Running out of room at church – ask folks to leave

This might sound counterintuitive, but Craig Groeschel at LifeChurch.tv has a series of articles on getting folks to leave your church.
Groeschel suggests that if folks aren’t behind your vision or mission and moving your church forward then they’re dead weight.
Groeschel says he preached the church’s vision in an attempt to get everyone on board. If people weren’t on board with the vision, he asked them to find another church.
He even offered brochures from 10 other churches he knew and recommended. It was a serious challenge and 500 people ended up leaving.

I boldly but lovingly asked everyone to “sell out to Christ through a local church.” If it was at Life, great! But if they couldn’t fully buy into the vision, I asked them to find another church.
The next week, we had about 500 new seats for people who could get excited about the vision. Within a short period of time, God filled those seats with passionate people. Many of those who left our church found great, biblical churches where they could worship and use their gifts.
Everybody won!
That’s why I sometimes say, “You can grow your church by asking people to leave.”

Wow. Groeschel said churches also need to create environments where people can leave a church graciously.

To have a really healthy church, you need to develop a climate that allows people to leave your church gracefully.
The church I came from years ago was sort of like the movie The Firm. Once you were in, you could never leave–at least not without controversy.
If you left the church, many people thought you were:
1) Betraying the pastor
2) Abandoning your friends
3) Disobeying God
After someone left, they were treated like they were leaving Christianity. That’s a tragedy.

I can say I’ve felt some of that in the past after leaving other churches. Some of those relationships are probably strained today because of it others have been rebuilt or maintained because of mutual understandings and grace on both sides.

Great music and the news

OrangeNoiseRadio is still waiting to hear more about the negotiations between webcasters, NPR and SoundExchange over the royalty rates webcasters must pay for music programming.
We’re standing by Live365 in agreement that artists should be paid royalties, but Internet radio stations shouldn’t pay more than their fair share. Terrestrial and satellite radio stations should have to pay the same high royalties proposed by the Copyright Royalty Board on March 2, 2007, or Internet radio stations should receive a the same lower rate as other stations.
I encourage you to find out more about the latest updates, including a last minute deal made by congress to keep the stations on the air. Visit savenetradio.org for more info.
In the meantime, OrangeNoiseRadio is proud to announce we’ve added an hourly news broadcast from USA Radio Network as well as the Amber Alert System.
Now you can hear your favorite music, 24 hours a day and stay up to date on the latest news every hour between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Why listen anywhere else?
Check it out and show your support by becoming a VIP listener at: orangenoiseradio.com

Why do leaders fall?

From this morning’s Bible study?
Why does it seem that the biggest and most publicized failings of Christians often come from those caught in the sins they’ve preached the most against?
Why does it seem that a churches with a “high standard” of righteousness in certain areas (i.e. pornography, drugs, alcohol, adultery etc) have many people who fall into the trap of sin in those very issues?

Looking for an audio engineer

Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas is looking for a new audio director who will help the church transition from an analog audio system to a digital system (The Digidesign Venue).
It could be an exciting ministry for someone. Check out Church Video Ideas for more info.
I might be interested if it was closer and I didn’t love my church so much.
Which raises an interesting question. Should a church go outside it’s walls to hire a technical team, web designer, worship leader, secretary or other staff members? Or should a church look for people within the church already to fulfill those duties? Should positions be based solely on skill levels or more on the basis of availability and people who have caught on to the vision and goals of your church already?

I don’t know which I dislike more

When Laurie moved into our new place I moved my DSL with SBC/AT&T to her/our new place, along with my Linksys Wireless Router.
I never had a problem with it when it as at my old loft and I used my XP laptop.
But for some reason, Linksys and Mac don’t like each other. In fact despite their work on the iPhone I don’t think AT&T and Macs like each other either.
Laurie’s Mac works fine when it’s plugged into the router but everytime we tried to make it wireless it would suddenly screw up the Internet connection and both of us would be booted from the Internet.
It took several weeks and phone calls before I was able to finally get both of our computers running fine.
Then during our lazy Sunday afternoon the Internet went down. I don’t know what happened. But it went down. Good ole’ AT&T.
I worked on it for about 30 minutes and said forget it – I don’t want this headache right now.
I tried again later and we discovered we were back at square one. The Mac keeps booting the Internet connection.
Somewhere along the way, while trying to get the Internet back up, the router was reset and it apparently lost all the settings we had worked on to get the Mac talking to the router and Internet fine.
I worked on it later Sunday night, Monday evening and now again for nearly 3 hours tonight. And still no progress.
I guess I’m going to have to suffer through another tech phone call and being told to “be sure your router is plugged in correctly.”
Arrrgh.
Like I said, I don’t know which I dislike more… Linksys, AT&T or Macs. But considering my Gateway and Toshiba laptops with XP installed on them haven’t hick-up’d once since I turned the Mac off…. I think I know which one I’m leaning towards.

Huckabee’s online progress

From the Mike Huckabee campaign today (via email):

As a blogger for Huckabee, the campaign has asked me to share with you some insights into it’s online efforts. My firm managed the redesign of the campaign website www.mikehuckabee.com.
First, the campaign is headed in a postive direction online and in the third quarter you can expect continued, steady growth. That said there is obviously significant room for improvement.
The statistics below are a snapshot of some of the campaigns online activity. Without giving away too much they do indicate growing momentum.
A look at Mike Huckabee’s 2nd Quarter Online Results:

  • 35% of 2nd quarter fundraising report came from online contributions
  • 378% increase in number of unique online visitors over the first quarter (note: first quarter statistics are for February and March only, this still represents a sharp increase)
  • 81.9% of dollars raised online came in last 6 weeks of quarter (post South Carolina debate).
  • 42.3% of dollars raised online came in last 14 days of quarter.
  • Bloggers for Huckabee list roughly doubled.
  • The average contribution for the barber pole campaigns was $48 despite asking for minimum of $15. The barber pole technique and the obvious momentum gained from each successive debate performance resulted in a 404% increase in the number of online contributions.

Looking forward, the key to continued growth is building a vibrant list. The initial indications are good for this quarter. In the first two weeks of July, with the switch to www.mikehuckabee.com the campaign has seen a dramatic increase in traffic.
Later today, I will share with you some of the campaign’s online goals for the third quarter and discuss ways your blog can assist the campaign in reaching them.