Marketing and Management Thoughts

This really is an awesome flash visualization (via NYT) that you just have to check out online. It has a number of demographic break downs to see the different in how people use their time. You can also click on a part of the stacked line graph to see how that activity breaks down for the selected demographics.

Below are some quotes from the project that are particularly relevant to the church. Remember, the better we understand how people are using their time the more likely they will be to make sacrifices for Jesus.

“On Sundays at 11 a.m., about 13 percent of Americans are at church or participating in other religious activities.”

Time spent on Religious Activity per day:

By Race:

• White people spent 7 minutes
• Black people spent 17 minutes
• Hispanic people spent 8 minutes

By Age:

• 15-24 spent 5 minutes
• 25-64 spent 8 minutes
• over 64 spent 15 minutes

By Gender:

• Men spend 7 minutes
• Women spend 10 minutes
• Everyone averaged 8 minutes

View the Visualization Online

(hat nod kottke)

When I came across the blog of Josh Roberts as he lays out 10 mistakes he made when planting his church, Connect Rome, in Georgia. They are coming out as he posts them, so we’ll be updating our list as they are posted.

Here at nineteen05 we have a passion and heart for church planters. We are birthed out of a church plant (substance church) and are using nineteen05 as a platform to let us plant a church in Europe in the next 5 years. So needless to say we were excited to read through these gems.

10 biggest mistakes I’ve made so far

1. I took it way too personal
2. I missed out on life
3. I tried to promote me rather than the mission
4. I did too much and delegated too little
5. I didn’t clearly define expectations
6. I sometimes forgot that this was God’s thing
7. I didn’t have healthy ways to deal with anxiety
8. I took myself too seriously
9. I spent too much time with the wrong people and not enough time with the right people
10. I focused way too much on the urgent rather than focusing on the important

As Josh posts more of these, we’ll update the list above with links to those posts.

Earlier we’ve blogged about the importance of having a presence in online communities like Facebook and Twitter. Talking with some pastors and other friends of mine in ministry has raised an interesting point.

How does one separate their close friends, from those who know them because of their ministry? Facebook has actually built in a number of features to help you grant and deny access to various parts of your profile! Most people don’t realize this is even possible.

(more…)

Mecklenburg Community Church (website) was founded by a single family in their house and eight years later they had 5,000 members attending, 80% of whom weren’t attending a church. Their senior pastor offers some insights as to how they went about focusing on building a church of people from outside the church.

He believes there are 4 myths that churches buy into when trying to reach out and presents his reasons why they moved away from them. Also lists four ways they are drawing the unchurched in, like “Let them ask questions.”

Check out the very interesting reading. Gateway Country

It was surprising to me how relevant the article still is over seven years later. What are your thoughts?

Hat Nod to ChurchMarketingSucks.com (link).

Dreams into Reality

[HTML1]

Sometime over the next couple days we will no doubt hear about this man, Yves Rossi, in an aside to the news as he flies across the English Channel with a jet-pack. It will be a first and the Swiss born former fighter pilot is ready to give it a try.

Personally there are tinges of jealously and excitement as I hear about him setting out to do this. I don’t remember the number of tee-ball games I spent daydreaming in the outfield of doing amazing things like this. But what has come of nearly all of those childhood dreams? almost nothing.

While it is unlikely that anyone you or I know could pull off what Yves Rossi likely will, there are many things that those close to us, and those in our churches have dreamed of doing. Of the people in the pews next to us and those we meet up with for lunches and coffees there are two different types. (more…)

Same old goals get the same old excitement.

Ever notice how excited people get about anything new. They talk about it and want to be a part of it if they can. Most often for us this happens vicariously because these new things are distant to us personally. These new things generally consist of new TV programming, relationships in our peers, or a new gadget that comes out.

There are websites, magazines, and multi-million dollar industries revolving around each of these because they feed off our human excitement about something new.

So what happens when we aren’t new anymore?

One probably many non-profit organizations face on a regular basis is going stale. The freshness that exists around new things fades when organizations get older. It is this reason NGOs try to make the most of their first year or two.

We can’t be new and young all the time, and there are benefits to being established (especially for fundraising). So how do we go about keeping this excitement?

This isn’t going to be rocket science.

Think about the organizations that you’ve been a part of and ask this question, when were you most excited about that membership?

(more…)

When leaders don’t fail, no-one else will ever innovate.

Who has ever heard of someone achieving success without failing first? Every professional athlete spends more time practicing and lets not forget they were all amateurs before turning pro.

So why do we manage as if we should only experience/expect success and not failure. Those failures are the building blocks of their success. They might be of yours as well if you don’t push them away.

Leaders have to take risks that both succeed and that fail. Without this no one will feel the freedom to take steps of their own (in addition to your explicit encouragement). This molds the culture that your organization projects, both externally and internally, and will determine if you will raise up innovators from within or not.

The problem here is that we love boasting and reminiscing in our successes. If we only have success, or never talk about our failures, those around us will fear trying to live up to your standards. The more humble we are, the more accessible opportunity (and then innovation) will become to those around us.

In the last post we talked about how the focal point (mission statement) can inhibit innovation through suffocation. Here we’ll talk more about developing that culture. (more…)

Negative connotations aside, innovation is highly attractive. It draws people into an organization, or to a person. Yet often we struggle to cultivate a culture that is conducive to community. Most commonly this lack of an innovative culture comes down to a few points:

Factors Against an Innovative Culture

• Unknown focal point
• High and rigid management
• Lack of freedom
• Lack of goals to innovate towards
• Few empowered ‘champions’

Over the next few posts we’ll address the latter four, today this unknown focal point. (more…)