees glorify God, how much more must those created in His image? Worship the Lord in holy array. Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved(vv. 29c–30). 

Thanks. We glorify God by giving thanks to Him. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Then say, “Save us, O God of our salvation, And gather us and deliver us from the nations, To give thanks to Your holy name, And glory in Your praise. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, From everlasting even to everlasting (vv. 34–36a). 

Finally, we glorify God by doing all these things together. Then all the people said, “Amen,” and praised the Lord (v. 36b).

With recent news about debit card fees and “Bank Transfer Day” just a couple days away, a lot of people have been talking about banking lately. (If you’ve missed all the hype about the grassroots Bank Transfer Day event, there’s a good explanation of how it got started in an online article titled “Can Credit Unions Make a Success of Bank Transfer Day?”) 

Some churches have even been in the news lately, promoting to their people the idea of switching banks. What about your church or ministry? Have these events prompted your people to think and talk more about banking? What have they been saying? 

(We talked about it more in a post on our blog for missionaries titled “What to Say about Bank Transfer Day?“)

I think I’m a pretty smart person and shopper, and I’m always on the lookout for good value for my money. I also like to think of myself as a shrewd steward. Sometimes these ways of viewing myself conflict with each other.

When I’m looking for good value for my money, typically I’m looking for what’s in my best interest. After all, who else is going to look out for me? I do many of the things I’ve been taught, read about, or seen others do including comparison shopping, belonging to warehouse clubs, shopping online, and even recently using my phone to compare prices. All this to say, I’m trying to practice “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

At times, however, I find that this focus and mentality leads me to think of “me” just a little too much. I have also grown to learn and believe that God owns it all, and I’m just a steward (manager) of what he has provided me. If it really isn’t mine in the first place, then my focus on trying to figure out what is best for me might just lead me to compromise my other belief that I’m just a manager of what God has provided.

Since I was a child, I have been a member of a credit union as my family had discovered the value of members helping other members. When I went to college, I joined ECCU, which was 28 years ago. After college, I worked in regular banks before coming to work at ECCU, and I certainly can see a huge difference in perspective. At the banks where I worked, increasing shareholder value or the bottom line was the more important financial objective. It wasn’t that we didn’t care about our customers; it was that we served them so we could make a bigger profit. In a sense, it was like asking, “What’s in it for me?” first, before trying to take care of the customers.

Since coming to ECCU as an employee, I have never looked back on my days of working for a bank. Not that those banks are bad, they aren’t; but my world view of money is better served within the structure of a credit union. You see, at ECCU every member is an equal owner, and our structure forces us to only serve other evangelical Christian individuals, churches, schools and parachurch organizations.

In Acts, we read about the first Christians, who really practiced community and in doing so sold everything they had to ensure that the community was taken care of. While we certainly don’t live in that type of environment today, I fully believe being a part of a credit union, especially ECCU, allows me to help accomplish something that is bigger than me and support the evangelical Christian community. It isn’t about “what’s in it for me?”, but rather just one person trying to use God’s resources in a way that can advance the kingdom for his glory. That’s what ECCU is all about to me. It is all of us coming together, getting something of value for ourselves but also partnering with others to accomplish something much bigger than we could ever do by ourselves; and certainly something that could never happen if I only dealt with a bank.

So, why is it important for people like you and me to come together under the umbrella of ECCU and help serve over 3,000 ministries that impact the world for Christ, keeping our funds on deposit to help make that happen? For me, one big reason is that it helps me be the shrewd steward I long to be.

Matt Weidler, an ECCUemployee, was awarded a $10,000 check for having a brilliant idea — accessing ATMs using a cell phone. Matt was announced the winner of the CO-OP THINK prize on May 17 at the annual THINK Conference in Anaheim, CA. 

Read more about Matt’s winning idea by going to the CO-OP THINK website and clicking on 2011 Winner. 

What do you think of Matt’s idea?