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"If you try to control things, that’s self-limiting. The easiest way to think about this is that if all the decisions inside an organization had to roll up to the center of the company or to one person, it’s a massive bottleneck to progress. Instead it’s very important to establish philosophies, strategies and guidelines as well as have clear lines of accountability and responsibility inside the organization."

Michael Dell, Chairman of the Board of Dell as quoted from the Abilene Christian University Videoconference (Feb. 8, 2005)

Look what I found. Here’s a picture of me in a peach shirt very similar to the one Mark found with Ed Young. Not that I’m trying to avoid that hug or anything, but it appears that something’s not right.

By the way, I think I’m going to start wearing a male necklace again. I think I look pretty good with it don’t you? In the 80s, I tried to pull off the gold chain look, but that really never fit me. It was one of the disadvantages of having a small neck. Gold chains never looked good on small-necked guys like me. Now that I see this picture, though, I think I look pretty good with one of those trendy male necklaces…especially when I wear a peach shirt.

UPDATE: It turns out this was a vast, right-wing conspiracy. Ed was really wearing a white shirt in the original picture. See the comment from Jason on Mark’s post. The only difference is that Jason is apparently much more adept at PhotoShop than I am. Mark has underestimated my raw power of discernment and aversion to physical contact particularly from other males. (Don’t over analyze. I love my mom and dad. I’m just weird.)

Mark Waltz thinks he proved Ed Young owns a pink shirt. I promised Mark I’d buy a pink shirt, hug him and put a picture of the embrace on my blog if he could provide photographic evidence that Ed owns a pink shirt. You tell me. Is that not a peach shirt? And, how do we really know it’s Ed Young? Maybe someone has just superimposed Ed Young’s head on another guy wearing a peach shirt. In fact, that looks very similar to a peach shirt I used to own. I need to hunt through my pictures and see if I can find it. In the mean time, all I can say is this appears to be a vast, right-wing conspiracy to get me to hug Mark Waltz.

Just wanted to let you know there’s quite a bit of buzz surrounding the WiredChurches.com workshops we’re hosting on the Granger campus on July 22. The phone’s been ringing off the hook here today. As of yesterday today, we already had over 140 210 registrations from people throughout the country that are planning on joining us for one of the four topics being offered.

We tried to offer a few of our most popular topics in July. They include workshops on groups, First Impressions and creative arts. Additionally, Tim and I will be teaching Simply Strategic Growth for the first time. We’ll be sharing some of the strategies we’ve implemented at Granger to attract a crowd to our weekend services. You can take advantage of the early-bird savings (deadline extended to June 30) by registering online at WiredChurches.com.

If you join us and you’re one of my blog readers, please catch me and say "hey." I’d love to meet you in person and hear a little bit of your story.

First of all, I’m back from my golf trip. Did you miss me? Seems like the site survived on autopilot with the exception of my spelling error on the golf trip post. Yes, it was supposed to be "Quiet Please." Now you can be as loud as you want, though.

More importantly, it appears that something’s not working either at Bloglines or with Feedburner. Bloglines has not updated since Sunday for people that have subscribed to my Feedburner feed. Don’t you feel sorry for those people? How will they ever survive without reading my posts?

Secondly, Feedburner is not recognizing all the subscribers from Bloglines that have subscribed to the Feedburner feed. That’s why my readership stats were cut in half since yesterday. I have messages in to both the support teams from Bloglines and Feedburner. It will be a fun little test to see how helpful their responses are to this situation. In the mean time, if you techies out there know how to correct the problem, please let me know.

By the way, that little box that shows the numbers of readers by Feedburner does not include the subscribers to my blog that signed up before I started offering the Feedburner feed. I know there are at least 50 or more Bloglines subscribers in that category. If my Feedburner numbers are accurate, that means there’s probably another 50 people that are using other blog readers (Pluck, SharpReader, My Yahoo!, Firefox Live Bookmarks, etc.).

In other words, the current estimated number of total subscribers is about 140. That means you’re part of an elite group of people that probably know way too much about me.

It’s good to be back.

