History in the Making

How to Live-Blog Catalyst

Anne Jackson, the blogger with a thousand faces, has posed an interesting question about how to "live blog" Catalyst this year. The comments are very interesting...

How to Write a Controversial Blog Post

I'm the king of tossing out ideas that people love to swat like badminton birdies. (If you want to write controversial blog posts too, this is a tutorial to show you how I do it... =)

The Posted Idea
I start off by wanting to say that church planters throw themselves too early into preaching and teaching before they have sufficiently reached out to the community or laid a strong organizational foundation. It's the same problem hair dressers face when they start their own salons. They're great cutters, but don't have the business acumen to make the organization work.

But this concept is pretty blah by itself. So I dress it up with an attention-getting headline:

"Why Preachers Shouldn't Start Churches"

This statement could be misunderstood (and usually is), but somehow, in some way, it communicates what I'm trying to say. But then come the critics:

Critic #1: The Spiritualizer
Quotes 2 Timothy 4:2 that we should be ready to preach in season and out, and says that I'm putting too much emphasis on the human factor in ministry. We're only to be faithful in preaching.

Critic #2: The Unidentifier
Prefaces it by saying I'm usually a good read, but this post is just waaay overboard. Wonders if I haven't been reading my Bible since leaving the pastorate. Is considering dropping me from his Google reader.

Critic #3: The Personal Attacker
Tells me I must be bitter that I'm no longer a preacher. This must be my anger raging up inside. Usually, this comment is signed by "thelordsspokesman@gmail.com" which goes nowhere.

You gotta love blogging. =)

You Need an Icon that Can Stand Alone

At 12 years old, I mailed an altered swoosh design to Beaverton, Oregon to help their brand along, but they sent me a rejection letter, which was devastating for a small child. I've always been fascinated with Nike because they were one of the first to let their icon stand alone. No words. No tag line. Just the swoosh. How bangin' is that? When I planted a church seven years ago, I asked BURNKIT to creat a strong icon for us that could exist without words. And they did. What's amazing is that you could put the swoosh on ANYTHING and make it look inspirational. Take this couch. It's just an ordinary sofa. But the swoosh adds mystery and enchantment... even if it means nothing. The swoosh adds power to the couch.

Screen Tests

A friend sent me a link to this whole series of NYTimes Screen Tests with celebrities. Some are better than others, but interesting. Here's Will Ferrill's take.

On Innovation

Ken Coleman was busting my chops yesterday at the podcast recording about my job title - director of innovation and experience. Tons of pressure, he said, to do something innovative. And he's right. So I wanted to give my take on innovation...

If you do something innovative and then do it again and again for years on end, it's no longer innovative. So my job is to sabotage sacred cows that threaten the future. I don't want us to wake up someday with an organization that is taken for granted. The hardest plan to change is the one that worked in the past. So to be innovative is to stick my neck out and put myself at risk for unproven ideas.

It's to experiment at the highest levels of excellence and learn quickly from mistakes. No one recognizes innovation while it's innovating, so it's about living in obscurity before ideas take off. My job is to fight for ideas that I'm not even sure will work, but pound on conference room tables and create sound financial models as if I do. It's to help create a culture of progress, which comes with never being satisfied.

It's to identify the talents of others and put them in the right seats. It's to see the future before anyone else and pinpoint the trajectory of trends in culture. In the end, the greatest innovations are those that seem obvious. Why didn't anyone think of that before?

Tons of pressure... but what a job.

Catalyst at Turner Field

Catalyst Team at The Varsity in ATL

Brad on Conference Call w/ Seth Godin

Crazy Catalyst T-Shirt Concepts

Okay, this is an unofficial Catalyst post. (The views and images expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Catalyst.) But this is the season when we invite a few select artists to design a series of official Catalyst tees.

AND in the spirit of Vince Papale (whose inspirational story was depicted in the Walt Disney film Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg), we'll entertain a few "walk-ons."

If you have a great idea for a Catalyst T-Shirt, send it to me, and I'll post the best of the best here on the blog. The truly great ones might actually be turned into shirts. There's no compensation, but you'll get bragging rights and a free tee.

I'll start the submissions with my own Andy Stanley couture.

 

The Day I Killed the Bulletins

{GASP!}

The way church planters get stuff done is by framing all church activity in the most spiritual light possible. Nothing wrong with that.

