The New Revolution

I recently read a few chapters out of Barna's new book, Revolution. My initial reaction to reading that most individuals will just leave the church was, "Eh, I'm not so sure I see it that way." Since then, I've learned much more about myself and my church and I've moved more too, "Dude, Barna may be all over this."

I didn't really agree that Revolutionaries would find spiritual fulfillment outside the church institution. While my wife and I left our church, we didn't find any suitable replacement and we stopped going for a short while. We felt something missing, and we went back, so worshiping in a church is important to us right?

My wife, which I've mentioned I consider a poster-child for the post-modern view, gave a response to my question, "Can you be spiritually fulfilled outside the church?" "Um, yeah!," in a tone such as, "Well Yeah, duh!" As though that was a stupid question, and why didn't I realize that? She is not required be in a sanctuary to worship the Lord, or even step inside a church building to feel spiritually fulfilled. Well, Barna 1, Slezak 0. Hmm.

Next I began relating Barna's statements with my recent struggle with being a part of our church. Unfortunately, I found my view of our church was shared by many other young adults. Most of the young adults of our church have left to find other places to worship. I haven't talked to any of those that have left, but I wonder where they're going, or if they're going at all.

As for me, I feel like I've come full circle. The more I give it thought and prayer, the closer I come to giving up on our church and finding a church that reaches those in their early 40s and younger. The average mainline church is too inflexible, too set in its way to go through the trouble of trying to reach us. We have a couple of churches with emergent or ancient / future services which I would like to try out, but we don't have a good selection in this area of the Midwest I'm in. If I can't find one, Barna 2 Slezak 0?

Now I think Barna's got it right. The postmodern world view, along with the current state of the church is a great formula for my age of people leaving the church completely. The church is not fulfilling our needs, and in a world of rapid change and numerous choices, we'll keep looking until we find it. And if we find that outside the church, why do we need church?

Multitasking

It seems many bloggers are commenting on the recent story in Time Magazine about teens and how they use multiple media at one time. For example, Andrew Careaga wonders, "Are kids too connected? Are we?" And Kathy Sierra says all this multitasking degrades performance at every level.

I've previously mentioned that I've noticed this media multitasking in my own teenage daughter. Actually, I do it myself a fair amount. IM, e-mail, phone calls, and conversations in the office with co-workers are all happening at the same time when I'm at work. Am I really as bad at multitasking as Kathy says? As a parent, should I be stopping my daughter from doing this?

An AJAX future

In the next few years the Web will be dominated by AJAX applications. That's been my opinion for a while since I began to understand the explosive power this set of technologies would unleash on the wired world. Now comes Bill G. himself saying the same thing. Why is AJAX so important? It radically improves the user experience by overcoming the stateless nature of the web. Gone are the days of constant frustrating screen refreshes every time you make a change to a piece of data. For example my wife and I, in preparation for moving to Kansas City are looking for a house. One only need explore the difference between the Prudential Web Site and the Reece Nichols Website to understand the radical shift that is coming. What it takes me 20 minutes to do on RN, I can do in about 5 on the AJAX enabled Prudential site. So a word of warning to the web weaving masses, fail to embrace AJAX at your own peril, it will rule the Web.

The MySpace conversation continues ...

Shane Raynor at Wesley Blog republished on Wesley Daily my most recent post about MySpace, "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist." Gavin Richardson then added a lengthy comment at Wesley Daily as well as a post on his own blog.

I'd like to comment on something Gavin said:

"our churches" don't get invovled in this because of the quick percepetion of pedophiles, perversion/sexuality, vulger language, & secular-ness of the community. churches would rather say, 'don't go there' or 'your not allowed' than to say, "this is a glimpse of our society and we should be ministering amongst this world and not just watching idly."

I love the idea of MySpace, Xanga, blogs, etc. because they could give us a way to get involved in the world beyond the walls of the church, which is one of our guiding principles at Resurrection. My questions are aimed at understanding if anyone is already having measurable success with this idea. From what I'm able to determine anecdotally, this is still very early-stage experimenting without much in the way of measurable results (yet).

Gavin, keep up your pioneering work and keep us updated on your progress. I need some good stories of life change to get people at Resurrection excited about this.

Podcast search engines

Here are a couple of search engines specifically for podcasts, MP3s, and videos:

http://www.podscope.com/

http://www.blinkx.tv/

A few quick searches suggested to me that they aren't yet finding a lot of what's out there, including sermon feeds from Resurrection and Living Water. When will this multi-media search start to work well enough to be useful?

Hat tip: Web Evangelism Bulletin link to article on Search Engine Watch

If you're not on myspace, you don't exist

Cathy Sierra posts here regarding MySpace and why her daughter finds it so compelling relative to other social networking sites. She thinks it's because MySpace is continually updated with new functionality through rapid software development and lightning release cycles.

However, something she quotes her daughter as saying suggests a different reason: "If you're not on myspace, you don't exist." To me, that indicates her daughter is there because MySpace is the cool, hip, happening place to be right now.

Our discussion continues about how to use social networking in ministry. In particular, see the comments to my post, Scott Reese on MySpace & Paul. It seems that churches are in the earliest stages of exploring this new technology and social phenomenon. So far no one has hit upon a truly effective strategy that they can teach the rest of us.

I'm just old enough that I don't get a lot of this. How is MySpace fundamentally different from the online forums we've had for years? We were grappling with this same question months ago and I still haven't heard a convincing answer. Personally, in the church world I haven't seen forums be nearly as successful as blogs. What am I missing?

The Church and Central Intellegence

So ive been reading a lot about the crm struggles issue that many churches are having, here are some things I believe are worth thinking about. The question to ask is what metrics do church leaders want to monitor in order to make good decisions. This is the whole world of business analytics applied to the church. Before we can begin to shape an open source CRM like sugar or vtiger (A branch of sugar) into a church management intellegence system, we have to begin to nail down just what we want to measure, in other wise begin with the end in mind.

So what do you think should be measured, attendance of course, participation in small groups, giving perhaps, but what else. This is part of the difficulty of managing a church....the things that realy matter in the church are things like spiritual maturity, faithfullness to God, quality of prayer life, etc. Those are hard to measure statistically.

However for the things we can measure, what I would call measures of church health, we should have Dashboards of quickly readable information available to decision makers. This is discussed in a newsweek article I recently read. Im interested in people reading it and responding.

The Great Cop-Out

One of my new goals is to keep up a trend of posting here on the end of the week. Last Friday I really wanted to write, but couldn't pull it off. Last time I said I'd talk about Revolution, Barna's recent book, but instead I'm going to stick with writing about my trials in church life.

After my Church is Failing, Part II post, Clif read it, and was quickly compelled to strike up the conversation with me. (We talk of philosophical subjects and church life a lot.) The short version was he felt a significant portion of my perspective was due to stage in life and generation gap. I'm sure those things are a factor, how can they not be, but I was not willing to give up as much as he was driving at. This writing itself could be dismissed as such, as that's the age old cycle of growth - but doing so is a cop-out, and here is why.

I will not dismiss this as life stage so easily because I've heard that excuse used for the past fifteen years, and I'm sure I'll hear it for the next fifteen. If everything is attributed to just being a stage in my life that I need to somehow grow past and get over, I can be getting away with a lot more than I have been thus far. :) I believe this more to be a difference between post-modern and modern world views. Here's is a quick example of the difficulty between post-modern to modern communication:

What a post-modern says: "I like this church. The people here are nice, and I like coming here. I don't feel very connected with God when I worship here though. When I feel filled with worship, it is through high energy music that I connect with."

What a modern seems to hear: "I like this church. The people here are nice, and I like coming here. You don't do a good job reaching me during worship. You really need to change the service to have music that I like."

This seems to me an intrinsic communication gap. So do you read the above and dismiss it as differences between how generations worship, or do you read it and see an opportunity to reach those with a post-modern world view? Dismissing it as generation gap is a cop-out because that answer is essentially, "This is the way we do church, or you could go somewhere else." That's … not the church I've read about. What young people from the post-modern world view are saying is "What you do works for you, but it just doesn't work for me." All the while most churches are struggling to reach post-modern people.

