Month: June 2010

  • 7 Steps to Building an Online Personality

    This video covers that basic principles very well. If you can get through the weird music break in the middle, the second half is excellent in providing examples.

    HT to Dave Luke

  • Innovating with an established ecosystem

    Photo by fmgbain via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Starting a new organization is an entirely different task than innovating to change an existing organization.

    Both are hard. But changing and existing organization is way harder.

    For most of my career I’ve been in turnaround roles. Kristen and I have a little joke… My entire adult work life has seemed like one roller coaster ride after another.

    Click, click, click, click… up we climb.

    Click, click, click, click. My heart races.

    Wait for it. Wait for it… Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

    Arms up. Screaming bloody murder. Thinking of the Tom Petty song, Free Falling.

    Down the big hill we go.

    Over and over again I’m left to help try to innovate our way out of the mess.

    And, so far, I’ve been pretty successful at it by most people’s judgement.

    How does one innovate within an existing ecosystem?

    1. Become Switzerland. There are political factions within any organization. If you want to get stuff done you need to be neither and empathetic both sides at the same time.
    2. Spike the football. When you do something that everyone is happy with its OK to just look into the camera and say, “Thank you very much. Woohoo! Hi mom!” I’ve seen a lot of people fail in an organization because they were afraid to take the credit for their own ideas doing well. Don’t be an idiot. It’s OK to be the guy to do good stuff. Spike the football.
    3. Own the data. Existing organizations are horrible at owning their data. I like to look at the results of a long-standing program that has had no results and say, “30 years of VBS and not a single new family? Why didn’t we just light that $300,000 on fire? At least we would have had a good BBQ.” When people are tied to tradition or the way they’ve always done things, sometimes you need to be the person with the frying pan who hits them in the head. Helping people in leadership own the data is the catalyst to getting stuff done in an existing organization.
    4. Be creative. Face it. A fist full of money and a fat belly has never created a single good idea. Have you seen Bing? No budget, no time, no research, shot in the dark… that’s when good stuff happens. That’s when the best ideas pop into your head. Creativity and innovation come out of suffering and frustration. These are your friends and allies, not your enemies.
    5. Opportunistic eyes. I keep a list of ideas I’ve got on ice. Then, when I’m in a meeting and everyone is scratching their heads looking for something new, bam… I’m pull out my concept. If I ran around screaming about every idea I had all the time I’d look like a mad scientist.

    What are some ways you’ve learned to innovate within an existing ecosystem?

  • Listen to the Right People

    A big mouth doesn’t always equal an effective mouth

    Photo by sroemerm via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    One thing I’ve noticed happening in Christian-land these days is that there are a lot of voices saying quotable things about stuff they have no clue about.

    The biggest one, something I’d label a pet peeve, is people who have successfully planted a megachurch trying to teach people in existing churches how to change their church culture.

    It’s all a big misunderstanding.

    Let’s face this one reality– A guy who planted a church and it grew to 10,000+ members cannot possibly help a 100 year old church of 300 who is struggling. Nor can they help a church plant that started in a house with 25 people and has grown to 200. Or a church that was once 1000 but is now 85.

    Let’s face a second reality– If a person is a wonderful communicator of biblical truth they are not likely a prophet to your struggling ministry. They don’t know a single solitary thing about your situation. Nada, zip, zilch. If you had the chance to meet them they might tell you the same thing. They are probably impressed with what God does through their ministry, too. But that doesn’t mean squat to your church context.

    Do take their words of encouragement personally. But let’s face it, they don’t know how to fix your church.

    Should I try to change my church?

    Of course! Just make sure, when you need advice, you listen to people who have actually done what you are trying to do.

