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Communication Shifts Part 2: Old Ways

We communicated in a lot of ways. There wasn't a lot of coordination among all of the media. A shotgun approach evolved as pieces were added over the history of the church. We were using:

Newsletter - Our weekly newsletter, The Story, has been mailed for 52 years. Newsletters mainly included event information, but also had a pastor's letter, prayer list, thank you notes, and various other tidbits of information. Roughly 60% of the information in a given issue of the newsletter had been published in earlier issues. This was mailed most weeks (about 40 a year) to 1,200 households.

Electronic Newsletter - Our electronic newsletter was a link to a PDF version of the print newsletter. Newsletters were also published as a PDF of the print version. Each week another 400 people received the email with this link.

Weekend Bulletin - Each weekend we put a bulletin into the hands of everybody that attends worship. Other than the order of worship the bulletin also includes a series of announcements and opportunities to sign up for service opportunities.

Web Site - Our web site was designed in 2006 with a structure focused on first-time visitors to the church. It contained a news section that included information from the newsletter (and the PDF version). It also contained an extensive collection of many of the ministries within the church. When we outlined the web content it amounted to a nearly 30 page outline.

Information Center - Our Information Center sits between the sanctuary and the Fellowship Center (our cafe area). It was staffed by a member of our guest service team and usually covered with sign up sheets and flyers about various ministry opportunities.

Preworship slides - Prior to worship there are a series of slides that play on the screens in the sanctuary. These same slides play on a digital signage system throughout the church building.

Platform announcements - During each worship service a pastor makes some type of announcement. Usually these announcements come from one of the announcements printed in the bulletin.

Ministry Flyers - Each ministry has been publishing their own flyers. Sometimes they get posted as rogue posters on the walls around the building. They often get stacked at the Information Center as well and passed out at ministry events.

Email Lists - Leaders of a variety of ministries use direct email (either through personally managed lists) or mail sent from Shelby to communicate within the specific ministry.

Random Mailings - Postcards, letters, and other USPS mailings. A few years ago we dramatically cut the amount of mailing (no more reminder postcards for meetings), but there are still letters that get sent out.

Specialized Web Sites - We have a couple of blogs and some Google sites that are used for collaboration by teams. These are used mainly by the arts teams to prepare for worship.

Monday I'll continue this series talking about the results of our communication evaluation.

2009 in Three Words

@terrystorch and Shawn Wood tipped me off to a great post by Chris Brogan about goals for 2009. Last year I set very specific goals and did a very poor job of meeting them. I really like the approach of setting broader thematic goals rather than specific action oriented goals. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep these goals more easily. Most of the goals for last year are ongoing. I'm still working to blog more, I go through periods of focusing well on fitness, I'm going to take guitar lessons. So this year I thought I would take the broader approach.

Here's how Brogan describes the process:

If you want to try the process, it works something like this: think of how you want to be successful in 2009. Then, try to think in even broader terms. Extrapolate on the broader terms, and find one word to hang the idea on.

My three words for 2009:

Create - I've been in a rut creatively for the past several months. As a worship team we've been a lot less creative than I'd like. I've not been doing things that feed me creatively as much as I would like. So I'm taking some immediate steps. I'm getting out of my environment and working intentionally surrounded by other creative professionals. I'm taking guitar lessons. I'm starting to write without a real purpose - just to get words on paper - maybe it will develop into something. I'm going to relax, and cook, and take time off to really recharge (see word three).

Pray - Our core emphasis as a church for the next year is prayer. I believe very strongly in the power of prayer, but it currently isn't an integrated part of everything I do. Prayer has been an important part of my life, but it hasn't been as intentional as it should be of late. The staff is spending the first several weeks of the year going through Richard Foster's book Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home together. It's a great book and the first time I read it nearly 10 years ago was really when prayer became real in my life. I'm really excited to see how a focus on prayer for the year impacts both my life and the church.

Relax - I tend to be a ball of stress and a workaholic. I worry about things that aren't all that important. I obsess about quality often times about things out of my control. I neglect taking appropriate time off to recharge. My goal is to be very intentional about taking my day off and taking breaks during the work day. What that means is saying no to doing some things and more effectively delegating to others. It also means that I'm going to try to be a lot less serious. I plan on playing and having fun a lot more this year. 

What would your three words be for 2009?

Communication Shifts Part 1: Introduction

Over the past several months we've been making some substantial changes in the way we communicate as a church. Last summer we did a fairly extensive review of all the media we were using and the effectiveness of each medium. What we discovered was fairly concerning. We felt like we had been communicating effectively, but people kept telling us they didn't know about upcoming events and hadn't heard about something that happened at the church. While we had been communicating people obviously hadn't been listening. More accurately though they had tuned us out.

