Blogging - or the lack thereof...

Wow - it has been a long time since I last blogged. Believe me, I have my reasons, and none of them are pretty nor am I proud of them. With everything going on in our lives right now (my family, my church, and so on) honestly, my main goal has been to simply put one foot in front of the other, just trying to "keep on keeping on."

A good friend loaned me a book that has helped a lot in this regard - "Believe That You Can" by Jentezen Franklin. I have to admit that after watching Franklin on television (TBN - the "purple hair people) and after hearing him speak once (at a funeral) I never thought he would "have my ear." But his words have been encouraging me like words straight from the Lord; at least in the way that he has addressed my situation.

I will be back on the blogging bandwagon shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Death Spiral

Okay - I admit it, my "creative cooker" is not working very well these days. On top of that I am supposed to be writing my sermon for Sunday right now...at any rate - I just have to share today's post from Seth Godin. It speaks truth into my life - and into our church's life - in an amazing way.... I am cutting and pasting it here for you to read; and for me to remember.

You've probably seen it. The fish monger sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the fish a bit longer and don't clean up as often, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money... Eventually, you have an empty, smelly fish store that's out of business.

The doctor has fewer patients so he doesn't invest as much in training or staff and so some other patients choose to leave which means that there are even fewer patients...

The newspaper has fewer advertisers, so they can't invest as much in running stories, so people stop reading it, which means advertisers have less reason to advertise which leaves less money for stories...

As Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness," and yet that's what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don't. This isn't a dip, it's a cul de sac. It's over.

Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum... Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.

Change is a bear, but it's better than death.

Book Review: Tribes by Seth Godin

I actually got this book as a “freebie” at last October’s Catalyst Conference and just got around to reading it tonight. Godin is a self-described “best-selling author, entrepreneur, and change agent.” I think of him as the Leonard Sweet of the Internet era. He specializes in marketing and communication, especially Internet marketing and connecting. He is a prolific blogger, writer, and speaker who loves to challenge the status quo, dares to question the accepted order and who specializes in debunking commonly held assumptions ("myths"). He calls doing this being a heretic.

Tribes is actually the first book of Godin’s I have read (he has written a dozen), but I read his blog faithfully. In the book he defines a tribe as "any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea." Tribes can be religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). Godin contends to be human is to long to be a part of a tribe.

With the Internet and all its social networking opportunities (Facebook, Twitter, etc…) it is easier than ever today to form or join a tribe. With the exponential expansion of modern forces of connection anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at his or her fingertips to form a tribe or to locate one to be a part of. The main question this opportunity presents, Godin contends, is who is going to lead all these tribes?

Tribes has some good leadership thinking in it. Much of it is very relevant to the church too. He talks a lot about the “tightening the tribe” using all the tools available to leaders in our new more connected world. He especially touts the efficiency of blogs for doing this. “A blogger has a free, nearly effortless tool to send regular (daily? hourly?) messages to the people who want to read them. And with comments and trackbacks, the members of the tribe can talk back and to each other. Discussions take place, ideas are shared, decisions are made – quickly” (pg. 53).

I loved Godin’s important distinction between "fans" and "numbers." He writes, “A true fan brings three friends with him to a John Mayer concert…a true fan connects with other true fans and amplifies the noise the artise makes…” “Too many organizations care about numbers, not fans. They care about hits or turnstile clicks or media mentions. What they’re missing is the depth of commitment and interconnection that true fans deliver…the real win is in turning a casual fan into a true one” (pg. 33)

There is a plenty of other good leadership insight in this short 147 page book. I definitely need to go back now and reread the book with a highlighter in hand. I plan to encourage our staff at NewSong to read the book and to use its principles as they form their tribes within NewSong as well.

In conclusion, I encourage anyone interested in thinking outside the box about their church or business to read this book and to apply its principles.

Devote Yourself

Okay, it's 10pm on Monday night and I'm tired from a long day (but a great one!) and it is time now to sit down and consider what to write for my newsletter article which is due tomorrow, but before I do that I want to blog. I'm enjoying blogging more than newsletter writing lately...I don't know why, I am confident not many people are reading this - but it doesn't matter.

At any rate, one of the ways I prime my creative pump is by reading other blogs, especially ones by other pastors. I made my usual round tonight (you can see the ones I read on the right side of my blog, further down). But... (boy this is taking a long time to get to my point)...But... I ran across something by Pastor Steven Furtick tonight that really struck me as important. I don't particularly like Steven Furtick to be totally honest. He didn't make a favorable impression on me when he spoke at a Catalyst event I attended last October (boy, here I go again digressing....) But to make a long story short (ha ha) - what Furtick said resonated with me. I've got it below with a few comments interspersed and with my own take on a few things he covered.

Furtick reminds us that in Acts 2, 3000 people were converted to faith in Christ in one day and became believers. Acts 2:42 begins the description of the strategy for discipling this bunch of new Christians:

"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."

Did you catch it? They devoted themselves. Who devoted themselves? The new believers did! Nobody devoted them to the teaching. They had to do it for themselves. The apostles did the teaching - they laid it out for the people - but burden of discipleship rested primarily on the new believers, not the leaders of the church.

The job of church leaders is to create and sustain processes and systems that responsibly enable people to grow in their faith after receiving Christ. At NewSong this is the LOVE, GROW, SHARE process. But if a new Christian (or even existing ones) are not willing to devote themselves to teaching, community, and service, this does not mean the pastor or leaders of the church have failed in discipling them. It could be any number of things. For instance it might mean the person is not a truly regenerated born again believer. The speaker talked about that at the Christian Life and Witness Class tonight. There are plenty of people who sit in a pew every Sunday that "know all the verses but don't know HIM." They don not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A new nature should produce an insatiable appetite for the things of God. And that’s an appetite only God can create - not me, or Jordan, or Griffin, or McKenzi, or Justin, or our Elders.

I think if I hear one more person say they left "thus-and-so" church because they "weren't being fed" I'm going to throw up (my comment). Biblical discipleship is not about spoon feeding people. According to Acts 2:42, it’s an all you can eat self-service buffet where you get your own plate, refill your own drinks, and you clean up after yourself (Furtick).

Devote yourself!

Getting the Word Out

Although I am relatively new to the whole blogging, Facebook, Twitter phenomenon I have obviously recently embraced the concept as a way to get the Good News about Jesus (and NewSong) out. Upon browsing other blog sites I noticed that other bloggers list their Facebook and Twitter accounts and I’m suspecting one reason they do so is so these links will be picked up and indexed by Internet search engines, especially the more often the links appear.

What and I trying to say? Well, the first place most people are going to turn to find out anything on the Internet is a search engine, most likely, Google. Thus by pointing a link or two at my blog, my Facebook account and my Twitter account I should generate more public listings on search engines, so here I (shamelessly) go.

Here is a link to Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church in Cumming, Georgia on blogspot and Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church in Cumming, Georgia on Facebook and Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church on Twitter.

Oh, I feel so cheap now! But hopefully in a little while a web crawler will be by to pick up those links and before long, voila, more people will find me, view my blog and my Facebook account and my Twitter account and discover all the absolutely astounding information that can be found there! :-)

It will be interesting to see if this works…