So my question still waits for an answer. Your worship doesn't work for me, should I just go find someplace that does? In many places in life it's easy to dismiss differences of opinion citing generation gap, but I do not feel you can do that in the church. One of the things the church should be is a place where people can go to have a closer relationship with God and worship Him. Many would agree that the church should be that place for young and old. Very few would agree to change the church to be able to do just that.

So how do you include both the young and the old and not change the church? What if we didn't want to change the way your church is done, we just wanted church to include our needs too? How would you do that?

Sting of loss

From my wife, Laura:

I received word that my best friend, Kay Roberts, passed from this life to the next at 1:30 this morning. The breast cancer she had battled for two years had invaded other parts of her body, and her last days were spent at home, surrounded by loved ones. I have spent the last four days taking my place beside her for many hours, whispering prayers, singing hymns and even reminding her of funny moments we have shared over the last 14 years. She has been a constant presence in my life almost every day for those 14 years, and I have not even begun to grieve her loss.

Yet I know that our goodbye is only temporary, and that she is with One who loves her even more than I do. Please remember all those who are feeling the sting of her loss - her husband Richard and her children Isabella, Micah and Juliana, her mother Zoe and step-father Don, and her brother Ken, as well as many other friends and family.

Thank you for your prayers for me. My body is beyond exhaustion, yet there is still much to be done to help support her family. I will rely heavily upon the strength of God to get me through the days and weeks ahead.

Microsoft CRM 3.0

I went to the Microsoft CRM 3.0 launch event here in Kansas City on Thursday morning. I wanted to see what had been done with the product since I last saw it demoed (version 1.0 in Sept. 2003). I was pretty sure before I went that it wouldn't work as a church management system (ChMS), but I figured it was a good use of my time to go find out for certain.

The strength of Microsoft CRM is native integration with Outlook and a full Internet Explorer client (like Outlook Web Access). If you have a "Microsoft shop", their CRM fully leverages your investment in the Microsoft platform. It now has a cool dashboard view with graphs of key metrics and drill-down capability. Custom reports can be built in SQL Reporting Services. It's now much more customizable than before.

So, could it be used as a ChMS? In a word, no. The core functionality of tracking people, households, and family relationships it can do at least as well if not better than any ChMS out there. The problem is all the functionality we expect in a ChMS that it doesn't have - things like online event registration, check-in, attendance, volunteer management, and so on. So the VAR that invited me to the event, NetStandard, asked me if we could build a connector to integrate Shelby with CRM. Of course, the answer to that is yes, but would it make strategic sense? I know what I really want.

Kay

My wife's best friend is Kay. Kay is 44 years old with three kids and an active faith. She has recurrent breast cancer that is now spreading all over her body. Sadly, it appears that the end is near, at least from a medical standpoint.

Laura (my wife, who is a church-planting pastor) visited Kay yesterday and wrote this e-mail to a number of her friends:

Many of you have been praying for Kay and have asked for updates. Most of you know that the breast cancer has now spread to her lungs and stomach, and possibly other places we don't know about. I got to see her today for the first time in 10 days due to a cold I have had. During that time, her new doctor has prescribed all kinds of pain medication in the hopes that her body could finally get some rest and maybe feel like eating a little more. The doctor has also started her on hormone therapy to help fight the cancer.

The difference between the Kay I saw 10 days and today is dramatic. The pain medication keeps her in a near-constant state of "doped" to the point that she is unable to have any kind of conversation at all. Her body looks very emaciated, and in the hour I was there today, it was a battle for her mother to get her to take three sips of Coke. And the hormones are making her agitated and irritable. When I walked in and saw her, it seemed to me like the end of her life is near - although I cannot say if that means days, weeks or months. Of course, our God can even now reverse the cancer and the damage it has done, but I think God is preparing to welcome her home soon.

Please pray for her family - for her three kids (Isabella, Micah and Juliana), for her husband Richard and her mother and step-father Zoe and Don. And I covet your prayers for me, as well. Kay has been my best friend for 14 years, and hardly a day has gone by in that time when we haven't spoken on the phone. She is such a huge part of my life, and I will need God's help to fill the emptiness when she is gone. I know that our goodbye is only temporary, but it still hurts so much to have to say it.

Internet More Popular than TV

An article from England tells us that the internet has become the favorite pass-time of folks in Great Brittan surpassing television.

AOL, Goodmail, and Non-Profits

This announcement is interesting. It seems that the PR hit AOL took from "Charging" for certified email has given non-profits a small win. AOL says they will provide a way for IRS qualified non-profits to be whitelisted and delivered around their spam filters for free forever. I guess this could end up being a good thing if others adopt the standard---At least for non-profits. I worry though that they might take the rout of some of the software companies and specifically forbid religious organizations. Though I'm not typically much for Moveon.org they seemed to help on this one. Nothing like riling up a bunch of social networking, internet savy, political activists.

Scoble on ugly design

Robert Scoble posts today about websites that are "ugly" but still commercially successful. He calls this "anti-marketing design."

But, go deeper: we’re sick of committee-driven marketing. We don’t believe it. If we ever did. We’ve built a bulls**t filter that filters out well-designed things in a commercial context. We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it.

That certainly contradicts studies I've seen that link credibility to appearance. The same content when presented more beautifully will be considered more authoritative. What's wrong with being beautiful and "real" at the same time?

Church IS Failing - Part II

In my previous post I expressed the concern of my wife and I about the worship service we attend. A service that has seen little growth over a year and is not nearly it's former self. Most of the younger crowd is missing. I'd say we met with just about everyone we should meet with, and expressed our concern for not being fulfilled in the worship service we attend. We've talked with the praise band director, the senior pastor, and the director of Foundational Ministries.

Our conclusion is that the church is not changing at the pace it needs to. Each individual we talked to has a different story. I'm not about to point fingers, and there are plenty of other circumstances you could attribute it to, but the cold hard fact is that change was needed more than a year ago - and here we are in the same situation today. It's no secret that the process of change has a greater lifespan within a church than outside of it, even in churches that are nimble. Our pastor, still newly appointed here nearly a year ago, has been extra careful with change. I understand not wanting to come off as dividing rather than a uniting - then again, how long do we continue to fail in face of not rocking the boat? In the life of a church, that can prove to be a while.

The questions that remain: Will as many people who needed the change still be around by the time change occurs? Will we still be there?

In talking with our pastor, he stated that he has implemented change in other churches quite successfully. He reminded us that change takes time. Sure, no problem. In fact, some of those changes took eight years to achieve. …. !?!?
[Insert another record scratch here]

Wow. In an age when technology allows information to flow at light speed and change to follow quickly behind, me thinks that churches need to learn how to change a bit quicker than that. I'm dumbfounded. I'm not suggesting that a change in worship style will take eight years to implement, but I'm not waiting around another one, all the time being unfulfilled in worshiping the Lord!

I will admit this is a localized problem. They're only losing the younger folks; attendance is strong among people in their 40s and higher. So even if a church like ours actually understands what is needed to survive into the future - can they do it fast enough? I'm not filled with hope at this point, and reading Barna's Revolution didn't help either. I'll talk about that next.

Brian Slezak

Blogs are postmodern wells

Mark Batterson: "For what it's worth, blogs are postmodern wells. I'm psyched about our blog groups that have launched this semester. Digital discipleship!" By "well" of course he means a place in the center of town where people gather and talk.

I'm hoping to learn something from this. If they are able to blaze the trail on the "blog groups" idea, I'll have a successful example of blog ministry to show ministry leaders at Resurrection. Go Mark! Go NCC!

Scott Reese on Myspace & Paul

In case you didn't see Scott Reese's post on Myspace & Paul, I wanted to highlight it even though it's been four weeks since he posted it. Scott is doing some very solid thinking here.

Since summer of 2005 I've been thinking a great deal about how blogging and social networking sites (like Myspace, Xanga, and Facebook) can be used for evangelism and outreach. See some of my previous posts on the subject here, here, here, and here.

I've made some efforts to educate management here at Resurrection about the potential, but haven't been able to spark them into action yet. Is anyone out there aware of a church that's effectively reaching out through social networking sites?

Postmodern Olympians

Over the last few days I have been fascinated as I watched Bob Costas and Tom Brokaw try to understand this new crop of USA Olympians. Both broadcasters are prototypical baby boomers having grown up in the era of the Miracle on Ice (that great hockey game that pitted good verses evil, US verses them, The United States Verses the Soviet Union). In those days the Olympics were serious business, the desire to compete was fueled by a nationalistic fervor intended to boost each countries claim not only to athletic superiority, but to cultural and political superiority as well.

