Why are America's Most Innovative Churches also some of the largest in America?  Northpointe, NewSpring, Saddleback et al are nominees for the award in 2008.    Is this like when Taco Bell wins best Mexican food because it's the most voted place in town?  Aren't there small churches who are doing innovative things too?  It seems like smaller churches should have more freedom to be innovative.  House church movements?  Harbor's multi-site, multi-congregational non-video venue model?  Soma's multi-congregational, involved discipleship (street walking) and dialogue based services?  How about people who are doing amazing mercy ministries, changing a city, Tentmakers, re-thinking church structures based on changing paradigms? 

Hmmm…according to the survey these aren't considered as much as podcasts, blogging, websites, social networking, film production and video venues …. 

Ekklesia 360 Church CMS has launched our new design.  The old design had run it's course and we decided to give the site a fresh look.  The website uses the Ekklesia Website CMS.  The website was designed by Designwise and Shane Thacker developed our new logo.  (see blue/white logos)

It's been a great year so far, we have had 20 different design companies use our CMS for their clients.  (View a few of our website design partners)  We now have over 800 churches, ministries and companies using our backend to manage their website/content.  Our team has grown to 12 people who are passionate about helping use technology for God's glory.

 Learn more about Ekklesia's:

• Content Management System
• Event Management System
• Member Management System
• Contact Management System
• Blogging System
• Outreach System
• Social Networking
• E-commerce

Kaleo Church has re-launched it's website for the 5th time.  Our website has been a significant tool in our ministry as an effective way to connect our community, communicate with people who visit our church and non-believers.  Through our website we've seen people attend events/services and become Christians. 

To commemorate the launch, I thought I'd talk about why we have done this now and in the past and other decisions involved.

Kaleo v5.0 -  As Kaleo seeks to launch it's third and fourth locations, we created this design to reflect our multi-site church planting strategy.  We also wanted to change the style of design.  Our previous website designs were typically black/dark.  We wanted to change this to a more clean/white-space design. The functionality is powered by the Ekklesia 360 Church CMS.  Some of the changes included:

• Design: A new clean design was used, created by Mark Priestap at Designwise.  We partnered with the Journey in St. Louis in sharing the cost for the design and we each customized our one layout to reflect our community.  Mark's design was influenced by Mars Hill and we spoke to them to ensure it was ok that we moved in this direction.
• Design: We wanted to put more people and stories on the site.  We now have 3-types of Kaleo Stories: Gospel Stories (how the gospel is changing lives), Mission Stories (how people in our community are living on mission) and World Stories (how people internationally are spreading the gospel.  The persecution of believers and the church planters we support/pray for.)
• Content: Changed a lot of content, such as the gospel, added Mission, Serve & Connect sections and other pages.
• Media: We centralized all sermons (previously on three pages) to one Media & Messages page.
• Blog: We added a blog to the home page for better updates/communication.
• Social Networking: We added a backend for community members to create their own page, blog, galleries, commenting on content, participate in groups, discussions, etc.  As part of the previously mentioned Mullet Strategy - "business in front, party in the back".
• Event Registration: The site now has event registration both for free and paid events.

Kaleo v4.0 - While we had this site, we moved into AMC Theaters for our Mission Valley service.  We had the site up less than 2 months when we launched our 2nd site at San Diego State University (SDSU).  We had decided to move to a multi-site, multi-congregational church planting strategy.  The site was designed by Church Plant Media and the flash was done by AM Design.  This was our first transition to the Ekklesia 360 Church CMS.   (click on design for screenshot) Some of the changes included:

• Content Management System: CMS to manage content (sermons, articles, events, pages, etc.)
• Design: First design not created by me! 

Kaleo v3.0 - This was the site we had when we moved into a church building because we outgrew our warehouse.  The design was created by me and used a php/mysql database.  We managed it through phpMyAdmin.  Chris Livhdahl and I did most of that.  Click on the image to the right to view an interior page.

• Dynamic - We moved from a static, hard-coded site to php-based. 

Kaleo v2.0 - While we had this website, Kaleo 'went public' in 2004 with a move to Sunday morning service in a warehouse we rented.  We went public when we had about 50 adults attending the church.  This design was created by me (man I'm glad I don't design anymore).  It is a static site that better laid out content to view.  Click on the image to the right to view an interior page. 

• Flash - Each interior page had a unique flash header. 

