Category: management

  • Leading to the edges

    ruler-edgeEntrepreneurs get this. Start-up businesses get this. New franchises get this. Church planters get this. But no one in an older business, church, franchise, or industry can comprehend this.

    You have grown your audience as much within what you are doing today as you will ever grow it. You primary demographic already knows about you and has decided whether to be a customer or not. They have decided whether to become a student in your college or not. They have decided whether or not your to attend your church.

    People largely make decisions on your project, widget, consumable, or institution in an instant. Five seconds or less. (Test it yourself, watch TV commercials. How soon until you decide if you are buying that product? I thought so.) Spending more money to advertise the same thing over and over again is just a waste of money. This is why Super Bowl commercials can be deal makers or deal breakers for companies you’ve never heard of.

    This is why marketers dump millions of dollars onto the airwaves and see little return on their investment. This is why church marketing sucks. Once you can identify who your audience is… your best possibility for growth then shifts to customer service and care. Can I keep the customers I have? Can I provide them such an amazing service that they tell their friends that they have to go there, be there, or be your customer?

    Growth comes as you lead your organization towards the edges. When you help your church or college find a new demographic, there is growth. When you design a new product that changes the game for an old industry, there is growth. When you serve a need that everyone wants but no one offers, there is growth.

    What’s the first step in determining how to find my edge?

    Spend time and discover where you are failing. Spend time finding out where everyone in your industry fails. Spend time finding out what churches in your area aren’t doing.

    Hint: Studying successful companies, institutions, churches, or whatever will only lead you away from growth and into their market. Learn from their best practices, for sure, but don’t study them to copy them. Their edge won’t ever be your edge.

  • Rounding 3rd

    softball-gameA few years ago I was on the church softball team. Being a church league for adults it was mostly filled with people who used to be able to play well, but time and a few extra pounds had lowered their skill level down a lot lower than their imaginations thought they were. In other words, most of the teams sucked. And none was worse than ours!

    After a couple of weeks of frustration I started to figure out how to hit. The first 5-6 times up to bat my golf-styled swing lead to easy outs as all I could do was hit the ball right down the fairway… easily gobbled up by the pitcher, 2nd baseman, or center fielder. While watching a few games I made an interesting observation: There were a lot of dropped balls. I noticed that there was a high likelihood that the person playing first base wasn’t going to be able to keep his foot on the bag and catch a poorly thrown ball.

    So I learned to just keep running. In game after game this strategy worked. I’d hit a ground ball to 3rd base and instead of trying to beat out the play I’d just round first and keep running. Time and time again they’d drop the ball or it’d fly over their head and I was off to second or even third.

    The last game of the year, while I was riding to the game with a few other players, I joked that I wasn’t going to stop at third base. I was going to just keep the calamity going all the way home. I had a feeling that if I rounded third the same way I rounded first, I could make it a home run.

    So, true to form our team was down big with just two innings left. I get up and absolutely tee off on a ball that splits the outfielders and one hops to the fence. It’s a stand-up double and I could probably make it to third if I weren’t so out of shape. The third base coach gave me the stop sign at second. But I look at his stop sign and throw caution to the wind… it’s time to go home! As I got close to third I could tell by the way the third basemen was looking that the ball was coming in and he would tag me out. So I rounded third. My locomotion– instead of sliding– caused him to look up for a brief second and he bobbled the ball. Halfway home he tossed the ball to the catcher which made me stop and retreat to third. But wouldn’t you know it? When the catcher tossed the ball back to third, he dropped it and I turned for home… stretching a double into an inside the park home run.

    During my commute yesterday I was thinking about this, I love rounding third. I love the whimsy of finishing stuff off with a bang. Which is a weird statement for a guy who spends a lot of his mental day imagining ideas for projects that will never get done. That might lead you to believe I’m a project start-up kind of guy. Nope, I love seeing that small percentage of ideas come to fruition.

    With three of those “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if” projects just hours, days, or weeks away from completion I’m finding that rounding 3rd base has given me a lot of energy and momentum. I know that locomotion, surprise, and a smile will carry it home from here.

  • Responding to Stress

    Here are a few categories of responses to job stress. I think I’ve exhibited them all in the past 3 months.

    – The ostrich: This person looks at the stress at work and just sticks their head into their own work, trying to ignore anything else that goes on. This can be good because at times of high stress there is a need for some people to keep plugging away at work. But it can be bad in that this response can lead to that person working on old priorities and foregoing new priorities.

