A New Approach to Marketing
Take a look at at the video by beyondrelevance.com. This video is a parable “If Starbucks Marketed like a Church”. It’s a constant reminder that we should take a guest friendly approach to our marketing and environment.
Flow Chart 2.0
So, I can’t take credit for this one, but still worthy of passing along…
Most churches (at least the smart ones) are taking a team approach to ministry. No longer is one person the one stop shop for an entire ministry or branch of ministries. Most Student Pastors and Children’s Pastors now have a team, Worship ministry has a team. This is a great idea…and highly recommended.
My problem is, when creating a flow chart or workflow, it’s really hard to communicate that team concept. It always seems so starchy and so power-trippy.
Recently at WOLC (the greatest church on the “freakin” plannet – www.mywayoflife.org) we implemented a new structure to our team of leaders. The table chart. Maybe it’s stolen, maybe it’s not, but I give credit to Pastor Wade for bringing it to our church.
The center of the table is your vision, sitting around the table is 4 or 5 chairs (depending on your structure). These chairs represent the major categories of ministry (ours are student, admin/operations, discipleship, worship, and eventually evangelism). Each of these chairs are also sitting at another table (these tables are represented by circles on the chart). At the center of those circles are the vision for that branch of minstry and around that table sits ministries that fall under that branch. For example, in my “admin/operations” branch falls: Production Team (lighting, media, video, sound), Marketing, General Administration, and Event Management. Obviously those ministries are represented by teams as well.
What a great way to convey a team concept. Starts in and works out, not starts up and falls down like a big-chief on a high chair.
Email me for a copy of ours for reference: blankenship1@gmail.com
Peace!
Out: Paper In: Synchronization
I learned something last year… it’s really easy to mis-communicate about calendar changes and updates when everyone is responsible for managing their own calendars. In fact, I can’t even remember how many times I had to reissue printed calendars and documents to ministry leaders over the first part of 2008.
I decided that I wanted to change that over the last quarter of of 08 and the future. Why not create one master calendar and have the other ministry leaders tap into this calendar, rather than managing their own?
No more printing, no more asking, “Do we have anything on the 30th of April?” This idea has brough huge clarity to our administration. Not only do the ministry leaders have an up-to-the-minute update on calendar changes, but I now have someone to serve as a second set of eyes on my calendar. If I have something wrong, I now have a team that can communicate that to me. It’s about teamwork.
So here’s how it works::
Apple Users: Stop using Entourage now, use iCal. iCal allows you to add layers to your calendars that gives you functionality to only give certain levels of ministry leaders the access to the events that pertain to their level of ministy need. You can also set up specific calendars to share tasks between yourself an ministry leaders to reduce the, what I call, “I’ve got it, you take it” tasks.
Create your calendar and then sign up for iCal Exchange or MobileMe. iCal Exchange is a free service that will host your calendar online. This allows you to publish, and have your team “Subscribe” to it using iCal by entering the URL supplied by iCal Exchange.
You can then use an inexpensive software calling “Spanning Sync” to sync your iCal to Google calendar so you can effectively communicate with the less-fortunate or as I call them: PC users.
Windows Users: The best option for you is Google Calendar. Please use an online resource if you need help with this service.
Feel free to post any questions you may have or help needed with setup.
Paper users: Can your daytimer or franklin covey do that?
Old Blog- New Idea
So I’ve decided to make a change. Doesn’t everyone have a blog about their thoughts, or their day, or what they think about this or that? I’ve realized that I want my blog to be about something that I can offer to help others in my role.
I’m learning every day and I want someone else to take what I learn and move forward.
Recently at Catalyst Conference Seth Godin talked about “Tribes”. People travel and live in tribes and that’s how most information is transferred today. I belive there’s a tribe of people yet to be created that change the way churches are organized.
Take what you need and throw away the rest.
I’m glad to be back. We’ll talk soon.
Gambling with fake money…
Yesterday we had our semi-annual company-wide meeting at work. A morning full of long — detail oriented presentations about finance, development, marketing, and more. What a bore (I’m a poet and didn’t know it). So after our long morning of meetings and catering… they had a nice afternoon planned.
UPS hired an entertainment company to come in and set up a casino in a large tent next to our meeting room. We each got 25,000.00 of UPS bucks to play with. Black jack, hold ‘em, craps, roulette, and more. What fun! We didn’t even have to lose any money.
The coolest part about it was, for every 10,000 we ended up with, we got tickets issued to enter in drawings for prizes.
I’m not a very good gambler, so, after the first 25,000.00 was gone there was a man walking around with more green to hand out.
totally free.
even if you blew yours.
he keeps you in the game.
What a great comparison to God. There were plenty of people wandering around after they blew their money and all they did was watch others play and win, and continue to play. But… there was a man giving out more money!
So often we find ourselves wandering around on empty. Watching others enjoy abundance, when we can have our own the whole time.
You. just. have. to. ask.
God has the amazing ability to refresh and restore our lives by simply asking. So why do we choose to wander around and get nothing and just wait for the game to start over. He just so happens to be wandering in our midst waiting for people to ask.
Stay in the game. Just ask God, he gives it. We just forget to ask sometimes.
What do YOU do?
For the last few weeks life has been a little crazy with the new baby, Nichole being in and out of the hospital, holidays, church, etc. I wouldn’t call it a bad crazy (except for the hospital part), but it’s just been busy. I’ve had that feeling that we are all too familiar with, how do I get connected to God?