With the fall of communism in Europe all sorts of worldview changes began to emerge. Militant Islam has filled a power and meaning vaccuume and willingly provided us with a new bad guy, but Islamic countries haven't ever competed well in the games so the joy of victory and the sting of loss just isn't the same.

Enter America's Postmodern Olympians. Here are some quotes I heard: "If I give everything I have and race the way I feel like I should race and don't come out with a single Medal, I will be just as happy as If I won 5 medals" That general sentiment was repeated over and over by Bode Miller, and though there was something about his attitude I didn't like, it was clear that part of the problem was the complete inability of Brokaw or Costas to even process that kind of postmodern, a-political, a-competitive thinking from a person who is a world class athlete. They can't imagine that Bode actually cares more about hanging out, partying, being with friends, and being in the Olympic "community" than he does about winning and crushing his opponents. Its not that they cant process his behavior, its that their modernist brains simply cannot fit it into their existing worldview as anything remotely ok.

Another Olympian that made a similar statement was Apollo Ono, In one interview he spoke openly about the fact that there is too much emphasis on the color of the medal and not enough focus on the Olympic spirit and tradition. Isn't that interesting, Ono has none of the arrogance or braggadocio of Miller yet he is echoing the same basic sentiment, we come we compete we do our best and were happy with the outcome---its you guys (read modern media) that aren't. Now at the same time watching Ono cross first to win the 500 Gold Medal and his total elation tells you that winning is still important to these new postmodern, but its just that not winning isn't quite as bad as it used to be. They seem to be more focused on the underlying purpose of the olympics to bring people of all cultures together so that they might promote understanding through the use of sport. Seems kinda cool to me...but hey I'm postmodern.

Oh one other thing: Sasha Cohen--not a post modern, Shaun White--Totally postmodern dude you can figure out why!!

Church IS Failing - Part I

This evening, my wife and I sat in a Chinese restaurant eating dinner and discussing our church. We attended the contemporary worship service last weekend, the first time in a few months to be completely honest. We stopped attending the service a while back.

A few months prior to today, we were driving home for lunch after leaving the worship service that ends just before noon. The both of us were quiet and unenthusiastic. One of asked the other, "How do you feel about the service now-a-days?" Thus began the journey into realization - that after two years of being a part of this worship service, (my wife singing in the praise band, myself running the sound board,) it was no longer filling us up but leaving us empty. The songs were getting slower, the enthusiasm lower. It just wasn't there any longer. We decided to try out some other local church services.

Here eating dinner out at our favorite Chinese place, we discussed the current condition of the service. It's pretty sickly, down around half from its peak attendance. What used to be an upbeat and growing service filled with 20's to 40's and their children, was now a slow, shrinking collection of 30's to 60's. You can see that many of the praise band members have left. We just learned today that the recent reaction to this decline was - changing to a traditional order of worship. .... !?!?!?!
[insert record scratch here]

Hold on folks! Huh!? Now, let's review that again. A contemporary service that was previously upbeat, enthusiastic, and strong, lost its impact for whatever reason - and a traditional order of worship is the shot in the arm it needs? We're desperate here! We want to worship but you're boring us! This is not a rant, but a plea. My wife and I are disappointed and unfulfilled, and we're quite obviously not the only ones. I can't say this builds a great deal of hope in my heart, from a church that has persisted over 100 years and is struggling to reach a postmodern group.

Why are they failing?

I'll make some suggestions in Part II, but if you're following me here and have any comments, I'm very interested and listening.

Brian Slezak

Online community is more than forums

Mark Stephenson, director of Web Empowered Church (WEC), posts here about how "online community" used to mean forums, but now takes many different forms. These days there are many places on a site where users could potentially post their own thoughts, requests, questions, feedback, and so on. Mark explains how WEC already has a wide variety of extensions for TYPO3 that provide church-specific functionality that fosters online community.

MegaVoice

Lee Grady at Charisma Online posts here about MegaVoice, a company that makes a solid-state, handheld audio player device, similar to an iPod. The MegaVoice is preloaded at the factory with audio that can't be changed by the user, and is capable of running on solar power. Using these devices, illiterate people all over the world can now hear the Bible read in their native languages. How cool is that?

More background here.

Integrating CRM and the Web

Duncan Rein, CEO of Silas Partners, posts here regarding how CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) should be and inevitably will be fully integrated with the church's website. This is further fuel for our previous discussion with Tony Dye and others about Church Management Systems (ChMS) and Content Management Systems (CoMS).

To put it in concrete terms, at Resurrection we're using TYPO3 for content management and Shelby for church management/CRM. I'm in agreement that ultimately we need to: A) integrate the two; or B) replace both with something else already integrated; or C) develop an open source church management/CRM that we can natively integrate with TYPO3. Right now we're working on option A, but somewhat reluctantly since this is inelegant and it's difficult to see how well it will work over the long term. Option B isn't a great one for us because we're fully committed to TYPO3 and Web Empowered Church. That leaves option C, for which my heart yearns, but we can't pursue because we have no funding or interest among executive management here.

Hmmm ... Maybe we take Tony's suggestion and sneak this in the back door by gradually building a CRM/ChMS in the form of TYPO3 extensions?

Blog Evangelism

Web Evangelism Bulletin has just posted a new article about Blog Evangelism. The article includes a brief but good overview of the difference between a blog and a traditional website. This would be good for anyone in your church who is struggling to understand the point of blogging and how it can be used in evangelism.

Naked Conversations

Naked Conversations, the long awaited book about blogging by Scoble and Israel is out now. Here's a review by Kathy Sierra. I'd be very interested in the thoughts of anyone in the church IT community about this book. Has anyone read it (or started to read it)?

What can we learn from b-linked?

A number of church tech bloggers have linked and commented on the reports regarding a recent study about teens and religion (for example: here and here). Teenage Research Unlimited did the study for B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO) an international group committed to reaching and teaching Jewish teens.

There are actually two stories here. The first story is the survey data (Word document) that BBYO released and many newspapers reported and bloggers have commented on.

The second story is that BBYO has built a new online community for Jewish teens called b-linked. The site is their strategy to address two findings: 68% of teens say religions is important to them and 92% say they want a better connection. I wish I had more time to investigate and comment further on this, but at first glance it seems that they've spent some money and built a really nice site. They report having 3,480 teens signed up so far. We need to pay attention to this. If they stick with this strategy and make it work, there will be a lot for us to learn.

1/20th of a second

Wired News reports that visitors to your website form an impression of the visual appeal of your site within 1/20th of a second. So how important are visual designers on your web team?

Another use for blogging in the church

Here's another use for blogging in the church. First United Methodist Church of La Vergne, TN recently started using a blog to publish their church newsletter to the web. I think this is a cool way for a small church to get started using web technology at no cost.

Mark Batterson on prayer

Mark Batterson: "Prayer is spiritual priming. When you live in prayer mode your spiritual radar is on. Your spiritual antenna is up. If you don't pray there will be countless God-given opportunities that come and go without you even knowing it. Why? Because you aren't primed and ready!"

MySpace is the top social networking site

USA Today just published an article on social networking sites. All the teens I know have Xanga, but it appears that MySpace is the place to be now. And of course Facebook is still exploding on college campuses.

Hat tip: Richard MacManus

Our default answer is "yes"

The people on my team will attest to fact that one of my favorite things to say is: "Our job is to find a way to say 'yes'." "No" is easy. "Yes" requires you to exercise your creativity. My "say 'yes'" philosophy is echoed in this post by Dave Ferguson.

The new Intel

Check out Business Week's story about major changes at Intel brought about by Paul Otellini who took over as CEO in May 2005.

Should a young person consider going into IT?

Today I had an IM exchange with a friend whose son is in college. We were talking about his major and his interests. When the conversation ended I said, "I should blog this!" So here it is ...

Clif says:
Your son knows a lot about computers. After an ugly couple of years the IT labor market is coming back strong. So it would be a good option for him if he's interested.

My friend says:
That is interesting... he has asked me what I thought of the market in IT and I have hedged. Do you think the improved conditions have any staying power?

