Marketing and Management Thoughts

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.

I have been spending far to many nights lately working that I missed Louis CK (personal – wiki) on Conan O’Brien last week. I want to hear your thoughts.

Louis hit right on the head the entitlement mentality of the majority of Americans under the age of 30. Not only have we never faced any major struggles (as a society), our parents grew up in a similar circumstance except that they had their parents harping on them about the war (WWII). Yes Vietnam was a tragedy for our nation, but it is drastically different than Iraq/Afghanistan in terms of social/cultural impact.

Not only are some of his lines great (“You’re sitting in a chair, in the SKY!”) and potential illustration material, he has address what I believe to be one of the underlying things the current recession has touched on. That we believe we should never have to cut back, or to choose between several ‘good’ things, and that paired with a lack of appreciation spells a recipe for hard times ahead.

This video has been making its rounds on the web, and I’m interested to hear what you feel Louis is touching on during his interview.

(hat nod - swissmiss & DEtF )

If you have been using Twitter, visited a friends twitter page, or seen Facebook status show up with weird URLs in them you have likely been noticing shortened URLs. (Learn how to update Facebook with twitter)

These shortened URLs have come about because of the limit of characters you can use on twitter (140) so posting a long URL to a blog post (such as this one at nearly 90 characters) would take up nearly your whole message. Instead you can post http://tr.im/2h6l and use that to access the article about Facebook and twitter.

I personally use the tr.im service and have enjoyed it (they keep stats for you so you can know how many people are clicking on your links and from where/when).

Here is a list of the 11 Best URL Shortening Services out there. Check it out if you use twitter. I’d encourage you to pick one and bookmark it for easy access.

Warning!

While these URLs are very convenient for a service like twitter, I would avoid using them in printed material. If you have a web page you want people to go to from your church bulletin, use the full address. It will help them remember your domain name to tell others, and will have less problems with people typing them in wrong.

Example: we used http://tr.im/2h6l above and it links to our blog here at nineteen05. Clicking doesn’t have any issues here but what if you were typing and the L looked like an I… Now we’re at a German Internet sales magazine article… 2n6l leads us to an article about mobile phones and security… 2n6i to a NYT article on a potential role of Chinese savings into the financial crisis.

With that warning given, we encourage you to use these url shortening services online. But when it comes to print you are far safer to write out your full address.

It’s important in any line of work (professional or hobby) to keep tabs on what others are doing. I follow all these blogs (and then some) to keep my eyes sharp and my mind inspired in the realm of design. If you aren’t currently using a feed aggregator like Google Reader you should really start (lets you keep up with news/blog updates all in one place). Subscribe to our blog, and the blogs listed below.

6 Blogs You’ve Gotta Read

1. Swiss Miss – General Design (http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/)
   Tina Roth Eisenberg keeps this blog packed full of great design work on a daily basis.
2. notcot – General Design (http://www.notcot.com/)
   Kept up by a teamof bloggers who post about all things design. Worth checking out (and they are doing christmas product give aways right now, and it’s free to enter!).
3. Brand New – Brand/Identity (http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/)
   A beautiful blog when it comes to brand identities. They focus mainly on re-branding of large brands (like Pepsi, Delta, banks, ect). The insights shared on the new brands are really helpful to start/continue forming an eye for identify/brand development.
4. Fubiz – Video/Motion Design (http://www.fubiz.net/blog/)
   Most of what they post at Fubiz involves motion art. These videos are really well done and an inspiration to the multi-media designer inside me. I do realize this site is in french, but they post such visually stunning work (much of which is actually in English).
5. TypeNEU – Type Design (http://www.typeneu.com/)
   Type faces are gorgeous. The right type face changes everything. The days of papyrus and comic sans are long gone. This blog will help you realize the current trends in fonts, and gain an appreciation for this, all to often, overlooked art of typeface design.
6. I Love Typography – Type Design (http://ilovetypography.com/)
   Similar to TypeNEU, focuses on typography and has a lot of stunning content for inspiration.

Still not enough designy goodness?

Below are even more blogs to check out.

• http://www.productdose.com/
• http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/
• http://www.designspotter.com/
• http://designnotes.info/
• http://mocoloco.com/

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).

One of the most burdensome tasks with running a website is keeping it up to date with fresh content. So how can we get more out of the content we do create?

Often content creators initially fall under the misunderstanding that everything needs to be made new and this quickly becomes overwhelming. Now enter a phrase that will save the day…
(more…)

The western world is undergoing a dramatic shift as we leave the era spurred on by the industrial revolution and we enter into a world spurred on by the microchip. Just as with every previous shift in eras we don’t leave behind the previous technologies, only adapt their uses and move into newer technologies.

This raises the question, How do we, as the church, stay relevant in the info age?

I understand some people have strong theological opposition to the Internet and the progression of technology. If that’s you, the rest of this post will just upset you. If not, keep reading.

First we have to embrace technology, and quickly. The church has gotten into the habit of letting technological things blow past us until its obvious we need to get on board with them.

So what does this embracing look like?

(more…)