    – The jackal: This person is the cynic. Generally makes fun of the stressful situation. I think of this as a nervous response to stress. This person tends to have a “sky is falling” type of attitude and veils negativity with humor. But this person will also have every intention of being the person to turn out the lights on the last day. Keep working, keep scavenging, it’ll pay off in the end.

    – The parrot: This person repeats everything. Not so much a gossip, but a person who likes to communicate what the problem and solution is as presented. Both helpful and annoying at the same time, this response seems to be a self-motivating one. But the parrot likes to think it is helping those around it.

    – The bear: This person is all black cloud. They think that today is as good as its going to get. Tomorrow is just another day closer to destruction. This stress response is toxic to a stressful situation because its pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Their Eeyore belief system is not cautious, it is reckless. This person secretly likes stress. Above I said I’ve expressed all of these in the past three months, that’s not true. I refuse to be the bear.

    – The bull: This person sees an opportunity in everything. Relentlessly over-optimistic. This stress response is helpful in times like this because they don’t care about forecasts and the nightmares MSNBC predicts.

    – The honey bee: Similar to the ostrich, this person just shows up and gets the job done. The swarm of activity around doesn’t seem to matter as this person merely concentrates on building the hive and following the orders of the queen bee. Collect pollen, make honey, repeat. If anything the stressful situation makes this person more urgent.

    – The sloth: This person responds to a stressful situation by retreating. They burn up sick and vacation days. They find excuses to avoid dealing with the cause of the stress. Really, this is just a lazy response to stress. This person hopes that while they are checked out the problem will get resolved.

    – The viper: This person just gets mean. Like a snake, they strike out of fear. They feel like if they are mean they can just scare their problems away. Of course, fear is a short term motivator… but this person doesn’t seem to care about that.

    What are some stress responses I’ve missed?

  • The Fall of GM- a visual map

    fallofgm500mint

    HT to Mint.com

  • The McLane Stimulus Plan

    big-money1

    Since it’s clear the Obama Administration is going to be giving 100% of the stimulus money to failed companies like GM and AIG and nothing in cash to the middle class, Kristen and I had to make our own bail out plan. (Sorry for the dig on Obama, I was a big fan of Bush’s free money system!)

    Our challenge was pretty simple. How do we live on 70% of our income for the next 24 months? If we could do that, this is what we would have at the end of it.

    – No debt

    – 3 months living expenses in the bank as a rainy day fund

    – 1 months living expenses in the bank as general savings

    – Still faithfully giving to our church

    Our 2008 scenario was like this. Prior to moving to California we lived at about 105% of our income. Basically, we had been swallowed by inflation and struggled to recover. Each month we went a little deeper into debt. When we moved to California we had about 4 months where we lived at 200% of our income. Why? We had two houses, we moved 2500 miles, and stuff like that.

    Our plan, live on 70% of what we bring home after taxes. Roughly, the breakdown looks like this. (+/- 2% per month)

    10% of our income to paying off debt accumulated in 2007-2008. (Our credit cards jumped from 17% to 29.99% last year, we alone in that?)

    10% of our income to savings.

    10% of our income to regular charitable giving.

    This is where the McLane plan differs from the pop culture financial planners. Most of them would say, “Concentrate on paying off the highest interest thing first, then focus on savings.” I’m not going to lie… I can’t bring myself to not save and spend that much paying down debt while not putting anything into savings.

    We’re about 3 months into this plan. It seems to be working for us. For those in love with budgeting, it’s a semi-budget. It leaves about 20% of our money as flexibility… which really works for us.

  • Re-branding the Recession

    recessionAre you tired of the recession yet? Maybe it comes from living in Detroit and hearing how the economy was slowing down for 3 straight years before the rest of the country went into recession? If you want to play an interesting game, take bets before the nightly news starts on how many news stories wll not mention the economy. They even weave it into the weather and sports! “The left fielder is in an economic slump of his own, he signed a new contract for the league minimum.”

    Talk of the economy tanking has become a self-fulfilling prophesy! Of course it is tanking, we are told there is no hope 100 times per day.

    I see something completely different. I see us on the horizon of a great cultural correction. I think we’re on the verge of a new wave of innovation not seen since the industrial revolution. The days of negative cash flow entrepreneurship are over as a new wave of cottage industry uses new media to compete with corporations… often with little or no capital investment… thus getting these new businesses in the black almost immediately. What I see today is opportunity!

