I read some about this book and it looks right up my alley. I love strategy/future change. (Hey 2 of Amazon’s TOP 10 Reviewers recommend it!) Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

Book Description: Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data and lead to costly errors in judgment. Now, internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth present a groundbreaking framework for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry. Based on proven theories outlined in Christensen’s landmark books The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, Seeing What’s Next offers a practical, three-part model that helps decision-makers spot the signals of industry change, determine the outcome of competitive battles, and assess whether a firm’s actions will ensure or threaten future success. Through in-depth case studies of industries from aviation to health care, the authors illustrate the predictive power of innovation theory in action. Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in Technology & Operations Management and General Management. Scott D. Anthony recently joined Innosight, LLC as a partner. Erik A. Roth recently joined McKinsey & Co. as a consultant in its Boston office.

Do you desire to see your church grow to the next level? Do you feel stuck at a certain level in your church’s growth? In this session you will learn how to effectively develop growth systems that work whether your barrier is 125, 250, 500 or 1000.

You will learn:

* How to identify and remove the barriers that keep your church from growing
* How to develop effective systems for staff, space, small groups, and finances in order to strengthen your growth potential
* How to think strategically about growth in order to avoid future barriers

Speaker: Nelson Searcy
Lead Pastor : Journey Church of the City
Bio: Nelson Searcy is the founding pastor of The Journey Church of the City in New York, NY. The Journey is an innovative, multicultural, multi-site church in Manhattan and is one of the fastest growing churches in the Northeast. Nelson previously served as the Director of The Purpose Driven Community at Saddleback Church. He is also founder of EpicAdventures.org and Smartleadership.com.

Many church planters seem to hit certain attendance numbers and plateau. Searcy identified the most common church attendance barriers as 65, 125, 250 and 500. He said the question a church should ask is not “How do I get my church to grow?” BUT “What is keeping my church from growing?” Searcy said clearly God desires the kingdom to grow and has called us to go and make disciples. So, when a church isn’t growing, it is something that is keeping it from growth. Searcy identified 9 barriers to growth: Space, Pastor Development, Sharing, Stewardship, Sunday Services, Small Groups, Staff, Speaking and Structure.

In the session, Searcy spoke on 3 of these barriers, Space, Pastor Development and Sharing.

Growth Barrier Space
Barrier Principle: Once a room is 70%, its full.

When a room is full, people stop:
- inviting friends
- talking to guests (they focus on getting out of the room)
- attending regularly

Growth Barrier Self Development
Self Development = Leadership Ability + Spiritual Maturity

When a pastor isn’t growing, the church stops growing, sermons are stale and the passion for ministry wanes. Searcy said every pastor is doing way to much. Pastors need to not be doers but equipers. “Often a church will grow to a certain level, and come back to a level the pastor is more comfortable with,” said Searcy.

Growth Barrier Sharing
Sharing = Reaching new people

Every person in the church needs to be challenged to share with 3 people. Searcy stated a healthy ratio is 5:100 (five first time guests for every 100 people).

Searcy has a website where he sells his seminars on, www.epicteam.org. He said his best selling seminar his Assimilation Seminar-From First Time Guests to Long Time Members.

Also see: The TurnOut Solution: Solving the Problem of Plateau and Decline
Churches: Breaking the 125 Barrier

Here’s a book I’m ordering: Quick Scripture Reference for Biblical Counseling

Book Description
The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling was first published in March 1988. While its primary intention was to help counselors and pastors, over the years laypersons have also found it indispensable in helping them meet their personal needs as well as mold their personal and family devotions.

This revised and expanded edition is specially designed to help people use the Scriptures more effectively in their lives. Scripture quotations are from the popular NIV. Scripture passages on each of the practical topics are thoughtfully arranged in a numbered list so that users can see their significance at a glance. Users have all the pertinent Bible passages at their fingertips when they need them most.

Book I’m buying: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

Description: After more than thirty years of serving in leadership positions and speaking on leadership, author John C. Maxwell is often asked, “If you were to take everything you’ve learned about leadership over the years and boil it down into a short list, what would it be?” This book is his answer. Simply and briefly, Maxwell outlines the essentials of leadership that transcend time, place, culture, and situation. These basic laws of success can be applied to business and private life, helping anyone reach their full potential.

A National Christian Magazine asked me if I had people who are interested in contributing to an article they are writing. It would require that a person attends a church in their area and perform a ’secret shopper’ role to provide feedback. The magazine will put this in an issue in early 2006 but needs people to do this now.

