Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey

Raise Your Hand

Growing a volunteer ministry is currently a hot topic in the church world. There are books and entire conferences dedicated to the subject. In fact, the sessions on volunteering at our recent conference had over 300 people in attendance, something almost unheard of 3-4 years ago.

Why the interest? In my view, it is because church's have discovered that volunteering is as crucial to those serving as it is to the church. When a person volunteers, he takes ownership of his church and truly connects with the overall vision. The church, of course, benefits immensely; Fellowship Church could simply not function on a weekend without our incredible volunteers. However, when you get people plugged-in to serving, you are allowing them to become part of something larger than themselves, and there are few things more rewarding.

Our CreativePastors team (Full disclosure: I happen to be married to a member of that team!) and Volunteer Ministry have developed a Volunteer Kit to address the question: How do we build a volunteer-driven church? The kit is a combination of resources which lay out the vision of volunteering and how to put it into practice, including many hands-on examples and sample materials.

The Volunteer Kit was released at the Creative Church Conference two weeks ago and we've been blown away by the response. Check it out, and see if it could benefit your church.

Bruce Springsteen > Raise Your Hand > Get it now!

Meaning Makers

Daniel Pink (of Free Agent Nation fame) is about to release his next book, A Whole New Mind. Wired has a preview article: Revenge of the Right Brain.

We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

Liberal arts and philosophy majors of the world unite! I look forward to hearing Daniel at SXSW in March.

Everybody to the Limit

Scoble hits the pause button: It's becoming clear in my life that I can't do it all.

Amen! This is a huge focus for our organization, so much so that our current series is on bridging the gap between our priorities and our commitments (you can watch or listen online here). In fact, we built a cool .NET web app to track your time and priorities, called Retrospective. The reality of where we spend our time can be somewhat startling.

Here are the three principles we emphasize as a staff:

Say No to the Good and Yes to the Great

We come across hundreds of good ideas every month - new programs or ministries, new web features or marketing ideas. In order to utilize our time and resources effectively, however, we must say no to many of these in order to say yes to those few, great things that truly line-up with our purpose and will have the broadest possible impact. And because of our intense focus on those few things, we can do them with excellence.

What are You Subtracting?

This follows directly from the first principle. Don't tell me what you're adding, tell me what you're subtracting. As your team or organization grows, you must constantly re-evaluate what you're doing to see if it is still effective and still in-line with your purpose. If it isn't, you need to drop it and move on.

Over the past year, we've subtracted four significant pieces from our main website that were not central to the purpose of the church. Now we can spend more time and resources on the great, instead of the good.

Only Do What Only You Can Do

Every person brings unique talents and passions to their work. Once those talents become clear, systematically work to strip away as much as possible so you can focus all of your creative energy on what only you can do. Develop your strengths, not your weaknesses. You will thrive and so will your organization.

Read Jim Collins and Andy Stanley for more.

Hand on the Guitar

During my mother's recent visit, I had the chance to look through family photos, something that is more entertaining every year. One photo in particular struck me. It showed my father and I sitting next to each other. I am smiling and looking at him (around 8 years old) and he is looking away while he plays his favorite Martin guitar.

The photo reminded me of a game we would often play (at least I thought of it as a game at the time).  My father absolutely loved to play the guitar, particularly in the evenings and on the weekend. I would often run and sit next to him and watch him play. I would wait patiently for a brief pause where I could grab his attention and tell him my news, or show him my latest discovery, or ask him if he wanted to go outside.

Many times, though, minutes would go by without the slightest interruption. That's when I would put my hand on top of the strings, while he was playing, and attempt to prevent him from playing. He would laugh and enjoy the challenge of trying to play through the distraction, and I would laugh because it seemed like we were having fun together. But then my hand would get tired, I would let go, and, somewhat relieved, he would continue playing. I would often get up after a few more minutes and find another way to fill my time.

Now, my father had many amazing qualities and great moments, but I look back on that now and see how obviously I was attempting to say, "Can you stop, just for a few minutes, put down your guitar, and give me your undivided attention?"

And then I think about my 9-year old son.

And this wonderful Apple laptop.

And the number of times I've said, "Just a few more minutes."

And the number of times he's said, "It's been 20 minutes. You said it would be 10."

I think about the number of times I've listened while my eyes finished scanning the screen.

He deserves better.

It looks like I have my own guitar, and no more excuses.

Das Blog, Boss, Das Blog!

dasBlog is a free, open source, ASP.NET blog engine designed to support hundreds of blogs on a single server. A new version has recently been released and developer David Hayden recommends it as the best .NET blog solution. I hope to experiment with it soon as I haven't been impressed by the alternatives.

[My apologies to lovers of bad 80's television for the title of this post]

Words Matter

Some places have Help Desks. Others have Technical Support Counters.

Apple has Genius Bars.

Which would you want to visit?

C3 Pictures

My recent recap of the C3 Conference and our session on the web and weblogs lacked one thing - pictures! Here's your chance to feel like you were there, including this behind-the-scenes view of my notes and required gadgets.

After each session, Terry and I had the chance to talk further with many of the great people who were in attendance.

The conference was as much fun for the staff as it was for the attendees. Be sure to check out Terry's collection of photos from the full conference.

It Was 21 Years Ago Today

Take a few minutes and visit Jason Kottke's site for a wonderful piece of history. Kottke has posted links to a newly released video of the original introudction of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs, 21 years ago. Whether you're an Apple fan or not, it is fantastic to witness such a historic moment and be reminded of what a leap forward the Macintosh was at that time and how far we've come since.

It's also the perfect companion video to Revolution in the Valley, an outstanding new book about the birth of the Macintosh.

FC @ SXSW

Terry and I are officially attending South by Southwest Interactive this March in Austin. This will be our second SXSW and we're looking forward to an even better week this year. The 2004 edition was held immediately after the rise and fall of Howard Dean and the rise to prominence of MoveOn.org, so the conference had many moments that were more political rally than technology conference.

This year, the focus seems to have returned to technology, with many more How-To sessions and great speakers such as Zeldman, Bruce Sterling, Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink. And did I mention that the guys behind Homestar Runner are going to be there?

You can't beat the incredible price, $250 for four days, and in our case, the three-hour drive. How could we say no?

If you'll be in Austin this March, be sure to let us know.

O2B@C3

This year's Creative Church Conference at Fellowship Church has come and gone. C3 is easily one of the highlights of the year for everyone on staff and this year was no exception. There is nothing quite like the energy of 2,000 people all gathered together for one purpose - to better reach our communities for Christ.

Our two web sessions on Thursday, WWW: Web, Weblogs, and What's Next, went very well. Terry and I had the chance to speak with over 100 church staff and volunteers on how Fellowship utilizes the web across our diverse ministries. We started each session with a 25 minute presentation, then opened the floor for questions. Out of the 100+ people, I would guess that 50 had heard of weblogs and 20 actually had a weblog of their own.

The questions were great, covering workflow, the use of volunteers, content management alternatives (Contribute and Mambo Server were both raved about), and the debate over our recent switch to QuickTime streaming. I also had the chance to tell the story of Scoble visiting Fellowship. Scoble should be happy to hear that he was discussed at a church conference!

The general sessions with Ed Young, Andy Stanley, and Rob Bell were fantastic. Be sure to check-out Terry on each of the sessions.