YouSendIt.com

If you are like me, finding an easy way to get files larger than 5MB to someone by email is difficult. if you don’t have an ftp site set up, you may find yourself trying to get by email file limits. Even if you do have an ftp site, your recipient may not know how to log in.

A year or so ago I stumbled onto a site called YouSendIt.com. I found it again, and have been using it often around church. Basically, for free, you can upload a file up to 100MB and email a simple click and download link to up to 100 people. The file will remain up for 7 days. And you have a maximum of 1GB of bandwidth each month.

If you need more they offer 3 higher levels of service for a fee.

But for my purposes, sending over a picture or video that needs to be reviewed is super simple, and even the most technically challenged people can download the file. Recently, a large team went overseas for a mission trip, and realized that they had forgotten several videos. We converted them to h.264 QT files, and used YouSendIt.com to deliver them around the world.

Check it out at www.yousendit.com

To iPhone or not iPhone…

So the question started about a month or so ago, and I have to be honest it hasn’t been all apps and games. I’m a hacker from the old windows mobile 5 days. Had a t-mobile mda with every mod hack I could get my hands on. I was like the rest of the world, if it didn’t have push technology and/or exchange server sync I didn’t need it.

Then it happened, iPhone 3g. No, I’m not going to tell you about all the amazing features; this post is about all the amazing dreams I have for the iPhone and how it can impact ministry today.

Imagine life group enrollment, volunteer sign-up, VBS registration, and so many other possibilities in the palm of your hand. Did I mention that the rest of the world can use these features to?

With the launch of the 3g came this new SDK available to anyone. The software development kit for the iPhone means it’s a whole new ball game; yeah, I can copy and paste some code, but I don’t have to anymore. Apple has given the every day guy or gal like you and me the possibility to create web interfaces and applications so easily that anyone can do it…and they are! Just take a look at the ever growing list of apps and web apps on the apple website. Did I mention that research shows the number 1 fastest type of web app is church sites? Or maybe you should just click the link at the top of this page to our downloads page; my first app is sitting there, it’s an rss feed widget, so the user can get pushed info to your dashboard anytime you want. Hmmm, what a novel idea! As Christians we should not be new to this thought; the Word of God is the same way to us. Make it available, make it readable, and finally make it replicable.

So guys, this is my vow, now that the novelty is almost gone and the need sets in, I will use all that He has given me, iPhone included, to make a difference for His pleasure always.

Sean
Sent from my iPhone

Firing People as an Act of Stewardship

No one likes to fire someone. It’s a hard thing to do. Coming to the place where you decide that a player isn’t working for the team is difficult, and actually letting that person go is not any easier. It is, however, a very important thing to do. If you have a person on staff that isn’t working out, letting them go is actually an act of stewardship.

Every ministry has limited resources. A staff member that isn’t working out not only is taking home a salary that should be going to another person that can do the job, but they are likely creating extra work for other staff, causing friction, and generally hampering efficiency. Firing them is a good thing for the health of the ministry.

But aren’t we a ministry? Shouldn’t we minister to this staff person?

Yes, but if the ministry isn’t effective, you can’t minister to as many people. You can’t do what God has called you to do as well. It is simply poor stewardship to keep a staff member that is hindering ministry. I am not talking about someone that needs a little training, or that could be coached up. I’m talking about someone that you know won’t work out.

Cutting them loose is good for them, allowing them to go on to a place where God can use their talents and abilities. It is also good stewardship for your ministry. For your team to be most effective, you need people that are working together, effectively. Keeping an ill-fitted staff member around will cause all kinds of trouble, and ultimately hinder ministry.

While you may want to help the staff member, you must fire them if they cannot do the job. You can continue to help them after they don’t work for you, but you need to clear their position so you can begin to find someone that can do the job. It’s hard, but it’s true. Anything less is poor stewardship of the resources God has given you.

People vs. Tasks

Are you a people person? Or do you bury yourself in tasks?

If you are like me, you have a list of things to get done each week. Sundays come around with startling regularity, and making sure everything is set for the weekend is a major task. It’s important. It must be done.