If you’d like to be a Church Secret Shoper let me know your name, the city you live in and your email address.

As I walked the Exhibition floor of the National Outreach Convention, I browsed the exhibits. One exhibitor, who sold services to ‘pastors’ said, “Oh, this is really more for pastors.” I replied, “I am a pastor.” She responded, “Oh, a youth pastor. Well maybe someday you will be a senior pastor.” Maybe because I was a little scruffy, wearing my ‘Friends Gnome Matter What’ t-shirt (with a great gnome illustration) or something I wasn’t good enough to buy their product? Anyway, this happened twice within a period of ten minutes.

Are Youth Pastors Second Class Citizens in the ministry?

I spent today at the National Outreach Convention. I will dedicate a post to each session I attend to share what I learned. Here are the sessions I plan or have to attended:

Breaking Attendance Barriers

Do you desire to see your church grow to the next level? Do you feel stuck at a certain level in your church’s growth? In this session you will learn how to effectively develop growth systems that work whether your barrier is 125, 250, 500 or 1000.
You will learn:

* How to identify and remove the barriers that keep your church from growing
* How to develop effective systems for staff, space, small groups, and finances in order to strengthen your growth potential
* How to think strategically about growth in order to avoid future barriers

The TurnOut Solution: Solving the Problem of Plateau and Decline

Churches lapse into plateau and decline because, over time, they turn more and more inward. The solution is simply that churches must turn outward in order to correct spiritual negatives and to reach lost communities strategically. When they do, they foster health and growth, and see an increase in turnout.

You will learn:

* The origin and nature of plateau and decline.
* Spiritual and strategic dynamics of moving from plateau and decline to health and growth.
* The first steps in turning their churches around by turning their churches outward.

Putting E-Communications to Work in Family Outreach

Our culture is media dominated - a fact particularly true for young marrieds and younger families where the opportunities for preventing marriage and family problems vs. remedial efforts to fix problems are the greatest. These same opportunities provide an open door to use marriage content to reach families for Christ via e-communications.

This presentation will highlight the latest research from secular studies and the Barna Research Group on how the Internet is changing daily life. Identify opportunities for impacting marriages and families through church e-communications.
You will:

* Learn how the Internet & e-communications are shaping daily life among various age groups
* Understand the fundamental and basic considerations in choosing e-communication objectives
* Experience some best practices in using e-communications in marriage, family, and outreach ministry

Creating a Church that Connects & Integrates Visitors

This session is for those who are looking for practical tools that will greatly increase visitor assimilation in their church. Gain insights from a leading authority on assimilation in a concise presentation that provides practical “lessons learned” and “best practices” from fifteen years of working with thousands of churches.
You will learn:

* 7 Laws of Assimilation with associated principles
* Best practices and lessons learned in assimilation.
* The big picture of assimilation

The Power of the Internet for Outreach, In-Reach, and Up-Reach

Websites: The hub of communication inside and outside the church? The front door of today’s church? The meeting room for ministries? When the doors are shut and the lights are off at the church can your website can be used of God to actually reach people?

You will learn:

* How to use your church website as an Outreach, In-reach, and Up-reach tool for your church
* Website keys to create stickiness and generate ongoing traffic flow
* How to improve communication to your community, your membership, and your key leadership
* Practical web-based applications and ideas to harness the energy from your other internal and external media, advertising, and outreach initiatives

Redesigned Site v2.0 Now

Ekklesia Systems is a web-based application built for churches. Ekklesia combines a Content Management System (CMS), Contact Management System, Assimilation/Member Management System and Event/Registration Management System in one system. Ekklesia was created by church planters who saw a need because existing ‘off the shelf’ products and third party applications reached a point of diminishing returns. This group of pastors and lay-leaders decided to build a system that tackled these challenges .

Solution is SPORG meets Constant Contact meets a CMS meets Connection Power rolled into one.

There are many ‘anti-cult’ sites (Rick Ross Twelve Tribes resources, Twelve Tribes-EX) that attack the Twelve Tribes for being a cult. Their claims often attack positions the Twelve Tribes takes on discipline, lifestyle and Biblical authority. I’ve had a couple people request feedback from my stay at the Twelve Tribes commune in Vista, and whether I believe they are a ‘cult’.