I’ve attended church, but when you have a baby that wants to randomly yell and throw food it can be a bit distrac… wait… it can be VERY distracting. Through these last few weeks the point has been proven to me stronger than ever, church is not where your relationship with God grows and becomes real. That has to happen at home.
Church is where we worship and strengthen the community of believers, but with a lack of personal devotion time, there is no depth…
What’s so awesome about God is that he’s a gracious God, he gives back more than we put in (way more). Here’s what I mean… last night I ran downstairs to put my clothes for work in the dryer at about 11:30 PM. I had already been to church, even though spending much of the time in the hallway with London; and yet I was still empty.
As my pants were in the dryer I took five minutes and sat down at my keyboard and began to play the old simple song “Surround Me” (This is where God starts giving back more than I give), and God began to refresh me sitting right there. Did I cry? No. Did I interceed? No. But I felt the overwhelming comfort of God’s presence around me, and it’s exactly what I needed at the time, and God understands that.
God knows where we are. I’ve heard that statement over the years and it made some sense, but last night, in a basement filled with boxes, and laundry, and a/c units that cost a lot of money to fix every other month… God met me; and it made a lot of sense.
My question (since this is supposed to be a conversational blog), what do you do?
…but he helps sick kids!
Last week the George Mitchell report on his investigation into HGH and steroids in Major League Baseball. Between 25-30% of the players on the list of users were either current or former members of the Baltimore Orioles. Seems surprising to me that almost 1/3 of the list is occupied by losers. The Orioles haven’t had a winning season since I was a child (over 13 years).
Even greater, one of the prides of Baltimore, young and atheletic second basemen Brian Roberts, is listed on the report. Brian Roberts has been one of the bright spots in the O’s lineup for about five years. This week the Orioles released a statement defending Roberts by the work that he’s done in the community. “BUT HE HELPS SICK KIDS” was the best story they can come up with supporting their player (referring to the work Roberts does with sick children in local hospitals).
Ironically, Roberts himself doesn’t deny the allegations. In fact, he admits it, and he accepts responsibility. Roberts said, “In 2003, when I took one shot of steroids, I immediately realized that this was not what I stood for or anything that I wanted to continue doing,” Roberts told the Sun. “I never used steroids, human growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing drugs prior to or since that single incident. I can honestly say before God, myself, my family and all of my fans that steroids or any performance-enhancing drugs have never had any effect on what I have worked so hard to accomplish in the game of baseball. I am very sorry and I deeply regret ever making that terrible decision. My only hope and prayer is that the Orioles, my family, friends and fans that have supported me so faithfully will forgive me.”
Roberts exemplified greater leadership than the organizational leaders for the team he plays for. See a trend? Could it be that the Orioles have been losers for so long because they lack true leadership from the top?!
Poor leadership trickles all the way down the stream to the coaches and players that enter the field nearly every night April-October. The players involved in taking steroids have poor personal leadership; they substitute true work ethic by using a substance that will provide results which do not equal the work put forth.
The only way to get where we need to be is true work and strong leadership. With these trends in our lives, we will never become winners. Throw any substance, any lie, any form of cheating into the mix… in the end…. we all end up losers, even if you help sick kids.
Love is a verb.
I’m a blogger, I can’t believe it. I’ve always wrestled with the idea of blogging, but always felt inadequate, or that it could be a bit prideful to think that someone actually wants to read what I have to say…. and for that matter… who am I to offer my words without someone even asking for them ?
I felt this way, until last night. Last night as I stood in my living room drinking my nightly 4.3 ounces of sweet tea before I head off to bed and it hit my like a ton of bricks.
It’s not
good for
man
to
be
alone.
Just as you see it written is how it happened in my head, it was like Rob Bell was doing some type of dramatic speaking in my mind.
As you may know last Friday (Dec 7), my wife gave birth to our second baby boy. Things seemed to be going well… I started a great new job, having a baby, Christmas time, happy happy + joy joy. Well we came home from the hospital on Tuesday and Nichole had to be re-admitted for infection on Friday. This sparked a chain reaction like fireworks at a smokers convention.
So I had to find someone to take care of London while we went to the hospital. So many questions… is she going to be ok? how long will she be here? who will keep london? can the new baby stay with her in the hospital? who will take care of my dogs? i’m not going to have to call out of work on my new job am i?
it’s not
good
for man
to
be
alone.
Long story – short. We have a wonderful group of people that stepped up to the plate. I started getting answers. Yes the baby could stay, but only if I was there too. People offered to take London. Mom stopped by for the dogs. I would sit at the hospital. People came to sit with Nichole while I worked on Monday. What would we have done without people. People who care, people who love you, people that not only love you, but are willing to go out of their way when you are unable to help yourself.
Last night as I sipped my 4.3 ounces of sweet tea in my octagon shaped mini-glass, the weight of all of it just settled in.
that’s it!
that’s what it means.
In Genesis when God said the simple words: it’s not good for man to be alone, it wasn’t just a phrase for his justification or reasoning to create Eve. He was sending a message that would ring through eternity. Life is not meant to be alone. You can’t.
it’s
not
supposed
to be
that
way.
God places people in our life, because life is not to be done alone. It’s about helping others and sacrificing for the sake of someone else in need. Let’s not be hogs of our own time and then steal the time of others without doing our part. I want to do anything I can for the people that brought sanity back into my life. It’ s just how it works.
So, why can I now freely blog? Because it’s not good for man to be alone. It’s my duty to share what on my heart or in my mind because we don’t hold all the tools necessary to do the job on our own. I need your blog, and you need mine.
