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Story....of Great Importance

I've heard more about the topic of story recently, particularly with Ben Arment's new project called STORY.  In following his blog I've heard a lot about the topic of story as he has blogged about it and as he has included links to other sources talking about the importance (or lack of) of story.  

Recently I watched the Q & A from the Advance Conference with Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Bryan Chapell.  In that video, the question came up about how to transition an old church that isn't reaching new people well.  Mark had a great insight that involved story.  He said that churches need to do a good job of celebrating birth and new birth.  What he meant was churches should celebrate newborn babies and new Christians and the life change they experience.  In doing so he believes "old" churches who are resistant to change would be more willing to change and sacrifice their preferences because of the power of the stories they hear.  The stories would compel them to move beyond their personal preferences.

Most great leaders will say that great leaders also need to be great storytellers.  I definitely need to be a better storyteller and whoever pays my way to the STORY event will help me do that :)  

(totally kidding, don't buy me a ticket because I can't go anyway......I know you were thinking about it)

Church Surveys - Extremely Helpful

Our church was started to reach people who are not a part of any church.  We are constantly trying to evaluate how well we are doing in light of that vision.  Last month we had a church-wide survey that had a ton of questions that helped us evaluate how well we are doing in a number of different areas.  Here are some of the interesting things we found:

• Our attenders are 60% married & 40% single (that's adults & students responding) 
• Our most common age brackets are 28-35 & 23-27  
• Since we launched, 55% of new attenders have been from another church and 45% have come from an "unchurched" background.  That is much better than the national average for churches and we have actually gotten better recently (it's 50/50 in the last year specifically)
• 71% of people came to CCC because they were invited  
• Our Starting Point environment is extremely helpful for getting people connected in small groups (twice as likely to connect) and contributing on ministry teams (three times as likely to serve)  

We also learned there are some things we can improve on:

• Communicating what Starting Point is and why it's valuable to newcomers and long-time attenders. 
• We can communicate about membership more clearly and regularly
• We can improve on how well we track assimilation on an individual, and church-wide level

The survey was a bear to analyze but it provided a lot of great information, only a portion of which I mentioned here.  It will probably be a yearly thing for us and should go a long way towards helping us constantly get better at everything we do.

Does your church do surveys?  If so, could you send me a copy?  If not, why not?

North Point Online Debuts on My Birthday

North Point is following the likes of LifeChurch.tv and NewSpring as they launch an online environment on Sunday, August 16.  They'll broadcast the 6pm service at Buckhead Church every week online while creating some opportunities for online attenders to connect surrounding the service.  Here's a video they released this week to promote it.  Check out the new website here:  www.northpointonline.tv

I can't wait....

....to watch Transformers 2.  I know, I'm a huge nerd.  And if you didn't already think so, you will after I tell you that I "robotized" myself on the transformersmovie.com website:

Resist until you shed blood

I've been reading through the Bible on YouVersion using their one-year Bible plan.  Last week I was reading Hebrews 12 and came across this:

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  Hebrews 12:4

Wow.  I think about how often I barely resist at all.  Particularly if the sin is something that can happen very quickly (words and thoughts fall in that category).  I want to keep this verse on my mind so whenever I am tempted, I can be reminded of this call to stand strong.

I love that it says resist until the point of shedding blood, because it really brings out the battle mentality.  I can't help the fact that stuff like that fires me up :)

Friday Five

It's been a while since I had the Friday Five, but here are my five favorite blog posts from this week:

Carlos Whittaker - The TED Commandments - rules every speaker needs to know - Great for anybody who communicates in front of people

Orange Leaders - The future......it's coming - Good reminder to make time to plan for the future rather than simply react to the past or present.

Steven Furtick - What is that to you? - Steven reminds us with wisdom from the Bible that we shouldn't be concerned with how God blesses or uses others, but rather we should be consider with how we respond to what we have been entrusted with.

Tony Morgan - Leading vs. Managing - It's always helpful to identify how much of each we are doing when leading a team

Mark Batterson - The Art of Gleaning - Mark had a lot of great posts this week and this one was my favorite

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

Check out this video that shows some amazing creativity.  I'd love to see it in person to see how real it looks from a short distance away.  Visit the blog here if you can't see the video below.

Training Volunteers Using the Web

I recently had an idea about how I could possibly leverage the internet to help train and develop CCC Kids volunteers.  The web technology I plan to use is primarily WordPress Multiuser.  

Basically I want to create a website for volunteers that will be the central place for communication and training.  The communication would replace a big part of our current system of communicating (email) with blog posts.  But, the key would be subscribing all volunteers to the email service of the blog so nothing really changes for them.  The benefit though, is that the blog post will stay up so it can be seen after it's read in the email if needed, and volunteers can comment on it.  Hopefully it will be a great way to have discussions and clarify things when needed.

The other huge part is the training.  This falls in two realms:  orientations and ongoing training.  The website could be used to help new volunteers learn everything about CCC (vision/strategy), CCC Kid's strategy, environments, volunteer roles, and the Orange Strategy we use.  With it being online, they can learn it at their own pace (within a specified time frame) and interact with different elements along the way, including articles, podcasts and other downloadable elements.  

The ongoing training would essentially be in the form of articles and podcasts that would be available on the site to volunteers (who have a login).  Discussion would be facilitated through the comments to allow people to process what they're learning.  

The biggest challenges are:

• I don't know much about in-depth WordPress coding
• Making time to work on it  
• Doing it in such a way that I could reproduce it for other churches quickly and in a way that would allow them to get full use of the system without needing to know WordPress coding.  

I really want to make this reproducible for other churches because I think most churches would benefit from something like this.  If you would like to check it out when it's done, leave a comment and I'll be sure to contact you about it.  

Staff Retreat Thoughts - Dealing in Reality

Something else we do at our staff retreats is evaluate.  Now, we evaluate everything and we evaluate every week, but staff retreats and extended times of meeting like that are when we really get the chance to evaulate the big picture things, particularly things that aren't events or programs but more like systems and strategies.

In evaluating, it's critical to deal in reality.  In the book Good to Great Jim Collins talks about it as the willingness to "confront the brutal facts".  In the book Breakout Churches (modeled after Good to Great) Thom Rainer calls it the "ABC Moment" (awareness/belief/crisis).  

One thing I love about CCC is our desire to know the facts (reality) and how hard we'll work to find them.  Fortunately none of them right now are brutal (or probably even close).  But, we always find ways we can improve and that wouldn't happen if we just assumed everything was perfect rather than dealing in reality.

Staff Retreat Thoughts - Making Time to Think & Discuss

A huge part of our staff retreats are about making time to think and discuss.  John Maxwell just blogged about the importance of making time to think and how to become better thinkers.  

I believe anything that can be lead is best lead by a team (as long as there is still a point leader).  With that in mind, discussion is critical as well.  Discussion helps us think through everything more fully as we are presented with things we had not thought of on each topic.  Discussion is often times difficult, time-consuming and even painful in some cases.  But, if it is done well it always leads to greater clarity.

It's pretty common in church-world for staff to not create enough time to think and discuss, particularly because Sunday is always coming and there is so much to do that is urgent.  The key is making time for what is really important and thinking and discussion are a part of that. 

My experience has shown me that making time for what is important still allows the urgent to get done.  Yet, I still don't trust that and often times neglect what is important for what is urgent.  You'd think I'd learn.