First, I want to say that my experience there greatly impacted me. I was blown-away that a community of people were willing to ‘give it all away’ so that they would share all their life’s resources. At the start of each day, the community gathers in a covenant reminder that they will ‘die to themselves’ and love one another. Much of the bad press towards the Twelve Tribes isn’t so much an attack on their community but on them living out what the Bible commands. You may be surprised I say that. Well I do need to say my experience was not exhaustive, so I did not get to see how (method) they lived out these beliefs (principles). But they do seek to base their principles on the Bible. For this, most of American modern Christianity will want to reject what they are doing. The price is far too great for us to give up our worldly possessions and consumer mentality. Many of us our too deeply entrenched in the American-brand of Christianity that fits our lifestyle easily.

Here is where I would differ with the Twelve Tribes and warn people about deciding to join their community.

1. They believe that in order to be saved, you must accept Jesus and move in to a Twelve Tribes community. They mix justification with sanctification. I asked several questions to determine what they meant. First, I asked, if a person came to the same convictions and were not in an area where the Twelve Tribes had a community, would they be saved. Second, if a person came to the convictions and decided to move to a Twelve Tribes community but died before they got there, would these people be saved? An elder at the Vista location could not say ‘yes’ to these scenarios.

2. Three different people stated that from after the book of James was written until 1970, there is no evidence of true Christians in this (roughly) 1,900 year period.

3. They believe there is no room for disagreement with their doctrine. Those who disagree are considered rebelling against God’s bride, the church. There ‘doctrine’ is the interpretation of scripture based on Eugene Sprigg’s (and other leaders?) interpretation.

4. There is an element of sectarian us/them with the world. Don’t catch sin like the ebola virus out there in the evil world. People only work for the Tribes, they see the ‘world’ as being the evil system rather than a place where they work side-by-side with non-believers and live out the gospel.

5. An elder told me that John Calvin was ‘under a spirit of evil’ when he interpreted scripture. He said that the modern (false) church has been under his influence ever since.

6. They believe that all professed Christians that are not apart of their community are no different than atheists.

It is because of these stances that I would not encourage people to get involved in their community. I say this with sadness because so much of their life seems more Christian in substance than my life and the church-communities I see.

My youth group experience (at least the way I perceived it) seemed focused more on what not to do. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t have sex. In fact, I think it was in my church high school group that I learned that ’sex was bad’. Church seemed so unreal from the reality I faced and the pressures of the teen years of fitting in. I wasn’t being equipped to reply to the reasons why I shouldn’t do these things other than moralism. I wish the conversations were more frank and dealt less with the ‘what not to do’ and more with a Kingdom culture.

That leads me to a post Jen Zug made:

When I was a teenager I smoked, I shoplifted, I double pierced my ear with a needle and an ice cube, and I kissed boys in the bushes at church camp.

These are the kinds of characters and antics I find in the Diary of a Teenage Girl series by Melody Carlson. This is not simply the Christian version of the Sweet Valley High series with its drama and quest for popularity, but these are honest stories of real people who wrestle with everyday things like car privileges, school bullies, body image, and boys. (Full Post: Finally, a Teen Book Series for the Rest of Us

Churches, let’s stop entertaining our kids with cool services and XBox after service and raise a generation of gospel culture-changing activists. That may need to start with conversations based in reality.

Take a look at the article in World magazine (October 29, 2005 issue) about church closings.

Get ready, America. Get ready for the huge collapse from within that is soon to result in the locking of hundreds and then thousands of church doors across our country—all from the inside.

The trend is already well under way, of course, in Roman Catholic circles. In Boston, in Toledo, and in St. Louis, parishioners are protesting, but to no avail. They don’t buy their bishops’ arguments that priest shortages, dwindling finances, rising maintenance and utility costs, and shifting populations are forcing once familiar facilities to be boarded up. From the vigor of the protests, you’d think that hundreds of thousands of folks had been displaced—but it was the emptiness of the pews in the first place that produced the phenomenon.

Mainline churches, like the Methodist church in my own neighborhood, will not be far behind. Denominational treasuries simply aren’t up to the task of sustaining ministry personnel and facility upkeep for neighborhood “franchises” that can’t carry their own weight. When the 25 elderly people who gather now each week dwindle to a dozen, someone will have to pay the piper. And someone will have also to figure out who will mow the lawn of the church that isn’t being used anymore.

And then—sooner than you think—it will be the turn of the evangelical churches as well. Thousands of them, too, are teetering on the edge of their existence. Stick your head in the door on a typical Sunday, and see how many children are around. If you were a regional manager for McDonald’s, you’d close the place in a jiffy. Except for the grit and determination of a few old stalwarts, it would already have happened. But there’s no promise for the future.

