TonyMorganLive.com

Just want to thank everyone who participated in my very unscientific blog readership survey. I had over 350 responses. By the way, the Google form worked like a charm. It automatically takes form submissions and populates a spreadsheet.

Based on the folks that responded, here’s what I learned or confirmed:

98% attend church 2 or more times each month.

• No shock here. Most of my content is about ministry.
• Pretty amazing, actually, that 2% aren’t regular church attenders.

88% of readers don’t attend NewSpring Church.

• That number is actually higher than I thought.
• This is encouraging, though, because my primary target audience is other church leaders…not NewSpring attenders.

61% of you are on paid staff at a church.

• Again, this isn’t a surprise to me.
• Wish I would have thought to ask whether or not the remaining 39% are serving in some sort of volunteer role at their church.

Of those folks who are on paid staff, here is the breakdown on your roles:

1. Senior/Lead Pastor - 22%
2. Worship/Media/Tech Arts - 22%
3. Student Ministry - 15%
4. Admin/Finance/IT - 10%
5. Adult Ministries/Groups/Care - 7%
6. Communications/Web - 4%
7. Children’s Ministry - 3%
8. Other/Combo Roles - 16%

• The shocker here for me was the number of “arts” folks following the blog. I’d love to hear from you. Why are you following my site? I don’t really picture myself to be writing to that audience.
• And, would someone just let your children’s ministry folks know that there’s this thing that’s called the Internet and they can find all of their coloring sheets online now. :-)

Your thoughts? What surprised you about these results?

My apologies to everyone who participated in the Metro-Rednexual Contest. I’ve been delayed in compiling the results. After reviewing all the submissions, I’ve arrived at the following top 10 list. Without further delay:

You might be a metro-rednexual if…

1. You have a gun rack in the back of your Audi.
2. You have highlights in your mullet.
3. You have matching throw pillows and an elaborate bedding ensemble for your double-wide.
4. You chew Red Man tobacco and spit in a Starbucks cup.
5. You’ve programmed “Achy Breaky Heart” as the ring tone on your iPhone.
6. You enjoy fishin’ on Saturday morning and eating $30 sushi on Saturday night.
7. You use car grease to “style” your hair.
8. You stop and get a latte on the way to your deer stand.
9. You know the release dates for the fall clothing line and the flavor rotation on the freezy drink machine.
10. You own Gucci cowboy boots.

Thanks for participating. Sandy, I declare you the winner. Gas station lunch is on me the next time you’re in town.

And, just for the record, Gary is truly the only metro-rednexual in the crowd.

Joe Sangl is on a crusade to help others win with money. And, as of yesterday, his crusade has made a pit stop on my site. Joe is the newest sponsor of TonyMorganLive.com. Just in case you’re wondering, he didn’t use a credit card to pay for the advertising and his check didn’t bounce. Guess he’s smokin’ what he’s sellin’.

So, before you do anything else…

• Check out Joe’s site where you can learn more about his new book, I Was Broke, Now I’m Not.
• Subscribe to his blog.
• Take advantage of Joe’s free financial planning tools.
• Tell Joe he’s going to remain a very frustrated fellow if he continues to follow Purdue football.

Finally, there’s one remaining spot for a lucky advertiser to have a place on my home page. Is it yours? If you’re interested, you know how to reach me.

After this Sunday, NewSpring Church will look completely different. In addition to officially becoming a multi-site church, we’re launching a rebranding and a completely new website. Against our better judgment, Joshua and I have decided to take a few minutes out of our day on Wednesday to talk about what’s coming. And, if you’re nice, we’ll swing back around in a couple of weeks and talk about what happened.

This should be an interesting interview. By Wednesday, Joshua will probably have gone several days without sleep. If he has any cognitive resources left; however, we’re going to tap them to try to uncover the why and how behind what’s about to happen.

Do you want to watch the behind-the-scenes footage and participate in the conversation? Then plan on visiting my Mogulus site on Wednesday at 11:00 am (ET). My apologies to our friends on the left coast. It’ll be early, but you can skip Regis and Kelly for one morning.

To prepare for our conversation, what are some of your initial questions?

Curtis emailed me this morning asking me to blog about interviewing tips. I’m assuming it might be related to this job opening at Fellowship Technologies. I’ve shared some of my philosophy in the past. Here’s a snippet.

Just like with a marriage relationship, your business relationship is more likely to last because of the intangibles you’ll discover over time rather than the details you might find on someone’s resume. For a moment, forget about education, experience and skills, and answer these questions:

• Does this person love our church (or organization)? Have they demonstrated that they fully embrace our mission, vision and values?
• What motivates this person? Will they soar in the role I’m offering, or will it just become a job to earn a paycheck?
• Does he or she want to continue to grow? Does she like to read? Does he take time to think? Does she make it a priority to dream and to create?
• Is this person a leader? With a limited amount of money to invest in staff, I need someone who will help me multiply the ministry. Will this person help me do that?
• Does this person have a track record of success? Do they have the potential to help the church (or organization) reach the next level?
• Do I like this person? Does he or she have a fun personality? Am I going to enjoy spending fifty hours or more each week with this person? (This one is HUGE! Listen to your gut…that’s probably the Holy Spirit giving you direction.)
  

In my experience, when trying to find the best talent, these types of questions are far more important than learning whether or not someone has a big, fancy resume.

Here’s the rest of the article on Pastors.com.

RoseAngela and Daniel opened today’s services at the Anderson Campus with their rendition of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.” This is a recording on my Flip Video camera, so the video and audio quality don’t do it justice. There will be a better version on our web site in a couple of days. In the mean time, here you go.

UPDATE: Thanks to the help of the media team, here’s a much better video/audio version of the opener. By the way, these close up shots beg the question: Who has prettier hair–Rose or Daniel?

UPDATE 2: I’d just like to thank Ingrid for sending all her friends to my site. It’s been a long time since you’ve all visited. I was starting to think I’d lost my edge. Welcome back. (And, no, I’m not going to post your comments, but I’ve really had fun reading them today.)

Crazy In Love from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.

We may be getting ready to launch the NewSpring Greenville campus in just over a week, but in the midst of it all, we’re moving right along with the plans to launch the Florence campus this fall. With that in mind here is a quick update…

• We have four staff members that will be relocating to Florence: a campus pastor, worship leader, children’s director and a one more person to assist with ministry support.
• Although we haven’t even begun promoting the Florence campus, we already have 96 folks in that area who have contacted us and expressed an interest in being involved!
• We’re currently working on a location to meet in each week and hope to have an announcement within the next couple of weeks.
• The projected launch is early- to mid-September…the countdown begins!

If you’d like to keep up with plans for launching the Florence campus, visit Michael’s blog.

Ken has more details on the trailer he created for the new series that we’re launching at NewSpring on July 13. That also happens to be the first day we are officially multi-site in Anderson and Greenville.

You Asked For It Promo 01 from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

All of these questions were generated through a voting process with our church. First, we had folks submit questions on any topic. Then we had them vote on the most popular questions.

These are the questions NewSpringers are asking. I wonder what this series would look like if we didn’t allow church people to vote? What questions are people outside the church asking? Let me know if your church tries to tackle that one and design a series around those questions.