A few years ago we made a major shift in our worship planning to move towards a single big idea for each weekend. That idea often carries into the ministry we do with children, youth, and small groups in the church. We've seen a dramatic impact to focusing our message during worship. This same focus was needed in all of our communication.

Ultimately communicating is less about how we share information and more about how well people receive it. We took time to look at each tool we were using to communicate with people in the church. The evaluation covered the source material, final output, and measured the how well the message was received. 

Over the next week I'll be posting detailed information about the prior way we were communicating, the results of our evaluation, and the changes that are taking place at Schweitzer.

ProPresenter Remote

Renewed Vision recently updated ProPresenter and made available a remote application that runs on the iPhone. I got a chance to use the remote in a real environment on Christmas Eve during the runthrough for our 11pm service. I've got to say overall I was very impressed. It let me flip through slides for the band without having to sit in the booth. In the past I've used Screen Sharing on the Mac to get out of the booth for a runthrough, but Wednesday I wanted to be able to walk around the room, not just sit at a laptop. Overall I was really happy with the performance of the remote. It's incredibly easy to use and very responsive. I'm not sure it's ready for production use (it crashed twice in 40 minutes), but in a pinch it's better than nothing. The remote offers both a view and a control mode letting somebody with an iPhone or iPod Touch either control slide display or review data. The remote is an extra purchase, but it's under $5 on the iTunes App Store. The remote is a great tool and I'm excited to be able to use it more. Some features I'd like to see:

• ability to show and hide the output window
• confidence monitor mode - that uses the iPhone screen to display the main output content
• ability to edit slides from the remote would be awesome
• saved passwords for quicker connections (especially given crashes)

Mint.com

A few days ago I signed up to use Mint.com for tracking spending and budgeting. We had Quicken in the past, and basically never used it. Even with most stuff importing into Quicken automatically it would take several hours at the end of the month. The result was that we basically went months without doing any real work on tracking our spending.

It took me about 30 minutes to set up all of our bank info, credit cards, etc. Mint linked up quickly and easily, imported the data, and auto categorized most transactions. I spent another 15-20 minutes categorizing the transactions Mint didn't figure out. There's also an iPhone app that makes it incredibly easy to get the status of what's going on with our finances, get detail on transaction, etc. The iPhone app doesn't let you make any updates, but it's great for viewing information. Mint has gotten some great reviews and the best part is that it's free.

We'll see how it goes after a few months. Since setting up the account, importing transactions, and categorizing the unknown transactions took less time than we used to spend on a fully-configured Quicken setup I'm optimistic. 

Slumdog Millionaire at the Moxie

Last night we went to see Slumdog Millionaire at the Moxie. If you haven't seen this movie yet you absolutely should.

It's a great story about an orphan in India, the girl he loves, and his experience on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The film is very well done, directed by Danny Boyle (Sunshine, 28 Days Later, Trainspotting) and the editing is superb. It's very quickly paced and fits the chaotic nature of the story very well. I especially liked how the story is told almost entirely in flashbacks.

This was our first time visiting the Moxie's new location. It's much nicer than the old location with more convenient parking, two screens, expanded bathrooms, and a huge lobby. The comfort of home with a big tv, surround sound, and Netflix have dramatically reduced our going to the theater, but I love going to the Moxie. The Moxie is also the only theater I'm aware of in town where you can accompany your movie viewing with a beer or a glass of wine. At the old location they pretty much had to have an intermission for changing reels, even if it's not a requirement at the new location I still like the intermission. It lets me stretch my legs (a big gripe I have in theaters), go to the bathroom, get more snacks, and chat about the first half of the movie. A lot of people may not like the intermission, but I'm a fan of a 12 minute break in the middle of a film.

MAX 2008

I had a great time at MAX this year. It was probably the best conference Adobe has put on in several years. Each year I make claims that I may not come back next year because of disappointment. After this year I have no plans to miss MAX next year (although I don't like it being in LA). Usually I have the experience of skipping sessions to hang out and network with people in the Community Lounge.

The main educational value coming from one or two sessions that blow me away. Sometimes it's hard to make a schedule for the conference. I always have a couple of can't miss sessions, but the others usually seem lackluster. This year was totally different. I only had four slots that didn't have a good fit for me. Most of the sessions had several presentations that interested me. I found it hard to pick between several good topics - an ideal situation in a conference. My big complaint is that a lot of the sessions were only offered once. The sessions are all supposed to be posted on Adobe TV so hopefully I'll be able to catch those I wasn't able to see at the event.