Kaleo v1.0 - This is our first site ever.  We launched this site as we began to do services with a core group of a dozen or so people in the 2002-2003.  I had 7 or so images for the home page that were selected at random to give it a changing appearance.  Click on the image to see another home page.

Each week I (or an elder @ Kaleo) end our worship service with a benediction.  I used to do these benedictions based on verses in the bible.  In the last 6-months I have transitioned to Triperspectival Benedictions that follow the sermon.  The three elements of the benediction are:

Normative/Information: What was the passage, topic or emphasis we examined from the Bible.

Existential/Transformation: How, as Christians, are we changed by God in this area?  What is God's grace doing in our lives?

Situational/Sending: What is our call to now live in response to this new reality.  How are we a sent people to be on mission and proclaim/live this reality?

This was today's benediction based on a sermon in Acts chapter 9 that dealt with Paul's conversion and his radical life of faith through the gospel.

Kaleo, may you grow in faith in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

May you see yourself as the children of God.  That you are forgiven, that you are more loved, accepted and approved than you dare imagine.

May you go and live as the children of God, rejoicing and telling everyone the good news of what God has done.

Go in peace. 

Just another crazy triperspectival idea from the Kaleo guys. 

Here are a few links of interest:

Seminary’s, Vocation, Depressed Cities & Tentmakers - Learn how seminary's, church Bible schools, cities with high unemployment can utilize the Tentmaker Group to make a difference.

The Porn Myth - Great article on the myths of porn by an early feminist.  As Challies says it, "I delight in finding articles in secular publications that just say what the Bible has been saying all along. In many ways, this is just such an article." 

An Interview with Tim Smith - Including info on the Continuous Worship Conference.

The 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis - It was only a week ago we (and those at the GCA conference) drove across this bridge several times.  Read John Piper's "Putting My Daughter to Bed Two Hours After the Bridge Collapsed".

As we prepare to relaunch Kaleo's website with a new design, we are adding a major element.  We will implement Ekklesia's "web mullet strategy".

The biggest sites on the web are all embracing the “mullet strategy”—business up front, party in the back! User generated content is all the rage but most of it totally sucks. That is why sites like YouTube, MySpace, CNN, and HuffPost are all embracing the mullet strategy. They let users party, argue, and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp. The mullet strategy is here to stay because the best way for web companies to grow traffic is to let the users have control, but the best way to sell advertising is a slick, pretty front page where corporate sponsors can wistfully admire their brands.  (Source: Doubletounged Idea/Image: think:lab see more images HT: Bryan Zug )

We want people in our church to be in community, connect, discuss, post, interact and all that other yummy social networking functionality. Churches who understand how to tap into social networks have a tremendous opportunity to connect with people.  Some goals include:

• Connecting people with similar interests (eg. Mountain biking) to connect, organize and be missional in planning activities.
• Allowing home groups to continue the conversation throughout the week, post, discuss interact around topics.  This area would facilitate some of this conversation.
• To participate in conversations for 'registered members' to discuss church business.

How would you want to use a mullet strategy for your church?

The Tentmaker Group website has launched! If you know people looking to fund a church plant transition, pastors who seek supplemental income or people interested in roles that will re-invest money into church planting and ministering to people in their city, this is one avenue.  From the site:

The Tentmaker Group exists for God’s glory to create self-sustaining, gospel-centered movements to change cities.  Learn more about our vision. The Tentmaker Group was created in answer the following questions:

How do you transition into ministry?

How do you create a sustainable movement?

How do you fund a church plant?

How do you change a city?

For many, funding is a significant challenge to the pursuit of their calling. The Tentmaker Group provides opportunities to help fund these transitions and city-changing movements.

I've been reading Total Church, a remarkable book that looks at a 'radical reshaping around gospel and community'.  In it they talk about the community formed at The Crowded House, where: 

We are committed to caring for one another, discipling one another, investing in relationships and resolving conflict. We will expect one another to make decisions with regard to the implications for the church and to make significant decisions in consultation with the church. We will not view church as a meeting you attend. We will not let conflict continue unresolved. (emphasis mine)

Chester/Timmis argue that just as a 'married man must take into account his wife and family' in making decisions, the same should be done in the family of God.   The book then points out:

This is not a process of 'heavy shepherding' where the leader tells people what to do.  Our statement does not say decisions are made for people.  It says they are made with regard to the community to which they belong.  Nor is it top-down.  It is a community process in which everyone is accountable to everyone.  As leaders, we submit our schedules, priorities and key decisions to the community. 

