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Scoble posted lasted night about CEOs reading blogs, even though they aren’t themselves blogging. He mentioned a personally signed letter he received from "Mr. Google Guy" Eric Schmidt and another blogger friend who received a note from Steve Jobs. Just in case you’re wondering, neither of those guys has sent me personal notes…yet.

It made me wonder, though, if there are any "CEO-types" reading my blog. I know of at least one. It just so happens his office is in relative close proximity to mine. That’s why I will only say nice things on my blog about CEO-types–especially the ones that lead churches in Granger, Indiana.

Hey…if you paid my salary, I’d say nice things about you too.

I think you’re going to like this one.

Yesterday I got an email from Blair on our staff team. He encouraged me to check out Kristin’s blog. I don’t know Kristin, but she’s a woman at Granger who recently took Class 201 where we offer people tools and encouragement to pursue spiritual growth.

At the end of that class, we ask people to commit to a daily time with God. For Kristin, the result of that commitment was the beginning of this blog. I won’t try to explain it. You can experience it yourself. All I have to say is that I love Kristin’s passion for following Jesus. His mark on her life shines through her writing.

I love it when I see people pursuing God passionately through his Word, prayer, listening…in their own way…as God has uniquely designed them…but still completely focused on following Jesus.

I think he loves that as well.

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

Music: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day; "All About You" by United Live

Message: "Stompin’ Together" — Bob Laurent, Teaching Pastor, taught about the importance of living life in community with others. He highlighted several of the "one another’s" from God’s Word including be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10), accept (Romans 15:7), serve (Galatians 5:13), forgive (Colossians 3:13), encourage (I Thessalonians 5:11) and love one another (John 15:12-13).

Service Highlights: The live experience included a group of guys and gals using brooms to create the beat with dance. The video showed the rhythms of a neighborhood scene that ended with a toddler in a lawnmower disaster. (Don’t worry. No one was hurt.) The service also included a video review of the all-church service we held on the campus of Notre Dame one year ago. It’s the one-year anniversary of our Come Together stewardship campaign.

Stats: 4,725 total attendance (3,812 adults + 913 kids); 14.0% increase from the same weekend last year

Percentage of weekend attendance by service:

1. Sun 10:15 am = 28%
2. Sat 5:30 pm = 20%
3. Sat 7:30 pm = 20%
4. Sun 8:45 am = 16%
5. Sun 11:45 am = 16%

Final Notes: Next weekend is the final weekend that we’ll be using just the new half of the auditorium.

So I’m reading Robert Scoble’s blog the other day (doesn’t everybody?), and I read his post about Google’s lack of strategy being a strategy. It reminded me of my visit to Nothing, Arizona earlier this year. You’ve probably not heard of Nothing, Arizona because it’s essentially…nothing. Here’s the sign that hangs in the center of the town:

As you can see, the people of Nothing had a vision for Nothing that involved nothing. There’s really not much to the town of Nothing. There’s a gas station, called the “All Mart” and a couple of trailers. Nothing was their vision, and it resulted in nothing. Here’s the evidence:

Well, these thoughts about lack of vision, or a vision of nothing, got me in a particularly fiesty mood and I began to list some of the advantages of doing ministry without a ministry strategy. Since my last Top 10 list was so well-received, let’s see how this one does. Here are:

10 Advantages of Doing Ministry Without a Ministry Strategy

1. You give the loudest person the opportunity to decide what happens at your church.
2. Sharp leaders who are accustomed to serving in organizations with clearly defined plans for future growth won’t stick around your church. That means more ministry for you!
3. You’ll get to hone your debating skills as people argue about what to do next.
4. More meetings! Where there’s no strategy, the meetings flourish.
5. Some people call them church splits. We like to call them church plants. More mother churches!
6. You don’t have to worry about celebrating success, because no one even knows what success looks like. It’s just better to keep that a secret.
7. Rather than trying to discern God’s will for your ministry, you can just rely on dumb luck.
8. You don’t have to pray as much, because there’s nothing to pray for. As an added bonus, that means you don’t have to develop as much faith either—whatever happens…happens.
9. You can count your offerings a lot faster, because people will save their financial gifts for organizations that actually have a plan for the money they receive.
10. Your lack of ministry strategy, which is a ministry strategy, will do just fine in Nothing, Arizona.

I probably shouldn’t post on my blog when I’m in a fiesty mood, should I? Regardless of how you answer that question, I still recommend that you don’t vacation in Nothing, Arizona and don’t do ministry without a ministry strategy.

Thank you Robert Scoble…and thanks for Nothing.

One of my new blogging friends and leadership coach/consultant, Lisa Haneberg, gave a wonderful endorsement of my site this past week. She was way too kind with her comments, but they were much appreciated.

As it turns out, Lisa and I have quite a bit in common–even more than I realized. We’re both authors. We’re both bloggers. We both have a passion for equipping other leaders. And, as I learned through her post, we’re both “not very religious” people. I tried religion, and it left me feeling frustrated and empty. Funny thing is, as I read the Bible, I don’t think Jesus liked religious people either. But that’s probably a topic for a separate post.