Clif says:
In short: yes. Here's my high-level view ...

1. The market overheated with Dot Com and Y2K. There was a labor shortage. Compensation rose in response, attracting career-changers and causing a boom in the IT training industry and the IT consulting industry. (1998-2000)

2. The bubble burst. The NASDAQ collapsed. The macro economy went into recession. 9/11 happened. (2000-2001)

3. Business people were tired from the boom 90s. The IT innovation curve flattened. Businesses took the opportunity to consolidate and reap the productivity gains of the previous investment cycle. (2002-2004)

4. There were lots of initial experiments in off shore outsourcing. Some successful. Some not. (2002-2004)

5. The entire labor market adjusted to a new lower demand level combined with a new source of cheap supply overseas. The career-changer folks lost their jobs, many leaving the industry and not returning. The IT training industry collapsed. The IT consulting industry collapsed. Many people lost jobs and consulting assignments with inflated compensation and eventually found new jobs at more reasonable compensation. (2002-2004)

6. Now the economy is growing robustly (GDP growth in the range of 3% to 4.5%). The labor market has adjusted to the overseas supply. Business managers have determined what they can and can't outsource off shore. IT training is back to a more normal level, with no new career-changers. IT consulting has returned, but at a much reduced level. (2003-2005)

7. We're seeing a dramatic increase in the IT innovation curve that will continue for the next three years, at least. This innovation curve is driven by: RSS, AJAX, web services, multi-core processors, Windows Vista, Office 12, and wireless. (2005-?)

So ... in summary, IT is a good field again. Not overheated, but not depressed. Healthy sources of innovation that will drive growth in demand, coupled with stabilized labor supply. [See also my previous post on the economy, IT innovation, and the IT labor market.]

My friend says:
I am less exposed than you are to much of this but I agree with what you are saying. The question in my mind is which jobs are the most secure. (most difficult to commoditize and outsource)

Clif says:
Well, that question (at least for now) has been answered.

The very high-tech stuff is still done here: chip design, compiler design, etc. But there are very few folks who do that work.

Work in large organizations that is highly repetitive and relatively low value is done off shore: call centers, big software development sweat shops, etc.

The biggest demand for people here is in the middle: project managers, people who understand technology and can apply it, system architects, etc. Also, nearly all small-to-medium businesses use local labor because it's too difficult to establish off-shore relationships, find good people, and manage them. Only the largest companies can really do that. (And they're finding that the cost advantages are more modest than they expected in the beginning.)

Bottom line: off-shore is now a permanent part of the labor market. But it doesn't threaten anything that your son would really want to do with his life.

Doesn't like Christianity

Dave Winer: "I don't like Christmas, maybe that has something to do with not particularly liking Christians. Let me explain. It's not the people I don't like, it's the Christianity of the people. "

Something for all of us to chew on during our Christmas break.

Policies

Dave Ferguson: "policy is what happens when we can’t get people to do what we want them to do or when people are not championing a clear cause. Policy occurs when the ethos of a church culture is weak and the cause is not compelling."

Wow. Maybe there's a good reason I don't like to think or speak in terms of "policies"?

Road Runner e-mail

Did I mention how cranky I am with Road Runner right now? It gets worse.

Our master e-mail list has around 9,000 subscribers. All of a sudden, the number of subscribers dropped significantly yesterday. Upon investigation, 1,400 of our 1,700 Road Runner subscribers are bounced.

Road Runner tech support is clueless - we might as well be talking to a wall. Our IP addresses aren't getting blocked. We aren't on any blacklists that we can determine. We are having a temporary problem with our DNS service that messed up our SPF record, but that doesn't explain the issue. Is it related to the issue we had last week? Who knows?

Our e-mail service is Intellicontact. They are nice and helpful, but they haven't been able to figure it out either. The problem is, they send huge numbers of e-mails for thousands of clients, so figuring out why one ISP is bouncing the e-mails from one client is a needle-in-a-haystack problem for them. According to Intellicontact, they are on the Road Runner whitelist. If so, it isn't helping us. Their web interface shows the number of times bounced for each subscriber, but it doesn't show the last date/time bounced or the bounce reason - both of these pieces of information are critical to figuring out why Road Runner is bouncing us. So Intellicontact is investigating.

But in the meantime, we can't send e-mail to 1,400 people - 16% of our entire list. Christmas Eve is 36 hours away and we can't communicate with 16% of the congregation. I've spent a full day on this and I don't feel any closer to resolution. Road Runner, your spam Nazis are making it impossible for us to communicate with 16% of our congregation. Would it get your attention if they started switching to other providers?

Check out the Google zeitgeist for 2005

Here are the most popular searches this year on Google. ("Zeitgeist" means "spirit of the times".)

Tactical IT execution and strategic IT leadership

While you're on Tony Dye's blog, also check out his post on Choices for the CMS we want and the comments that follow. This post sparked a lengthy conversation between myself and Brian Slezak, my fellow Appian Way blogger who works with me in the IT Department at Resurrection. Particularly, we discussed the comment by Carl Wilhelm. I guessed that Carl's comment was referencing Barna's new book Revolution that I posted about previously. (I haven't read it yet because our bookstore hasn't been able to get a copy - apparently there have been some delays in printing and distribution - but I know enough about the subject matter of the book to surmise that Carl was referring to it.)

Our conversation was around the differences between tactical IT execution and strategic IT leadership. This is a subject that deserves a long post of its own, or perhaps several posts. In very brief summary, we have found smooth sailing when we're responding effectively to an IT need identified by a ministry leader. These are generally situations where there's an opportunity to improve efficiency (and thereby reduce costs) by automating an existing process that has gotten to a large enough scale that automation is appropriate. On the other hand, when we begin to think bigger, more strategically, about social and technical trends and how that may impact ministry in the future, then we are sailing on much more difficult and choppy waters. The risks are much higher because our role as servants of the other ministries of the church puts us in a great position to respond to their needs, but a bad position to lead technical change.

Speaking only for myself, I have been an IT executive for a number of years. As such I have been accustomed to being on the executive team in the secular, for-profit world and sitting in all of the executive meetings where strategy is being discussed and the technical implications of each strategic option are thoroughly explored. At Resurrection, I'm not on the executive team. My boss is, but he's the CFO and is not a technical person. So I'm not able to influence church strategy from a technical standpoint. I know from talking with a number of my peers at very large churches that this is the case in most of their churches as well. Few churches have an IT expert on their executive team, unless the senior pastor happens to be a person who thinks strategically about IT and drives it.

This becomes very important when you start considering questions like those raised by Carl Wilhelm. Even though I have the background and skills to determine technology strategy and to make a plan that directly responds to Carl's questions, I'm not in a position to influence the decision-makers to make it happen. Is it just a simple as me learning how to "lead up"?

Tony Dye's class on syndication and blogging

A few weeks ago Tony Dye posted the PowerPoint he used in a "lunch & learn" session on syndication and blogging. Thanks Tony for this great resource. I know I need to offer similar training to our staff at Resurrection.

Top 10

Richard McManus gives us his take on the top 10 Web 2.0 moments of 2005.

Ariel Sharon Yassir Arafat goof

This just goes to prove that no matter how sophisticated the technology, when the content goes bad it can go really really bad. Ariel Sharon had a small stroke today. Our CBS news affiliate in Nashville reported it but something is strangely wrong.....enough so that seeing it might give cause for Ariel have to return to the hospital..., lets hope he doesnt watch the Nasvhille local News.

Texting in ministry

Effective Web Ministry Notes comments on an article in the Orlando Sentinel regarding how college coaches are sending text messages to recruits' phones as a tool in their recruiting efforts. We need to figure out how to use texting in our student ministry strategy.

Narnia, Middle Earth, Good, and Evil

Im sitting here trying to think about how to put into words what I am feeling. I just saw the Chronicles of Narnia and Ive been watching the weeks news and these two things have seemed to collide for me. You may wonder what the failure to renew the Patriot Act and Narnia have in common....Im going to try and connect the dots.

