Scott Belsky

Scott is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for creative industries. Behance oversees the Behance Network, the world’s leading online platform for creative professionals; The 99%, Behance’s think tank and annual conference devoted to execution in the creative world, and Action Method, a popular online/mobile productivity application and line of organizational paper products.

TONY: Why does it seem that some people and organizations have a knack for making ideas happen while others flounder?

SCOTT: As we all know, most ideas never happen. But some people/teams are able to consistently defy the odds…and execute their ideas time and time again.

I firmly believe that ideas DON’T happen because they are great – or by accident. Ideas are made to happen through a series of other forces.

One big factor is a person’s ability to stick with one particular idea long enough! Most ideas are left abandoned in what I’ve come to call the “project plateau.” The project plateau is like an expansive desert, void of any oasis of inspiration or excitement. It is the pure drudgery in the middle stages of a project; ceaseless follow-ups and a lot of hard work with no clear end in sight. As we trudge our way through, we get distracted by life’s demands.  As creative minds, we also come up with new ideas that entice us to escape the doldrums of the project plateau and start all over again with something new and shiny. The project plateau is especially difficult to endure without the usual short-term rewards that keep us motivated. The usual financial reward and fanfare won’t be there for you in the middle of a project.

You know you’re in a project’s plateau when you feel isolated and uncertain if your idea will ever see the light of day.

The folks that consistently make ideas happen have found ways to keep themselves and their teams motivated, organized, and accountable throughout a project.

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Bellevue Church Management System is a full-featured, web-based, open source, church management system capable of serving large or small churches.

TONY: How did Bellevue Church Management System get started?

BVCMS: Bellevue Baptist Church experienced a dilemma in 2007. Bellevue found that the commercial church management system they had been utilizing to manage the church was no longer meeting its needs. In November 2007, Bellevue initiated the Bellevue CMS (Bellevue Church Management System) project, an endeavor to write a new church management system from the ground up.

In May of 2008, Bellevue CMS was introduced to the Bellevue staff. The legacy system continued to be utilized for all data entry, but Bellevue CMS became the option of choice for searching and reporting. In August of the same year, Bellevue extended access to Bellevue CMS to Bible fellowship teachers and lay leaders so they could better manage and track their groups. Two months later the old system began to be phased out. By April 2009, five hundred active users were working with Bellevue CMS.

Bellevue CMS was such a success that it made sense to share this innovation with other churches. Instead of adding another commercial solution to the market place, Bellevue made the the source code available to the public under an open source, but commercially protected license. This guaranteed the source code for Bellevue CMS would forever be free and open to the world. On April 19, 2009, the first public release of the code was made available on CodePlex, an open source project repository. Today, Bellevue CMS is utilized by churches across the world.

David Carroll, the developer of Bellevue CMS, has started a company, completely separate from Bellevue Baptist Church, to host, support and continue to develop Bellevue CMS for other churches as a service-based commercial business. The church has graciously offered to allow the use of their Internet connection and server room to house Bellevue CMS servers.

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Dave Travis

Continuing the series I launched last week on trends in the church, I linked up with Dave Travis recently to get his thoughts. Dave is the Managing Director of the Leadership Network, an organization dedicated to accelerating the impact of leaders. Here’s what Dave had to share.

First of all, we use the term innovation as an idea or practice that leads to higher performance. The second caveat is that we tend to work with larger churches, so it is hard to say that this is impacting all churches right now but eventually they will.

One innovation larger churches are really getting serious about is adoption, merger and takeover. They’re using “aquimergertakeover” of smaller congregations and buildings for new sites for the megachurch as a way of reinvigorating ministry in a place. The “planting” or multi-site churches are actively seeking these sites as takeover targets. This has been going on for 20 years, but now, with the rise of multi-site, churches are starting to do this intentionally as a strategy.
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Today was the start of the “Broke: Picking Up Your Financial Pieces” series at the Dallas and West Paulding campuses of West Ridge Church. Brian opened the series teaching about the fact that “God is not broke.” Here are some of the highlights from his talk:

• “People spend more than they earn and buy things they can’t afford.”
• “We don’t plan for tough times, and instead we live paycheck to paycheck.”
• “We have this idea that we are entitled to things and that we should have it right now.”
• “The reason people challenge whether the New Testament teaches tithing is because they’re looking for freedom to give less to God.”
• “Stuff is not yours. It’s on loan from God.”
• “God is not broke. Everything belongs to God.”
• “Everything we have comes from God.”
• “Are you faithful with what God has given you?”
• “If you are going to change your financial situation, you have to change your perspective.”
• “God has put on loan to us a certain amount of stuff, and he’s asking, ‘What are you going to do with my stuff?’”
• “The problem is we think we are owners instead of stewards.”
• “Some of you are so committed to tithing you are being legalistic. You need to move from tithing to generosity.”

You can watch all of the messages in this new series by visiting the media page of WestRidge.com.

You may be interested in checking out some of the ministry resources that are available. Here are the folks that are making things happen at TonyMorganLive.com this month:

faithHighway – provides total marketing solutions to attract visitors to churches

Integrity Music – check out their new digital magazine that highlights worship albums available for gifts

dc – design and communication solutions that create raving fans, inspire people, and honor Christ

Bellevue Church Management System – the free, web-based and open source church management suite

Clover – provides websites for growing churches and ministries

Disciple Making Leaders – offering discipleship curriculum and training seminars for church leaders

MAG – outsourcing qualified, professional Executive Assistants to support a senior-level church leader who cannot find or afford a full-time person

Orange – offering free curriculum that will revolutionize your children and student ministry

Outreach Events – specializes in dynamic, outreach-oriented events with people like Scott Rigsby that create opportunities for sharing faith

Screenflex – sells economical, portable room dividers for churches, schools and businesses

StreamingChurch.tv – provides everything you need to broadcast your services live

Want to get the word out about your business or event? I only have a couple of advertising spots open. If you are interested, email me for more details. I’d love to have you join our team!

