I've Been Thinking About This…

I think this is clever marketing. In Japan, although newspapers are more widely subscribed to than in the US, the publishers can see an inevitable decline as the next generation moves up. They also observe that the next generation is crazy about manga – a stylized form of cartoon.

Wired Magazine on 'Manga News'

Putting the two together, they are appealing to young potential readers by setting the news into manga – real news in cartoon form. Talk about adjusting your approach to meet the culture!

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Evidently I like the books that are part of the Leadership Network Innovation Series. Dave & Jon Ferguson’s The Big Idea ¹ which I reviewed here and Larry Osborne’s Sticky Church ² reviewed here were both significant reads for me, and now Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon & Warren Bird’s A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal (Leadership Network Innovation Series) ³ dropped in wanting to be read and I’ve dog-eared many of the pages, just as I did their previous book, The Multi-Site Church Revolution ⁴.

The authors seem to enjoy drifting around the country visiting other multi-site churches – and they must have done it a lot in preparing this book. It’s a great scam! I only wish I’d thought of it first – but it’s always such a big deal for me to get organized for travel. However, I think they should take me with them for the next book.

‘Roadtrip’ is not an obvious book. Obvious would have been to write a chapter on each church visited, list the goods and bads of their implementation, then perhaps the history of the transition and a bunch of facts. And they do that, to a certain extent. But they also use each chapter to open up a sort of discussion on other areas of the multi-site challenges: technology, for instance (chapters 6 & 7) or international campuses in chapter 9. The end result is that they cover different approaches to multi-site – Do we want to open a new campus locally, in another state, in another country, on another continent, even on another world (the internet (not Mars (yet)))? Does the preaching happen live because the other campus has its own teacher? Or does the preacher drive from one campus to the next to preach? Or is a message transmitted by satellite or the internet or mailed or driven around? All these have their discussions. Then again, what triggers the church to open the new site? Is it a deliberate spin-off, or did the second site start as a church in its own right and merge in (and why)? How do you go about doing this? What are the hard-and-fast rules, and what are the guidelines? (See IPOD for instance, chapter 1.)

(As an aside: Not so sure about the (somewhat difficult to read) infographic on p. 17 that has 6 milestones of multi-site history; number 1 is the birth of the Church and number 5 is the publication of their previous book. Seems like the relative importance of things went adrift somewhere there – not sure I’d put my book on quite the same level as the birth of the Church!)

Their definition of ‘Multi-site’ is “one church meeting in multiple locations, sharing a common vision, budget, leadership and board” (p. 10).

• You don’t have to be a mega-church to go multi-site.
• 10% of all Protestant Christians in the US and Canada worship in a multi-site church. (This seems high to me, but I’m convinced that multi-site is a trend that God is using – read ‘Is God Dismantling Denominations?’ for more on that.)

I appreciated the summary facts about each church at the front of the chapter. As it happens, many of the churches they visited are the same ones that get me excited about church innovation, and so I get this extra low-down on them. Cool.

Other points of interest:

• What kind of madman launches multiple new campuses at the same time? I mean, why would it even cross your mind? (See chapter 12 for how well it worked.)
• What’s the difference between being a church with multiple sites and a church of multi-sites (See chapter 3.)
• Think a long-established liturgical church made up of parents and grandparents can’t go multi-site? Wrong. (See chapter 3.)
• Do not overlook the appendices. They’ve got some great summary information – resources, job descriptions and pitfalls to avoid.

There is one page in the book that I think is very wrong (sorry guys!), and I realize that the authors may have been more carried away with the idea than considering the ramifications: Chapter 6 has the story of the woman who lives in Texas but every Sunday turns to her old church (in Florida) on the internet for her time of worship. True, some weeks she invites friends and family over to watch with her. But we’re specifically told that she is not connecting to a local church. Usually when you move to a new town you put down new roots; you find a new church; you make new friends and enjoy and grow from their fellowship. It’s not all perfect, but it’s important. Sad to say, at this point the book lionizes the fact that this woman ‘and a growing community of people’ have used the internet to remove themselves from fellowship. This self-isolation – or clinging to the past – is emphatically NOT what we are called to do as Christians.

OK, flame off – I’ve just written about the only bit I disagree with. Not bad for 3 paragraphs of an entire book.

In summary and in the main, I found it a tremendously helpful book. Questions that have been surfacing as my church plays with the ideas involved in expansion – such as planting, moving to a second service or going multi-site – are finding answers here. And between it and its predecessor, The Multi-site Church Revolution, a good ‘roadmap’ of options and their costs has been laid out.

Give it a read – it’s a tremendous resource and documents the early days of what I am convinced is one of God’s next steps for His Church.