Just a few minutes into Narnia I realized something profound, well I thought it profound you might thing it obvious. I realized that both Tolkein and Lewis lived through the Nazi bombardment of Great Brittan, and quickly thereafter I realized that both of their books were about the profound battle between Good and Evil. It is of course the greatest sin of our society to believe in such a thing, that there actually are good guys (That wear the white hats) and bad guys (That wear the black hats) and yet there is something profound in our collective conscience that drives millions of dollars in movie sales when anyone dares to make a movie that revives this "old" way of thinking. I think its because, deep down, despite the attempts of the philosiphers of pluralism and the modern media's attempt to make all ideas equally acceptable, we all know the truth. There is Good, and there is Evil and we know it when we see it.

There are good ideas....Like the idea that sacrifice and love of neighbor are what hold societies together, and bad ideas....dare I say evil.... like the idea that murdering people in the name of God is ever justified (Regardless of whether it is Osama or Paul Hill). I think its time for us a Christians to re assert this grand Idea, that the Creator of the universe has given us some rules, some of them dont seem very modern....we would rather God not care about our sexual morality for example, but see thats the point of Narnia and Middle Earth....There is a "deeper magic", a guiding truth that is biger than all of us, and we are not in control.

But we moderns dont like to think that some ideas and, in fact, some people are evil (or at least controled by it). We like to say things like "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" We judge not based on some transcendent notion of the Good, but on the basis of sincerity of belief. Our primary virtue is to be tolerence, by which we mean being friendly to any way of thinking that does not posit that there is such a thing as Good and Evil. And so now your asking what does this have to do with the Patriot Act well, here goes.

This week the Senate decided not to renew the Patriot Act, this "contraversial" bill was overwhelmingly passed in the days and weeks after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. But we modern Americans have short memories, we forget that there are good forces in the world today....Democracy being one, and Evil forces in the world today...Islamic Extreemism being one, and that these two grand ideas for they are both grand, are in fundamental conflict. The failure to renew the patriot act, and our growing softness when it comes to fighting evil around the world remind me that the most dangerous idea in the world might just be the idea that there is no such thing as Good and Evil. Its what Nevil Chamberlin thought, its what the French leadership thought in the 1930's, its what the German people thought during the rise of the Third Reich, and unfortunately more and more its what we think.

What scares me most about the breakdown in our society, and its intolerance of any thinking that posits a true Good and a certain Evil, is that every society that has gone such a rout in its Intellectual life, has ultimately succumed to some great Evil.

So thats what Im thinking....Technology bringing Narnia and Middle Earth to life on the big screen....thats technology in ministry: Here is to hoping it can revive our beliefe in the Good Guys and the Deeper Magic.

Road Runner is causing me pain

One of our senior ministry leaders is replying to e-mails from a hundred or so people who e-mailed her. Many of these people are on Road Runner e-mail addresses. (Road Runner is the Internet service from Time Warner Cable.) She started getting bounce-backs from Road Runner that look like this:

The e-mail system was unable to deliver the message, but did not report a specific reason. Check the address and try again. If it still fails, contact your system administrator. exchange01.church.cor.org #4.0.0 smtp;452 Too many recipients received this hour. Please see our rate limit policy at http://security.rr.com/spam.htm#ratelimit


So I clicked the link and read about Road Runner's rate limit policy. Turns out that we didn't have forward DNS for our mail server, exchange01.church.cor.org, which caused us to fall under the category of "Systems With Incorrectly Configured DNS Entries". Accordingly, we are limited to sending e-mails to 10 Road Runner customers per hour. Since we have literally thousands of people in our congregation with Road Runner addresses, this is a problem.

Needless to say, we corrected the DNS issue right away, but how long will it be before Road Runner's system checks again and realizes we fixed it?

Later in the same Road Runner page about their rate limit policy we read:

The SenderBase Reputation Score that Road Runner uses as part of its inbound email rate limiting decision cannot be looked up on the SenderBase site as a direct query.

Woo hoo. So Road Runner is going to base its rate limitation partly on the SenderBase Reputation Score, but there's no obvious way for me to find out our score. Road Runner, this is not serving your customers well. How are we supposed to explain to our congregants that we can't get e-mail through to them due to a policy of their ISP that's so complicated, even us IT guys can't figure it out or do anything about it?

Skipping Christmas Part II

Clif Pointed to Perry Nobles post so I just wanted to make some comments about his comments.

First this is a silly controversy at some level. God will not ask us about our decisions to open on one particular Sunday before allowing entrance into the eternal Kingdom, and so as such who really cares. What it points to, however, are deeper issues of ecclesiology that have, in my mind, done damage to the way we think about church in general.

Perry's points were:

1. there is not a biblical mandate to open church on Christmas day when it’s on a Sunday.
2. We are worshiping on the 23rd and 24th and that’s enough.
3. People have a life outside the church

Ok here goes, first the idea that we need a biblical mandate to do those things that the church has deemed important to do for 2000 years is ridiculous. There is no biblical mandate to baptize infants but we have been doing it for 2,000 years (I hear my Baptists brethren wailing and that’s the point) There is no biblical mandate to have church on Sunday at all, yet it is the consensus day of worship for 2,000 years, There are hundreds of things that we do as Christians that are not biblically mandated. This is of course where some strains of Protestantism have become so iconoclastic that they have forgotten the importance of church tradition. I would think you would be hard pressed to find a Catholic Church that has ever failed to celebrate mass on any Sunday Especially Christmas Day.

2. Ok Pope John Paul regularly performed mass at midnight on Christmas Eve then got up the next morning and had Christmas Day services....Give me a break we can never worship God enough.

3. And to the point that people have a life outside the Church ah, this is the biggest flaw I see in Perry's reasoning. What is the Chief End of Man...? To Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever, by buying in to the idea of a separation between the sacred and the secular we are intimating that there are more important things....like family...than the worship of the Savior on the day we celebrate his birth. This is one of our two High Holy Days, can you imagine any other faith failing to show up at a place of worship on its most important day.

Bottom line is the 23rd is not Christmas Day; the 24th is not Christmas Day. The CHRIST MASS is to be celebrated on the 25th of December. It’s just the way it is, no biblical mandate, rather the mandate of our ancestors, our forefathers in the faith who would come back and slap us silly for even considering such a thing.

Basically I think the choice to close is mostly about Mega Church arrogance and historical ignorance. Back to the Catholics, one of the things I admire about them is that they would have a priest celebrate the Christmas Mass whether or not a single person showed up because the mass is about more than entertaining the masses.

No church on Christmas?

Seems as if this whole "no church on Christmas" thing is generating a lot of discussion. Even national popular press stories are appearing, such as this on one MSNBC.

Chuck Russell, my fellow Appian Way blogger, linked one of his seminary professors, Ben Witherington, who really blasted churches for closing. Ben's post drew a lot of comments.

Another perspective is from Perry Noble who explains why he decided not to have services on Christmas. Perry also takes the opportunity to poke fun at the controversy.

And then there's Rich Tucker who linked a very old story about Resurrection explaining that we've bucked the trend by being traditional in some ways, yet we're still successful. By the way Resurrection is having worship on Christmas Day, and so is my wife's church, Living Water. So hey, if your church is closed, you're always welcome here. ;-)

Talking Head Video is Boring

The folks over at the Nielsen Norman Group are doing eye tracking testing on talking head videos and there verdict is that people find them boring. You can watch a clip of a typical session here Here is what N/N had to say.

"It's... interesting to notice how much attention was diverted elsewhere in the image, including the road sign behind the interviewee. There's even a brief glance at an object over his shoulder that looks like a trash can. Most interesting of all is the tremendous attention spent outside the video itself on things such as alternative headlines and video controls. The eyetracking data clearly show that a talking head is boring, even for 24 seconds. On the Web, 24 seconds is a long time -- too long for users to keep their attention on something monotonous."

Skipping Christmas

Seems as though Willow Creeks decision to skip christmas this year has caused some uproar. I tend to agree with the critics...Closing Church on Christmas day is a bit like Closing Fenway or Wrigley on Opening Day. My church is going this route as well and I was a little supprised. I do think reducing the amount of activity is smart, but totally shutting down does seem to be capitulating to the culture. Anyway here is what one of my professors had to say about it.

Church marketing report

Kevin D. Hendricks of Church Marketing Sucks points us to a new report on the results of a survey on church marketing of over 500 church leaders across the country. This short report is worth a read.

Kevin says, "It's not Barna material by any means, but it is some interesting stuff."

