Plaid is giving a way a Flip Video camcorder ($129USD) to someone who completes our survey on how they use the web to get things done for ministry. The survey closes at midnight November 18. I will post the results the next day. Feel free to spread the word.

I was reading Willow Creek Repents (which I think is an unfair title) and was fascinated by the findings issued by a new book from Willow Creek. This lead me to watch the video by Greg Hawkins where he explains the point of the book.

At the end of the video, he concludes:

Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights.

At Plaid, we agree with this statement and believe that Plaid can assist ministries in this transformation.

Existing church software enables measuring discipleship through “participation”

Essentially, existing church management software reflects and promotes the “participation” model Hawkins describes. The software is focused on recording data that according the Hawkins does not contribute to discipleship.

For example, ChMS vendors are developing the “hottest” feature and churches are spending lots of resources to implement it. Check in or integrated attendance recording. That does not seem to be the place where innovation should be occurring.

The tools we use shape our thinking. If we do not change our church software, how we do church will not change.

Plaid answers the challenge issued by Hawkins and Willow Creek

Plaid is different. It does not record attendance. It measures “attention” or engagement of leaders towards its members.

Attendance shows how the members engage the church. A metric that Hawkins now questions and an assumption that Bill Hybles in fact says was a mistake,

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

Plaid rather measures the engagement of leaders with members. Using attention data (what contact records they interact with inside the software: edit, add, comment, send email, organize into a list, etc.), we can help individual ministry practitioners discover who they “disciple”. Essentially, this is based on the idea found known as Dunbar’s number.

At Plaid, our quest is to give ministries new ways of measuring. I am not fool enough to think Plaid is a silver bullet, but I do believe that refactoring church software is one aspect of this change.

At your events, there are many ways to aquire contact information from new people and visitors. It usually results in a stack of handwritten cards. Even with well-intentioned ministry teams, entering this information into some kind of database falls through the cracks or is not completed in a timely manner.

Plaid makes it easy to enter contact information:

• You only need to enter 3 fields (name, phone and email) in order to add a contact
• You can add one or 10 contacts at a time

Discover the hundreds of ways Plaid can improve your ministry.

I use Google Calendar with Gmail to organize my life and work. I do not carry a paper calendar and usually just scribble notes (in pencil) on whatever scrap of paper is nearby. I have tried all the Daytimers and Hipster PDAs, but I am just not a paper person.

You might guess that I sometimes have trouble remembering appointments or making timely phone calls. I’m embarrassed by my tardiness and its my reputation (such as it is). I recently made a small change to my Google Calendar which now sends my mobile phone a text message as reminder.

It is easy to set up SMS reminders for Google Calendar.

First, you need to set up  your phone. This can be done through Settings and clicking on the Mobile Setup link. Follow the simple instructions to enable your phone. (Basically, Google sends your phone a text message with a numberical code which you need to re-enter in this setting.) Once you do this correctly, you will see under Mobile Settings that your mobile status is “Phone number successfully validated.”

Then you can set your SMS notification preferences for your calendar. To do this, on the right under My Calendars, click on the drop down menu and select notifications. On this screen, you can set your SMS preferences. By default, I have all events send me a text message 10 minutes before its start. You can then change this preference on an event by event basis by editing the “Options” of that specific event.

I have a throw away phone and a pay-as-you-go plan. But even my $19 phone gets the text message and if I view it and click “Options” any phone numbers I list in the event, I am able to call without dialing.

As a web designer, you would think that I spend most of my time in Photoshop designing web pages. Well, you would be wrong. I spend lots of time managing projects. When I pastored, I never thought in terms of project management. And that was my mistake. I had projects all over the place, but simply managed them like tasks.

• Mail newsletter
• VBS
• Schedule summer missions trip
• Get van fixed

One of the things that I learned from Getting Things Done by David Allen was the difference between next actions and projects. Nothing in the above list is a next action and most 3 of 4 are really projects with many next actions. For example, Get van fixed is not a next action. Find repair shop for van is the real next action.

Mail newsletter, VBS and summer missions trips are all projects that have many next actions. Every ministry has projects like these to manage. If you apply a few easy principles, you can start feeling productive and less stress out (hat tip: FreelanceSwitch):