Go to your Google search engine and enter “church closings.” This morning I got 508,000 responses. A few of them had to do with finding out who was closing in case of snow or ice. Most of the entries, though, are about a much, much worse storm that is brewing.

Another reason I hope to start DonateChurch.org as a place for dying churches to plant their seed into new church plants. Kind of a classifieds for new churches who are growing to find dying churches and the reverse. More to come…

An interesting article about how useful people consider their church website. Poll question, How Useful is your Church Website?

12% say they use their church web site every day
12% ask “What church web site?”
35% say their church’s web site is as current as a 1980 hymnal.

Another reason we create a web-based church content management system (and assimiliation, contact mgmt, event mgmt, etc…)

I’ve been given a pass to attend the National Outreach Convention. I listened to the promo video, it says:

Every day in America, 6 new churches are born but 8 close their doors.
Only 6% of churches are growing at the pace of their community.
95% of Christians have never led a person to Christ.

Their conclusion, Churches are not effective ambassadors for Jesus. It will be interesting to see all the outreach ‘technology & techniques’ and see what they are all about….these include:

Youth Outreach - How to better reach youth and empower Christian youth to reach their peers and the local community.
Children’s Outreach - How to create empowering ministry that reaches children and families in your community.
Postmodern Outreach - How to better reach the postmodern generation and identify the trends and issues that impact your current ministry.
Targeted Outreach - Proven strategies and “how to’s” for specific target groups and niche audiences.
Outreach Events - The best outreach event ideas from churches and ministries across the country.
Outreach Technology - How to use technology to expand your outreach effectiveness.
Outreach Marketing - Successfully implementing the 4 laws of effective outreach in your church. (Coordinated by Outreach Marketing)
Outreach Assimilation - Great solutions for churches seeking to improve their assimilation and “front door” ministries.
Creative Outreach - Using multimedia, worship, creativity and innovation to engage unbelievers through your church.
Outreach Strategies - Practical and proven strategies to equip leaders for effective outreach.
Community Outreach - Best practice models of spiritual bridge-building through innovative, authentic, community-based ministry.

Here are some drive-by observations from a sort of Harvard Business Review (HBR) Jesus Business Review (JBR) perspetive:

How Companies Turn Buzz Into Sales

In recent years, firms have turned to nontraditional marketing campaigns to generate buzz about their products and services. Indeed, positive word-of-mouth is anecdotally cited as the secret behind such successes as Chrysler’s PT Cruiser and the revival of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Knowing that the average consumer often listens to what trendsetters say, marketers go after specific groups of influential consumers.

But they may be missing the mark. Recent research reveals that the most obvious targets for a marketing campaign — loyal customers and tastemakers — may not create the best buzz for the marketing buck. (Source: MIT Sloan Management Review )

Kaleo’s Experience: Our ‘loyal customers’ (those who’ve attended 6-months or more) typically lag behind newer converts or attenders to Kaleo in actively inviting others to participate in Kaleo’s community.

The Art of Making Change Initiatives Stick

Many organizations regress after major change efforts because they lack a foundation that enables initiatives to stick. Through a detailed study of a major clothing retailer, the authors demonstrate the importance of starting early, having the right processes and avoiding top-down directives. The four critical processes they describe rely on understanding emotions and behavior, not just numbers. Giving employees a visceral sense of the need for change motivates them to maintain their efforts long after management attention has turned elsewhere. (Source: MIT Sloan Management Review )

Kaleo’s Experience: To quote Rick McKinley, “Sometimes your feel like you are yelling at dirt waiting for the plant to grow.” Meaning, often the leadership of the church feels a distinct message and direction the church goes in and it can take months before this is translated into the live’s of the congregation. The important thing is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (to quote a book by Eugene H. Peterson) where a vision is cast and consistently re-enforced in messages, communication and teaching.

We want to start a Classical Christian Education system in San Diego. I threw together a site to communicate our vision for the Geneva School of San Diego:

Geneva School is the vision of like-minded people who prepare to plant a Classical Christian Education school in San Diego. The Geneva School of San Diego is committed to provide an educational program that is both classical in its methodology and Scripturally-based in its principles and values. We are committed to assisting Christian families who elect to live and raise children in San Diego by making available an excellent Christ-centered, classical education to their children. By doing this, we will produce leaders of Christian character dedicated to a life of service, and participate in the moral and spiritual regeneration of our community.

Let me know if you have any suggestions, or if you want to help…