Executive Pastor Online

I have often said that developing a strong Information Technology (IT) infrastructure is a key to helping an organization accomplish its goals.  Does this extend to the church?  Absolutely!

Where else is accomplishing the goal (mission) more important?  While doing some research on the topic of Technology for Executive Pastor Online, I found this post dealing with this topic and how a commitment to strengthening the IT infrastructure directly translates into a church's ability to evangelize.

The stats are a little old but the point is made very well.  Read on ...

Ten Evangelism and IT Lessons from One of America's Biggest Churches 

How did Dallas' Fellowship Church become America's fifth largest church in less than 15 years?

CTO Terry Storch has the answer: information technology investments designed to attract a new kind of churchgoer that other churches were ignoring.

Who said IT doesn't matter? Certainly not the people running this church.

Every weekend 18,000 to 19,000 people walk through the doors. Thousands more watch on the church's TV or radio shows.

Brian Bailey, Internet technology manager, heard I was in town and invited me over to see the secrets behind this church's massive success. Hey, I'm a technology evangelist and I wanted to see how the professionals do it.

Even before I got in, I could see this church was something different. The only thing visible on the side of one of their two huge buildings, from the freeway, is the church's URL. Even in Silicon Valley I haven't seen that approach taken on a church sign.

Lesson one: make it easy for everyone to learn about you -- on their terms. Coming in the doors I noticed something else: plasma screens everywhere. I felt like I was in a rock concert, or a sports event. That's on purpose, Bailey told me. The church knows it's competing against video games, rock concerts, mass media like ESPN, and sporting events, he said. When the church started, they decided to appeal to a new generation of church goers who feel uncomfortable in the traditional churches most of us attend. So, they invested in video, audio, computers, multimedia, and making the end-to-end church experience better than their competitors. "Our services are a lot like attending a concert," Bailey told me -- he handed me some DVDs so I could check it out for myself.

Lesson two: make it easy to experience your product's special attributes. You'll see this investment in all areas, from the time you walk into the church and are registered by one of the volunteers manning 50 computer stations. Plus, massive investments in audio, lighting, video technology -- this church has an all-digital sound system that is better than many rock shows have.

Lesson three: to get word-of-mouth advertising you need to be remarkable. If you are bringing kids, the volunteer will guide you to the right room (and, will print out a name tag and a receipt that guarantees that only you will be able to take a child out of the classroom). They custom designed the system (yes, it's a multi-tier .NET app written in C# and backed by SQL Server) to be extremely efficient, even in a noisy attrium with thousands of people talking "we only need the last four digits of your phone number," Storch said. Why a phone number? They found that was easier to understand than asking someone to spell their name. The screens are touch-screen and a volunteer can be taught the basics in minutes. Funny enough, though it sounds like it treats visitors like a number, the end result is that each person gets paid attention to and has individual attention that they couldn't get in such a large church without IT investments.

Lesson four: use IT to efficiently get close to your customers and take care of their needs. The atrium, by the way, doesn't look like your traditional church. A baseball or football fan would feel right at home here. In the middle is circular information desk surrounded by eight plasma screens. "The minute the service starts we switch four of them to the service," Storch said. The rest of the time there's a set of information screens that play (different ones on each screen). All high-definition.

Lesson five: if you want to be better, make sure you're better from the first minutes of someone's experience. Speaking of HD, this church was the first in the world to film all of its services in high-definition TV format. They worked with Sony on their HDTV system and, Storch says they learned so much that now the church is consulted on HDTV projects around the world.

Lesson six: if you want to be seen as bleeding edge, invest to be bleeding edge and do so throughout your company. The church's store also uses plasma screens throughout the store to display information and to set the mood. Of course there's WiFi available in the atrium and other parts of the church (not in the main worship hall, though. "We haven't yet pushed the edge there," Storch admits, but says they are looking into it). He said they invested in WiFi because they wanted to give church members a way to hang out at the church during the week and be able to stay in touch with work and family.

Lesson seven: extend the usefulness of your plant. Other IT investments they've made? A sizeable fiber-optic network that was designed to take the HDTV video load, not to mention the church's Web traffic, and other needs (there's computers in nearly every room I toured, including the children's play areas). Plus, they designed the network for future growth -- the church is now working on building satellite campuses that will share video feeds. To do that, they needed to make sure their network would never go down and have a good backbone to allow for future growth. Every system has redundancy, too (there are two digital sound boards, for instance, in case one goes down). Imagine what would happen if the computer system went down on a Sunday with 5,000 people arriving for the next service and trying to get their kids into the right classroom.

