Fathers day success!

I wanted to give some pastors some ideas for their upcoming Fathers Day.

Fathers day is always a bitter sweet day for dads that go to church. What do I mean? Over the last several years I noticed that on Fathers Day the sermon always revolves around dads doing a better job. "It's time for our dads to be the Priests of the Household" is a popular saying. Although I agree. I did not want to beat up our dads on their special day. I was ready to try something different. What did we do? Here is a list.

1. Honor our dads.
2. For one day make church, dad friendly.
3. Lets do something special for them.
4. Feed the faithful, sow in the seekers.

How did we do it.

For the month of June we did a series called "Night at the Movies." We took some of our favorite movies and made sermons out of them. (Karate Kid, Hoosiers, Brubaker) On fathers day we picked one of Americas favorite westerns, John Wayne's "The Cowboys."

For some this might be sacreligious but I moved ten lazy boy chairs, five ice chests (full of every soft drink imaginable) and every snack on the planet. At the beginning of the service I drew names and that dad got to sit in the honor seat all service. They had a blast.

Next - Dad's love John Wayne! "The Cowboys" is a perfect Fathers Day movie-message. To make this special I included a friend, Clay O'Brian Cooper. Not only is Clay a seven time World Champion Team Roper and PRCA Hall of Fame inductee, but as a young boy he was in two John Wayne movies including "The Cowboys". I opened the service with this video. I knew that a lot of people knew Clay was in the movie. However, no one had ever asked the questions we were all asking. This video was a gift to our dads. I thought it turned out great.

Clay autographed two movie pictures for a couple of our blessed dads. All of our fathers had a great experience at church. Our Moms immediately made statements that they could go for something like this for Mothers Day.

I am so proud of Cowboy Junction Church for being a church where I could do something like this. Also everyone took advantage of this opportunity and invited their friend to come to church and "watch John Wayne".