Jim Tomberlin

Jim Tomberlin began his multi-site church journey in the mid-1990s when he was the senior pastor of Woodman Valley Chapel. In 2000 he went on to pioneer the multi-site model at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. Since 2005 he has been consulting and coaching churches in developing and implementing multi-campus strategies.

TONY: What’s a current multi-site trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

JIM: The last decade of the 20th century saw the rise of the multi-site innovator-pioneers. The first decade of the 21st century saw the wave of the multi-site early adopters with over 3,000 multi-site venues and campuses launched across North America. Now as we enter the second decade of the 21st century the middle adopters will mainstream the movement as it spreads around the world.

The multi-site movement began as a band-aid for megachurches that were out of room or limited by zoning restrictions. It quickly evolved into a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes and will become a revitalization strategy for stuck or struggling churches. Many of these aging churches are solid, but stuck in non-growing situations because of the inevitable social-demographic changes occurring around them and/or their inability to embrace contemporary worship styles and culturally-relevant ministry practices. Multi-siting allows stuck churches to reinvent themselves by extending in new ways and to new locations without abandoning their base. Revitalization mergers also allow smaller struggling churches to have a new beginning by being adopted by a stronger vibrant church.

The other significant development will be the rise of the collegiate model of church reproduction. This is the hybrid of multi-siting and church-planting. Church-planting churches will incorporate multi-site campuses and multi-site churches will launch church plants. Church leaders will focus less on growing their church and more on reaching an area for Christ through externally-focused multi-site campuses and “missional communities” (small groups).

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Over the last three years, I’ve had the opportunity to facilitate six different leadership coaching networks with more than 75 leaders from across the country. It’s been quite a privilege to be engaged in these new relationships. In addition to learning quite a bit together, we’ve had the opportunity to celebrate many ministry wins and walk through a number of ministry challenges. Several folks have transitioned to new leadership roles. I’ve gained many new ministry partners, more important, it’s led to new, lasting friendships.

All that to say, the next leadership coaching network will be launching in March, and I’d like you to consider joining us. Here are some things to keep in mind…

• This is not an opportunity for someone who is looking for inspiration. My coaching networks involve work. You can’t just show up. You will have to commit to six months of reading and engaging exercises with the ministry team at your church.
• This experience isn’t for people looking for leadership theory. Yes, you’ll learn some leadership skills, but this experience is designed for you to put those skills into action. Every month you will leave with new tools to implement in your ministry environment.
• This is not a conference experience. In a conference, you can sit and soak in the teaching without engaging anyone else. In this coaching experience, you will be encouraged and challenged by other leaders who will be counting on you to participate fully.

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Jenni Catron

Continuing the series on the future of the church, I recently connected with Jenni Catron who is the Executive Director of Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Specifically, I was interested in getting Jenni’s take on women in church leadership. Here’s what she had to share.

TONY: What’s a current trend related to women in ministry that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

JENNI: I’m excited to see a growing willingness to include women in top leadership roles within our churches. From teaching on Sunday mornings to serving as executive pastors to leading various ministry areas, women are beginning to serve in these leadership roles more consistently.

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Yes, people will leave the church. Sometimes it’s good to just state the obvious. My friend Scott Hodge did that today. He shared:

“You know as well as I do that your church will never be the right church for everyone. In fact, trying to be will pretty much guarantee that you’ll end up reaching no one. Actually, you will. But trust me, you don’t want them.”

Check out the rest of what Scott had to share on this topic. If you’re not following his writing, you really need to. He’s smart. He’s leading a great church in the Chicagoland area. Especially if you’re in the process of transitioning your ministry, you need to follow Scott’s story.

Mel McGowan

You’re going to love this connection. Mel McGowan spent nearly a decade with the Walt Disney Company, he founded Visioneering Studios, a nationwide architectural and community development ministry which was awarded the 2008 Solomon Award for “Best Church Architect”. He has been named one of the top 25 cultural influencers by OC Metro magazine for his role as an “Architectural Evangelist”.

TONY: What’s a current trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

MEL: I’d say that the biggest shift that I see is a move away from the paradigm of a “campus” (what I call the “Acropolis” model) to that of true community gathering place (the “Agora” model). Increasingly, both established megachurch pastors and next generation leaders are increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of a one-day-a-week, single use, internally oriented megachurch campus in which the parking lot sits empty the rest of the week. Like the ancient Acropolis, the faithful (who have made a prior commitment to “ascend” to the sacred space) are separated from the rest of the community.

The roots of the internally oriented “campus” paradigm come from monasteries and cloisters. To the outsider, this “Christian country club or compound” can seem intimidating at best and completely dissonant with the “Unchristian” perception of Jesus (as described in Gabe Lyon’s book). To the insider/Christian, it becomes to easy for this to facilitate an insular “Holy huddle” lifestyle.

With that said, some mistake the only alternative as an “anti-building” or underground house church approach. I tend to agree with my friend Chris Seay when he told me that real estate development and building can be one of the most incarnational acts that we can join God in. The trend that I see is rediscovering the role of ecclesia (Christ-centered community) as an “anchor tenant” in the heart of our cities and communities. I hesitate to use the “Third Place” term because it has been co-opted into the old campus model to mean repainting the lobby in Starbucks colors and serving coffee on Sunday morning. The real power in the term has roots in the ancient Greek agora (the predecessor to the Roman forum, Medieval piazza, and the American town square), where sacred space was always “in the mix” of where people (believers or not) “did life.”

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