In the book they cite one attender who quit his 'high-paying' job as a bank executive to teach English as a second language.   Is the American church ready for this?  (The book is not yet released in the US.  I believe Mark Moore has 50 copies for purchase.)   They go on to say:

I cannot be who I am without regard to other people.  Into our pervasively individualistic world-view, we speak the gospel of reconciliation, unity and identity as the people of God.  This is perhaps the most significant 'culture gap' which the church has to bridge.  (emphasis mine)

Since I did my session on Post-Christian World, here are a few add'l external links from the last day in the blogosphere that relate:

What do our church buildings witness to? "Our church buildings witness to the immobility, inflexibility, lack of fellowship, pride and class divisions in today's church." According to "Radical Renewal: The Problem of Wineskins Today" (Howard A. Snyder), post at Mark Moore's blog.

The Center for Christian Leadership is pleased to announce an upcoming conference, Beyond the Church Doors: Developing a Missional Mindset within Your Congregation, on March 31 and April 1, 2008, featuring Dr. Ed Stetzer and Dr. Alan Roxburgh. If your church is developing creative and strategic ways of engaging in missional ministry, we would like to profile your activities in our conference materials.

Take the Missional Church Survey online >>

Many North American churches today are shifting away from an “attractional model” of ministry designed to draw people into the church building to a “missional model” which involves training and equipping whole congregations to act as missionaries in their local communities. We would like to know how your church is engaging in ministries of compassion and service in order to further the gospel and impact the culture. …

We are compiling a list of stories that will inspire others to creatively engage in missional practices. Please share one or two of your church’s activities that have impacted your community. (HT: djchuang)

Also check out Inc. Magazine's newest issue, Fun! It's the New Core Value to continue to see how the culture shift is changing institutions.  

Here is the session I did at GCA on Communication in Our Post-Christian World (86-page PDF).  There is a lot of stuff the pdf won't explain but it will provide a general idea of the conversation.  For example,

We are in the middle of one of the greatest worldview transitions in recent history.  Gen-X is turning 40. While much has been discussed in terms of culture/postmodernity, it is now beginning to take hold institutionally as this generation moves into positions of power.  How the values of Gen-X & Y are reshaping ecclesiology, theology and mission and causing greater diversity in the forms and expression of the church.  

The ghost of Christianity and Christendom and it's gospel inoculation impact on mission.  The reversal with new church expressions seeing 'tradtional/modern' churches as synchronizing to a dying culture.

How the increased connectivity of Gen-x & Y creates a Virtual Tribalism and the impact on evangelism, outreach and churches. A look at this hyper-affinity and the 10 Idols of these new generations. 

For those who asked for the church planting movie, it's located here: Post-Christian America & the Urgency of Church Planting (This post also has the link to all stats/sources) 

I attended Emerging 1 & 2 and Evangelism 1 & 2 today. Emerging Session 2 was led by Steve Treichler from Hope Community.  Some quotes:

"We are in the middle of the greatest worldview shift in 200 years and evangelicals have largely sheltered themselves from this transition."  (Meaning: we no longer understand our culture)

"The gospel is a chocolate covered waffle cone.  In 11 years of our church  I have never told our people, "'you should invite your friends to church.  We do  very little 'should'." (Meaning: If our people don't see the gospel as something to prize and share, our people don't get it.) 

Here are a couple quotes from Martin Ban who is currently the Senior Pastor of Christ Church Santa Fe.  These are from his session, Making Room: A Trinitarian Reflection on Evangelism and Cultural Engagement with the Gospel. This was an excellent session which impacted me particularly as it relates to how God has allowed us to be IN Christ.  I'll have to digest this for a bit, but here are two quotes that struck me (but don't really indicate the thrust of the message). 

"The gospel is not efficient."   (As it relates to loving others and being missional.

If our people learn a Systematic Theology of Grace it results in a reduction of risk (taken by people).  We need to teach our people a Kingdom view of Grace with enables them to take greater risks. 

Dan said one of his mentors was Dick Kaufmann (he also mentioned Frame, Keller, Schaeffer, Newbigin and others) so I liked him from the get-go.  Plus, he presented his session with a triperspectival understanding of evangelism.  Eg., He discussed things like the Logos, Ethos and Pathos in evangelism.  He's going to send out his presentation PowerPoint so I will refresh myself on a couple thoughts and post on these.  

