Cool Social Networking Strategy Tool

I found this interesting tool today on the social media usage and habits based on age, sex and country.

Here is an explanation of the social technology profiles:

Social Technographics Explained

View more presentations from jbernoff.

The Buried Life

I have to say that I believe "sneaking into a party at the Playboy Mansion" is a pretty banal life objective, however I think MTV's show, The Buried Life has strong potential for good. This show resonates with American culture in identifying and playing to our desire to live an exceptional life while helping others do the same. Check out the trailer:

What Makes Us Human ...

This is a long one (around 35 minutes) ... and maybe a full pot of Joe required ... but worth every minute and every delicious sip ... you can skip the intro until about 5:05 in. Great final perspective offered especially if you are a fan of Kierkegaard. Great perspective on what makes us uniquely human and how Faith can play into that.

What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me

A good way to start your day. 8min 30 sec. Grab a cup of Joe and Enjoy.

A New Adventure

Dear Arts Team Friends –

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a personal adventure I’ll be taking in the near future. A little background: Five years ago, I felt God’s call to move into ministry at GCC. So, I left my career to come to GCC. Next to marrying Chris, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I have not for a moment doubted my calling, nor regretted my decision to follow that call. However, over the past several months, I have had this sense of completion - a sense that I have helped take our teams to the place God has asked of me, but that there are higher, better places God has in store for our team. I have also sensed that God wants someone else to help lead us there.

After several weeks of processing this with Tim Stevens and Mark Beeson, I have decided to step down from the paid ministry at GCC, return to the marketplace, and remain at GCC as a volunteer minister and a future member of the Administrative Council (Church Board of Directors.) I love our church, it’s mission, and it’s values. I trust and respect the leadership of our Senior Management Team. I cannot think of a better place in which to serve and worship.

My experience as pastor of creative arts has been amazing and has helped move me closer to God. I am grateful for having been given this opportunity. I am grateful for having been able to serve with each of you - it’s meant more to me than you could ever know. Over the next few weeks, Tim and the SMT will be working on my transition plan. My goal is to leave and lead well through this change and help position our team and our church for an amazing future.

It’s been a true pleasure to have been your pastor. Thank you for continually sacrificing and serving Jesus with your gifts in our church. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Your Friend in Christ,

- Butch

Wisdom

I've been privileged enough to find some of the talks given at TED by Barry Schwartz and thought I should share this with you. Grab a cup of Joe and enjoy!

Transformational

Years ago, I worked with a woman named Jane who was a phenomenal computer programmer. She specialized in an older language called Cobol, which in the computer world, is a language comparable to Latin. That is, its a language that's dead or at least dying. In the company where we worked, many of our automated systems were driven by Cobol and as a result, she was a person in demand. Not only because of her special knowledge, but also because she had a positive attitude and a she was a very hard worker. Everyone wanted Jane working on their project team. In short, Jane rocked.

As time passed and the company grew, it was decided (and rightly so) that the systems that had for many years given the company it's competitive edge, needed to be upgraded to a more robust system, a better and more reliable platform. This, we all believed, would help to ensure the company's long-term survival. It meant moving away from the old language and to a newer one.

As a result, the company took on a huge initiative and for quite a while Jane grew even more in demand. As other programmers began migrating code, they called upon her to translate her native language to theirs. She worked hours upon hours and months upon months until tens of thousands of lines of code had all been rewritten.

The thing that puzzled me about Jane was that she worked like a maniac to ultimately make herself obsolete. She had to have known that after the code had been migrated, the need for her skill at our company would have been reduced to almost nil. It was a little like she was digging her own grave - except instead of using a shovel, Jane used her keyboard. The astounding thing was that she did this with a relentless pursuit of excellence and with an amazing attitude. Jane was willing to risk her own immediate comfort to get others and herself to a better place.

It's been years since I watched all of that and I'm not sure what ever happened to Jane, but if I were a betting man, I would bet that it was something wonderful, something transformational. Self-sacrifice is foundational to our Faith and the greatest expression of love. My Faith and my experience tells me that we are all charged with the task of making ourselves obsolete, of transferring what we know to others, to our youth, to our coworkers, and to our supervisors and leaders, so they can move to a better, more reliable platform.

Now, don't get me wrong. I want to be, and I think we all should be, life-long learners. I believe we all need to sharpen our skills, remain strong in intellect and virtue, and stay true to our calling. We should in everything, be the very best we can, for as long as we can. But I also believe we are all eventually called to attempt to help eliminate our jobs, to hand off, to make room for others, to move others to the next level, to create opportunity, to migrate our current reality to something new, something better.

I believe something wonderful, something transformational for everyone comes from that.

Too Many Jellies for the "Nones?"

I read a compelling article last night in the November 6th issue of The Week magazine called Losing our Religion. A new study by researchers at Trinity College found that 34 million Americans have no religious affiliation - about 15 percent of the US population. That number was at 8 percent in 1990. This group is referred to as the Nones.

Less than 10 percent of the Nones are atheists. The others 90-plus percent believe in something higher but not the God as described in the Bible. They are "skeptical about organized religion and clerics while still holding on to the idea of God."

The article also concludes that while all religious institutions (churches, mosques, synagogues) have seen the decline, the hardest hit are mainstream Protestant churches (including mega churches) seeing declines in attendance of 20 percent of more in recent years.

The article also states that "denominational loyalty has eroded as church-goers 'shop' for new congregations they hope will better suit their values and tastes."

I have witnessed this, perhaps you have, too.

Church shopping. While this is never been a goal at GCC to reach the already churched, I have experienced this phenomenon on my own teams. Some people leaving for the greener pastures of other churches and some people coming into our church looking for something better. There are many church choices in our community. There is a church available for almost every teaching or worship flavor you could want. And, if your favorite flavor is not available locally, you can probably find your flavor easily on the Internet - what you want, when you want it. It's a church consumer's paradise. Or is it?

I recently attended a one-day seminar conducted by Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior at the graduate school of business at Stanford university and co-author of Made to Stick. He cited a study about choice and the sales of jelly. A table was set out offering 25 flavors of jelly for a week. Many people stopped by to visit the table and few sales were made. The next week, same store, same table, 6 flavors were on display. Fewer people stopped by, but sales of jelly were 10 times greater.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why Too Many Options Lead to Dissatisfaction (check out his TED talk - 19 minutes) tells us that many choice options lead to consumer paralysis, mental confusion, and regret about possibly having made the wrong choice. The result? No choice at all or extremely heightened dissatisfaction with our choice. Could this be the mental and spiritual condition of the Nones? Of church shoppers?

It seems many people are stopping by the church jelly stand in America, but few are buying.

While I do not have the answers to these questions, I think they must be asked and considered:

Are church planters, with the good intention of reaching niche segments of the lost, inadvertently creating choice-saturated markets that create confusion and regret for all church consumers?

Is it possible that the multi-site growth initiatives of mega churches around the country are actually hurting the church as a whole by adding more choice options to already crowded geographical and cyber church markets?

I believe in the multi-site movement. I think it helps big church become small for consumers who are better served by a smaller congregation. However, I think it will be imperative that churches strongly consider what it means to inject another church into a market even and especially if it's flavor is different.