    Don’t believe me? Check out Mark Cuban’s self-created Stimulus Plan. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, too. Propose a good idea and he’ll get you going in a month.

    Don’t believe me? We got YMX off the ground with almost no capital costs and turned a profit on the first day.

    Don’t believe me? My friend Bob Carter created a massive iPod repair business out of his basement and now employs several people. He turned what Apple said was junk into profit! Soon he’ll be franchising his idea across the country.

    Don’t believe me? Thousands of small businesses are being created right now and marketed through Etsy, Ebay, and Craigslist for little or no capital investment.

    Don’t believe me? Smart entrepreneurs are investing in a depressed real estate market. They are buying up neighborhoods to turn single-family homes into investment property. These are the Donald Trump’s of Main Street… they are using real money to make more money tomorrow.

    Don’t believe me? Community colleges across the country are jam packed as laid off workers learn new skills. And many of them will create their own small businesses.With no money to borrow almost all of them will be positive cash flow businesses from the start.

    I’m going to keep preaching this truth until people get it. Out of desperation comes innovation. Big companies depends on expensive research and development departments to come up with new products. How many billions of dollars were invested in concept cars in the last 10 years? And how many of them were profitable? See what I mean?

    But anyone who has a hungry family to feed can create a product the market wants. Tommorow’s poor are waiting for the government to bail the out. But just like in any industrial revolution… the ones who get started early and estrablish themselves early will have the advantage.

    This recession is a needed correction. Smart companies will learn to depend less on borrowing from a broken banking system and get in the black faster.

    There are millions of new ideas out there just waiting to be taken to market. Chances are you have one already. So what are you waiting for?

  • One-Two Punch of Leaders

    leadership-trump-rogers

    I’ve been thinking about leadership a lot lately as I reflect on the type of leader that I tend to follow. More to the point, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the type of leader I aspire to be.

    Let’s start with what I hate.

    I hate the Donald Trump-type of leader.The ego driven type A-aholics that thrive on their own power. As Trump himself has proven time and again, it is a losing style of leadership. Trump’s leadership style is bankrupt across many layers.

    I hate the Mr. Rogers-type of leader. These leaders are so afraid of expressing their will on an organization that their team feels unlead. These leaders make you feel good but often lead failing organizations. This leadership style makes you feel good but fails to produce results.

    Rather than go any further into this metaphor, I’ll get to the point. The type of leader I love and aspire to be is actually a combination of both. When I look at the landscape of “what’s wrong with leadership” I often see one type of leader or the other leading an organization. But I think it’d be more healthy if organizations intentionally had a little of both. You need a strong leader to get things done and cast vision. But you also need people who are insanely compassionate. And since it is nearly impossible to be both Donald Trump and Mr. Rogers… I think the best style of leadership is to have both.

    It’s way better to have the tension of plural leadership than it is to fail.

    Observation #1: Women seem to be better at this than men. I’m not one of those Christian men who buys into the lie that men are better leaders than women. I’ve got too much experience with excellent female leaders to believe that for a second. I’m astonished that churches openly discriminate against women who are strong leaders… but that’s another post for another day. I am not saying that men can’t do this, I’m just observing that when it comes to sharing leadership for the strength of the team… my experience has shown me that women do it easier than men.

    Observation #2: The best leaders have an equal and opposite sidekick. I jokingly refer to this as “Good cop, bad cop.” I’ve played both roles in leadership… but it’s way more fun to be good cop. When this works well it gets an insane amount of stuff done. It’s an efficiency machine!

    Observation #3: Everyone is happier with a one-two punch of leaders. Ultimately, there is the boss. But having a one-two punch of leaders allows people of various personality types to have someone to gel with.

    Application: I’m still working through this. Let me know your thoughts.

  • Goodnight Gospelcom Alliance

    I was pretty excited to have Youth Ministry Exchange join the GCI Alliance back in 2006. In fact, we made a big deal about telling people with over 100 guesses as to what the big surprise was all about.

    I sensed in the last few months things weren’t going well… staff leaving for other places and not getting replaced, stuff like that.

    Yesterday I got news that the Ministry Alliance will cease to exist in mid-December. For the 200+ organizations who look to GCI for assistance and encouragement this was a huge shock.

    Here’s parts of the email I got.