The set-up team is like a band of Levitical priests setting up the Tabernacle in the wilderness. Serving in the children's ministry is like Jesus letting the little children come to him. And so on...

But for yeeears, I had trouble finding someone to create the bulletin. I referenced Tertius, who transcribed the Apostle Paul's epistle to the Romans, =) but no one was buying. So I agonized and wrestled with this for almost two years before I finally realized...

"Dude, it's just a stupid bulletin. Kill it."

And do you know what..?

Not a single person complained after we stopped making bulletins. Okay, maybe one old guy. But since we had a simple church structure, we made the same 3 announcements every week (there were no pot-lucks or work-days to pimp), and we let people take notes on {gasp} their own paper.

It was a revolutionary idea...

We didn't need a bulletin.

huh.

What I've Learned from my Time at Catalyst

I'm one of five writers on the new and improved Catalyst Blog - and this is the title of my kick-off post today. Check it out [here].

Where I Just Can't Go with My Blog

Brad and I were talking about the runaway success of some major blogs this morning. And it got me thinking about where I won't go with mine, however much it sabotages my readership.

• I just can't bring myself to post advertisements. I'll cut grass on the side first.
• I won't take off my shirt for you. No matter how much I like you. I just can't do it.
• My sex life is off limits.
• My attention span is too short to write on one theme til Kingdom come.
• I would love a new profile pic every month, but I don't know any free photographers.
• I go back and forth about shutting off comments, but I just can't keep them off.
• I'm not this hip. No matter how hard I try. And believe me, I try.
• I'm not reformed, but I might consider it to have a blog like this.
• I don't have a high likeability factor. And sometimes I write negative things.
• Now that I'm not a pastor, I don't have Sunday reflections anymore, but then again, I don't have "suicide Monday mornings" either. =)

Okay, that's enough. All that to say... I gotta be me. Even if I am missing out.

Rumblings in the Church Planting World

Such interesting fluxes and changes in the ministry world...

• Vince Antonucci of Forefront Church announces that he's leaving to plant a church on the Las Vegas strip one year from now.
• Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin are partnering to start a new church in the Atlanta area... while 7:22 decides to call it quits.
• Craig Gross of XXX Church announces a new (actual) church in Las Vegas starting in 2009.

I love it. When people are listening to God, stuff like this happens. And it usually goes against the "better judgement" of other people. Following God is humanly irrational.

Our Ideas Set on Fire

Awesome meeting with Joshua Dunford of BURNKIT today here in Atlanta. My favorite design firm. Now I'm off to meet with some Asian American pastors... Happy Friday.

The Follow-up Phone Call

When new guests visit our churches, they want, more than anything, a personal connection. I mean, they don't really want one. That's why they slink in the back, give short answers, and then rush out quickly. But when it's all said and done, after visiting our churches... they really want one.

They're testing the waters. Pinky toe in the swimming pool. They're afraid. But deep down, they really do want to swim.

That's why the follow-up phone call is soooo important. A call to say, "Hey, it was great to have you. We'd love to get to know you better."

The trouble is... we pastors are more afraid of the follow-up phone call than anyone else. We justify not doing it by labeling it "harassment," as in "we won't harass you." (There. Now we certainly can't do it. It's illegal.=) We'll even send gifts and packages and cornucopias of treats with hand-written notes to the children.

Anything to prevent having to actually talk to a guest. Because we're afraid of what they might say. We're afraid of... rejection. Or the awkward silence on the other end of the line.

But they really do want a call. Hey, sometimes it is awkward. But when we do it, the pay-off is huge. At least no one can say we didn't try to reach out. And who knows, it could put someone over the edge. But we pastors are so insecure.

How to Build a Distribution Channel (and why you need one in the first place)

The best way to succeed at anything - whether you're a first-time author, a rock band, a fund-raiser, a singer/songwriter, an itinerant evangelist, or a consultant - is to create a distribution channel. (That's a fancy way of saying "a direct connection with a core audience.")

By the time church planters want to raise money, they're already 8-12 months behind because they never built a mailing list. Aspiring authors can't get published because they never built a readership. It's all about the distribution channel...

Most of the organizations you're familiar with have taken great care to build one -- the Willow Creek Association, LifeChurch, Integrity Music, Catalyst, you name it. They're all leading voices because they have a broadband connection to a core audience.