UPDATE: I’m pretty impressed with the FeedBurner folks. I posted a message on their support and discussion forums and had a reply in about an hour with a couple of messages coaching me on how I needed to communicate with Bloglines. The Bloglines folks acknowledged the problem was on their end and indicated they hoped to have the problem corrected shortly. I don’t know how widespread the issue was, but it appears from the FeedBurner forum that others have been experiencing the same issue. Bloglines corrected the problem sometime this evening, and my blog is back to full strength. With that news, I know you’ll all rest easier tonight.

For several months leading up to the grand opening of our expanded auditorium, my staff and volunteer team has been working behind the scenes to implement and enhance several systems in preparation for future ministry growth. Our administrative services team, which includes finance, communications, facilities, and technology, worked diligently and in cooperation with almost every other ministry team in the church. While continuing to handle regular, day-to-day responsibilities, the team focused on these specific projects:

• implementing an automated children’s check-in system
• implementing a centralized contact management system
• developing a new logo
• implementing a new system for online event registrations which will also be used at our on-site guest services locations
• implementing an online group finder
• refocusing our overall communications strategy
• implementing a system for online ministry connections
• implementing a new contributions processing system
• developing a reformatted weekend program
• redesigning and developing the new GCCwired.com
• redesigning and developing the new WiredChurches.com which included the new ecommerce solution
• redesigning our weekly enewsletters and transitioning to a new email distribution solution
• restructuring teams in a couple of key ministry areas
• streamlining the promotions process for ministry teams
• developing new systems for facility care to accommodate all the new space
• designing and implementing tech improvements for our new facility space

I thought you might be interested in seeing what happens behind the scenes in my ministry area. Some of it has become visible. Some of it will hopefully remain invisible to most people. That’s when we know systems are really working–when they make life easier for people serving in ministry and being served by ministry. It’s perfect when the systems are so good they’re almost not noticed.

In addition to letting you know what’s been happening in the background at Granger, I also just wanted to use this opportunity to give props to my team. You’re incredible! And you’ll always be the coolest of the cool cats!

From Seth Godin’s blog: "I was walking on stage, Tom was walking off. I got to talk to him for thirty seconds. My energy level tripled. Tom Peters does that to people. He does it on purpose. Do you?"

If 30 seconds of Tom Peters is the energizer, I’m afraid 30 seconds with Tony Morgan would be the sedative. That works for Tom Peters, but I don’t think it would work for me. If I tried to energize people like Tom Peters does, I think people would see it as inauthentic. And, I don’t think people would like me.

I like it when people like me.

"But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously–take God seriously."

Micah 6:8 (The Message)

I’ve put the blog on autopilot for a few days while I head up to the Treetops Resort up in Michigan with a few of my friends to play all 81 holes on the 5 courses over the next 3 days. If I play well, I’ll let you know. If I don’t, it won’t matter because I’ll be golfing.

While I’m gone, be nice. Don’t say anything that will embarrass my subscribers. Respond with helpful insights. I’ll catch up with you when I return. (Corey, mainly I’m talking to you.)

By now you know I’m not very hip on holidays–particularly holidays that really aren’t holidays. I made a big deal about finding a church on Mother’s Day weekend that wasn’t doing a Mother’s Day service. Well, it would be pretty bad if I pointed you to a cool church this weekend that was doing a Father’s Day service.

With that in mind, I searched high and low. And, indeed, I found more than enough Father’s Day services to attend this weekend. Some of them were even offering clever approaches to hit the topic. I found "Mr. Incredible." I saw "Cinderella Man." I just couldn’t pull the trigger on those cool churches this weekend, though, because I was afraid I’d experience the wrath of the angry mothers for not treating dads the same way I treated moms.

That being the case, I’m taking you to a distant land to visit a cool church this weekend. We’re going all the way across a big ocean to Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Hope City Church looks like a fun church with a fun leadership team. I have no idea what a "beige free zone" is, but is sounds like fun…though I am concerned that, once again, pink seems to be the theme of the week.

Dave Gilpin and his team are creatively bringing the message of hope found in Jesus Christ to four different communities. And, they’re doing it in a fun way. If I wasn’t attending Granger Community Church this weekend, I’d go to Hope City Church to figure out why they don’t like beige, and that makes them my cool church of the week.

In fact, you could say they’re my favourite church of the week, and I’m honoured to mention them. (I’ve always wanted to spell with a British accent.)