Church Management System principles

Tony Dye of Perimeter Church just completed a great series of blog posts about what a good Church Management System (CMS) should do and how it should work. This is great reading for any of you who are considering installing a CMS or changing your existing CMS.

I wonder if any of the CMS companies out there are sophisticated enough to be paying attention to this discussion in the blog world. Some of Tony's comments seemed aimed directly at the vendors of popular systems. Are they listening?

Retail

Six months ago the closest thing to retail at Church of the Resurrection was selling CDs and videos of sermons. Today we have a bookstore (that sells our own CDs, videos, etc. as well as other typical Christian bookstore stuff), a ticketing system for selling reserved seat tickets to events in our main sanctuary, and now a coffee shop. Whew! I've never managed technology in a retail operation before, so it's been a learning experience.

For the bookstore we're using Booklog software and have been happy with it. For ticketing we're using Wintix and Webtix from Center Stage Software. It is functional but unimpressive (ask me for more info, if you're interested). For the coffee shop we're in the process of installing Restaurant Manager. Should have it running by the middle of next week.

In the process of installing all of these retail systems, we have discovered a great Internet vendor called POS Micro that sells all of the required specialty hardware such as cash drawers, barcode readers, keyboards, receipt printers, etc. They have stuff in stock, can ship overnight, can take orders until 8:00 pm Eastern time, and are inexpensive. Highly recommended.

Muddled Middle or Extreme Center

My friend Clif has been sending me updates on the post below because, quite frankly, I think he knows I disagree with some of the points made in the underlying article. First let me say that in general I agree with Jones and Hamilton on the notion of the Extreme Center. The question is the center of what.

As a Methodist I am certainly not a fundamentalist, and yet I adhere to the supremacy of scripture. As a Methodist I tend to be less dogmatic on certain areas of doctrine like the issues around the end times or other such things, but as Methodists we are confessional in that we believe that Jesus actually was God Incarnate, He was punished for our sins, and He was resurrected. On those issues there can be no real debate. (They are forever ensuring as doctrinal standards in our restrictive rules and cannot be changed.) In other words United Methodists...To the extent that they adhere to their own constitution and stated beliefs, are firmly orthodox.

So my question is the middle means what? I'm not big on saying we are in the middle, I tend to refer to it as the Muddled Middle and think of it as the place where churches go to die. What Jones and Hamilton articulate is not the muddled middle but the extreme center. The word extreme is important here. It is recapturing and rearticulating our Wesleyan core with confidence that we know what is in fact true about God. Namely that He has the heart of a Father and that grace is at the center of His relationship to and with us, and that this grace can transform us. That's appealing to me.

Several things drew my attention in the article. First among them Roberts said,

"But they also want a pastor who didn't ordain himself. Or who changed his first name to Bishop. Or who makes up the church's theological standards to fit her own tastes, needs or desires."

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one. After all we are a denomination founded by a renegade Anglican who was kicked out of just about every church he ever preached in, and who violated church law by ordaining missionary bishops (Coke then Coke ordained Asbury) to oversee the Methodist movement in America. And why was Wesley persona non grata in so many churches in England? Because they felt he was "making up the church's theological standards to fit his own tastes, needs, or desires."

Second, the Via Media is not the golden mean of Aristotle Roberts seems to suggest, in fact it refers to a radical middle way between Catholic and Protestant theologies, namely the understanding of grace. The unique focus of Wesley is the idea that grace is both the un-earned favor (Protestant) AND the power to overcome personal sin (Catholic) ... Some would call that quite radical.

Then he said:

"They want a church that didn't rise up out of a vacuum, but that has instead grown up in a creative way from the deep and nourishing roots of history and tradition. They want organization, and order, and transparency that can be trusted. "

Well this is interesting, given that the Methodist movement started as a rebellion of sorts against the established doldrums of the Anglican Church. John Wesley's famous "The World Is My Parish" quote refers to his defiance of the Church of England's insistance that he not preach outside of his parish ... and especially not to the people in the streets. John threatened the organization, order, and transparency of the established church.

So I agree lets persue the Extreme Center, not the Muddled Middle ... Centered on Christ and his mission in the world. After all it is his Body.

So recapping ... Extreme Center-Sign Me Up Muddled Middle-spit it out!

Yep, we really ARE in the middle

Adam Roberts from Shepherd of the Hills UMC in Douglasville, Georgia describes how Methodists really are in the theological middle. In the post he quotes Adam Hamilton, our senior pastor. Scott Jones, the Methodist bishop in Kansas agrees, and refers to this position as "The Extreme Center."

United Methodist News Service article on podcasting

The United Methodist News Service just released a nice article about churches doing podcasting. It features a number of quotes from Peter Metz, Resurrection's Director of Communications.

Nerd test

Jason took the nerd test. I thought I was a nerd, but I must bow to Jason who scored a whopping 96!

A story of evangelism over the web

I don't know how often this happens, but at least here is one story of how the web was used to reach one person.

Top 20 church business admins in the US

Our boss, Brent Messick, is one of the top 20 church business administrators in the US. Congratulations Brent!

Is all this technology making us less human?

Tony Long of Wired News wonders how instant communications technology is impacting our humanity. I'm not fully endorsing his point of view, but it spoke to me today.

Revolution

Barna's new book, Revolution, is getting a lot of buzz, including a prominent mention yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal. (Thanks, Jeff, for alterting me to this.)

My mom first told me about the book earlier this week, and offered to pay for a copy. Woo hoo! So I guess this will be on my reading list soon.

Word of the podcast is spreading

Jeff is listening to our sermon podcasts and is telling his friends. Jeff, we're happy you're listening and even happier you think it's cool enough to tell your friends.

Typo3 makes #1 on Google with "Content Management"

The creator of the Typo3 CMS posted on this discovery yesterday in the typo3.dev newsgroup at news.netfielders.de.

Searching Google.com for "content management" you will find, at least today, Typo3 is the top result above PostNuke and Vignette.

I also noted this on the Web Empowered Church Developer Forum. To read how WEC is utilizing Typo3 in their ministry to the world, check out webempoweredchurch.com.

Web Developer position open

At Resurrection we've had a position open for a web developer since August. As a hiring manager in the IT field, this is the first time in more than four years that I've had difficulty filling an IT job. See my previous post about how the world has changed. Now Scoble posts this morning that every company he knows is hiring like crazy. The IT labor market has changed for sure.

I just now realized that I've been remiss in not posting our job opening here. Are you a skilled web developer who is a passionate follower of Christ and would consider a ministry position at Resurrection? Do you know someone like that?

Here's the job posting:

Blend your passion for following Christ with your technical talents at one of the top mainline Protestant churches in the United States.

Outstanding opportunity for an early-career IT professional to gain experience in all aspects of IT in this multi-functional position. Work in the energetic IT department of a large and fast-growing church in Kansas City, reporting to the Director of IT. Develop both .NET web applications connecting to existing SQL Server databases and simple web applications that integrate with the TYPO3 open source web content management system. Develop new web page templates for TYPO3, support line-of-business applications including TYPO3, Shelby church management system, and the mass outbound e-mail system. Work directly with end users.

Candidate should have two years current web development experience using the Microsoft platform (Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, IIS, ASP, SQL Server, .NET). The position will require technical proficiency in HTML, CSS, XML, and SQL. Should be familiar with TCP/IP, HTTP protocols, object-oriented and structured programming, Windows 2000/2003 user administration, and SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

Familiarity with the open source platform (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL) and graphical web design skills are a plus.

If you are a disciplined software engineer, have the personality to work with non-technical end users, are committed to personal spiritual growth, and desire to serve God in a ministry position, this could be your calling. Please email your resume to kcesi@email.com, then call Cork Kurlbaum at 913-685-8383.

Looks like we better upgrade Skype right away

Skype has a critical security flaw. You need to upgrade to the newest version, 1.4.0.84.

Gutenburg Goes to Church

In a new post called "Gutenburg goes to church," Internet evangelist Scott Reese imagines the early resistance Gutenburg might have encountered when he wanted to use his new printing press to print Bibles. Those of us who develop, refine, and deploy new technology are faced every day with the kinds of issues Gutenburg must have faced as well.

Church Management System comparison

In this month's issue, Christian Computing Magazine compares 40 Church Management Systems in a familiar product evaluation matrix format. Full contact info on all 40 vendors is provided at the end of the article. If you're looking to buy a CMS or to replace your existing CMS, having a list of 40 vendors with contact info all in one place will speed your search significantly.