My favorite sessions:

• Anatomy of a Video Player
• Hands on with Flash Catalyst (Thermo)
• Using Flex and Adobe AIR to Automate Creative Suite 4 Workflows
• Creating Effects with Pixel Bender
• Programmatic Animations in After Effects with Expressions and Scripting
• Both Keynotes were also really good

If this pattern holds, MAX getting better every year, next year should be great. This year it had the same feel I remember from the Macromedia UCON days. Great job Adobe!

50,000 Shoes in 50 Days

Just took part in the 50,000 Shoes in 50 Days challenge. I would encourage you to do the same. It's pretty amazing that for $5 you can send two pairs of shoes to people who've never had shoes. It just takes a couple of minutes. You never really think about how important shoes are, because we wear them all the time, but over 300 million people around the world don’t have shoes. Walking around barefoot most places on the planet isn't safe like it is in your back yard. Having to walk around without shoes puts people into life-threatening situations.

It only takes 2 minutes to provide shoes for people who really need them. It costs about the same as a trip to Starbucks.
 

Coolest Birthday Gift Ever - Cheese Making Kit

My birthday was this weekend and Sarah got me what is probably the coolest birthday gift I've ever gotten. The gift being a cheese making kit makes me a pretty big dork. We've been on a kick of producing our own food whenever possible (going on three months of no bread buying). We joined a farm-share coop. Our milk comes from a local, natural dairy.

Sarah's knitting has been a big part of the joke that developed into this gift. I've for the most part been against her spinning yarn. I put up with the room dedicated to yarn. I put up with the supplies for dying stuff. Spinning was out of the question. The rule was no spinning unless we had the sheep and I could quit my job and make artisinal sheep's milk cheese. I'm wondering if there is a plot that involves a spinning wheel given that the cheese making kit includes supplies to make mozzarella, ricotta, an instructional DVD and a book of 75 cheese recipes. Several of the recipes use sheep's milk. Hmm.

I'm going to start with the quick, soft cheeses first, then try goat cheese. I'm hoping that if all goes well I can start a hard cheese or two after the first of the year. I think the crawl space under our living room is the perfect temperature/humidity to be a cheese cellar. If not there's the spare dorm fridge in the garage. On second thought the dorm fridge might be a better idea to start.

End of the Political Season

I've got to say that I'm glad for the end of the political season this year. Last night was the first election where I didn't have more than one television going in my living room. The main reason is that we only have one television, so I didn't have others to pull through the house like previous elections. Sarah and I each had our laptops as well. I'm a huge fan of the political process and I love elections. I worked on several campaigns in the past (two Bond senate campaigns, several Hulshof runs for the house, and Dole in 96). I'm glad the season is over because I'm tired of the division this year has put upon the country. I'm sick of people being called a hillbilly for being Republican and being heathens for being a Democrat.

As the presidential campaigns came to a close I've got to say I was incredibly impressed by Obama's positive approach, and dismayed that the Democratic party and most of the Republicans team took a negative route. On Saturday I went to an Obama speech and was impressed how when the crowd would boo McCain they were told "No need to boo, just vote." It's a shame this type of behavior couldn't exist in all political settings. While I was certainly leaning one way the attitudes and styles of campaigning presented a dramatic difference between the candidates that impacted my decision. I think the days of calling myself a Republican may be over, but I have difficulty calling myself a Democrat. My political views haven't changed that much over the years, but the Republican party certainly has changed. I used to joke that I was a Libertarian, which is partially true, but not very practical.

The biggest challenge that faces the Republican party are voters like me. I'm fiscally conservative and want balanced budgets. I'm also relatively socially liberal because I want to take care of the poor, have good schools, good roads and good healthcare. I think governmental action is most effective at a local level but that quality needs to be balanced across the nation. I'm incredibly protective of my civil liberties which is why the concept of a "free speech zone" makes me sick. I believe that as one of the richest nations in the world there are global problems that we should be working to solve (hunger, lack of clean water, curable disease). I want smaller government, less federal taxation, and a radical commitment to human rights.

I'm also religious, I work as a pastor. My faith doesn't just influence my decisions, my faith is the largest guide to my decisions. My faith is not a weapon to be used against those who disagree with me. Government is not about enforcing the faith values of one group on another. If people in the Church lived their beliefs, put their money and actions where they say their faith guides them governmental intervention wouldn't be required in so many cases. It's the reason we support Heifer every year. It's why organizations like Compassion are so important. It's why Advent Conspiracy is such a great idea. It's the reason congregations run food pantries and shelters and missions and adopt villages, neighborhoods, and schools.

I was incredibly impressed with both the speeches by McCain and Obama last night. I feel like both handled their respective role with dignity and class. I pray that as a nation we truly can come together and work effectively. Like it or not, Barack Obama is going to be president. It's time for us to put differences aside and restore respect and civility. I'm proud to be an American after this historic election.