Working

- posted by Dave @ 9:53 AM

 
New Work
I promise to start working on this.

My book has been out for a year. Beyond the Box: Innovative Churches that Work. Bill Easum was great to work with and you can find a sample chapter at the Leadership Network web site.
www.leadnet.org and look under resources.

You can always reach me at dave.travis@leadnet.org
- posted by Dave @ 9:46 AM

 
Live@17
Ok, I admit it. I went online today to watch the pga tour at the Players Championship. There is a hole there that gives the pro golfers fits. It is a short par 3, island hole that leaves many balls into the lake.

They had been promoting a live web feed that would show just that tortuous hole. I checked it out.

Now I have dial up access, not a really fast connection. The screen was small, somewhat jiggly but serviceable. It made me think how much video is going to be pushed through this channel in the future.

I made it about 10 minutes and then my eyes got tired. It ain’t TV yet, but soon. And this will have impact on churches.

One - it's another competition for time.
Two - it will eventually replace satellite and other distribution methods for live broadblasts.
Three - with two way capability - your small group or sunday school class may really meet online.

- posted by Dave @ 2:33 PM

 
A little confusion
Our office has been getting some calls about a recent mailing. We recently sent a mail packet to selected friends that contained several brochures within in. The number of the brochures, depended on several factors.

These included: What region of the country you are in, your role at the church and so on.

Everyone got a letter about the upcoming Joshua movie. Bob Buford wrote that letter to help bring attention to that matter.

The other brochures were either from teaching churches with upcoming events, or church planting churches that are having events soon.
- posted by Dave @ 11:47 AM

 
A few bugs
I am still figuring out blogger and my site templates. Still a few bugs in the system. Thanks for your patience.
- posted by Dave @ 11:44 AM

 
Who is my enemy?
I had a great conversation with Rich Nathan today about his new book. Rich is the Senior Pastor of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Columbus, Ohio.

I have always enjoyed talking with Rich about a variety of subjects. His new book is called “Who is my Enemy?: Welcoming People the Church Rejects.” It’s not who you think. And is a discussion of the ways the church needs to build bridges to persons.

“The big problem in the first century where Jesus lived was the Romans. They were the dominant culture and did everything wrong. But Jesus rarely criticized the Romans. He criticized the religious people for not living up to God’s standards.”

Rich said he feels that many Christians spend too much effort decrying the easy targets and end up alienating people to the gospel. His book talks about their church’s and individual ministries that seek to reach out to people with different views without being captured by those views.

Here is a link to the book. We will have an interview in one of our publications as soon as it is transcribed.

You can see the church here.
Book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031023882X/leadershipnetworA/


- posted by Dave @ 8:26 PM

 
Statistics are Tricky
In the Church Champions Update we cite with regularity various studies produced by pollsters, academics and other researchers. Most of us use statistics to help us better understand a given topic. We want to get a quantitative sense of what is going on.

Invariably, various researchers quibble with methodologies used by another group of researchers. In fact, when we run statistics from one group, we inevitably get responses from others commenting on the cited work.

It varies from:
“that person uses phone surveys and so they aren’t reliable.”
“that survey is a mail survey and so there is selection bias.”
“that is a self reported survey so you know its not the truth.”

The media people criticize the academics and vice versa. The practitioners criticize the academics, and so on.

The way I look at it these discussions, though often confusion, can actually be useful in clarifying the true picture.

Statistics are a snapshot in time and must be confirmed by other observations. So I don’t sweat it too much.

One of our regular readers sent back a great response this week to some Gallup numbers. She was a part of a team studying congregations and unfortunately signed her email with “The Congregational Lie Survey.”

She may be actually closer to the truth.

- posted by Dave @ 1:28 PM

 
Our friend Ken Hutcherson
Yes that was our friend Ken Hutcherson on Peter Jennings last night. Many of you know Ken Hutcherson as the Senior Pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Washington. His interview has to do with their church’s campaign to change the adoption laws in the US. According to Ken, the current laws allow babies to be bought and sold.

His main point is that adoption fees should be the same for babies of any race. Currently Caucasian babies carry much, much higher fees than children of other races. Hutcherson, who is black, says that white people are being discriminated against with these practices and no one will speak out. Slavery (the buying and selling of human beings) should be outlawed.

Here’s the link to the article, along with a picture of the provocative billboard they are running. I wish them well. You have to read the story just for the last line.

“ I am the chocolate enema…..” (Go read it to find more.)

By the way, Ken recently beat back prostate cancer with the Lord's help. They do a conference every year on multi cultural churches. See the Leadership Network Teaching Church area for more details.

- posted by Dave @ 8:32 PM