    • Hire a consultant. Having an outside expert come over a series of months is probably the best and fastest thing you can do to systemically change a church. A neutral third party can be the best money you’ll ever spend.
    • Get to know people. It shocks me how fast newly hired church leaders want to move. Most church issues are based in culture. Over-eager church leaders will try to change stuff without understanding the culture enough… thus making the problem worse. Then they quit and leave the mess to someone else to clean up.
    • Become the expert on your community. You have the one advantage that truly makes a difference. You are there. When you read a book, article, or hear a message, everything you take in should be screened through the matrix of your unique church culture. Something you hear can be a fantastic idea– but a complete disaster in your culture. Become the expert of your community. (Which means spending decreasing time in the office and increasing time meeting the people you are trying to reach.)
    • Innovation is always welcome. I’ve never been in a church where new ideas were frowned upon. The trick in a church is how you implement an innovation. If people spent half the time on implementation that they spend on generating new ideas they’d be a lot better off.
    • Fools GoldPhoto by sportwrapper via Flicker (Creative Commons)

      Focus on transforming the people you have. The people in your church already have access to the people you want to reach. A popular speaker says, “You need to focus more on reaching than keeping.” That phrase shocks me. It sounds brilliant but is incredibly rude. Do you want to go to that church? I know I don’t. Rather than focusing on shedding people you don’t like why not focus on teaching in such a way that transforms those people’s hearts? Why not pray for those who are your enemies that they might become your allies? You don’t turn around a church by shedding all the people. You turn around a church by transforming people’s hearts around a common vision.

    • It’s about we not you. When I read books and listen to speakers I’m shocked at how little value they give to the leaders of their congregation. When a leader starts to say “this is my vision” everyone should automatically know that this person isn’t leading people. Vision is inclusive.
    • Measure the right things. Do measure stuff. Just make sure you measure the right stuff. I can’t believe how many people are upset with their congregations because they are measuring stuff like butts in seats and dollar bills. We both know those aren’t Kingdom measurements.

  • The Volunteer

    I’m a big fan of this video. I think it turned out great. And I think its a great compliment to the first one we released a couple weeks back.

    The most loudest people in youth ministry tend to be the people who do it as a profession. But I think we’d all agree that the ones making the vast majority of the impact in youth ministry are volunteers. Hats off to them!

  • Staycation Success

    Paul was big pimpin' at the vacation house.

    We did it!

    It feels good just to say it. “We had a successful vacation.”

    Last night, Kristen and I went for a walk in our neighborhood and this was really the summary statement of our week in Carlsbad.

    It was nice to get away while only traveling about 40 minutes from our house. I don’t have any fascinating results to reveal… but here is a hodgepodge of things I’m thinking about last week.

    • The rhythm and pace of the week was great. Nearly every day we woke up, watched the World Cup while drinking coffee, went to the pool, had lunch, went to the beach, ate dinner, watched a movie, and went to sleep.
    • Opening up our vacation to a bigger definition of our family made a huge difference. It just wouldn’t have been as much fun without Kristen’s parent, my niece Allison, Erin, and Lisa. While it likely effected the bottom line a little, it was priceless to spend the quality/quantity time with them.
    • It was also fun to bring Stoney, our yellow lab. Renting a dog-friendly house was pretty simple and it was a bonus to have him along. I don’t want to sound like one of those people but he really is part of our family.
    • Kristen likes shells… a lot. One two mornings Kristen went shell hunting. It was almost embarrassing how many shells we brought home. Almost.
    • We learned the playmate lesson. While it definitely helped Megan to have someone her age to play with… we REALLY needed to have a playmate as well. Next time.
    • Have we found a vacation style we all like? Kristen and I like two different types of vacations. I like to unplug and do just about nothing. Kristen finds it very refreshing to explore new places. This really afforded us the opportunity to do either, neither, or both.
    • Turning off the computers and my brain was awesome. I don’t have a single blog post I wrote while on vacation. Nor did I think much about work. I told Kristen last night… generally vacations make me antsy to get hyper productive and this one didn’t. I think it just revealed how exhausted I had been.
    • Our party on Friday night was a blast. More on celebrating our marriage another day.
    • I love hanging with my kids. I know you are supposed to like being with your kids. But I really love being with them. There’s no other way to describe it.
    • I cannot get enough beach. That’s pretty funny for a guy born in Indiana. But it is true. Most of our vacations somehow involve a large body of water… I guess I’m just hard wired to relax by the ocean.
    • Wine has a magical ability to multiply. We started our party on Friday night with 8 bottles of wine. By the time the party was over we had 12. It was an anniversary miracle! OK, I think its just that people like to bring wine to dinner parties. We still got a chuckle out of  that.
    • Our garden didn’t take a vacation. I came back a couple of times to water and drove back up to the house with baskets of tomatoes, squash, and green beans.
    • Every vacation house needs a soaking tub. The bathroom in the master suite had a massive whirlpool tub. And all of us took turns enjoying a nice bath. It’s the simple pleasures in life, sometimes!