I find myself annoyed when I’m interrupted. Don’t these people know I am busy? I have to get ready for the services. I am doing all this work so they will have a good worship experience. Why won’t they let me get my work done?

I have to stop myself. I have to remind myself that ministry isn’t about doing stuff, it’s about impacting people, helping them grow in their relationship with Christ. I have to remember that ministry doesn’t stop when the service ends. While tasks are important, people are not interruptions… they are the reason I have a job. They are the people God has called me to minister to. My ministry job should never get in the way of actual ministry.

Bare Wire Ministry

How insulated are you?

A relationship with Christ is like an electric current, but if we keep it insulated, no one else can feel it. It’s time to strip the insulation away. Get out of our protective covering and take a chance.

As Christians, we can easily become insulated from the world we are trying to reach, especially if we work at a church. Before we know it we have surrounded ourselves with only Christian stuff and people. There’s nothing wrong with Christian people and stuff, unless they get in the way of reaching the people who don’t know Christ.

When was the last time you got out of the office, got past the barriers between yourself and the world, and met someone that wouldn’t come to your office? When is the last time you made a friend that didn’t go to your church?

How? How do you break free from the sheath that covers?

The answer is not another church program. The answer is a church with a mind to reach the world. Don’t be “of” the world, but be in it! Get out of the nightly event schedule, and go interact with people.

One way is to seek out people who share the same interests as you do. What are your hobbies? Don’t have any? Get some! Join a book club. Build models. Bake. Play video games. Get a bike. Join a gym. Put yourself into clubs and organizations that are not Christian based, and meet people.

Find a way to electrify the world. Try bare wire ministry.

What Makes a Church Successful?

A comment on a previous post got me to thinking… How do you define a successful church?

Is it numbers? Are large churches automatically successful? Simply because they draw big crowds? Is it growth? Are churches that show increases in membership successful?

How do you measure a church’s success?

While I can’t cover every aspect of what a healthy church looks like, I will offer a couple of benchmarks. For me, a healthy church is a Great Commission Church. I think the greatest evidence of a Great Commission Church is the presence of changed lives. If people’s lives aren’t being transformed within interaction with the local body of Christ, we aren’t doing what we have been commanded to do. Absent evidence of changed lives, our local body cannot be considered successful.

So how do you measure this? By asking questions that relate to numbers. I know, we hate numbers. Numbers reduce people and their lives to impersonal stats. Every number represents a story of a life that has intersected the ministry of our church. How can a simple number express how a drug addict has overcome obstacles?

And numbers can be misleading. “The American Church in Crisis” by David T. Olson describes the limits of Gallup polls in knowing how many people attend. Olson claims that the American church has not kept pace with the population growth, and our methods of gathering data about numbers are flawed. If a local body has shown a 15% increase in attendance, we might think that would indicate great growth until we learned that the community has grown by 30%. Not to mention the fact that attendance alone does not necessarily constitute a transformed life. In addition, there are plenty of churches preaching a feel-good message that draw huge crowds of untransformed people.

However, if we don’t use numbers there is no way to objectively assess the condition of a local body. So we must look at a wide array of areas to see if we are truly going, baptizing, making disciples and teaching them. We have to take into account changes in the community and culture and how they affect the numbers We have to look objectively at the effectiveness of ministries.

So, what are some questions that can help us?

How many have been baptized? How many attend? How many are active in the life of the church? How many attend small group Bible studies? How many have started to give? How many have started to serve? How many are truly being discipled? And the list goes on…

A word of warning, just because a number comes back negative doesn’t mean our church is ineffective. Every organization will experience ebbs and flows. But, if our attendance drops 50% in one year, we might want to look at why.

The goal of ministry isn’t to draw huge crowds, it’s to make disciples. Numbers alone do not mean anything about a ministry’s success. But numbers, in proper perspective, can bear witness to lives being changed through ministry.

Because we can or because we should?

I think this question should be in every minister’s vocabulary. I will speak to it regarding use of media, but every area of ministry should ask it of every new idea.

