LifeChurch.tv does it again! Facebook style!

LifeChurch.tv is now reaching into the world of Facebook with Facebook Church. It’s a great idea and even has a Facebook Church application. For those not familiar with Facebook, an application is an add-on you can put on your personal page. This should be very good and I’m interested to see how far it will go. Here’s where you can find more info.

Does Your Church “Get It”?

Does your church “get it”? What’s “get it” you may ask? Get it is understanding that what’s most important is reaching people and seeing their lives changed because of what they got. Seems easy enough doesn’t it? So what got me thinking about getting it? Todd Rhoades gave ten observations of great churches he’s visited over the past few months who “get it”. See what you think, and then ask the tough question, “Does my church get it?”

Here are the first 3 to get you started.
1. Each church has a pastor with a vision. And it’s not just that these pastors have a vision… it’s that they have a gift for communicating that vision to their staff and their entire church. While it might not be a surprise to anyone that churches that ‘get it’ have pastors who ‘get it’, it is a glaring similarity among these churches: their pastors are great leaders with a great vision.

2. Each church hires almost exclusively from within. Most every staff member of these churches was hired from within. When asked if this was intentional, most said that it was. Here’s the deal: most of these churches do a tremendous job of training leaders and empowering people in ministry. When that happens, the cream rises to the top, and that’s how they find their best staff people. Most do not have church staff experience, but rather bring their expertise from another area of business or commerce. And, I have to say, these are some sharp people.

3. Speaking of staff, the staff of these churches ‘get it’ too. The staff in these churches are very loyal to their church and to their leadership. These are people that have a long history with the church; and they are totally sold on the mission, vision and values of their church. They also view their job not only as to serve God, and the church; but also to come along side and support the vision and leadership of the senior pastor. These churches have very loyal staff.

Read the enitre article HERE. Thanks Todd for the article.

Until next time.

3 Potent Questions

Craig Groeschel just posted a great article today on LifeChurch.tv’s blog Swerve. He poses 3 important questions that were asked of him, I also will ask the same 3 questions. Find the whole article HERE.

1. If you weren’t on staff at your church, would you worship there?

2. If you didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, what would you know about him after a normal weekend at your church?

3. If you had a loved one who didn’t know Christ, and they had one week left to live, would you take them to your church or another?

I like to pick up things (usually sayings) from effetive leaders. Some of my favorites are Blaine Bartel’s “Sweat in Preparation so you don’t Bleed in Battle.” And of course, there’s John Maxwell’s “Everything Rises and Falls on Leadership.” I’m not positve, but I think these questions are going to rank up there with these other quotes. Because these are questions effective churches need to be asking themselves.

These are pivotal questions about the effectiveness of your church. I won’t tell you my answers because I don’t like them. Most of you know I just became Director of Ministries at my church Central Bible Church A/G. I know alot of what needs to be changed and how I’m going to do it. I didn’t completely know how to justify some of the needed changes. These 3 questions are a good start. I challenge you to ask them to yourself and find out what your honest answers are.

It’s not about being BIG, it’s about being EFFECTIVE. Big is just the by-product.

Until next time.

LifeChurch has Joined the Blogosphere

Craig Groeschel and Bobby Gruenewald from LifeChurch.tv are blogging now on their new blog Swerve. I’ve already enjoyed the tech articles that are on the blog. It should be great reading from the looks of the start of it. Check out this blog for several great links from Swerve’s view on CES and MacWorld. Good good stuff.

I want to encourage you to not be afraid of the unknown. Alot of the items that are coming out this year are going to be great tools for ministry. If…..If we decide to use them. Check out the link on swerve’s blog for MediaFLO. How’s your church’s cell phone ministry going? Ever thought about it. I have. I’ve been talking about cell phone ministry for a while now. My church uses cell phone technology to reach people. We’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg though. We are only at the beginnings of what can and will be done. You can check out church info and we have links to Roman’s Road and the 4 Spiritual Laws for someone witnessing and can’t remember all 4 laws. You can get a mobile map of the church so visitors who can’t find the church just need to go to their cell phone. It’s great but only the beginning. Check it out by pointing your phone’s web browser to www.centralbiblechurch.org.

And of course bookmark and SUBSCRIBE to this blog so you can get daily e-mails and stay up to date on what’s going on with the church and technology.

Until next time.

Everything With Excellence

So I learned something pretty early on in my ministry. If you’re going to do something, do it right and with excellence…the first time. I, of course, had that reinforced many times since in different pastoral positions I’ve been in. Back to when I learned to do everything I did in ministry with excellence. The church I was at was a growing church plant with a great senior pastor. I was at the church on a Saturday, helping with the weekly bulletin and in the middle of folding a pile of bulletins. The secretary came out and saw my “less than average” job of folding and explained that the senior pastor “wasn’t going to like it.” So we had to reprint, recut, and refold the bulletins. The pastor came out later and saw the “better” job and gave his praise. Bottom line (that isn’t on the bottom), that wasn’t a one time occurance. Everything was done with excellence. And I have since been “trained”, everything I do in ministry is my best pursuit of excellence.