Resurrection Podcast is Live

Resurrection's Weekly Sermon podcast is now live. Here's the link to our feed: http://www.cor.org/index.php?id=2485

Read on to learn how we built the podcast and publicized it to the world.

We decided to base our podcast feed on the RSS 2.0 capability that is built in to the ttnews plugin in TYPO3. First, we had to get ttnews working properly and generating the RSS feed. Then we had to modify ttnews to make it add enclosure tags to the feed for the MP3 files. While we were at it, we decided to add the iTunes-specific tags as well.

Next, we had to think about the user experience. We know that podcasting is a new technology that is only understood well by techies and other early adopters. When we release this capability to the 7,000+ weekly visitors to our website, how will the non-techies react to it? Will they be confused? Intimidated?

Podcasting technology is relatively immature and lacks a large installed base of podcatchers. iTunes is the only major media player that can act as a podcatcher. Also, Apple is the leader in integrating the website, music store, client software, and portable player device. Accordingly, we wanted to take advantage of Apple's market leadership, but without endorsing iTunes or implying that other podcatchers wouldn't work just as well.

So we did register the podcast with the iTunes Music Store. This is really a pain in the rear. First, you can't do this on the iTunes website. You have to go to the Music Store inside the iTunes application. Within the iTunes application click "Podcasts" and then "Submit a podcast." Then, you need an Apple ID. Then you need to sign up for the music store, which requires full contact information and a credit card as though you are going to download songs, even if you never intend to do that. (This whole time we're thinking, "we just want to register our podcast with your stupid directory!")

We're a bit confused about the podcast metadata you supply when you register with iTunes. Once registered, there doesn't seem to be any way to edit your registration. Yet, Apple does seem to pick up changes to the channel information in our feed. So perhaps it doesn't really matter what information (such as genre, author, etc.) you give when you sign up? Perhaps the only thing that really matters is the channel information? Also, be aware that Apple is caching the channel information. We don't know how frequently they poll the RSS feed for new information, but there doesn't seem to be a way to ping it to let it know your feed has changed (Feedburner is great about this).

Finally, we had to figure out how we were going to explain this whole podcasting thing to non-techie site visitors. We've done a bunch of work on this and posted some pages on the site. We don't know yet whether it is going to be adequate or whether further changes will be necessary. You can see our subscription page here and our FAQ page here. We borrowed the "Subscribe with iTunes" button from Brian Bailey. Thanks Brian! We hope you don't mind.

Update
The final test was asking my wife to subscribe. Watching her try and fail at this was a humbling experience for me. I had to tweak all the text on the subscription page before I got something that made sense to her. Once I wrote some text that she could understand, she downloaded iTunes. Then she had trouble installing it. When she finally got it installed, clicking the "Subscribe with iTunes" button didn't work. So I suggested a reboot (thinking there might be something not registered correctly from the installation). Still no luck. She finally gave up on that and tried subscribing manually. This was a disaster too. This whole time I'm thinking, "I sure hope this podcasting thing doesn't generate an avalanche of support calls! Ugh!"

Bottom line: it seems that podcasting is great for early adopters, but has a ways to go before it will work well for the masses. Feel free to comment if you think differently.

Evangelist for two churches at the same time?

Brian Bailey of Fellowship Church explains why they require their staff people to be members of the church. I totally understand the rationale behind this, but of course, I have my own unique perspective on it, which I shared in a comment to Brian's post.

Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has a great new post where she illustrates how great product design makes it easy for the user to do the right thing and difficult for them to do the wrong thing.

Simple principle, but difficult to always practice. For example, we know we have some usability issues on the Resurrection web site. We need to make some improvements to make it really great for users, but we can't do it all immediately. Is the first step admitting you have a problem?

Yahoo! RSS Research

Quoting Richard McManus:

"During the Web 2.0 Conference Yahoo! released a research report on the takeup of RSS. The resulting white paper was entitled RSS - Crossing into the Mainstream, which is a good indication of both the findings of the research and what Yahoo! is attempting to achieve in their use of RSS. The main points in the research were:

* Only 12% of the Internet population has heard the term RSS
* Only 4% of the population knowingly uses RSS
* 27% of the internet population uses RSS but doesn’t know that it's called RSS."

So we have a ways to go before RSS is truly mainstream. No real surprise there, but it's good to know where we are in the adoption curve.

More good local press

In his October 13 editorial, Steve Rose, the publisher of a local newspaper, gives Resurrection's Senior Pastor, Adam Hamilton, a very positive review.

Quoting from the piece: "Having seen Hamilton live and after hearing samples of his prior services, I can only say he is one of the most dynamic and inspiring speakers I have ever heard. His words are captivating, and his messages are very powerful."

That's awesome. Thanks Steve!

In an e-mail to the congregation, Adam had this to say in response: "First, I am grateful for the kind words of Steve Rose. He and his family are community leaders who have helped shape Johnson County in many wonderful ways. I was humbled and honored by his comments. I did want to offer two corrections to the column. The first has to do with the title; I am grateful to be the founding pastor of this congregation, and I thank God every day for the privilege of being your Senior Pastor, however I do not believe this is my church; this church belongs to God. If I had not been assigned to start this church, I am confident God would have called someone else; and if something were to happen to me, I am confident God would have someone in mind to take my place.

The second correction I would make would be to this paragraph, "The idea is to be inclusive and inoffensive. There's usually no talk about controversial subjects such as abortion and homosexuality." I think I know what Steve meant; I think he was contrasting us with some churches who seem to preach on these issues, particularly homosexuality, incessantly. As you know, we do talk about difficult issues, including abortion, homosexuality, stem cells, the war, racism, and other critical issues of our time. Though these are not our primary focus -- our primary focus is on helping people become deeply committed Christians -- our faith does touch on all of these issues. On some we take a clear stand; on other issues my aim is to help you to hear and understand those Christians on either side of the issue, and then to encourage you to think about these issues from a Biblical, pastoral and theological perspective. After attempting to model how we might listen to the claims of those with whom we disagree, I tell you how I see the issue. My book, Confronting the Controversies, is an example of how we've done this at Church of the Resurrection. I believe the Gospel will give offense at times -- it will be a stumbling block. I used a quote in Tom Leathers' funeral that captures one dimension of preaching -- "to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." I think that describes how I see part of the task of preaching at the Church of the Resurrection.

I am grateful to Steve Rose for his positive words about our church and for his leadership in our community."

Why blogging scares a lot of bosses

In a recent post, Microsoft's Robert Scoble helps us understand not only the benefits of blogging but also why this brave new world scares a lot of bosses.

Quoting from the post (referring to the this post, this post, and this post by various Microsoft bloggers) :

"This conversation is probably scaring so many people at other companies away from blogging. Is your company ready for this kind of conversation between an anonymous blogger and executives (and guys seven levels down like me?)

Most aren't.

Me? This is cool, but it's not where the big corporate payoff in blogging is (and there is a payoff for having a Mini-Microsoft -- he's getting read and causing conversations both internally and externally that are very healthy).

No, the big payoff is because now we can have a conversation with customers without having any intermediaries (and, thanks to Google you can find us!). I see evidence internally every day about just how big a deal this is."

I'm confident these lessons from Microsoft's bloging in the business world should apply to us in the church world too. Authenticity is absolutely critical for us to be effective, particularly with the post-moderns. Every day Microsoft is more and more transparent. As Scoble points out, it probably scares many people, but customers love it. Microsoft is showing us how transparency is worth the risks; and they play by some rules that help manage those risks. Can we in the church adopt a few basic rules and open up too?

High School seniors talk about how they use the web

Jeffrey McManus posts a summary here of a session at the Web 2.0 conference a couple of weeks ago led by a research analyst who put a half dozen 17- and 18-year-olds on stage to answer questions about how they use the web. Interesting information even though this is a very small sample of teenagers. These people were in 3rd grade when the web started to become widely available. They have grown up with the web and use it in very sophisticated ways.

Even though I'm the father of two teenagers, I need some help to figure out a smart strategy for the student ministry web site. Who out there is involved in or knows of a youth ministry that is truly using the web in a way that recognizes this and rewards teens with a web experience that matches their level of sophistication?