Lisa is in the middle of a fun pilot project called “2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough.” She has teams of people from throughout the world who are participating in the pilot program. It’ll be fun to read about what she learns through that process.

I found Lisa through her other management blog called Management Craft. I especially appreciated this post where Lisa asked the question: Is no management better than bad management? In my opinion, as I noted in her comments, the answer is “yes.”

"God is sheer mercy and grace; not easily angered, he’s rich in love. He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold, nor hold grudges forever. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our wrongs. As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him. And as far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins. As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear him."

Psalm 103:8-13 (The Message)

Since I’m the "family guy" this weekend, I thought I’d try to find a church somewhere in the country that’s trying to help people develop stronger families. Not only did I find a cool weekend series, I found a cool church…or is it churches?

Seacoast Church in South Carolina is actually one church in nine different locations. They have become one of the poster-children for the multi-site movement that’s beginning to take hold in many places across America. The Leadership Network has done some great research and put together training and other resources to equip churches interested in learning more about the multi-site strategy.

This weekend you can go to any of Seacoast’s nine locations to catch their current series, Family Lies. Here’s the preview from the Mount Pleasant location. I love the cartoon intro to catch people’s attention and give them a sneak peek of what they can expect to see this weekend. It looks like a fun series.

So, if I wasn’t attending the Saturday evening service at Granger Community Church this weekend, I’d go to Seacoast Church, and that makes them my cool church of the week.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and, like any wanna-be-a-cool-dad, I’m treating my family to a new experience. We’re going to head up to Milwaukee for a quick trip and take in a Brewers game. The kids love going to the ballpark to watch a baseball game.

You need to know that I always avoid getting tickets in the "family sections" because the kids have fun watching the beer guys. It’s a treat for them to watch the antics they use to sell their product and hear them shout out "icol beer here." (That’s "ice cold beer here.") They think that’s funny. It seems the beer guys also have a lot more fun than the ice cream and cotton candy crew. So, we’re going to the ballpark to watch a great game and to have fun watching the beer guys do their thing.

Does it make me a bad dad if I’m not a "family section"-type of of guy? I hope not, because we really enjoy the real ballpark experience.

If you are using a newsreader like Bloglines to catch my blog, please skip to the last paragraph. For those of you who are on my blog through a more conventional approach (i.e. typing in the address or linking from a search engine), read on.

Some of you may be wondering, "How in the world does Tony have the time to keep up with so many cool bloggers and websites?" I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s a clever little website called Bloglines that does all the work for me. For those of you who are trying to keep up with my blog and others, you may want to consider using bloglines. It’s a free tool that you can use to subscribe to as many blogs and news feeds as you’d like. Whenever someone adds a post to their blog, including me, your Bloglines feeds will automatically update letting you know there’s something new to read. Right now, I’m subscribed to 74 different sites. It’s very simple to get started. Just sign up, and then begin subscribing to the blogs you want to follow.

For those of you who are already using Bloglines or some other newsreader, I’d appreciate it if you’d update your feed for my blog. Jason hooked me up with Feedburner today. That will make it easier for me to monitor the traffic on my site. Ultimately that means better content for you to read. Everyone wins. Thanks for your help.

Letter #3 - I was wondering if you could provide insight into how Granger handles compensation issues (i.e. salary levels, raises etc). –from Mark in Edwardsville, Illinois

Mark, I’m glad you sent your message, because it’s created a great deal of conversation on my blog the last few days. As promised, this is how much I make. All you have to do is follow this simple formula to calculate my salary or anyone else’s:

1. start with your metric weight
2. multiple that by the number of suits that you own
3. add the zip code where you live
4. subtract the number of career home runs Duane Kuiper had with the Cleveland Indians
5. divide by the square root of your mother’s age
6. do something with "pi"
7. then ask your boss how much he’s going to pay you

You didn’t really think I was going to tell you how much I make, did you?

Let me try to give you some guidance, though, based on how we try to establish wage levels at Granger. When we’re setting salaries, we primarily consider performance and ministry/leadership capacity. Additionally, we take into consideration responses to questions like these:

• What do "normal" people in our area make for similar roles? (We can’t compete with marketplace employers, but it helps us get a general idea of what similar positions pay.)
• What do similar positions pay within our organization?
• What would it cost to replace this person? How easy would they be to replace?
• What do other churches our size pay? (This question obviously applies more to pastor and director-type roles where we may be competing with other churches to keep our talent.)
• What can we afford? (It’s pretty safe to say we’d typically love to pay our staff more; however, we need to balance that with being good stewards of the resources God has provided for ministry.)

The best place I’ve found for external wage comparisons with other churches is the National Association of Church Business Administration. For a small annual fee, you can use their online compensation data to analyze wage levels by position  based on factors like budget size, attendance, denomination, region, etc. Of course, this is no exact science. A position, even with the same title, in one church, may look very different in another church. That’s why external comparisons can’t be the only factor you consider.

For more insights on how we determine compensation levels at Granger, you may check out chapter 61 in Simply Strategic Stuff, "If you can’t pay your employees well, you have too many employees."

And, if all else fails, just follow the formula I outlined above. It really works!