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I spent quite a bit of time tonight visiting church websites throughout the country to find a cool church to tell you about this week. Don’t worry. I found one, and I’ll tell you about it in a separate post. In the process, though, I found lots of uncool sites. With that in mind, I thought this list might be helpful. Now, at least, you’ll know what it might take to become my cool church of the week. Here are the…

10 Easy Ways to Keep Me from Visiting Your Church Because I Visited Your Website

1. Avoid telling me what’s going to happen at your church this weekend. I found churches that had weather reports but nothing about their upcoming weekend service. I found two churches that had prominent information about upcoming golf scrambles (which I appreciated as a golfer), but nothing about this weekend’s service. Why would I come if I don’t know what I’m going to experience?
2. Put a picture of your building on the main page. After all, ministry is all about the buildings.
3. Use lots of purple and pink and add pictures of flowers. Really. Are you expecting any men to show up? And, for my benefit, please don’t put any doves on your website. Doves scare me.
4. Make me click a "skip intro" or "enter site" link. I don’t have time for that and it’s very annoying. If I have to wait for something to load or have to click around intro pages to get to the real information, I’m probably going to skip your church service.
5. Add as many pictures and graphics as you can to the main page. My life is already complicated. I don’t have time to figure out what’s important at your church. If you dump everything on the main page, I’m assuming you don’t know what’s important either.
6. Use amateur photography. And, for the record, it would be helpful to have at least one normal looking person on your site. Do us all a favor and hire a graphic designer, a professional photographer or purchase some stock photography.
7. List every single ministry you have at your church. Frankly, I don’t care what ministries you have. I just want to know whether or not I should visit your church this weekend. My first step isn’t the men’s Bible study or joining your church’s prayer partners ministry.
8. Make it as difficult as possible for me to get directions, services times, or find information about what will happen with my kids. It’s important that my kids have a great experience. If you can’t convince me that that will happen, I’m probably not going to risk visiting your service.
9. Put a picture of your pastor with his wife on the main page. That tells me it’s all about a personality, and I see enough of those people on television. I actually found one church that had not one but two pictures of the senior pastor on the main page. He was looking mighty dapper, though, in his fancy suit.
10. Try to sell your church rather than telling me how I will benefit from the experience. I don’t care how great your church is. I just want to know if visiting your church will help me and my unchurched friends take our next steps toward Christ.

OK. I have to go check our new web design (coming in just a few weeks!) to make sure we haven’t made any of these mistakes. I’d hate it if I couldn’t visit my own church.

Now go and be cool.

I regularly receive email messages from other church leaders across the country who are curious to know how we do ministry at Granger Community Church. I’ll try to share some of those questions and my thoughts from time to time. I thought we’d open up the mailbag today to see what’s on people’s minds.

Letter #1 - Do you allow non-believers to serve in any area of ministry? –from "K" in Sugarcreek, Ohio

Well, this is an interesting question, K. I think it depends on the ministry role and the influence that person has over others. Obviously, as a church, our primary mission is to help people take their next step toward Christ. That means if we’re looking at a position in the church where someone might have relational influence or leadership influence or congregational influence, we certainly want them to be Christ-followers.

There are a number of serving opportunities in the church, however, where "non-believers" can volunteer. Examples at Granger might include helping at the food pantry, building a Habitat home, passing out service bulletins, playing the guitar, or directing traffic. Some people don’t connect with God until they connect with others in a serving relationship. It’s through that relationship that they begin to consider the claims of Christ. That’s why we try to make available some easy access ministries across the life of our church where just about anyone can serve.

Letter #2 - What are some suggestions for starting a Saturday night service? –from Kevin in Aurora, IL

Actually, Kevin, this is one of the topics we cover in Simply Strategic Growth. Let me give you some quick thoughts:

• Don’t do anything on Sunday morning that’s not also offered on Saturday night.
• Make Saturdays unique by offering more than people might get on Sunday morning–more music, more food, more drinks, more fun for kids, etc. Check out the Saturday Night eXtras at Granger.
• Advertise what’s happening on Saturday night to your Sunday morning crowd. Newcomers may not be aware they can have a better service experience on Saturday evening that allows them to sleep in on Sunday.
• Challenge people to shift for six months. The vast majority of people who’ve done this at Granger would never go back to Sunday now. They love Saturday evening services.

"If God made the universe and if God made us and if God made the world, it just makes sense to invite God into our lives and ask Him, ‘You made me–what should I be doing?’"

Moby as quoted in Relevant (May/June 2005)

My newest book, Simply Strategic Growth, arrived in Granger yesterday. If you haven’t written a book before, let me just tell you it’s a rather bizarre experience to hold an actual copy in your hand after investing a year or so of your life into a project like that. It’s sort of like finally seeing your newborn infant after nine months of waiting. Of course, making a baby is a whole lot more fun than making a book…if you know what I mean.

