Monthly Archives: September 2007

The Happy Billionaire

Pam and I watched some of last year’s “Dancing with the Stars” and found it fun. Last night Pam said she’d like to watch it regularly this time, because Marie Osmond and Jane Seymour are participating. She likes them. I want to watch “Dancing with the Stars,” too. But for me, the draw is Mark Cuban, the billionaire bad-boy owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I’m a Cuban fan. A fan of his basketball team, of his blog, and of his approach to life.

In explaining on his blog why he agreed to participate in “Dancing with the Stars,” he wrote the following:

I’m the first to admit that I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I can honestly say I wake up every morning with a smile knowing what a wonderful family, friends and life I have. It’s the exact same way I felt when I was broke.

Money makes so many things in life easier, but it can’t buy you a positive outlook on life. Fortunately, how any of us approaches each of our days is completely up to us. It’s not something you can buy or sell. It’s not hard to put a smile on your face every day, but for some reason some people find it impossible to do. Not me.

The opportunity to do something unique that makes me smile is something I try not to pass up, Dancing with the Stars is just that….I’m going to be out there to win, but I promise you no one is going to be having a better time than me. I can promise you that.

When I’m 90 years old and talking to my grand kids and hopefully great grand kids, I won’t be the grandparent who tells them about the things I wished I had done and how they should experience life, I will be the grandparent with tons of great stories that hopefully inspires them to live their lives to the fullest.

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The View from the Brethren

Last Sunday I skipped church to play in the Indiana Open Table Tennis Tournament. I didn’t do well, which was probably a sign of God’s judgment. Today in church, a lot of people ribbed me about skipping church to play ping pong. But it was all good-natured. No legalists contending that my priorities were messed up, or that I was setting a poor example. Nope, everyone was cool and good-humored about it.

Anchor’s really a great church.

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Movie: Shoot ’em Up

Pam and I watched “Shoot ’em Up,” with Clive Owen and Paul Giametti. Pure, 100%, unadulterated, gratuitious violence from beginning to end. And for both Pam and me, a disturbingly guilty pleasure. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone…and yet, I’d see it again. I’m not sure if this says anything about my spiritual maturity.

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The Journey North

When I’m traveling and the event’s done, I want to get home. No staying another night in a hotel. So though MinistryCOM ended around 5 pm (6 pm Hoosier time), and it was eight hours from Nashville to Fort Wayne, Ind., I decided to go for it. If I got tired, I’d get a motel. Until then…well, let’s see how far I could go.

As it turned out, I had no trouble staying awake, with the help only of one of those quickstop faux-cappucinos and XM satellite radio. I listened to news and the comedy channel (the clean one, with guys like Bob Newhart, Dangerfield, Clower, etc.) until I crossed the Indiana border around 9:00. Ate in Jeffersonville, and headed out again, with 200 miles to go. I now switched between two XM stations that mix oldies with contemporary music, cranked the sound up…and it got me to Fort Wayne.

I crawled into my own sweet bed, already occupied by my wife and two cats, around 2:00 in the morning. So I made good time. Pam said when she would wake up, she’d say a prayer, “Keep Steve from getting tired.” Ah, despite the late hour, God was listening.

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MinistryCOM Notes, Day 1: Dawn Nicole Baldwin

Dawn Nicole Baldwin is CEO of AspireOne, which helps churches (mostly very large ones) with branding and web strategy. She’s a real authority on branding, particularly as it relates to the church world. She’s tightly associated with Willow Creek. Here are some tidbits from her afternoon session on branding.

