TonyMorganLive.com

I love being on the bleeding edge of technology. With that in mind, I volunteered to be one of the first NewSpring staffers to make the shift from using Microsoft Outlook to Google solutions. I’ve been using Google for several years to manage home email and calendars. I’ve been using Microsoft Outlook, though, for I think about 15 years to manage work email, calendar, contacts and tasks.

Today’s a brand new day. Here’s what the current set up looks like:

• We transitioned email to Gmail yesterday.
• After that switch took place, I imported my Outlook contacts into Gmail.
• I imported my Outlook calendar into Google Calendar. The huge advantage with that is that I no longer have to manually sync my Outlook Calendar to a Google Calendar for my wife to have access to my schedule. Love that!
• For task management, I’ve elected to use Remember the Milk. There’s a Firefox plug-in that allows RTM to integrate with Gmail. That makes it easy to convert email messages into new tasks.
• I’ve also started using Jott to add tasks to RTM when I’m on the road. Jott converts voice into text and automatically adds new tasks to my list. Very slick.
• The only missing piece to the puzzle is a solution the IT team (that’s Jared) needs to implement to allow me to access my email and calendar from my phone. That’s coming later this week.

And, yes, if you’re keeping track at home, this entire package can be yours for next to free. That’s one of the nice indirect benefits of moving in this direction. That means more dollars for front line ministries in the long run.

Here are some of the other immediate benefits I’ve noticed:

• Web Outlook has always been a stinky solution in my mind for when I’m away from the office network. Now everything is easily accessible when I’m away from the office through Google’s web-based solutions.
• Gmail rocks. I love the way it groups messages by conversations. I also like being able to tag conversations by projects.
• Google Chat is built right in which will be important as my team goes multi-site.
• We’re going to be able to take advantage of Google Sites to be our internal portal for sharing and exchanging documents and communications across multiple campuses.
• Google search is far superior to anything Microsoft has ever developed for it’s software solutions. The days of hunting for messages in my "deleted" and "sent" folders is behind me. Yippee!

No transition like this is without pain. I’m sure I’m going to experience something that’s going to be somewhat of a setback. But, honestly, so far the transition has been very positive. I’m loving the new set up.

Now, the only question in my mind is whether or not I should test-drive Google Docs and ditch Microsoft Office. It may be time…

Yesterday, Perry talked about how we need to fully surrender everything to God. Here are some of my favorite lines from his message:

• "When the Gospel takes root in someone’s life, everything changes."
• "A 95% commitment to Christ is 5% too short."
• "God doesn’t want anything from you. He wants everything."
• "If God loved us based on our performance, everyone in this room would be totally screwed."
• "God will forgive us for our past sins, but he will always deal with our current sins."
• "We will never understand what he expects until we discover who he is."
• "Until we understand what he expects, we’ll never give him our very best."
• Referring to Malachi 1:10: "This is where the fertilizer hits the fan…if you know what I mean."
• "If your offering means nothing to you, why do we expect it would mean anything to God."

I love stories like this. God created us to experience life in relationship with others. And sometimes, that means we need others to pick us up when we are down.

I just wanted to take a moment this morning to introduce you to the newest sponsor of tonymorganlive.com. I’ve been a big fan of Fellowship Technologies for several years. In case you’re unfamiliar with their service, they provide church management software for churches like Fellowship Church in Dallas (where they got their start) to NewSpring Church (yep, we’re using it to go multi-site) to the church around the corner (it’s for all sizes).

One of the reasons I love their solution so much is that it’s web-based. They handle the backups and the server maintenance and the security measures. We just use their solution to track ministry connections for everyone that takes a spiritual step at NewSpring. That includes tracking things like home group participation, volunteer teams, baptisms, salvations, event registrations, children’s check-in and giving. And, since it’s web-based, their solution easily integrates with our website to offer online options for people to take their next steps.

Though we have heavier users in our ministry, I love the tools it offers ministry leaders like me who can run inquiries on specific individuals or pull up reports to get an overall sense of the health of the church. And, like I said, the flexibility and power of the solution will really become evident when we go multi-site in the coming months.

With that, welcome Fellowship Technologies to the site. I love that fact that I get to partner and be a cheerleader for a company that has demonstrated a commitment to helping growing churches fulfill the Great Commission.

If you’re interested in learning about how you or your company can become a site sponsor, email me.

Here’s some good news my blogging friends. Thanks to Scott and the peeps at Updatable, things are about ready to change around here. This is the first major overhaul of the site since I launched over three years ago. It’s not just a cosmetic face lift. Everything has been rebuilt from scratch. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming days. And, in the mean time, take one last look at the old tonymorganlive.com.

Would anyone like to offer a eulogy for the old site?

I’m guessing it has nothing to do with the blog, but the first radio station picked up the single "Revolution" by Worth Dying For. That’s the band that was featured here through the month of April. WNGR in Greenville is the station that picked the song. Congratulations to the Worth Dying For crew.

Watch for new tunes from Integrity Music in the coming days. More good stuff coming.

In case you missed them, here are the posts that generated the most traffic last month:

1. America’s Most Innovative Churches of 2008
2. Your Branding Sucks: The Sequel
3. Pastor Does the KJV-Smackdown on NewSpring
4. The Void
5. Killing Cockroaches: My Newest Book for Church Leaders
6. Simple Church
7. Your Branding Sucks
8. NewSpring Art Director/Designer Job Opening
9. I’m ready for your questions. Fire away.
10. I finally met Andy Stanley.

Ever wonder how the rest of the world perceives how we talk? Check this out…

indexed: All rise! via kwout

The other day I was driving down the road going about 50 mph. Just in case you’re wondering, that’s not quite fast enough.

I passed an organization with a big sign out front. Part of the sign includes an electronic message board that rotates messages. I don’t know how many messages there are. At 50 mph, I only saw one. And, because of that, I know that it was precisely "8:28" when I passed the sign.

The funny thing about that is that I didn’t really need to know that it was 8:28. I already had that information from my car and cell phone clocks.

It made me wonder though…

• Didn’t they realize that I’m going fast and that it’s difficult for me to take in more than one message?
• Or, did they think all their messages were important enough that it would force me to stop?
• Did they know they were answering a question I wasn’t asking?
• Are they aware that the fancy flashing electronic sign caused me to miss whatever message they were sharing on the non-electronic portion of their sign?
• Do they know that they caught my attention but failed to generate an opportunity to respond?

You know what’s funny about this? There’s probably a group of people meeting in that organization thinking, "He missed our message because he wouldn’t slow down." Then, to affirm their position, someone will likely point out: "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it."

And, rather than changing the methods for communicating their message, they’ll continue blaming me for not hearing it.

Today was an interesting day in the world of social networking. There were a couple of milestones of note:

1. Ben Milstead recorded the 5,000th comment on my blog. Thanks, Ben, and welcome to blogging.

2. The number of "followers" on Twitter has surpassed the number of "friends" I have on Facebook. What’s amazing is the fact the Twitter thing has only been happening for a handful of months. Thanks Tweets!

So, there you have it, we have reason to celebrate tonight. The next round is on me.