Seth Godin? Purple distribution channel. Evotional? Chase the distribution channel. One Prayer? One distribution channel.

Even Starbucks realized they'd created an incredible distribution channel for recording artists through their thousands of stores -- a la Paul McCartney's latest CD. Garth Brooks did the same with Wal-Mart.

You can build a channel too, but it takes diligence and hard work. Here are a few ways to do it.

• Keep adding friends on Facebook.
• Publish your own magazine on Issuu.
• Blog every day. Gather an audience of readers.
• Build an ever-growing mailing list in Excel.
• Send newsletters on a monthly basis.
• Podcast or vodcast on a weekly basis.
• Create your own Mogulus channel

By the time you're ready to unveil your next great project or opus, you'll have a group of friends ready to receive it.

Attracting High-Capacity Leaders with a Vision Breakfast

Four years ago, our leadership team at Reston Community Church was trying to figure out how to engage some of the high-capacity leaders in our congregation. Asking them to, say, wear a reflective orange vest to direct parking felt emasculating.

Of course, roles like handing out bulletins are important, but these guys included a rocket scientist for the NSA, a senior vice president for the largest private defense firm, the owner of some radio stations, a doctor, an engineer for NASA, and so on... There was no reason we couldn't offer them a bigger piece of the pie. And it didn't have to be an overtly spiritual role.

High capacity leaders want to be invited to serve. It's not a pride-thing; they just don't know where to plug-in. So we invited 10 of them to a breakfast at the Marriott Hotel. We reserved a private dining room, wore our suits, prepared a formal presentation on Power Point and in print, and cast big vision to them. In essence... we spoke their language.

I can't tell you how much that meeting impacted our church. These leaders felt included. They bought-in. And it wasn't about giving them special treatment - they were the marginalized members of our community. It was about laying down our pride to let gifted leaders lead.

Wednesday Afternoon Crazy Goodness

Awesome day today. Trip to the orthodontist. Great connections with some peeps on the west coast. Lunch with the fabulous DJ Nick Beidel. And now reviewing screen tests for the upcoming Catalyst vodcast. (Marketing director Sally Heffner pictured below). Awesome stuff in the works, people. We're on a roll here in Catalyst headquarters. We're on a roll...

Improvements to CatalystSpace.com

We've been taking CatalystSpace to a whole new level in recent weeks. Here are just some of the changes we've made and some things in the works for August. Our very own Chris Ediger is to thank for these...

• Background refreshes with new submissions from the Artists Together project.
• The all-new Catalyst Store.
• The Catablog now has 5 writers for a constant stream of blog goodness.
• All limitations on commenting at the CataBlog have been turned off.
• Watch videos in the main flash panels without going deeper into the site
• Coming soon: the all-new Catalyst weekly Vodcast
• Coming soon: Catalyst TV - behind the scenes and best-of footage
• Coming soon: play Catalyst audio clips right on the home page
• Coming soon: new articles and content every week

The Stuff Legends are Made of

Church planters are notorious for thinking that a great dream + hard work + insight = a thriving church. But church planters fail all the time with this formula.

What's missing is spiritual fertility. Every area has an established degree of receptivity to the Gospel, which can make or break a chruch plant before it ever gets off the ground. I'm not saying we shouldn't plant churches in difficult areas. I'm saying that in these cases, we should change our primary activity from planting an organization to cultivating relationships.

If you've read The Purpose Driven Church, you know that Rick Warren prayed for a church to pastor for the rest of his life. You know that he scoured maps in his basement, looking for the fastest-growing areas across the country and discovered Orange County. And you know that he sent a letter to a California missions director at the same time that director sent a letter to him.

Now that's the stuff legends are made of. And it's enough to send tens of thousands of church planters charging head-long over the cliff. What we fail to consider is that before Rick planted Saddleback Commmunity Church, he attended and then taught at California Baptist University in Riverside, California for years. But get this - he preached over 100 revivals throughout the Riverside area, which is just a 30-minute drive from where the Saddleback campus currently sits.

Now do you think... that just maybe... he might have helped cultivate this area for a church plant? I'm thinking it might have been the true first base.

I write this because I have a huge heart for the struggling church planter. I think they need to know about spiritual fertility and how it impacts whether a church plant will work.

Just finished a book on this subject, which will hopefully be out by spring. More to come...