  • Ask, “What do we, as a church, want to be known for?” If we’re not intentional about defining who we are, others will do it for us.
  • “Brand experience” includes many ways people interact with you: word of mouth, your website, mailers, publications, your logo, and much more. The brand is not just the logo.
  • Brand strategy: ask these three questions: Who are you serving? What are your unique strengths? How do you reach people with impact.
  • When ministry leaders say, “We need a brochure,”…do they really? I face that at the denominational level. Everyone wants a brochure, and I don’t think they’re all that valuable.
  • Blanding: trying to be all things to all people. You water all your uniquenesses down.
  • She doesn’t like churches giving different brands to a bunch of church ministries. She doesn’t like having different URLs for the various ministries. Prefers having everything under the single brand of the church and the church website.
  • Identify your biggest fans (brand advocates). In churches, your church’s biggest fans are often new Christians.
  • Sometimes the senior pastor is such a presence that he is the brand. Go to the website for Houston’s Lakewood Church. You’ll see Joel Osteen plastered everywhere. You wonder whether the website is for the church or a commercial for his books.
  • Seacoast Church is a multi-site church with 11 campuses, one of which is five hours from water. Did the name “Seacoast” fit them? They decided that their brand transcended geography.
  • She gave away some gifts. One was to the person who had been in his/her communications role the longest. A gal sitting in front of me said “16 years,” and nobody could top that. So she got a free book. After the workshop, I told her, “I’ve been doing my job for 26 years.” But since the focus here is local church communications, I didn’t inject myself.
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Notes from MinistryCOM Day 1: Terry Storch

  • We’re meeting at The People’s Church, a megachurch in a community on the outskirts of Nashville, on the south side. You could call it a suburban church, I suppose.
  • The MC is Evan McBroom, who heads his own communications consulting firm in Indianapolis called Fishhook. He said we communications people are like sled dogs–someone’s always whipping us from behind, and the view ahead isn’t so great, either.
  • The church’s worship team led us in both the morning and afternoon keynote sessions. Very good group, superb sound. I need to look up the song “Mighty to Save,” so we can do it at Anchor. “My Savior, he can move the mountains….”
  • The keyboard player nodded his head throughout most of the singing. He tried to find things to do with his left hand (which, in a band, isn’t really needed)–grab the side of the keyboard, adjust the microphone…anything to keep it away from the keyboard. That’s tough for a keyboard guy.
  • Terry Storch, the Digerati Pastor at Lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma, gave the morning keynote. LifeChurch is a highly innovative, multi-site church which has the coolest church homepage. They have their own church in Second Life, a virtual reality world. At least one person became a Christian through it. Storch is very highly regarded by Christian communications people.
  • Storch talked about how the communication revolution has affected the church. The Guttenberg press brought the printed word, radio brought the spoke word, TV brought the visual word. The internet, at least what’s called Web 2.0, is all about participation. Churches focus on one-way communications, while the web is about multi-faceted communication.
  • He said “Church 1.0” is all about service times. “If you want to know what we do, come to the church at our times.” But with “Church 2.0,” people want your content anything they want it, not just when your church doors are open.
  • “Churches are al about a building.” If it doesn’t happen in the church building, it’s not “church.” He said he led more people to Christ at Starbucks than inside the walls of his church. He mentioned the idea of the “Omnipresent Church.” The church is about people, and it happens constantly, not just at designated times.
  • Rather than go “out” to do outreach, we should be “in” communities like MySpace and Facebook. We can make relationships online, and then turn them into physical outreach by meeting those people in person. He said his wife met two such persons already.
  • We used the phrase “Each one reach one.” But that’s addition. We now need to think, “Each one invites everyone.”
  • 1.2 billion people in the world (out of 6.6 billion) are connected to the internet today.
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At MinistryCOM 2007

I’m in Nashville, Tenn., attending the MinistryCOM convention, which is for Christian communications professionals. About 300 people are here, and most work for megachurches. Good people, passionate about what they do, and highly competent. Seriously, these are some way-competent folks.

In one workshop, the leader asked how many of us were the entire communications staff. About one-third of the hands went up. He said, “Your job is difficult, because nobody else understands what you do.” That describes most of my career. Except for a couple years in the early 1980s, and six months in 2006, I’ve had no one with whom to “talk shop.” My coworkers and superiors appreciate what I do, but they aren’t conversant in my skills (writing, graphic design, web design). That’s the way it goes. I’m the only United Brethren person here, period. I’m not sure we have any communications fulltimers on staff at any of our churches.

But many of the MinistryCOM attendees come from churches with an entire communications staff. I ate lunch with a trio from a Wisconsin church–the woman communications director, the web guy, and a graphics guy. I enjoyed being able to converse knowledgeably with each one, since those areas are all strengths for me. That’s what happens after years and years of having to do everything yourself. You’re forced to accumulate additional expertise.