    As the result of a number of factors, the Board of Directors of Gospel
    Communications has decided that the ministry of Gospel Communications as we
    have known it is coming to a close.  This was, obviously, not an easy
    decision, but our commitment is to carry it out in the best manner possible.
    We are currently involved in trying to find good stewards for the various
    ministries of Gospel Communications who will be able to carry those
    ministries forward.

    I wanted to let you know that the decision talked about above means that the services offered to Alliance Ministries (hosting, technical support, training, etc.) are coming to an
    end. Although this is not the path that any of us would have necessarily
    chosen, we are committed to making this transition as smooth and as
    God-honoring as possible.

    Right now it looks like our date for “end of service” will be December 15,
    2008. We are contractually obligated to give Alliance Ministries 60 days of
    notice. The December 15 date will make the transition period approximately
    90 days.

    Here’s my personal opinion. I think that the need for the Alliance may have passed. When it was created back in 1995 this thing was totally needed. Ministries struggled to find decent hosts, small ministries had no practical way to create an online presence without spending tons of cash, and there wasn’t a lot of technical support out there for people just learning. Boy how times have changed! Speaking as a member, having been to the conference, I just don’t see the need for this type of Alliance.

    With that said, I do think there is a great need to keep ministries together. I think that things like traning events and sharing resources is always going to be needed. Further, I think that as ministries get more sophisticated and as high capacity people look for work in this field there will be a greater need for the networking that something like GCI could provide.

    In other words, a retooled version of the Alliance could and will still work. Fewer hoops, increase the help, and loads of churches and ministries will flock to it. Hint: Make it for-profit, ask people to pay to be a part of it, but make it worth their while to pay. Another hint: Dump the hosting and technical support. No need to compete on that playing field with hosts that are so cheap and so reliable.

    What about the Gospel Communication sites? All I know is that there’s no way sites like ThinkChristian.net or Biblegateway.com will go away. They are simply too popular to let go.

  • Finding a church home: Journey Community Church

    finding a church home: journey community churchSeveral weeks ago I shared that our family would document the church search process. And this past weekend that search continued as we attended Journey Community Church in La Mesa. 

    It’s worth pointing out right away that a ton of people I work with go to Journey and suggested that we check it out. Everyone at work says the same thing, “I love Journey.” With that ringing endorsement… why not visit?

    First impressions: Journey recently bought a shopping center. So their campus is spread around in a typical California shopping center kind of way. (For you midwesterners, this means that its designed like a mall, but the walkways aren’t indoors.)

    As we pulled into the parking lot Kristen told me “if you flash your lights at a parking attendant they’ll know you are a visitor and you can park in the front row.” Apparently, she read that on the website. As soon as she said this I swerved to park back by the student center. Getting out of the car, the kids could tell this didn’t look very much like a church. In fact, Paul said “can we go to a regular church next week?” (Kaleo meets in a movie theater.) So we walked to what looked like the main building and started looking for signs to the kids area. 

    When we got to the lobby we were pointed towards the kids registration area. So far, so good! As we made our way through the maze of hallways we saw lots of pictures of things the church had recently done, I liked that a lot. (Good to know they do stuff today.) The child check-in process was painless enough. After checkin the desk printed some badges for the kids and we were led upstairs to the kids rooms. 

    The kids rooms were well stocked and the staff was clearly well-trained. Our kids were nervous, Paul particularly, and they were fine with us giving them a little extra attention before we headed to the service. 

    From there, Kristen and I made our way to “big church” for the 9:00 AM service. The room has a lot of very comfortable chairs, the room is laid out a lot like a typical conference room. Big sections of seats, bleachers near the back, big stage, and two big screens so people in the back can see. 

    The service. The music was familiar to us. In fact, the order of service was pretty familiar to us as well and we found comfort in that. Couple songs, announcements, shake some hands, couple more songs, offering, song, sermon, song. The music was good, nothing about it really captured my attention strikingly good or bad. If nothing else, the songs were performed fairly closely to how they are recorded. It was clear when we came in that they were trying to do something artistic in the room that day. There were several prayer stations in the auditorium. Let’s see, lighting was good, display of stuff on the screen was good, sound was good. From a technical aspect the only thing that was distracting was that their transitions were pretty rough leaving the service feeling very disconnected from its elements choppy. Plus, the very fact that I was sitting there thinking about the service order, lighting, set design, and transitions should tell you a lot about the service. 

