February 4, 2010

The Conference Scoop- Where to be and not to be

While there are lots of conference out there, look to these to help you clarify and not copycat vision

There is a great line up of places to meet and get down and dirty with clarity. Here is where I will be hanging out and speaking in the next several weeks:


Verge in Austin is Happening NOW. This is the first conference to focus on Missional Communities. It sold out around 2000 folks. The good news is that you can attend the conference via live feed. Sign-up here. Why Verge?

  • #1 Missional Communities are the next thing. We’ve gone from “mega” to “multi” to “micro”
  • #2 Austin is a great town. (Especially for those who are truly free in Christ.)
  • #3 This huge meet-up will be an inspirational high

If you want to meet there I will be coming late and staying over Sunday and Monday to spend time with Alan Hirsch with some other thought leaders. 


The following week you might want to check out the Churchplanters.com Conference in Atlanta. Why do I look forward to this conference each year?

  • #1 Sean Lovejoy, David Putnam and company host a great event with focused content.
  • #2 The vibe is real and raw- You’ve  gotta love the guts it took to plant a church in Andy Stanely’s backyard. You’ve gotta respect their results.
  • #3 Mt. Lake Church and Auxano are partnering to launch an Atlanta based co:Lab 

I look forward to seeing your there. I will be speaking twice on Tuesday and hosting a lunch if you’re interested in the Vision co::Lab


One March 3rd, Leadership Network is bringing their next online conference experience to the masses. This time its called “Aha!”  Why attend Aha!

  • #1 It’s totally free and you get to learn from comfort of home!
  • #2 40 Aha moments all delivered under six minutes
  • #3 Fresh voices will be highlighted, so get off the rock-star train. 

For Aha! I submitted one of my own stories entitled, “How a Funnel Changed My Life.”

While these are the next three, there are many others coming in the next few months where I would love to connect! More on these to come. 

January 27, 2010

If Steve Jobs Made Disciples…

What Apple Can Teach Church Leaders

Whatever your opinion of the iPad roll-out today, Apple’s ability to capture the consumer imagination and bring innovative products to life is unparalleled.  Today’s 8 minute overview of the revolutionary iPad contains these phrases. What if people talked about church saying things like…

  • When something exceeds our ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical
  • It’s hard to see how something so simple can be so capable
  • It’s going to change the way we do the things we do, every day
  • I don’t have to change myself to fit it; it fits me
  • We decided, “Let’s redesign it all…let’s redesign and reimagine and rebuild from the ground up…”
  • You get an order of magnitude more powerful
  • There’s automatic orientation 
  • Everything gets out of the way so that you can focus on the content you care about
  • We want to put it in the hands as many people as possible right from the start 
  • This is a new category, but millions and millions of people are going to be instantly familiar with it

A I work daily to help the local church reflect amazing claims like this,  I believe we have a massive opportunity to be schooled by Apple’s achievement. How? Listen to the linchpin strategy of Apple’s success:

“It’s built by our hardware team in concert with our software team and what that gives you is a level of performance that you can’t get any other way. Apple is the one place that you can really do this. We build battery technology, we build chip technology and we build software and we bring all those things together in way that no one else can do it.”

The singular application is that design from the ground up is so fully integrated, that quality and innovation are unsurpassed. In church speak, we would dream that ministry content, ministry environments, ministry people and processes are so integrated that life change and accessibility to the gospel are unsurpassed.

But we prefer not to do the work of designing, thinking and building this way. We like the message of Simple Church, or Church Unique, but get stuck talking with lay leadership about original and simple design. In the end we punt essential principles in favor of ministry environments running with imported programs. We let every staff person makes decisions based on their own “operating system.” 

January 25, 2010

Architectural Evangelism

Using Space to Tell the Greatest Story

Today I am hanging out with Mel McGowan, a thought  leader in the area of designing sacred space. We are collaborating at a blue sky session with one of his new church clients in Houston. Mel’s passion is to “tear down the metaphorical walls that separate a church from its local culture and create places that help re-connect the community to the message of Christ.” His background in film and a decade-long stint with the Walt Disney Company influenced the designs he has created for more than 60 faith-based clients including Saddleback, Mariners in Irvine and Southeast Christian in Louisville.

Why do I love Mel? While most church architects have led us to “do church” in the United States of Generica, Mel is showing a better way- the way of Church Unique.  I have worked up close with two churches that have used the services of Visionering Studios, and the product is impressive. 

The church pictured here is Northside Christian Church, in Spring, Texas. Northside is an Auxano client that went through Vision co::Lab, and brought us in to do a Guest Perspective Evaluation. Post grand opening, Northside doubled their attendance from  600 to 1200 in the first six months. This true “third space” comes with stocked pond for fishing and disc golf course among other features.  Imagine having to solve the problem of people smoking weed on your church property. Or wait, is that what architectural evangelism is all about. The first step in their stated strategy is “hang out!”  