This is only the third MinistryCOM convention. There are quite a few first-timers this year, which is nice. I attended last year’s convention in Phoenix and profited tremendously from it. It took little time for me to realize, “This is a conference I must attend every year.”

As is the case at any Christian (or secular) conference, plenty of individuals stand around by themselves. They came alone, like me. We stand against the walls or in corners. Or, this being a group of communications people, open up a laptop and check email. It’s too easy to disappear into your computer, which is like erecting a big “Do Not Disturb” sign to fend off social advances. I tried to connect, but couldn’t. During the morning, I sat beside another Mac guy; he snagged a connection, but I couldn’t. Go figure. Probably too many people logging on. A number of people mentioned their inability to connect, though not in a complaining way. Church people are adept at complaining, but I haven’t noticed that here. Of course, I’m not exactly plugged in.

The break times are great. They have Nature’s Valley Sweet and Salty Nut granola bars. I tried one. Yum. I took another. In the afternoon, I took two more and ate them before the concluding session.

Now I’m back in my Ramada Limited hotel room, with my full-barred wireless signal. I called Pam at music practice, and now I’m ready to head out to the Nashville Table Tennis club, which meets on Thursday nights. Some southern rednecks are gonna get the chance to whomp on a Yankee.

Postscript three hours later: The table tennis club wasn’t what I expected. Of the 12 guys there, 9 were Asian, most of them very good. One guy had a 2500 rating, another was over 2000, and their US Top Ten player was absent (his wife was having a baby). Nevertheless, I played extremely well, and ended up with a 3-2 record. Very fun. Sure beat any alternatives I had for the evening.

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A Sad Lifetime of Grief

Some years ago, I watched a TV documentary about the Manson murders which focused some attention on a sister of Sharon Tate, whose mission in life seemed to be showing up at the parole hearings of the Manson girls and making sure they aren’t released. Twenty-five years after the murders, she remained angry, embittered, and unforgiving. It struck me as intensely sad. Her life is defined by something that happened in 1969.

I don’t know how I would behave under those circumstances, but I hope I would be able to get on with my life.

A few weeks ago, I watched something similar on MSNBC, this time about a woman whose brother was senselessly killed by two teenagers about 20 years ago. The woman was stuck in time. She had never allowed her family to take another family picture, because it wouldn’t include her brother. The others had moved on, dealt with their grief, but she hadn’t. She remained angry, embittered, and unforgiving.

Through a special program (whose name I can’t recall), this woman was able to go into the prison, meet with one of the killers, and ask him anything she wanted. It was interesting to watch. The man was as contrite as anyone could expect, with no excuses, and through the prism of TV, I felt he was fully sincere. He, in fact, had developed what seemed to be tremendous maturity and character within the confines of prison; his life was defined by his crime, but he was able to move on. But the woman left that meeting even more determined to keep the guy in prison; determined to show up at any parole hearings to state her case. This, too, struck me as terribly sad.

A few days ago, a news show mentioned a woman who lost someone in the World Trade Center. She was among the relative few who refused to accept any survivor compensation. She, too, remains angry, embittered, unforgiving. Stuck in 2001. She says, “I want answers.” To…what? She, too, struck me as a tragically sad figure. Someone you probably don’t enjoy being around. Someone who has crafted her identity around the tragedy of 9/11.

I can’t claim any knowledge of what it feels like to lose a loved one to senseless violence. But I would hope I could move on with my life. I would expect better of a Christian.

Today is 9/11. There are World Trade Center survivors still fighting over what will replace the towers. Some want to make it a perpetual memorial to their loved ones. On MSNBC this morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg talked, in a diplomatic way, about the need to move on with your life. He mentioned the death of his father when he was 21, but that he and his sister, despite their grief, completed college and began successful careers, and now, looking back, the grief is gone and they only have good memories of their father. Their example is not sad.

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Fear and Loathing on the John

I sat down on a toilet in a public restroom, and somebody moved into the stall right next to me. It felt very eery. It’s never exactly comfortable to use a public restroom. But now, the experience inflicts all kinds of anxieties. I even found myself, for the first time in my life, reflecting on my stance.

Thank you, Senator Craig.

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What Goes Around

Came across this Mark Twain quote today. I’d never heard it before:

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Not an exact copy, but certainly reminiscent.

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