How many times does a new idea come up, and get implemented simply because we have the resources to do it? The conversation normally starts like this, “Hey, I just visited this other church and they did something so cool…” Then, because it’s new and cool, we move forward and do it, without first ever examining whether it is a good idea or our own congregation, for our own culture, for our own community.

So, what’s the big deal, If we have the resources to do it anyway? When we devote resources, time, money, or energy to work that is unnecessary and ineffective we rob those resources from work that is better suited for our mission and ministry.

I know churches that have thrown money and time away in order to do a TV ministry simply because they thought big churches should do it. No one had a vision for extending the ministry of the church through TV, they just wanted to make it happen. How many infrequently updated podcasts are out there, with poor production and content, simply because hip churches do web streaming? With no passion for the work and no calling from God to pursue it, is it any wonder the work fails?

Doing things because we can is a bad thing. Are we doing what we should be doing in our ministry to fulfill our mission? Stop wasting time on the rest.

New Model Christian Movie Making

Last night I was privileged to watch the first pre-release screening of Fireproof, which is the 3rd movie from Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA. While I’m not going to review the film at this time, I will say that it was great; funny and engaging. I really enjoyed it.

I was reminded of how Christians used to make movies, and the dismal failures they were. I can remember watching movies on film at church camp. One of my favorites was called “SuperChristian” which had a good message, but was just about as cheesy as you could get. Who could forget the Thief in the Night series? Great concepts but really lacking in funding to pull off a story like that.

The old Christian Movie Making Model consisted of someone having an idea, going out to raise funding, making the movie, and then dumping it to whatever little release they could, and taking their new idea back to the donors for more money. “What a success our last movie was, give us more money to make another one!”

I think that is one of the reasons that Christian film has been ignored by mainstream media. It is a foreign concept to think that anyone would sink money into a film with no hope of getting it seen, and no possibility of recouping the cost of the film production. The few Christian films that made it into theaters were not successful at all, by their standards. It’s great that a few people saw The Judas Project, The Omega Code, and Tribulation Force, but they were far from Hollywood successes.

But, this model is changing, and it is changing how people look at Christian film. While Mel Gibson was working on The Passion of Christ and getting ready to blow open the path for Christian film in Hollywood with it’s 2004 release, Sherwood Baptist Church raised $20k and made their first movie, Flywheel in 2003. It’s not the greatest movie ever made. It’s obvious they didn’t have a big budget. They tell a good story as best they can within their budget. As a result, the story is compelling enough to help you forget the acting and lighting. So compelling that it ended up being carried by Blockbuster across the country. I rented it while in NC.

The church made $100k from Flywheel. They took that money and spent between $80k and $100k on Facing the Giants. They hooked up with David Nixon Productions, and made a better film with another compelling story. That movie got picked up by Sony Pictures (via Provident Films). Last number I heard was that it made a little over $30 Million in tickets and sales. Sherwood did not get all that money by any means, but they did take $2 Million and use it to make Fireproof, which is due out in September.

Fireproof is a better movie. It actually has special effects, and paid actors, which help to tell another compelling story. I predict that it will do as good or better than Facing the Giants. I also predict that the money made from this film will be put back into another film, and the new model will continue, and many more people will see really good, compelling Christian stories.

Now, if we can just get more people to adopt this model.

Technology in Church

Recently the Barna Group released a report about technology in church.

Because my career in church media has been in larger churches, I always assume that more people are using technology than are. Only 2/3s are using a screen in worship? That is only up 3% in 3 years! Is it any wonder we hear that 90% of churches are in decline?

Yes, I did just equate using a screen with reaching people. Let me explain.

I believe that media is a cultural language. The world lives and breathes media. We used to talk about modern vs postmodern, but now we should discuss literate vs post-literate. More people get their information through audio and video images than through print. As “people of The Book” that should frighten us, just a little. And we should ask ourselves how we reach a culture fluent in “media”.