Resurrection West

The Kansas City Star published an article today (subscription required) covering Church of the Resurrection's announcement that we'll be adding a second location in western Johnson County next spring. We're now at the early stages of figuring out how we'll link the locations with data, systems, phone/voicemail, mail, etc. Stay tuned, it's going to be exciting!

The world changed while I wasn't looking

Some data points:

1. The macro economy is booming again as evidenced by the fact that the Fed is increasingly concerned about inflation. Of course, we have the near-term effects of oil prices and the Gulf hurricanes. But this concern is deeper and wider than that.

2. We created a new position in August at Resurrection for a mid-level web developer. We've gotten very few resumes and no good fits. 18 months ago, we got many strong candidates and made a good hire within 6 weeks of creating a position.

3. A headhunter called me today looking for a Perl and XML programmer. First time I've received a phone call from a headhunter since before 9/11.

4. The Internet is growing faster now than it was at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000.

5. Any of you been in IT long enough to remember the term "push" that was so in vogue in the dot-com era? I used PointCast myself. "Push" technology didn't really work - partly because too many people were on dial-up connections that weren't always on - so it faded. But e-mail did work and it became the push that actually caught on. Now we have a reversal. Mass outbound e-mail is so difficult, it's become nearly unusable. In its place we finally have push that really works the way the original "push" people envisioned: RSS.

6. Memeorandum is now the best place for technology news. It's fresher than any other site and the right stuff is at the top of the page. Why? Not in spite of there not being a traditional journalist or editor making the decisions, but because there isn't one. Now here's the really cool part: memorandum is just a piece of software running on a server. It scans the Internet and purely algorithmically determines the top news of the moment and then it presents that news both as a web page for human consumption and as an RSS feed for computer consumption. It illustrates perfectly how a Web 2.0 application can grab information from the Internet, process it and add value, and then output the results in a way that another piece of software can use it as an input.

7. Podcasting has gone from being invented to being everywhere in one year. We're testing our sermon podcast feed at Resurrection right now. The video iPod, announced only yesterday, immediately spawned a deal between Apple and Disney that is getting a chilly response from some ABC affiliates.

8. Brian Bailey has as much influence in my new world as MSNBC - they're peers in my RSS reader (which is Pluck, by the way).

So how are these data points related?

The macro economy has heated up. The IT labor market, at least in Kansas City, is (suddenly?) tight. We have a major change happening in technology (this time driven by RSS). And the Internet is booming. Does it seem like 1995 all over again? It does to me. Only this time, it's perhaps even bigger because, as data points 6, 7, and 8 show, the media world is in the process of being turned upside down.

Reflecting on the above data points, it seems clear to me we're in the early stages of a technology change as significant as the emergence of the web into the mainstream (1994 or 1995) and before that the Macintosh-led graphical user interface and mouse (1984). I'm not suggesting this change is driving the macro economy or even the IT labor market, but it does seem at least noteworthy that all these things are happening at the same time.

The world changed while I wasn't looking. But I'm looking now ...

TYPO3 is hard

Pastor Jeff Mikels blogs this week about the difficulty in trying to install/configure TYPO3 and the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) extensions. Read the comments and you'll see a response from Mark Stephenson.

In my opinion, TYPO3/WEC isn't to the point that it's easily adoptable by small or even medium-sized churches, unless they're unusally blessed with a gifted volunteer web developer. Early adopters will be high-tech churches of any size or very large churches like ours that have IT people on staff.

Having said that, WEC's goal (which we fully share and support) is definitely to make this usable by any church, anywhere. The technical barriers to achieving that goal are significant, but we're all working together to overcome them. I believe that those barriers will be overcome in time, with God's help. In the meantime, I would encourage any large or high-tech church to consider building/rebuilding their site in TYPO3 and to take advantage of the tools and expertise offered by WEC. The more of these early adopters we get involved in WEC, the faster we will be able to make the system work for the other churches.

I'm not speaking for Web-Empowered Church. I'm speaking from the point-of-view of the IT Director of a large church that is fully committed to WEC and its goals. God is doing something big here, and it's very exciting to be a part of it.

WEC Around the World

Mark Stephenson of Web Empowered Church (WEC) posted the following on the WEC forum last night. I thought many of our readers would want to see this ...

------------------

Team,

I'd like to share a praise. Just in the first 10 days of October, people from the following countries visited the WEC website:

European Union, Great Britain, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, Bulgaria, Austria, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Argentina, France, Guatemala, China, India, Indonesia, Italy, Russian Federation

I have exchanged e-mails with churches in Denmark, Great Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Japan who are all planning to use WEC.

Thanks for your Awesome work!! God is blessing! This is huge!

Blessed to be a servant of Christ,
Mark

More on Flash Video

I mentioned earlier that we're investigating moving from Windows Media Video to Flash Video for our streaming sermons. Brian Bailey of Fellowship Church gives a lot more details today on how they did this. Thanks Brian!

Free Downloads of Big Wig Web Developer Conference

A friend of mine emailed me this link recently.  This is a web developer conference that can be downloaded for free.  Its line up is a Who’s Who of web designers and usability experts.  You would pay thousands to go and sit at the feet of these folks (I know from experience)…..Download now wile there is still time!!!

Jakob Nielsen on the Office 12 UI design

Jakob Nielsen, the guru of application and web usability for a generation, is weighing in on Microsoft’s new office 12 user interface paradigm. He seems to indicate that the new paradigm, one he calls "what you get is what you see," will be transformative. I am wondering out loud if this will be one of those Dvorak keyboard moments. I tend to agree that the new paradigm is a better one, but wonder if a generation of folks trained on the old Microsoft standard will have difficulty adapting to the new model no matter how superior it is. I guess this is where I officially become old, and start talking about the new fangled things these kids are using ...

Working too much?

How many of us who serve in ministry as a vocation can relate to this article from Business Week?

Here's a quote: "More than 31 percent of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22 percent in 1980. Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31 percent in 2001. About 60 percent of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we're talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out."

Sound familiar? I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but that's me.

Office 12 supports PDF

Office 12 will generate PDF files natively. Nice.

Scoble breaks a rule

I see that Microsoft's Scoble is switching his domain name to http://www.robertscoble.com/. Obviously, that's a better domain name, but isn't it dangerous to change your address when you're one of the most popular blogs in the known universe? He's aware of this risk, of course, and wonders aloud what will happen to his search ranks, RSS subscriptions, etc.

I’m really curious about how this will turn out. Is Scoble at the level where he can do stuff like this? Are people are so interested in reading his thoughts that they’ll find him wherever he is and update their RSS subscriptions? (I know I will.) Is it possible to get to such a point of popularity that you can break a major marketing rule and still be successful?

Anyone else notice problems accessing websites yesterday?

Here's why (apparently). For a while, I couldn't get to Google, MSN, or Yahoo. But I could still get to Resurrection and many other less-trafficed sites.

Microsoft really believes that "markets are conversations"

Scoble points us to Macintosh fan Giles Turnbull talking about how far ahead Microsoft is in opening up to customers via employee blogs.

What would it mean for local churches to open up via blogs in the same way Microsoft has? Would the people we're seeking to reach and serve appreciate us opening up in the same way? I expect so. Post-moderns, in particular, put a high premium on authenticity. When we make mistakes, I'd like to see us learn how to be honest about it in our blogs. Microsoft has shown us how.

Flash Video

We've had it on our list for months to look into Flash Video (FLV) as a better cross-platform alternative to Windows Media Video (WMV). Ginghamsburg is doing it with success. Now I see that Fellowship Church is going that way too. I'm eager to find some time soon to see if we can develop a new weekly process that would allow us to make this change.

Leadership Institute wrap-up

Adam Hamilton, Resurrection's Senior Pastor, was awesome again Saturday morning in his plenary session at Leadership Institute 2005. Then I had a chance to present on "Proven Principles of Church Technology Management". I hope some of you at the workshop will become regular readers of this blog. Welcome!

Workshop recaps, photos, downloads, and more have been posted to the IT section of our Resurrection website. We're still uploading stuff so if you don't see what you're looking for, come back.

Jon and Brian provided awesome support for the conference, and also for me, their leader. Thanks guys!

Oh yeah, and Friday's blogger did post again and again. He (mostly) liked it! Thanks, Brent.