    I’ll be getting back to my normal blogging self by the end of the week.

  • Best of 2008

    Best of 2008

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    “Who Are You Anyway?”

    Confession #1: I’ve gotten wrapped up in being called a leader. I fall into the mistake of thinking people want to know what I think. Instead, a true leader defers to the ultimate source of wisdom, thinking, and counsel. The most appropriate thing I can do as a leader is point someone to ultimate truth found in the Bible. And I recognize that sometimes I do that and sometimes I depend on my own talent, experiences, and personal preferences. I used to be so good at saying, “This is what the Bible says: _______. And this is what I would do if I were in your position: ______________.” It seems that the more people want to recognize me as a “leader” the more I want to emphasize the latter instead of the former. The result is that I’m not always the best leader I can be. Ironic, eh?

    Confession #2: I get wrapped up in being called a pastor. I’ve never been comfortable with that title. But as the year’s have gone by I’ve gotten much less diligent in blushing it off when people call me “Pastor Adam.” I don’t know if it’s that I’ve gotten comfortable with what God has done and others recognize that in me or if I just like being called a pastor? Now, it’s true. That is what/who I am. And I am not ashamed of the title. I am not ashamed of my position. And I am not ashamed of my church. It’s not about shame. I recognize that its a sign of respect for my position yet I’ve always been uncomfortable with being labeled any title. Since I entered full-time ministry I’ve always self-reflected and laughed at God’s slapping me… ME… with the title of pastor. Sure… since I was little… even before I was a Christian… I always knew I’d be in ministry. But I also know who I am. I am biblically qualified to be a pastor and yet I know who I am.

    • Above reproach? As far as I know
    • A one woman man? Heck yes!
    • Temperate? I do my very best to not lose it
    • Self-controlled? To the best of my knowledge
    • Respectable? You tell me
    • Hospitable? Check
    • Able to teach? Check
    • Not given to drunkenness? Been good on that one since early teens
    • Not violent but gentle? By the grace of God
    • Not quarrelsome? Not my thing
    • Not a lover of money? How could I be?
    • Manage his family well? Could always do better
    • Not a recent convert? Check
    • Good reputation? Let me know, OK?

    Confession #3: I want to get more wrapped up in my identity as a daddy and husband than as “Pastor Adam.” Closing in on 6 years of working in churches full time and I know well why some denominations don’t let their pastors marry. The demands on the position are over-the-top hard to balance with a family. People think nothing of about calling me late at night or early in the morning to talk to me or ask me to do something. And I’m always tempted to work every day and most nights for youth group, small groups, meetings, and other stuff that lands on my schedule. I really don’t think this is biblical and I should be more disciplined about saying “Can we talk or do this tomorrow?” In the past 6 years we’ve had countless family meals interrupted, countless dates disrupted, dozens of movies put on pause, play time put on pause for other people so many times my kids hate it when I take a call, times with daddy missed for this and that. Spending quality time with other people’s kids while missing the same with my own. Honestly, I hardly ever noticed. But my wife and kids did. It’s tough being married with kids and being married with kids to a church. Only recently have I been doing some studying in the New Testament and I realized… “Wait a minute! These guys weren’t nearly as available as I am and God still thought they rocked as pastors and leaders.”

    Read the rest

    This is one of those blogs posts that has stuck with me. For the last two years I’ve been unwinding myself from being “Pastor Adam” to going back to being “just Adam.”

    I’m thankful for my new life and friendships. And I’m thankful that most of those people know me as Adam and not Pastor Adam. I still don’t know/think that I’m done with being on church staff… but I do know that if there is a next time, I won’t let people call me Pastor Adam. You can have a title with your job. But you can’t ever allow yourself to be that title more than you are yourself.

