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Too many churches, businesses, and even families miss out on productivity by not having a consistent information flow plan. Does your church have an organized way for all departments to flow their information in a concise, clear way for expedience and synergy?
Let’s see if this is familiar to anybody:
Your energetic and sacrificing Sunday School teacher brings 10 rowdy kids into the sanctuary to practice their presentation for Sunday morning. In the middle of their practice, the youth group piles in expecting to “jam” on the instruments. (which is never a good idea) While they are trying to figure out what to do since the kids are practicing and they are bored, the church handyman stumbles in with his ladder and 3 helpers to paint the baptistry. The Sunday School teacher is upset, the handyman is impatient, and the youth pastor just wishes everyone would get out of his way.
If that sounds familiar, then you need to rethink your information flow. This post is in no way going to cure your problems but it will give you a few ideas to streamline your information flow and keep everyone at least in the same chapter if not on the same page.
The diagnosis is simple: [Read More]
I have grown up with a split nature, I believe. I am both extremely ambitious and totally not ambitious all at the same time. I have great ideas and can see the end result but lose interest sometimes long before I am near that end.
I was watching some Ted Talks the other day and happened upon a guy I have come to admire. His passion for what he does not only comes out in hit after hit, but it is infectious. It was he, who was giving the lecture on Mystery ,that made me realize I didn’t have anything I was really, truly passionate about.
He exposed the truth in me with his pure passion. I realized that, although I was a minister, teacher, youth pastor, and a lot more, I wasn’t truly passionate about any of them. I was sleepily going through my life making sure I did my best, but I preferred not to think about it during the downtime.
I preferred to play a computer game or read a book and relax rather than think about what I was giving my life to. When talking with friends, I didn’t spend much time talking about my so-called passions. Why? Because I wasn’t passionate.
Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you have given your life to something you believe in with all of your heart but you haven’t yet developed a passion for it. Read on, it’s coming. [Read More]
Not A Good Sign
Unless you are ready to move to a deserted island where no human will ever have a relationship with you again, you might as well get used to the idea that conflict is coming.
I have the type of personality that despises conflict. I would much rather everyone always get along happily with no miscommunications, no confusion, and no conflicting ideas. What a boring world that would be.
There is no way to escape conflict. We all have different ideas, ideals, and motivations. The Bible says that every man’s way is right in his own eyes. When you get two men together there is going to be two ways of accomplishing the same task. Given enough time, there will be a solid disagreement as to how to accomplish the task in the best way possible.
I have experienced conflict in the home and conflict in the work place. Some of the conflict came because of something I said or did. Some of the conflict came because of things others said or did. Either way, there was conflict and it has an effect on people.
Here are the three very powerful skills that, if perfected, can lead to happy life at home and work. When you learn how to effectively deal with conflict it doesn’t seem like such a tall mountain to climb. [Read More]
We all know the headache in web conferencing. You have to download the server software, and learn how to use it. You have to send out urls to your clients or associates with a login code and instructions for this and that.
I’m not degrading the other online meeting sources out there as I have used quite a bit of them and they all work extremely well. But sometimes you just want powerful simplicity with the needed features.
That’s where iMeet has totally revolutionized the online meeting process. It is a bit on the expensive side but the pricing is simple. It’s $69 bucks a month, all the time. There is no client counting or limiting the amount of meetings you hold. It’s simple, and as Steve Jobs always says, “It just works.” [Read More]
An Inventive Way To Make You Look
I have absolutely fallen in love with the Harvard Business Journal. There is great stuff on just about every page. The subscription is pricey at about $80 per year, but it is well worth it.
I found these 4 ways to cultivate inventiveness in your team from a recent issue. Don’t ask me what issue, I read it at Borders while I was waiting on my wife.
Trust me, if your team doesn’t have inventiveness, you will find yourself constantly coming up with solutions to problems you shouldn’t have to face. If you help their creativity grow, problems will solve themselves as they invent ways to do things better.
Sometimes this requires changing the way you do things. Perhaps a suggestion that flies in the face of the way you have ALWAYS operated will come about from the inventiveness you have cultivated.