Lesson eight: design your systems so they never go down and can expand for future growth. Several years ago, the church almost went with a database back end from Oracle, but switched to Microsoft several years ago because of Microsoft's special non-profit pricing, which saved the church tens of thousands of dollars, Storch said. Plus, they liked the quality, performance, and productivity that they got with Visual Studio and .NET. "We're extremely happy with Microsoft and .NET," Bailey said. How happy? Well, one of their staff members is 15-year-old James Reggio -- he's been programming for more than five years and is working on multimedia applications for the church's TV studio. Amazing kid. I asked him "so, are you the next Bill Gates?" Answer: he has bigger goals. He says that .NET lets him get a lot more done for the church than other programming environments. While most of the computers at this church are running Windows, there are a couple of Macs (their radio show engineer was editing on a Mac when I was given a tour), most of the video is running on a Windows front end, but the back end is an SGI set of computers, along with a stack of computers running Linux that do the hard-core video rendering. "Why did you use Linux for that?" I asked. Storch answered that most the bleeding-edge video rendering apps were designed for Linux.

Lesson nine: don't be religious about technology, choose what gets the job done best for the least amount of money and staff time. By the way, now the church is selling their software that they wrote to run their church. Named Fellowship One, it looks to become as successful in helping churches run themselves as the church itself is.

Lesson 10: when you become successful, bottle up what got you there and sell it to others. I asked why he went with Windows for their network architecture (Exchange runs their email, Active Directory keeps track of domain, .NET apps do nearly everything from logging their cash, to signing volunteers in. Microsoft Great Plains and SBS keep track of the business). He said they choose Windows because most of their congregants know Windows, and there's a good pool of Windows developers and IT support people to help out too and because there's one company to deal with for support needs.

The next time someone tells me that IT doesn't matter, I'm gonna take them to church. After all, isn't that what an evangelist should do?

Check out the original post here.

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I don't know if I've posted much on the Church Development Fund (CDF). These guys are awesome! We basically owe our ability to have purchased 19 acres of land and build a 13,000 square foot facility to the ministry of the CDF.

What's not to like about this organization? They are all about providing resources to growing churches, like ours, allowing them to build facilities. They build facilities that enable them to better impact their communities. Consequently, they grow and reach more and more people. That's a good thing.

Of course, there's an investment side of the CDF. In fact, I've offered to participate in a focus group meeting in Columbus, Ohio tomorrow. This focus group is going to spend time discovering new ways to get the word out that the CDF is a good investment. The return is above market and the added benefit is knowing that your investment will go toward helping churches build facilities that allow them to reach more people.

Talk about a "win win!"

I'll post more about the focus group tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the Church Development Fund's website here.

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I've spent the last several days reflecting on my feelings about my experiences in Mexico.  I was part of a group of more than 30 that went to Juarez to build 2 single family homes.  My last few blog posts contain most of the details.

One of the reasons I went on the trip was to allow God to "tweak" me in some way about the church's role in serving the poor.  You see, I've never been on a mission's trip before.  Unlike many in my position, I was not raised in the church.  I didn't become a Christian until June of 2000 ... shortly before moving to Pennsylvania to take a job.  Therefore, I haven't had much of the experiences of many who were part of a youth group growing up or long time members of a church sending many to places like Africa.

In fact, I really didn't get the whole "missions" thing.  I mean, I know what the Bible says.  As Christ followers we are to care for the sick, poor, and impoverished.  I get that.  But, actually getting on a plane, flying somewhere like Juarez, and doing the "missions thing" myself was another matter!

So ... what happened you ask?  I guess I can't say that I get it now and am forever sold out as a mission's guy.  I did make a number of observations on the trip and do feel changed in some way, all be it subtle.

Here goes.  First, seeing the way the typical citizen of Juarez lives was sobering.  They have virtually nothing.  They live in structures built from pretty much any material available ... mostly pallets and car tires.  There were houses constructed of a combination of things (pallets, plastic sheet material, chicken wire, cardboard, tires, etc.).  Basically anything that could be scavenged and transported to a site was used to create shelter.

It was interesting, though.  It bugged me a little that one of the people for which our team built a house talked on a cell phone off and on during the day.  Should that even bother me?  I was talking to a friend about it and he said some in his van on the El Paso side of the border noticed a poor person on the side of the road with one of those signs that said "I'll work for food."  They noticed, though, that the guy was smoking a cigarette.  Knowing the cost of cigarettes these days, obviously this person (if really in need) was choosing to purchase cigarettes over food.  Is that something we are supposed to think about?  In other words, are we to judge the "degree of neediness" of the people we are helping?