1. Write out the desired outcome. I find that I procrastinate more when I do not know what I’m trying to achieve with a project. This is even more true if you have been “assigned” the project rather than creating the project yourself.
2. Get the outcome approved in writing. One of the sources of conflict in the church is miscommunication. Conflict can be reduced by getting written approval from your stakeholder (pastor, team leader or board) that you are on track before you start. This includes getting a time and date for when you need to deliver your project.
3. Create an ordered list of “next actions”. This may get a little pedantic. Basically, you can not do “mail newsletter”. But you can “Email pastor for his column”, “Ask church administrator to print off labels” and “Schedule volutneers to prepare mailing”.
4. Review your “next actions” and estimate the time. I find it best to take that number and TRIPLE IT. Yes, multiply it by three. This will account for all the things you do not know that you do not know.
5. Communicate to all stakeholders while you finishing your next actions. Tell them what you did, what you are doing now and what might be at risk. Get in the habit of talking about the bad news before people hear about it from someone else. If you are not going to have all your classes covered on Sunday morning, tell the people who need to know before Sunday! I also am in the habit of just asked open ended questions like “How do you think this is going?” as a way to engage the people I’m serving.
6. Stay focused. Once you list your next actions, work hard not to add to the list of the project. This is called scope creep and is a sure way to destroy a project.
7. Celebrate. When your finished, share and enjoy your success.

How do you feel productive in ministry? Add your comments below.

Marc Andreessen, the man who co-created the first web browser and co-founded of Netscape, started blogging only five weeks ago. He recently summarized eleven lessons he learned about starting to blog for the first time,

Eleventh and last, the most common reaction that I got from starting my blog that I didn’t expect was, “finally he’s blogging”.

I found that to be quite humorous because of course from the perspective of bloggers who have been active for several years, it’s completely true, and yet here we are still living in a world where most people who have interesting things to say are not yet blogging and have no idea that they’re behind the trend curve.

When I started reading his blog, I thought the same thing. If anyone should have been blogging for years, it should have been Andreessen. But his observation is correct. The most interesting people in the church are not yet blogging. The ChurchReport list of the 50 most influencial Christians have few bloggers (most have podcasts but that is a distribution sermons):

• #16 Rick Warren blog and podcast (RSS)
• #19 Paula White MySpace
• #23 Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. Blog or Crosswalk
• #44 Beth Moore’s Living Proof Ministry has a blog (RSS)
• #45 Mike Slaughter Blog
• #46 Phil Vischer Blog (RSS)
• Let me know if I missed any by adding a comment to this post…

Now, none of these blogs are any good or even worthy of getting into my RSS Reader. If you look at the list, you will see a generational bias. But basically of the none of the most influential Christians are involved in the conversation about Christianity online. Now, this may not matter today or in the next few years.

However, if you review this list in five years, I will bet that most of the most influential Christians are blogging or podcasting (more than just putting sermons online).
Take A Ways 

• The old path to being influential in the church you passed through certain gatekeepers: denominations, academics and publishers. In the future, you can be influential because you are networked and skilled at sustaining and generating conversations. You no longer need “influence” bestowed upon you via a denomination, seminary or publisher.
• The other lesson to learn is that if you currently are a person who has interesting things to say about ministry and are not blogging; if you do it well, you can gain audience very quickly.

Now its a whole other discussion as to how to gain influence in the church without losing your soul in the process (or maybe the questions whether you should seek to gain influence)…

Without irony, I present the Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen board game [via ysmarko], Your Best Life Now: The Game is an entertaining and educational way to take inventory of yourself and accountability of your actions.” It is for 2 or more players, ages 16 and up.

The person responsible for this game is Kevin McNulty, VP of Sales of Endless Games (PDF),

“We are privileged, honored and excited to create a multi-generational board game based upon Joel’s inspirational, uplifting, and remarkable book,” said McNulty. “The game will make a difference in the lives of people that play it,” he continued. “Its play has a unique twist that integrates the game’s results into the lives of the players after they finish playing.”

[…] The Game was conceived by game inventor Richard C. Levy, whose credits also include board games based upon the best-selling books Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

I just think this might be not such a great idea…

Apple announced that Google Maps will be one of the 12 widgets that launch on the new Apple iPhone. Well if you want your church to appear on Google Maps on the iPhone, get your ministry listed on Google Local Business. If you have problems getting your church listing working, visit the Google Maps Help Group.

DaySpring allows you to send free Flash cards to people. You can find:

• Birthday
• Prayer
• Sympathy

There are dozens of others. This is a simple way to keep in touch between ministry events.

Ministry is hectic. Most people serving in ministry have other things in their lives going on besides church. It is hard enough to carve out time to actually be at the ministry event and find the time to prepare for it. If we are honest, our time for spiritual disciplines is what gets lost when we are busy. And who of us is not busy.

But the energy and power we need for ministry is found in exactly those disciplines. If we are really serving people, then we need to be responsible to those habits which actually affect our ministry. So here is one easy way we can gain some time for solitude, meditation and prayer:

Reduce your screen time

The US Census reported most adults and teens “will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices.”

My wife and I are totally guilty of this — our laptops are always open. Like you, our habit is to watch TV in order to relax. Now, I am not saying get rid of TV or your laptop because I am certainly not going to do that — but see if we can watch 30 minutes less screen time every day. We will lose 8 days screen time a year; and gain 30 minutes a day for solitude, meditation and prayer.

That seems like a good trade…