"Prepare to jump to... Ludicrous speed!" (Spaceballs)

I'm posting after a week. What a week. Topping the list of accomplishments for the week was the secret launch of the new therockchurch.info, a project that began back in late July. It's a work in progress, although the new buzzword for that is "beta". I still have a few pages to complete, but the majority of necessary information is available. It doesn't display properly on IE 6.0, but that's okay, everyone should be running FireFox (HA!).

I Fit...I Am The Rock Church Night went off with a bang! Over 300 people showed up for our annual Volunteer & Vision meeting. Youth Pastor Travis and Children's Director Staci did a great job at hosting Bingo.

Interns began the year last week. Staci and I were given the opportunity to take the 1st years for a little exercise and it was a great experience. The Interns are definitely meshing as a team and getting used to performing cohesively.

And to prove my geekiness, I picked up a smokin' deal of a 20" wide screen LCD monitor from newegg.com to complete my trifecta of LCDs. That's right- 3 monitors. I'll downsize back to two, just so my cubicle outlet doesn't explode (Clark W. Griswold ring a bell?).

My next future dilemma is a phone decision. I can go with the Apple iPhone or the BlackBerry Curve. I don't need a music library, just pictures. I need internet, texting, and email. I have resigned to the fact I'll be a phoneslinger, wearing the weapon on my hip; ready to retrieve it at my whim; affording me multiple opportunities to drop-test the phone from a mere 28" off the ground.

"but I still love technology.........."

"Unfortunately for you we aren't tested on tact or good manners." (Stranger Than Fiction)

Time management. Crucial phrase, since you can make more of everything except time. Being effective with time also prevents wasted effort. For example, I read a lot of different blogs, as long as they actually have descriptive content and are not a stream-of-conscious blurb. I don't have time to read two sentences about an experience walking down the street. I do have time to read a outlined process for focusing efforts to accomplish goals.

When I read this (go to 9/14), I was wondering, how would some people view the statement of #5: "Oh, in case you're wondering, I just did the math yesterday. We have 72 full-time and part-time staff members at NewSpring. And, we're averaging 7,300 people in attendance for the year. That means our attendance to staff ratio is about 100:1. How does that compare to your church?"

I think that this statement would be awesome as a full blog posting, or blog series, because some people may be wondering what Tony is saying. What does a staff-to-attendee ratio really mean? For number crunchers, a high ratio means lower church overhead. Or is the staff overworked trying to minister to a high ratio? Is there an "optimum" ratio?

"Life moves pretty fast." (Ferris Bueller)

MinistryCOM Church Communications Conference - Day 1

Terry Storch was the opening speaker and he presented the dilemma facing churches today in communicating with today's culture and technology. It was pretty awesome, considering he was able to articulate what I've been thinking about for a few weeks. The internet has changed everything. And the new "version" of the internet is all about personal interaction.

He main 5 points (his presentation was version 30 - 6:30 Starbucks):

1. Churches performed one-way communication (church 1.0). In today's culture, the guy who has a myspace page for his band (that plays in bars) goes to your church. He invites people to your church, but doesn't exactly project your church values. Church 1.0 is all about service times. If you want to learn about Jesus, come when WE do it. People want to participate. Church 2.0 focus on creating experiences anytime. “Anytime” content doesn't have to be the Sunday morning word.

2. Walls. Churches so focused on buildings- if it doesn't happen in the building, it isn't church.

3. Omnipresent Church – if church is about a building, do we put God in a box? At MinistryCOM, 500 attendees representing 300 churches, approx. 1 million influenced, who influence their friends.

4. Re-Imagine Outreach (borrowed from Tom Peters) What does outreach look like? Churches still doing outreaches and missions the same way. With the internet the outreaches should be different. Should be “inreach” through facebook, Church 1.0 = physically “out”. Virtual relationship then move to physically relationship.

5. Church 1.0 = The Power of 1. Everyone invites 1 person. The problem is that is it's addition. Attrition rate is greater than addition in many churches. Time for leaders to get out of mindset of addition and multiplication. One person can invite EVERYBODY if content is delivered the way users want it. It's about the name of Jesus, not the one on the side of the building.

There are the highlights of Terry's presentation. And he made a comment about wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate." (Cool Hand Luke)

In just over a week I head to Nashville, TN for MinistryCOM 2007- the church communications conference. With a speaker list that includes Terry Storch and Kem Meyer, the conference has some great sounding breakout sessions. I just wish I could be a three places at once.

I can' wait to learn something new, and hopefully I can share some things I've learned along the way.

"Without ME, it's just AWESO" (t-shirt)

"ME" are two letters contained in my first name, Michael, so ergo, when The Office returns, TV will return to being awesoME.

"Hey where'd you get that?" (WarGames)

Free Software!

Just kidding. I recently picked up a laptop and I am in the middle of an experiment. I am only using the software that came with the machine (like the OS, utilities and whatnot), but not the productivity software. Meaning no Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excell, Adobe Photoshop, whatever.

I run OpenOffice.org office suite. I'm typing this now in OO's Writer program, then I will copy and paste to the Blogger interface.

My email client is Mozilla's Thunderbird, with the Lightning calendar add-on. Between Thunderbird and Eudora, I was able to get Thunderbird up and running first. And I like the interface and the simplicity it operates on.

I've been able to link my calendar to my Google calendar, but it is not as transparent as I wish. Maybe I'll learn some new tricks, but so far I'm not disappointed.

I'm also running Gimp for my photo editing. Haven't used it yet. My geek journey continues...

"Nobody cares about the man in the box." (The Prestige)

I love the Self-Checkout at grocery stores. Zip-Zing done. Only 3 or 4 items? Swipe, swipe, punch, bag. The ultimate convenience when you only have a few items. Or if you happen to need to buy certain products and don't feel right going through a regular checkstand. Like Crunchy Corn Bran, prunes, prune juice, and a box of Ex-Lax.

However, the Self-Checkout only works WHEN YOU CAN USE IT! Why do stores put them in, only to limit the access time where more than one is open? Obvious answer: not enough staffing to monitor the stations, to deter theft. But really, is that such a burden considering these checkouts are right next to the door?! Good planning and execution.

So now we have a convienence feature in a store that has now created an ever greater inconvienence. Not only am I forced to move to a different line because the patrons at the only Self-Checkout are typing and scanning their 14 different vegtables (these products take the longest amount of time to purchase) and having a hard time comprehending the alphabetical-push button interface, but my time is wasted. And time is the only thing you can't make more of.

A solution: allow patrons to enter in a payment method first (a debit/credit/patron card), the patron's zipcode or phone number, and allow them access to the Self-Checkout. Or just require patron card holders to be able to use the lanes w/o live monitoring.