Open Source Evangelism

I'm a huge Open Source proponent. But not just for software and not just for business.

I believe churches ought to be leaders in using Open Source methods to spread the gospel. Hey, we're all on the same team and working toward the same goal. We should be able to share our work with other churches to help further our goal. Likewise, if we improve something somebody else has shared we should share it back.

That said, Crossroads recently embarked on a unique marketing campaign for our upcoming series entitled I Don't. Pastor Scott brought back the idea for the marketing campaign from a conference he went to. There he learned of another church that had used this nearly identical campaign with great success.

You can read about our campaign in the local newspaper and view the relevant website at ihatemymarriage.org. Some might call this shameless copying. I say it's shameful not to copy it. If it works to further the work of Christ then by all means use it.

Standardization

At Crossroads we have people using all three major platforms -
Windows, Mac, and Linux. Most of our volunteers use Windows, but among
the staff we have people using all three.

This can cause some
difficulty when trying to pass files back and forth between systems.
For this reason I put together a draft of my thoughts on standardization.

Site Design

We’re currently in the middle of trying to get the Crossroads
website overhauled. We’re moving from using flat HTML files (with
embedded Perl using Mason) to Mambo.

That’s not the biggest struggle though. Deciding what the site should look like is the most difficult.

We’ve
come up with all kinds of cool designs and what I finally realized is
that we need to establish our target audience and who we want to
attract. Each design we come up with has some elements of Crossroads,
but others that somehow don’t seem to fit.

The
reason we’re having difficulty choosing a design is that we haven’t
established clear requirements for our design. We’ll be putting a team
together to develop these requirements and then going back to the
drawing board.

The other night we watched The Fast and the Furious. It’s really not my style,
but Shari said to me, "you know, this is what the people of this area
really like," and She’s right. How do you bottle up something like that
and infuse it into your site design?

Mambo

I keep seeing positive publicity for Mambo like this recent article. This makes me happy because it confirms my choice of Mambo as a platform to move our website to.

Easter at Crossroads

Easter at Crossroads was truly amazing. We packed out the 9:00am
service and had significant overflow. The 11:00am service was packed as
well. We had a total of 1535 people (an all time high) at Crossroads on
Sunday.

But that’s just the icing on the cake, the truly important part is that we had 93 decisions for Christ! That just blows my mind.

Sometimes
it’s hard to remember that this is what it’s all about. I get so caught
up in the ministry I’m doing that I lose site of why I’m doing it.

We need constant reminders like this to keep us on track. It’s not about us and our ministries, but the results in souls.

Leadership

I recently finished listening to The Next Generation Leader by Andy Stanley. I have an hour drive one way to work each day so I listen to books from simplyaudiobooks.com. After I finished I listened to Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels.

Both are excellent books but much different in thier approach. Next Generation Leader is a much smaller book (3 audio cds) whereas Courageous Leadership is at least 3 times as long (7 audio cds).

As a fledgeling leader I found the Next Generation Leader
to be just what I was looking for. Andy makes five basic points and
really makes you understand each of his points. This makes the book
very digestable and applicable to beginning leaders.

Bill Hybels
has written a masterpiece of leadership that is beyond me at this
point. I was amazed at the depth in his book and the wisdom he bestows,
but it will take many readings of his book to truly digest and apply
all that he has to say.

To sum it up Next Generation Leader is a excellent primer for leadership. Courageous Leadership is for those who want to take thier leadership to the highest level possible.

Mind Mapping

I just discovered Freemind
and I’m really digging it. I’m trying to get my life organized a little
more than it currently is. Being scatterbrained certainly isn’t helping
me get things done.

Freemind is Java based so it’ll work on Linux, Mac, and even Windows.

You can view my mindmap
on the web. It’s a Java applet so you must have Java installed to view
it (version 1.4). Just click on the little bubbles and you’ll be able to read my mind.

Church Blogs

Well, church IT blogging seems to be all the rage now so I figure I’d better get on the bandwagon and get blogging.

Check out:

• Brian Bailey’s Blog
• Terry Storch’s Blog

Hopefully this blog will be useful for other church IT guys and/or participants in ministries at Crossroads or other churches.