I know I’m the author, and you would probably expect me to say this, but I honestly think this is my favorite of the three books in the Simply Strategic series. This book, more than the previous two, really reflects the personality of Granger Community Church. The most notable uniqueness of Granger is the way we approach the "weekend experience." This book tries to unpack the values and strategies behind how we attract a crowd to our weekend services. As with the previous two books, we provide 99 ideas for you to consider. And, because Tim and I are not highly cerebral guys, you get those ideas in easy-to-read nuggets that make this the perfect bathroom read…if you know what I mean.

If you search hard enough, you can pre-order the book at Amazon. If you want a copy early, though, WiredChurches.com has them available at a discounted price. Of course, if you buy it there you’ll also be supporting the ministry of Granger Community Church instead of helping Amazon make more money, and that’s also a good thing…if you know what I mean.

I just found out that Mark Waltz is going to be my roomie next week out at the Purpose-Driven Church Conference. This presents a serious dilemma and one I’ve never faced before. Mark has recently started blogging as well. I’ve never had to share a high speed Internet connection with anyone since I’ve started blogging–and now I’m going to be competing with a fellow blogger for that connection. Fortunately, Mark is the "Pastor of Connections" at Granger. With that in mind, I’ll willing allow him to find his own connection.

As an added feature, next week’s "That’s Quotable" will feature the funniest things Mark Waltz says in his sleep. Should be a fun week!

Downloaded the new Dave Matthews Band album, Stand Up, tonight. Haven’t listened to the full album yet because I keep repeating the title track over and over again. I’m a sucker for a song with a funky beat, good sax and lots of energy. It makes my iPod and my ears happy.

It should probably not be a surprise to you by now that I deal with pride and jealousy in my life. (See this post on Amazon rankings as an example.) That’s probably why I hate it when God allows other teachers/writers/pastors to be good looking, witty, charming, intelligent–then, to top it all off, sometimes he even allows those same people to be sharp dressers. Man, I hate guys like that. It really ruins things for the simple schleps like me that don’t have it all together.

Well, Erwin McManus is one of those guys. And, regrettably, he’s released another great book–The Barbarian Way. To top it all off, they have a full-size picture of him on the cover…wearing cool clothes. They put light bulbs and life preservers on my book covers. Need I say more?

My pride issues aside, here are some of my favorite quotes from Erwin’s new book:

• "God’s will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance."
• "A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path. If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished."
• "In the civilized view of discipleship, everything and everyone moves toward the center. Discipleship is translated into standardizing everyone into the same pattern. We have equated the promise that we would be conformed into the image of Christ with a belief that all of us will be the same. Discipleship has become the mechanism for uniformity rather than uniqueness."
• "The most civilized churches have really no practical concern for people outside their congregations. The brokenness of a lost and unbelieving world is not enough to inspire the painful changes necessary to make the church relevant to the world in which we live."

Go ahead. Fawn all over McManus and guys like Marcus Buckingham with his sickening British accent that makes all the women ooooh and ahhhhh. My wife still thinks I’m pretty cool, and that’s all that counts. That’s a bloody good thing.

Here’s the "box score" for this past weekend at Granger Community Church.

Music: "Hide" by Joy Williams

Message: "Finding Life’s Rhythm" — Mark Beeson, Senior Pastor, introduced the Stomp Out Loud series reminding everyone, regardless of what we’ve been told in the past, we matter to God.

Service Highlights: The new series launch was a huge success (see the stats below). The media team developed a clever pre-service countdown. That was topped, though, by the initial video which featured guys from the band eating at a restaurant–they were eating in musical rhythm. It may have been one of the top five service elements I remember seeing at Granger. It was that good. Then, we had some live rhythms on the platform that set up the message perfectly. The arts team certainly hit a home run this weekend.

Stats: 5,625 total attendance (4,583 adults + 1,042 kids); 43.8% increase from the same weekend last year

Percentage of weekend attendance by service:

1. Sun 10:15 am = 26%
2. Sun 8:45 am = 20%
3. Sat 5:30 pm = 18%
4. Sat 7:30 pm = 18%
5. Sun 11:45 am = 18%

Final Notes: As I noted earlier, the video was top-notch this weekend. We don’t do this for every series, but I’m sure WiredChurches.com will make all the video from this entire series available on a DVD. We’ll try to turn that around as soon as possible, so you can pick up a copy. Really. You’re going to want to see the restaurant clip.

Next week I’m heading to SoCal with a group of my friends to attend Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Church Conference at Saddleback Church. Tim Stevens and I will be doing a few workshops during the conference. We’re looking forward to hanging out with church leaders from throughout the country.

To be honest, though, I’m also going because of the palm trees. I love palm trees. Every few months or so I just have to get someplace where I can enjoy them. In between trips, I enjoy the small decorative palm tree Kem Meyer gave me that sits on the corner of my desk. I know. This probably sounds pretty weird. Remember, though, I’m a Hoosier. When they finally let us out of the state, it doesn’t take very much to impress us.

Now that I read the article in print, I think I sound a little preachy. Sorry about that. Here’s my latest article from the May edition of The Church Report. Let me know how you’d respond to the question: Are people having fun at your church?