Realizing there are always ways to improve is the first step to accepting inventiveness in others around you. Here are the 4 ways to keep creativeness cultivated: [Read More]
Depending on how much energy you have as a leader, your church could develop a good habit of having a lot of projects and programs going on. If you are a church of thousands, you probably have plenty of volunteers to go around to each project. If you are a normal church, you probably have a handful of people doing all the projects. It’s difficult to keep the plans separated and everyone on the same page, 7 or 8 pages at a time.
A project management system is a logical step if things are falling through the cracks between planning and implementing your plans. If you are a project whiz and nothing ever falls through the cracks, a project management system is a good idea because one day you will be older and with that comes memory loss. It’s only a matter of time!
Get used to using project management software and you will soon realize that, not only do you lean on them to keep everything running smoothly, but they are essential to be the best you can be.
The most popular project management system out there right now is Basecamp. Basecamp has a 30 day free trial as well as a free account type to try it out on a single project to see if you like how it works. We recommend trying it out at least for 30 days, but we will mention some of the key features below so you will know what to expect. [Read More]
Back a few years ago, before I discovered the joy that is all things Mac, I had a little Compaq laptop. On this laptop, I had a piece of software that I absolutely fell in love with. That software was Microsoft Money.
I had my bank account synced with it, and I was monitoring my income, savings, cash flow, and some things I didn’t even understand. In other words, I was able to keep track of my finances easily with software that just made sense.
Then I made the move to Mac. My life was now in color rather than the sepia tone PC world I had lived in before. (Sorry PC fans) There was only one problem I could find. There was no Microsoft Money for Mac. The Quicken program was confusing and cluttered where Money had been simple and clean.
I stopped using a computer-based finance solution. My finances suffered as well. But, long story short, I have been waiting for an easy to use software program that would make life simpler on the OS X platform that I loved. Well, now I can tell you, the program is here.
It is Moneywell for Mac. The best feature of this program is that it has a one-window interface. No more flipping through hundreds of confusing views to see the information you need to manage your finances. With Moneywell, it is all perfectly organized and easy to understand. [Read More]
So you have taken our advice and gotten yourself a blog. The power behind the personal blog will not be realized for a few weeks but, if you have made the commitment to stick with it, you will be kicking out articles for at least the next 6 months.
Welcome to the writers block. This is a place where all writers who have to continually come up with content will find themselves. It’s on this block that many writers have given up, built homes, and live there forever more, never moving beyond this block.
Sometimes it is simple inspiration that can move a writer from writers block on to writing great content. So we are going to provide 10 subject ideas, or categories, that will get your mind churning and creating again. [Read More]
It doesn’t matter how large or small your church is, you need a blog. In this day and time, branding has become so important that it can make or break your outreach efforts.
Preachers are not just in the preaching business anymore. Preachers are in the people business. You have to love people, meet people, minister to people, help people through their problems, and, most importantly, let people get to know you.
15 years ago, a preacher could knock doors on a Saturday and meet people in the community. Today, people aren’t home, and if they are, they probably won’t answer for fear of salesmen and/or crazy religious people.
It’s hard to get someone’s undivided attention for more than 20 minutes. How are you going to let those outside of the church get to know what you think, believe, feel, and care about? You won’t, at least not as effectively, unless you embrace the plethora of ways to communicate thanks to modern technology.
The two best PR tools a minister has are blogs and podcasts. We will look at 4 reasons and preacher needs a blog. [Read More]
You might as well accept it. Just about every preacher in the world is a writer, of sorts. You write sermons. You write letters. You should write blogs. You have that book you are half-way finished with that is now lost somewhere on your computers hard drive. Or, in my case, forever lost on that dead external hard drive, never to be seen or heard from again.
Ministers are writers. Ministers are also prone to desire the very best. Why not? We want the best building, the best audio equipment, the best computers – we want the best! Why are you settling for a writing app that is built for school reports and not for serious writing professionals?
You should take a look at Scrivener on the App store. If you want to be serious about writing, you will look no further for a writing application than this robust piece of software for only $44.99. It bends and flexes to the exact kind of writing you are trying to do. And it is absolutely busting at the seems with features. [Read More]