What guiding principle drives the redemptive heartbeat and unorthodox creativity behind their design process?  They follow the tenet “form follows fiction,” rather than the traditional “form follows function.” All faith communities have a story to tell, and church buildings provide the perfect medium for this narrative. 

The bottom line: Don’t wrap your unique vision with generic brick and mortar. Find someone like Mel when its time to integrate your DNA and story into a one-of-a-kind building solution that serves as a tool for mission. Read more on “form follows fiction.”

Find out about our co::Labs starting soon both virtually and in Atlanta, Orlando, Houston and Dallas.

January 23, 2010

10 Power Principles on Church Strategy

Strategy Icons Below Designed by Auxano Creative

#1 Programs don’t attract people; people attract people (Aubrey Malphurs)

#2 Think steps not programs; strategy makes the next step simple, easy and obvious. (Andy Stanley)

#3 Strategy is a missional map, therefore communicate it visually (Church Unique)

#4 As a whole, cluttered and complex churches are not alive. (Thom Ranier) 

#5 Growing people grow people; consuming people consume programs. (Church Unique)

#6 Strategy as assimilation should not be confused with spiritual formation; one is about getting individuals into the body of Christ, the other is about getting the life of Christ into the individual.

#7 Strategy connects programs and events vertically with the mission and horizontally with one another. (adapted from Bill Donahue)

#8 The fewer specials you have the more you sell. (An executive chef  said this in an Auxano Vision Pathway, talking about church strategy.) 

#9 Churches need strategy because mission and values alone are not enough to remove competing pictures of the church’s future. (Church Unique)

#10 The two biggest reasons people don’t get more involved are 1) they don’t know how and 2) nobody invited them. (Auxano survey work)

September 8, 2009

How to Maximize your NINES Learning Experience

I spent the day at Leadership Network (LN) continuing a clarification and alignment process that started as they celebrated their 25th anniversary this past January. It has been an honor to serve them in this season of visioning. And the closer I get to their core, the more I respect their unique contribution to the kingdom.

One crown jewel in their strategy this year is the NINES.

In order to maximize this learning experience, consider the context of the offering.  The mission of Leadership Network is to accelerate the impact of 100X leaders.  What is a 100X leader? (I'm glad you asked.) The concept is rooted in Matthew 13:23.  People produce different amounts of fruit depending on the soil of their soul.  The verse references thirty, sixty, and hundred fold fruitfulness. LN taps into hundredfold leaders (100X) to accelerate their impact and to encourage the multiplication of that learning (one of their stated strategies). 

So in order to encourage multiplication, they are hosting this massive conversation called the NINES.  Over 8500 church leaders are registered to hear from over 70 different speakers. I believe this will be the most innovative and effective learning event of the year. Yet it has come together quickly and with a bit of intrigue. So how can you actually maximize the learning from this event?  Here is my advice.

1) Carve out as much time as possible to watch live.  This stuff is FREE and will be more focused and diverse than ANY conference you have to pay for and travel to see.  Grab your team and cancel your appointments. These are great thinkers and leaders.  They are not exclusively "rock stars" that we have heard from to death. 

2) Keep streaming tweets while watching OR if you can't watch live. Since I blogged on this innovative way to attend a conference click here to read more. I can't wait to watch the Emotional Resonance Spectrum tomorrow. The hashtag of leadership network generally is #leadnet, but for tomorrow's event it is #thenines

3) Zero in by asking for the Holy Spirit to help. Okay, if you are a church leader you are always praying for other people. Like me, you might forget this little step when it comes to learning. Pray for God to deliver the arrow of truth that you need to penetrate your heart.

4) Think "syntopically." This is where the value proposition of the NINES gets exponential. When you hear a dozen to seventy snapshots of passionate, persuasive nuggets from really smart leaders, look for the common themes and shared angles of the content. This is what all futurists and visionaries do.  They are not just seeing what others see. They are organizing and articulating in new ways what other people have seen but have not fully appreciated. Remember, no one is coordinating content, so common themes will be Spirit-driven.  Also remember that there is no real meaning to the order of the presenters other than trying to put out high-recognition names every hour (these LN guys aren't stupid). 

5) Focus reflection. All of this great content must translate, at some point, to meaningful take-aways based on the clarity of your own calling. My personal strategy will be to take hand written notes, that I will group eventually into no more than three categories. In my experience, if a leaders tries to carry more than three ideas, thoughts, or actions away in their wheelbarrow, he or she risks tipping over and having nothing. 

6) Act immediately. Perfect learning is the enemy to good execution. The truth is that you don't need more information to do a better job as a leader.  You need perspective, conviction, passion and stretched imagination. I think LN should host a conversation about the results of the learning tomorrow.  Your leadership will be measured, NOT by the size of your NINES notebook or the number of your compelling retweets.  Your leadership will be measured how you act with what you gain.  What will you need to stop, start, enhance, plan for, or discuss immediately with your leadership team as a result of what you learn?