    The message. Clearly the people like the teaching pastor. I found him to be an acquired taste and struggled to pay attention for longer than a minute or two at a time. The people listened intently and followed along on the outline diligently. (Well trained!) About 10 minutes in Kristen leaned over and said what I was thinking, “Can we get something in the middle?” This meant at Kaleo the sermons are so deep that it’s easy to get lost but at Journey it just felt very light. Not knowing the mission of the church its impossible to know if this teaching approach is right for this fellowship and the people they reach, but I’m just being honest in reporting that I didn’t connect with the message or the teaching pastor at all. His message ended with a transition to some prayer stations. It was really clear to me that there was a disconnect between the preparation of the prayer stations (art guy) and the communicator/instruction of the prayer stations. (teaching guy) When the speaker told people to get up and shuffle to the stations I looked at Kristen and just said, “Let’s go!” Yep, we bolted. 

    The church. It was really hard to grasp the heart of Journey in one visit. It’s a big church with a ton of people and a ton of things going on. I know from people who attend that it’s a very loving church and people grow a lot in small groups. In our visit, we didn’t feel the love. (yet) What came across to Kristen and I is that Journey is a programmatic church. You can see that in the kiosks and the endless bulletin. Now, there is nothing wrong with a programmatic church where there is something for everyone. Certainly, a lot of churches operate this way and are successful in reaching people. But not having been to one in a long time… it was a shock to the system! I kept thinking… where in the world would we start?

    Kids ministry. Our kids were happy. They told us all about the reward system of verse memory. They told us about the game. They showed us their crafts. They talked about how nice the teachers were. They told us they sang songs, but couldn’t remember what the songs were. Paul didn’t like the puppets but did like a guy dressed like an astronaut or something like that. (Did this really happen?) But when we asked them what they learned about God they looked blankly at us and said “I don’t know.” This is our families normal routine as we talk about what they learned in church… they are really good about telling us what they learned. But for some reason the lesson didn’t stick and 10 minutes after leaving they couldn’t remember. But they did get a nice goodie bag and were very entertained by that. 

    Overall. Let’s just say that I’m glad our process requires a second visit as we feel it’s not right to judge a ministry based on a single visit. Likewise, we know from our friends who a involved that this is a great community to be a part of. Yet, judging from Sunday services alone you can tell where this review would lead a decision for us. Let’s hope on our second visit we’ll get to meet a few people and get better connected to the heart of Journey. 

    A HUGE upside to Journey is that I know they have a rocking student ministry. Since we don’t have kids in that age bracket I didn’t get to see that in action. I’ve been in the middle school room, met the middle school pastor, and met a few of her volunteer staff… so when push comes to shove, I’m a youth ministry dude and having a great youth ministry is going to trump a lot of other stuff.

  • Finding a church home: Kaleo Church

    Our first stop on the search took us to Kaleo Church that meets at the AMC 20 in the Mission Valley Mall. Obviously, this being the first one we’ve visited it was pretty high on our list of places to explore.

    And we weren’t disappointed. Parking is a non-issue obviously. The location is easy enough to get to and was just 1.4 miles from the hotel. I think this campus would be roughly 10 miles from our new house… so a little far for our liking. But they also do something closer to us on the campus of San Diego State University that we may want to check out as well.

    I don’t really have a format to these “reviews,” so I am making it up.

    First impressions. I kind of dig the movie theater thing. Reminds me of Granger when it first started. It’s informal and comfortable to me. I could see myself easily inviting people to a movie theater. We were greeted by a few official greeter people and since we were awkwardly early for SoCal (15 minutes before service) there was absolutely no one in the auditorium! Thankfully Kate [wicked good violinist] was uber friendly and showed us where to take the kids. Boy were the kids happy they didn’t have to sit through the whole service.

    They seem pretty confident in their format. I like confidence. While it was odd there was no soft buffer music for those of us who came early, I was perfectly comfortable chilling with Kristen while the countdown clock was on.

    The service. It was very chill, but not overly chill in that the people up front came across as unprepared. The service order was very simple. 2-3 songs at the beginning, a message, 1-2 songs at the end with communion pretty much ending things. There were some short announcements at the beginning. But other than that it was a very basic service. Did I miss an offering? If they did it I didn’t notice. The lack of lighting, video, or even mics at times was both cool and different. For this group simplicity worked.
    Environmentally I don’t think they take full advantage of the space… but that’s OK and wasn’t annoying. I think their simple style reflects their values without coming across as bland.