Ed Stetzer promises to blog regularly.  He just launched EdStetzer.com.  Here's the goal of the blog:

This blog will be a mixture of several things. We will look at research and discuss it here. In just a couple of weeks we will release some groundbreaking research on the dropout rate for the transition years from high school to college. Several guest bloggers will both write and interact here. Whenever we release research, this will be the official forum for interacting with us. You can post questions, question our assumptions, or say we are the smartest people ever for doing the project (thanks, mom, for dropping by).

David Wayne and I had breakfast with Ed and asked him a couple questions.  Here is a quote:

Evangelicals have a weak ecclesiology.  Ecclesiology and missiology are the defining issues of our day.  We are going to see a great die-off in the American church of established churches, yet see a broader diversity of forms of church.

…more from GCA later. 

We completed day 1 of the GCA Church Planting conference.  John Piper did a session encouraging the church planters and reminding them to be weary of church planting experts/formula's it is the Holy Spirit the preaching of the gospel.  The first sessions took place as well.  Afterwards, I had a chance to meet David Wayne (JollyBlogger) in person.  Bart Johnson, Larry Kirk, James Martin and I sat around a table at an ice-cream social talking about cessationists, creedo/paedobaptism and a sundry of other denominationalism topics SBC, PCA, EV Free.  All over a nice sundae. 

Ed Stetzer came over and gave me a hard time for my Missional - Missio Dei, Missionary or Mission post that got him in trouble over at Bill Kinnon's blog.  Stetzer's talk is now leading many in the emerging church to begin the overthrow of governments according to Kinnon (all in good fun people).   I realize my post didn't portray Stetzer's full intent, I apologize for the ease of the straw man argument with no substance.  Stetzer asked us not to post further, so we're left waiting for his article to come out…..  (no pressure Stetzer).  

Stetzer, David Wayne (JollyBlogger) and I plan on getting together tomorrow morning for an interview.   So if you have questions for Stetzer that you can post prior to 5am PST (when we meet!), post them. 

I'm putting the finishing touches on my GCA presentation, Communication in Our Post-Christian World:

The culture is changing and it requires new methods of communication.  This session will help you learn how to effectively minister in a post-Christian context.   Come learn the 1) five values of this Post-Christian generation, the 2) ten idols that enslave them and 3) effective ways to communicate the eternal and unchanging gospel message.

This is the first session for my Media & Message series.  Any of you planning on being there?  (Jollblogger is coming to the conference! btw- If you haven't, add his feed to your reader.)

This week has been extremely crazy, as the Monk team is in town planning the future of Ekklesia 360 Church CMS.  We now have over 750 churches and ministries using our system and growing rapidly!  Secondly, I am wrapping up my two sessions for the GCA Conference on Message and Media: Communicating the Gospel in Our Post-Christian World.  It will be held at John Piper's church next week.  I haven't been able to finish a couple posts I'm working on, so here are a few links that have caused me to think:

Part-time pastors are making a comeback (another reason the Tentmaker Group is so necessary…) 

Top 25 Church Planting Churches in America : Reformed vs. Reformational (David Fairchild)

A new book is released, entitled: Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin.  (HT: Jordon Cooper with a full review of the book.) In his discussion of how the cities have changed into complex, bottom up systems, Brewin says this (pg 63),

There are still those who cry for revolution, for a revival that will change things in a snap, make everything OK as thousands flock to church… But the days for revolution are over. The cry for revival is too often a cry for abdication: you do it all, God. Well God has done God's bit, it is the systems that now need to change. This is the faith we have signed up for: the Church as the body of Christ where we have real parts to play, real responsibilities. 

Lastly, if you haven't already done so, I'd encourage you to check out Tim Chester's blog : Reformed spirituality, radical ecclesiology.   Chester and Steve Timmis are releasing a new book (not yet in America) called Total Church.  I leave the summary to Mark Moore :

Total Church is one of those books that you hold in your hand and think two things after you've read it. First, Wow! This book says it all. Second, Wow! This book says it all. The first "wow" is the one you say while cheering and applauding that someone has said things that you have desperately wanted to hear. Each page drips with gospel understanding and real life love for the church. The second "wow" is the one you say while realizing that you pretty much have nothing new to offer the world at this point other than a copy of this book. The things you had been thinking about that seemed so "radical" and "refreshing" are now nothing more than restatement of what's been said.