1. Because It’s for Jesus.
2. Because the world is watching.

And believe me, the world is watching. What makes a seeker want to pursue Christianity? It’s what he/she sees in a Christian. That’s why it is paramount that we always do our best. In EVERYTHING. So it disturbs me when I see Christians with a “sub-par” performance. Which brings me to reason why this post came to fruition. My wife and I were watching some of the tube last night and I was fulfilling my role of channel flipper. Going through the channels I came across a music video with a song I thought I recognized. But the quality was so terrible and the screen kept going to pixelation world, that I had to change it. But my interest had been peaked, as it always is when I see something Christian on television. Especially on local television. (Editor’s note: I thought long and hard about releasing the name of the show and website, but decided not to. Just know that is wasn’t TBN…this time.) So about ten minutes later I gave the show another go around. Same deal, but with teasing this time. It stayed great for about a minute and a half and then went back to pixelation. AAHHH!

My point being, if you’re going to do a ministry, of any sort, do it with excellence. Who got anything out of that show? No one. Especially the audience that I hope it was trying to reach, the seeker. There are many other sub-par things that go on in Christendom. This is just the one that made me write. Why spend all the time and money involved, for no one to get anything out of it. And the website? Not much better. I was stunned though to find out that it was a nationwide show and had stations across the US playing the show. Maybe I just caught a bad night. Now the second and final bottom line.

Whether we want to believe it or not, the world is watching us. What do they see? Everything that we do needs to be in the pursuit of excellence. So hopefully, they see excellence. Join me today in striving for better than average. There’s a whole world out there that needs to see Jesus in us.

Until next time.

The Geek Shall Inherit the Church

Okay, so I wanted to give this to you in sections and expound on each a little, but I can’t wait. Here’s the article from Ministry Today Magazine showing about just some of the ways to embrace technology to reach the world and your community. I don’t know how long this page stays up, I actually read the article originally from the print version. So read it before it goes away.

It talks about e-mail, new ministry positions available, and even examines the ‘dark’ side of it all. Great job of covering alot of different aspects of technology ministry. Good news: alot of this you can incorporate into a smaller church too! You just have to scale it down a little. I’m already examining different ways to assimilate it into my church. Have fun with this one, let your imagination go wild.

Until next time.

CES-Mania

Well for all you wannabe tech geeks out there, if you missed it, the CES will wrap things up tomorrow in Las Vegas. Because of course, if you are a tech geek, you’ve been planning the 4 day event now for 8 months. CES presented by the Consumer Electronics Association is a 4 day gadget-extravaganza. Big names like Apple and Microsoft always unveil something great there or somethings great. The huge buzz yesterday was Apple’s IPhone. Which is not turning out to be as good as most thought, even Apple-lovers. Paul Kedrosky names a few and Robert Scoble pointed out what should be the other five. As an ex-Cingular employee, I could not agree more.

Anyway, this is the time of year when you get to see the future of technology. So I am always happy around the time the CES is going on because I get to start figuring out how the church is going to start using the newest technology. Alot of times I’m right, sometimes I’m not though. Either way, it’s fun fun fun:)

So I thought of a challenge for you, the readers (all 5 of you, including my wife and I). Check out the CES and tell me what you think will make the biggest impact in the church world. Incase you are trying to find some good insight to cut through all the newest stuff, Scoble does about as good a job as anyone and covering the CES and giving good feedback. So have fun with this, lets get a good discussion going.

Until next time.

“Not Understandable” on DVD dot com

Okay, so let me first apologize for being so long since I wrote. So, I’m sorry. It was a long wonderful Christmas and New Year’s (in Atlanta and Des Moines) and sometimes it’s just hard to get out of vacation mode. I was also working on my newest website, a real estate website/blog for central Iowa. Woo Hoo. Anyway, that’s done and showing good signs of success already. But fear not, on my down time I was keeping lots of notes for this blog. I’ve been reading A TON of good stuff about how some churches have been using technology in a new favorite magazine of mine. But more about that at another time.

My issue for today is a great idea with just the wrong context. BiblesonDVD.com has an offering that amused me at first and then saddened me. I saw a commercial on television (not sure if it was a Christian station or not) for what I thought would be a good product. Only to be saddened once I got to the site. Have you went there yet? Did you notice anything? I did. Those three old initials kept popping up. KJV. Aaahhh! Why? It’s not like the church doesn’t have a hard enough PR problem. (i.e. I don’t understand the sentences) No one talks in KJV today. Why not a nice little version with NIV, or better yet, redo it completely in terminology that the lost of today understand?

My problem is this, if you’re going for realism and going to spend all this money to make something quality, why not make it effective too. If you just want realism, take the Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ approach and do it all in the original language. I know some of you like the NKJV for the ‘poeticness’ (is that a word?) and flow of the scripture. But when someone is down to their last leg and at the end of their rope, they don’t want poetry. They want the truth that speaks to their heart, and they want (and need) it to be understandable to them, to be able to apply it to their lives today. My feeling is this, a new believer has a hard enough time trying to make sense of all of the confusion of Christianity. Why unnecessarily further complicate things?