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• Mike did a stellar job in adult Bible study this morning on singleness in the Bible – focusing on the New Testament, his examples were John, Jesus, Paul and Mary.
• Worship team was down a lead guitarist, a pianist, 1 male and 2 female vocalists. They were awesome! If that’s what they’ll sound like, I’m really encouraged about going to 3 teams in a couple of months.
• Sorry to see the ‘Q’ trailer finish – the video was great.
• The elders have started to pray in the service – Terry did a great job today.
• I gave a message on ‘How Should We Then Live’ – about cold, hot and lukewarm Christians.
• I also challenged the congregation to join me in reading through 1 Peter this week – a chapter a day, Monday thru Friday. I’ll blog on the chapters each day.
• I also snuck in a plug for @votd, the verse-of-the-day twitterbot that delivers a Bible verse to you each morning.
• The prayer team were ready willing and able – we had a few more on team, and a few folks went forward for prayer again at the end.
• Next week we’re starting our ‘Love in New England’ series – Pastor George Smith is going to be preaching it up on Mothers Day. That’s going to be worth hearing! Here’s the rough lineup at present (although we may have to bump a week or two to insert things like the confirmation graduation):

  

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• Worship team did a tremendous job as ever.
• Singing ‘I Exalt Thee’ is always so powerful.
• Dropped a couple of new ways of doing things on Todd who was running the projector, but he handled it flawlessly (at least, I assume he did – the screen was behind me!)
• Pastor Warren got a chance to thank the church for his ‘exit gift’ – had a couple of photos of the cruise.
• Always amazes me that the sound guys can figure out what buttons to push and twist on the sound board. I get up there and it just works.
• We’ve been using a video trailer from CrossPoint.tv that they gave us permission modify – adding that bit of creativity as a walk-on seems to make it a little more connective somehow.
• Spoke today on Forgiveness – outline posted here earlier today; sermon already online here.
• A lot of folks came forward for prayer – so glad Ryan said to pull the prayer team forward to this week.
• In a couple of weeks we’re stating a series called “Love in New England” during which we’ll continue to offer prayer at the end of each service. Only problem from today’s service I can think of – we need more people on the prayer team (which is a really good problem to have)!

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List of books I’m reading now (or RSN):

• Andrew Murray. With Christ in the School of Prayer: A 31-Day Course in Christian Prayer, with Note on George Muller. Spire Books. Paperback, 1972 – with my small group.
• Various commentaries on the book of Revelation for adult Bible fellowship at church
• Mark L. Waltz. Lasting Impressions: From Visiting to Belonging. Paperback. Group, Dec. 8, 2008
• Dan B. Allender. To Be Told: God Invites You to Coauthor Your Future. Paperback. WalterBrook Press, Nov. 7, 2006
• Bob Kauflin. Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God. Paperback. Crossway, Mar. 31, 2008
• Dan Kimball. They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. Paperback. Zondervan, Mar. 1, 2007
• Jack Stack. A Stake in the Outcome: Building a Culture of Ownership for the Long-Term Success of Your Business. Hardcover. Currency/Doubleday, Mar. 19, 2002
• Francis Chan. Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. Paperback. David C Cook, May 1, 2008
• Ronald Rolheiser. The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. Paperback. Crossroad, Feb. 1, 2005
• Terry Nance. God’s Armor Bearer Volumes 1 & 2: Serving God’s Leaders. Paperback. Focus on the Harvest, Dec. 2003
• Tony Morgan. Killing Cockroaches: And Other Scattered Musings on Leadership. Paperback. B&H Books, Mar. 1, 2009
• Geoff Surratt. A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal (Leadership Network Innovation Series). Paperback. Zondervan, Oct. 1, 2009

I’m just finishing off the last one, Multi-site Roadtrip, and will be writing a review in a couple of days.

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The Leadership Network have just released what I might call the ‘anchor speakers’ for THE NINES conference tomorrow – like anchor stores in the mall, these names are well-known and provide place-holders – times when you will want to be there through the day. They’re all so great you’ll want to be present for each hour. Here’s the list (times converted to Eastern):

• 10am – Troy Gramling, Mark Beeson, Anne Jackson, Dave Ferguson, Scott Hodge
• 11am – Perry Noble, Stacy Spencer
• noon – Dino Rizzo, Nancy Beach, Steven Furtick, Reggie McNeal
• 1pm – Craig Groeschel, Leonard Sweet, Greg Surratt, Jon Tyson
• 2pm – Margaret Feinberg, Larry Osborne, Matt Carter, Pete Wilson
• 3pm – Neil Cole, Reggie Joiner, JD Greear
• 4pm – Mark Batterson, Dan Kimball, Mark DeYmaz
• 5pm – Jud Wilhite, Brian McLaren, Bob Roberts, Rick McKinley, John Ortberg
• 6pm – Alan Hirsch, John Bishop, Toby Slough, Ed Stetzer
• 7pm – Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, Brad Powell
• 8pm – Darrin Whitehead, Brian Bloye
• 9pm – Eric Bryant, Nancy Ortberg, Rick Warren

Some big names there, and some of my favorite speakers. I’m at least as excited that there are folks I’ve never heard of. If only a few of them are as good as the ones I know, I’m in clover.

Not sure why they didn’t list them all – they said ‘We don’t have room to list every one of the speakers here’, but as it’s an email I’m not sure what that means.

Also – vindication! – I’d like to note that this will run for 11+ hours as I predicted here last week. (I’m so proud…)

There’s almost 9,000 people signed up at this point, and lots more who are watching at central locations. Hope you can join us for the day tomorrow.

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