    I really liked the style of the band though I’d never heard any of the songs. I gathered that a husband/wife team lead the band and we sang originals. Stylistically, I can’t quite label it… Hawaiian maybe? Very cool and raw sound. No production elements whatsoever for worship times. For my comfort level I could have dealt with a little Tomlin or Crowder mixed in, but the worship was… worshipful. So that’s good.

    The message. Yikes, I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for the depth. I had listened to parts of a couple of recent messages so I knew I would like the style of the primary preaching elder, David (I think that’s his name.) I liked that the message was designed in a way that acknowledged my intelligence and yet made me think. It was conversational, he even stopped a few times to ask for thoughts. It was very personal to the audience, a few moments he directed certain portions to individuals in the church that a segment applied to. If I had to find something negative it is that it felt a little like a college lecture. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing at all… just an observation.

    It was a tough passage (one I’ve always shied away from preaching) so I am not certain if that led to the length of the message… maybe 50 minutes? (Matthew 13) If I were designing the service I’d shoot for a little less preaching, but it seemed like he preached until he was done. The message only felt long at the end when he prayed… FOREVER! (Take that with a grain of salt as I’m trying to be “picky” here. How can you rush prayer?)

    I can’t really compare the message to anyone else I’ve heard. Definitely not “feel good, one big idea” like Andy Stanley and not quite “holy cow that’s a lot of stuff” like John Piper. But more leaning towards Piper than Stanley. If I knew more about Mark Driscoll I’d guess it was more like him.

    The church. One thing Kristen and I strongly identify with Kaleo is its mission. They are seemingly passionate about reaching the community. I noticed on their website they have a new ministry to exotic dancers as well as a homeless outreach and several other community projects. I liked feeling as though I could likely contribute something to Kaleo if God wanted us to partner with them.

    One thing I like is that Kaleo is a church plant of the Acts 29 network. While I don’t think we’re 100% exactly matching their theology… it is quite solid. If we proceed I’m going to really understand their position on women [not] in ministry as well as a couple other positional differences. But no deal breakers that I know of. But I know a couple other Acts 29 planters and a little bit of networking goes a long way to gaining credibility in my world.

    Kids ministry. Being selfish parents… kids ministry is pretty important to us. It was a big deal that the kids both wanted to go back. Megan asked several times throughout the day if we could go back to that church. “I know we want to look at a few churches before we decide, but I really liked the people there.” Megan even told me “it was awesome” during lunch. She is a pretty shy girl, so she must have really connected with the leaders and kids to say that.

    Paul… he was bored and hungry when we picked him up. It’s no surprise he was hungry as he’s always hungry. And I don’t think he was really all that bored. When I asked him later in the day if he’d like to go back to the “movie theater church” he asked if he could go back and told me he really liked it there. One thing they both liked was that the kids got to come into “big church” for the worship portion of the service. I also noticed that most of the parents seemed to go get their kids and bring them to the end of the service with them… we’d probably do that again.

    Overall. Kristen and I really liked what we saw. From a first impression standpoint we really dug the service and it made us curious about the church. We will definitely come back when we move out in a few weeks and give it a second look. I’d be quite interested to see how school starting effects both the attendance and demographics of the congregation. I think there were about 100-150 people in the service this morning. (I could have been WAY off too as Kristen and I sat about 5 rows to the front.) Age wise, we’re in our early 30s with kids… and we felt a little high on the age radar. I felt like we could definitely connect with some of the other couples, maybe even get involved somehow in mentoring the engaged/young marrieds. The young demographic is not a bad thing at all! It was also noticeable that they don’t have any student ministry of any kind. 10 years as a youth pastor and that stuck out like a sore thumb. At the same time, if you aren’t ready for student ministry it’s best to just allow someone who is to do that. With that said my mind started to wander and wonder… “I bet they could do a service at the same time for high schoolers.”

    As Kristen and I made our way to the food court after church we both agreed, Kaleo’s service was definitely heartfelt and decidedly not fake. That’s a great impression to leave on two “battle tested” church staffers. We’ve been inside the walls enough at church to smell fake.

    Follow-up. I filled out the card and talked to someone after the service. Actually, I thought it was cool that a couple of other new people introduced themselves to us. They just moved here from Texas and have been going to Kaleo about a month… that conversation awkwardly died… but yeah, it was cool new people said hello to newer people. So I’ll just wait and see if/what we get for follow-up.