  • Best of 2007

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    Why Ethnography is Important

    Missionaries know it. Businesses know it. Documentarians film it. Marketers make money from it. But what is it? It is ethnography.

    Ethnography ????? ethnos = people and ??????? graphein = writing) is the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitativefieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system’s properties cannot
    necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other.

    It doesn’t matter if you are a youth pastor in a community. An insurance salesman. A high school math teacher. Or a physician. If you want to succeed in a community,  you need to take the time to understand how the community works. Understanding ethnography helps you understand how the people think, how the politics of both elected and unelected people control things, and understand how cultural phenomenon dictate community behavior. (Holidays, local business practices, etc)

    Here’s the thing. Most doctors, pastors, insurance salesmen, and high school math teachers that fail, do so for cultural reasons and not because they are bad doctors, pastors, salesmen, or teachers. They fail because they failed to grasp the culture they are working in. Yet they blame themselves, their training, or even the people they want to sell to, provide services for, or teach for their failure!

    Success at Romeo depends not just on us teaching doctrine and working hard.     It depends heavily on us adapting and developing methods to reach our community by first understanding how the community works. Stick with me. Read the rest

    Looking through blog posts in 2007, I can see my blog taking a big turn. For years I just blogged about what was going on in my daily life. Occasionally, I tossed in a thought or a principle. But in 2007, posts like this one started to creep up as I found a more comfortable voice.

    The biggest advice I have for anyone who wants to get started in blogging is… write, a lot!

  • Best of 2006

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    The (C)old House

    One thing I don’t like about an old house is that it is very hard to keep it warm. It’s a combination of a lack of insulation and inadequate duct work. If I had to do this house over again I would have installed radiated heat… but instead we have a blended system of forced air and electric heat. The result is that some areas are warmish while other areas are constantly drafty.

    It’s been a joke of visitors that our house is always cold. People say “We’re going to Adam’s house, we need to dress warm.” Or my personal favorite is a friend of mine who says “We McLane their house sometimes.” (Now we’re a verb?) Why? Um, pretty simple… we can’t afford to keep our old house at 72 degrees. Even at 65 during the day and 58 at night, we’re a little worried about energy costs this winter.

    Read the rest

    As much as we love San Diego, we still miss our house in Romeo. It’s a great place to live and I’m happy to hear that someone is finally living there again. I just hope they figure out a good way to heat it before winter!

  • Where to Rent vs. Buy

    HT to Mint

  • Best of 2005

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    Check Out YMX!

    Hey, a buddy of mine and I launched a website lately for youth workers to connect up. This is filling the forum void left behind since YS closed their forums back in June.

    Anyway, check it out at ymexchange.com

    link

    This changed everything. As I look back on the last several years, no event changed my life more than creating Youth Ministry Exchange.

    For years the youth ministry world was pretty self-contained. There were a limited number of players and it seemed impossible to get your foot in the door anywhere.

    So we created a new door.

    Within a month we created massive traffic for our new business. We had some sense that what we were creating was important– but the truth is we had no idea what we were doing. We were even afraid to call it a business. We didn’t have any of the legal stuff done. We never had a business plan. We never spent $1 on marketing. And the two original owners have STILL never met. 3.5 years later I was sitting in an office at Zondervan signing paperwork and waiting for a bank transfer as we sold Youth Ministry Exchange, LLC to Youth Specialties. It’s mind boggling.

    How in the world does a guy go from being a no-name youth pastor at a church of 150 to shaking hands and receiving a check from the CEO of a major publishing company in 3.5 years? Simple: Looking at closed doors and building an open one to walk through.

    Investing $72 in an idea changed my life.

    Want my advice? If you have an idea that you are absolutely passionate about… do it. Do it now. The idea and the opportunity are never going to get better than they are today. But invest less than $100. If it’s a good idea it won’t make a difference if you invest $100 trying it out or $100,000. (Donald Trump may be good, but that guy has led his company into bankruptcy three times! Never finance an idea with debt. Pure and simple.)