I could go on and on about this, but it’s late and we’ve got plenty of time in the future to discuss this issue. Bottom line: The lost need to find the truth. And we have a responsibility to get the truth to them. Why make the task harder than it is? Be relevant in every form of ministry that you do. Make the gospel usable and applicable to the unsaved. Be transparent, let them see Christ in you. The faster they get it, the faster they start telling other people about it!

Until next time.

How Cyber is Your Church?

Okay. So I know technology changes faster than we realize. I understand the church sometimes lags behind in the technology race. I understand that sometimes it’s okay to. But when I ran into this article, I couldn’t believe how far behind we are, as the church. The article was from June of 2006, yes, six months ago. For those of you who will not read the article, it speaks of how good PowerPoint can be to enhance a service, how cell phones can be distracting in a service. PowerPoint. Was the article talking about how helpful PowerPoint can be? Powerpoint 2 came out in 1987. Stop….let it sink in. Yep, that’s almost 20 years ago. Granted, you can do alot more with PowerPoint today with adding sound, tables, and much more complex variables. Cell phones being intrusive to a service? Of course, but who doesn’t know how to put the phone on vibrate or leave it off completely. That’s not the technology’s fault. It’s the old “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument. Phones going off during service don’t irritate me, the person who doesn’t turn it on vibrate or off, irritates me.

I liked that the article brought out the point of PDA’s. I enjoy having SmartBible on my Treo, in 2 different versions(NASB & KJV(for the ‘I hate anything new’ crowd)). I have a copy of God’s Word anywhere I am. Anywhere. I don’t enjoy the stares I get while in church, following scripture with the pastor, on my cell phone. I guess people don’t get it sometimes. Technology can be good! Christians can use all different types of technology to not only enchance their personal walks, but also to spread the gospel.

When reading the Rev. Goodier’s remarks about accessing the Bible on a PDA, did you catch the almost dare I say, arrogance? “It can be a convenience.” Of course he still carries around his pocket sized copy of the Bible. So what’s the problem? Is it because it’s not on paper, or because it’s on a cell phone? Am I reading it wrong? Then he’s back to the PowerPoint. Geez, give me a break. He’s acting like he’s using a technology no one’s ever heard of. Point of Interest: my eight year old nephew can put together a PowerPoint presentation. I’m scared to imagine what the good Rev. might say if he came into one of my church services, powered with MediaShout and it’s use of moving backgrounds and animated words. I would guess it might be a while before he explores the amazing world of DigitalJuice.com.

It’s my same old complaint. The church will stumble on to some form of technology that helps their spreading of the gospel, only to find out that the business world has been using it successfully for years, sometimes decades. It’s like thirdfloorthoughts commented on 12/14/06, we need to be operating ahead of the curve, not behind it. It’s time to put away our petty preconceived notions about different technologies and use what we can to reach this world. Believe me, someone is going to reach every person in this world. The question remains, will it be us or the world? The world’s got a pretty good head start on us. It’s time to stop arguing about issues that we are scared of and start using technology to get things done. Sounds pretty simple to me.

Until next time.

Pursuing…Perfection? Where’s the Honesty?

Gallup took another poll, big surprise. No, not really. The real suprise is where clergy ended up in the 2006 Most Honest and Ethical Professions poll. Have you checked the link yet? Clergy ranked 8th. 8th! Well 8th is better than 23rd. Clergy still ranked higher than car salesmen and congressmen. Well, that’s a relief….or is it? The top five were in the medical profession one way or another. Even engineers and college teachers ranked higher in people’s eyes than clergy. College teachers? That’s a whole other blog in itself. The days of Jim and Tammy Faye are long gone, even Jimmy S. is back with a television ministry. I’ve watched it a couple times, it wasn’t bad.

Of course, for those defending the clergy #8 ranking, you can say the poll was just taken at a bad time for christians in America. The fall of Ted Haggard still fresh in the minds of Americans. And that may be true, but you can’t put the blame for this, all at the feet of one man. Maybe the Catholic Church and all it’s priests problems. Maybe, but I think you have to dig deeper. Little deeper. Just a little deeper….do you see it? Maybe the glow of it coming into focus? Maybe it’s something on more of a grassroots level. Maybe it’s just clergy in general, and people looking for perfection where perfection cannot and will not be found. I don’t think you can blame bad timing. Trust me on this one. I’m a pastor’s son and have been a pastor. Perfection you will not find, but you can find the pursuit for perfection. With the assumption that perfection is to be Christ-like, of course.

So, why the low ranking? Granted, 8 out of 23 isn’t terrible. Here’s my guess. Maybe the reason is transparence, or the lack of it. Perhaps we as pastors(clergy), board members, sunday school teachers, lay people, christians just need to be more transparent with people. Let people know that we aren’t perfect, but we are trying. With the transparence comes honesty. And of course, with honesty comes the ethics and people’s perception of you and your honesty.

Let me encourage you to be more transparent today. Let people get to know the real you. Not the ‘Perfect Paul and Polly Christian’ fascade that we put on. Let me know what you think.

Until next time.