Another observation I made was the level of commitment on the part of the staff of Casas Por Cristo.  The 2 guys that spent the week with us (Jason and Scott) spoke one evening about their background and spiritual journey leading to serving as a Casas staff member.  They are truly missionaries ... raising their own salaries and called to live on the border to serve.

I guess the most significant observation I made, though, was how the group from our church bonded during the trip.  There were a number of folks that didn't know each other going in that will probably be lifelong friends coming out.  I had a number of "spiritual" conversations with people on the trip that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.  Awesome!  I can say with accuracy that there are a bunch of people that have been changed forever as a result of this trip.  Am I one of them?

Time will tell.  I can say, though, that supporting organizations like Casas Por Cristo through getting people in our church involved is definitely a worthwhile endeavor.  I can certainly see us sending another team next year!

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We just completed our work for the day. And, what a day it was! The best part I think is the shower I just had!

The wind is something! Around 1 or 2 p.m. each day (today and yesterday) on the construction site the wind has started to gust. That’s a real bummer when you are in the middle of a desert building a house … especially when you are working on completing the roof. Anyway, we’re almost done. We will finish tomorrow without fail. All we have left is drywall on the inside and stucco on the outside.

Here’s the routine. We’re up at 5:30 a.m. and on the construction site by 7:00. Of course there is much to do before we leave the Casas Por Cristo “Community Center." We prepare breakfast, cleanup, and load the Casas truck with the tools for the day. Once on site, the “games” begin. Yesterday, the first order of business was to build the concrete slab forms, get everything level, mix, and pour the concrete. Of course the finish work was the trick. Sean Healy, our team leader, really knows what he’s doing and knocked it out, almost by himself, no sweat. The other major task for yesterday was framing out all of the walls for the house. There are 17 on our team and we handled everything nicely. In fact, we ended the day way ahead of schedule.

Today was the fun part. We put up the walls, did the electrical, completed the roof, and insulated the whole house (walls and roof). After that we installed the windows, added the “chicken wire” to the black board, put the roof material on the roof, and installed the doors. It looks like a house!

Jonathan, the 16 year old receiving the house along with his mother Maria, helped us every step of the way. I tried to connect with him yesterday a bit. It’s difficult to tell if it’s because of my very poor Spanish, but he didn’t seem very talkative. Today was better, though. He and I talked a bit – Spanish all the way! He seems like a good kid. He allowed me to go into his family’s current house (if you can call it that) to use the restroom. Man! It’s sobering to see firsthand how they live. They make use of everything! The house is constructed of plastic sheets (from who knows where), pallets, and a bunch of other “scrap” material. I was talking to some of the other team members wondering how in the world they get all of this “stuff” all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. Who knows?

How am I feeling about the trip you might be wondering? That’s a great question. I really can’t say at this point. I’m kind of numb to it all. Today I tried to follow our Casas host’s advice. He (Jason) suggested that we stop working periodically throughout the day to take it all in, reflecting on what God is doing through our particular team in this place at this time. It worked a little. I must say I “feel” more at this time today than I did yesterday.

The amazing thing is that this is a “free gift” for Jonathan and his mother. There are no strings attached. They didn’t have to do anything to receive it. Sound familiar?

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I don’t know any other way to say it. I’m mighty proud of my wife (Terri Stone) of almost 24 years. She is a pastor on our staff … specifically Associate Director of Adult Ministries. She is a gifted speaker with a passion for teaching people about Jesus. Her responsibilities on our staff basically fall under the heading of “assimilation.” She is responsible for First Impressions (Hospitality, Resource Center, and Ushers), congregational facing forms of communication, including our website (MovieChurch.Com), and all of our assimilation classes (Starting Point, Baptism Class, and Membership Class). She is also responsible for following up with first time guests.

Anyway, she was invited to teach yesterday morning (Mother’s Day) by Craig Casey the Senior Pastor of Princeton Community Church in Pennington, New Jersey. They have one service, and from what I hear she knocked it out of the park. Awesome! Great job Terri!

Terri basically told her story beginning as a new mother at age 18. She told of life’s difficulties and how she found Jesus along the way. Her message ended with a video that our oldest child Gail (almost 30 and the mother of 3) edited shortly after the birth of her youngest, Drew (our 3rd grandchild!). I wasn’t there (on my way to Mexico) but I bet there wasn’t a “dry eye” in the place.

Check it out …

Terri … you go girl!

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