Who is fluent in media? Every human being who lives in 21^st century America and has access to any of the following: TV, radio, internet, print, audio CD, cassette, movie, DVD, VHS, theater, concerts, etc… They expect to find media used in all walks of life, just like I might expect a sales clerk to know how to ring up my purchase.

When they go to a church, see a stage and musical instruments, they expect to experience media. I mean experience it beyond the basic facilitation that a light bulb and voice amplification. They unconsciously expect to see a show. It is our job to engage them through the use of media, so that the message can transform their lives.

How should we use media within the church? We use it to speak to people in a language they understand, and expect. To be most effective, media within the church should have the same syntax as media in the world. Our media will not have the same message, but should be easily understood by those who are fluent in secular media.

So, when people keep talking about how the church is in decline, and I see reports like the one from Barna (which does give some hope because the use of technology is rising) I can understand how we are missing an entire generation in the church. no, it’s not just about the tech. You have to have a message that can transform, but that message won’t be heard by people who dismiss you as old-fashioned, out-of-touch, and behind-the-times.

Engage the culture, let your message, our message, transform it, and let God transform their souls!

Free Swag

Great custom graphic design is ideal. But sometimes time, money, or skill limitations make it necessary to use premade graphics. And even when you have the time, money, and skills, there are still occasions when it is more efficient to not reinvent the wheel and to instead use and build upon a premade resource.

In either case, here are 15 of the best sites offering free church graphics and resources. And if you want to spend some cash, I have also included 6 sites that cost money but are worth considering for premade resources.

Free Church Graphics and Resources

• CreativeMYK.com
  Offers free church graphics including logos, photos, vector art, projector slides, bulletins, sermon graphics, projector slides, templates, and more. The site also includes a social network for Christian artists.
• LifeChurch.tv Open
  Offers free sermon series resources that include message outlines, sermon graphics, videos, and more creative materials created by LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK).
• Muddy River Media
  Offers free illustrative videos, motion backgrounds, countdown timers, stock photographs, illustrations, small group resources, and more.
• NewSpring Ministries
  Offers free sermon series resources (e.g., sermon graphics, audio, message outline, & service outline) as well as administrative forms and manuals created by NewSpring Church (Anderson, SC).
• Northside Christian Church Creative Resources
  Offers free logos, posters, and other artwork designed by Northside Christian Church (New Albany, IN).
• Nside Admin
  Offers free administrative documents from North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA) on church government, human resources, accounting, facilities, IT, and Web.
• Seacoast All Access
  Offers free sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, motion graphics, audio, video, message notes, and small group questions created by Seacoast Church (Mt. Pleasant, SC).
• Vine Resources
  Offers free sermon series graphics, postcards, countdown videos, and message bumpers created by the college ministry of Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY).

Free General Graphics and Resources

• Adobe Exchange
  Offers free downloads to use with Adobe software including brushes, styles, gradients, custom shapes, and patterns for Photoshop.
• BittBox
  A blog that regularly highlights free Photoshop brushes, Flash components, vector graphics, and more.
• Brusheezy
  Offers free Photoshop brushes.
• Flasheezy
  Offers free Flash elements.
• PS Brushes
  Offers free Photoshop brushes.
• Smashing Magazine
  A blog that regularly highlights free graphics, fonts, and more.
• Vecteezy
  Offers free vector graphics.

Church Resources that Cost Money

• Creative Pastors
  Sells sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, video, mind maps, outlines, audio, and more created by Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX).
• North Point Resources
  Sells logos, DVDs, sermon messages, conference messages, and more created by North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA).
• Outreach
  Sells church graphics that include postcards, banners, bulletins, door hangers, invitations, brochures, logos, signage, and more.
• The Church Box
  Sells sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, PowerPoint slides, and audio created by Four Corners Community Church (West Chester, OH).
• WiredChurches.com
  Sells sermon series resources (e.g., outlines, graphics, videos, audio, & scripts) and administrative resources (e.g., forms, documents, & manuals) created by Granger Community Church (Granger, IN).
• WorshipHouse Media
  Sells mini-movies, motions, stills, software, and editables for churches.