• You need clarity and focus

    Paul’s teacher has been on us for a few months to get his eyes checked out. She’d tell us, “He squints to see the board” or “He says he has to sit up front. I think he needs glasses.”

    I assumed, just like his big sister, that he’d need glasses eventually. Everyone in my family wears glasses. It’s an inevitability for McLane’s.

    Until recently, he never complained about not being able to see well. When we asked him to read a sign or move back from the TV he’d just roll his eyes. In truth, there are a number of behavior issues we are dealing with, so we thought this stubbornness about sitting near the TV was just part of his personality.

    It all made sense when I took him to Lenscrafters on Saturday. He was very excited and talkative about the appointment. As we waited for the doctor to see him, he was a nervous kind of chipper that we rarely see.

    Then he did the pre-screening. He seemed to instantly shut down. There were four machines with simple tasks. In each of them he was excited to do it. But in each of them when the doctor asked him questions he just didn’t answer.

    “Uh oh, this isn’t going well.” I sent Kristen a text.

    When the pre-screening was over I asked him why he didn’t answer any of the questions. “She was trying to trick me. I never saw anything like she was saying I should. I’m not going to answer and get an answer wrong, I only like correct answers.”

    That’s when I started to worry. It hit me. It’s not that he wasn’t trying. It’s that he had just failed all four of the pre-screening tests. Had we somehow missed something all along? Does my son have a vision problem?

    My mind raced to connect the dots.

    Then we went into the big room. The one with the hydraulic chair and big eyeglass contraption. The chair was on one wall and the chart with all the letters was on the other.

    “Paul, there are no wrong answers. This isn’t an eye test. We’re just seeing how we can help you see better. Is that OK?” He shook his head affirmatively.

    She explained what all of the instruments were in the room– so he wouldn’t be surprised by anything. (My heart was pumping a million miles per hour!)

    “Paul, can you tell me if you see any letter on the wall right in front of you?”

    “Letters? All I see is a white wall.”

    She pulled a pen from her pocket and held it about 2 feet from his face.

    “Can you read the letters on this pen?”

    “Of course I can, duh!” He was starting to have fun.

    Within a few minutes she started dialing her contraption to discover the right lenses which would help Paul.

    She flashed the first set in front of his face.

    “Ha! Ha! Now I see the poster on the wall. You weren’t tricking me.”

    On and on this went. Within a few minutes he was able to read the smallest letters on the chart with ease. First with one eye, then the other.

    Finally, she made some measurements and pulled out two lenses from desk. Just as she was putting them in front of his eyes she said, “OK Paul, tell me what you can see now?”

    His face lit up. He quickly started looking around the room. “Wow! I can see everything.”

    A smile was plastered on his face like one I’d rarely seen.

    I beamed at his discovery.

    The doctor turned to me and said, “Your son is profoundly nearsighted. But he doesn’t have a vision problem. He has a clarity and focus problem. Glasses are going to change everything.”

    That was a lightbulb moment for me. My mind started to race at all the times I’d taken him to sporting events or movies and he’d turned to me and said, “Can we leave? This is boring.” Or all of the blank stares when we pointed out historic sites. Or why he burned through quarter after quarter looking at New York City through those big binoculars. Or why he hated playing catch with me in the backyard. Or why riding his bike had always seemed so scary. On and on– the dots began to connect.

    How many of the behavior problems that we pull our hair out over are tied to this one simple thing… He couldn’t see?

    We will soon find out.

    The hour between ordering his glasses and picking them up might have been the longest 60 minutes of his life. We wondered the mall aimlessly. And about every 2 minutes he’d ask… “How much longer?”

    Finally, the time came and the lab technician called his name. As he put the glasses on his face and the technician made adjustments to the frames, I could see his eyes shooting all over. He was reading and discovering everything in the room. It was a brand new world!

    As we left the store he grabbed my arm. “Dad, look at those clouds!”

    What the moral of the story?

    There’s a lot of talk in leadership circles about having strong vision. But vision without clarity and focus on purpose will lead you, your organization, and your teams to become near-sighted.

    It’s one thing to have big vision. It’s another thing to back that up with clarity and focus.

  • If Sunday morning is about teaching…

    Photo by Phillip Howard via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Then how are you measuring what people are learning?

    As a youth worker I’m always aware of leakage in my teaching. That is, the difference between what I am teaching and what learners are learning.

    There is a naughty little educational word called “retention” we need to deal with. If there isn’t, what is the point of my teaching if my pupils aren’t learning?

    Questions I ask myself as a communicator of Biblical truth:

    • Why am I teaching them?
    • How do I measure if they are learning?
    • How do I teach all levels of learners, interest levels, and learning styles at the same time?

    Those who have sat under my leadership know that I do a lot of repetition and context to my regular teaching. Why do I do that? Because I want some things to stick. It doesn’t matter to me if you write it down in your outline or talked about it in a small group, I believe the Bible has incredible value for believers, we are called to know God’s Word, and we as leaders as told that one of our qualifications for biblical leadership is an ability to teach. I repeat and quiz because I want to burn an image of God’s Word on your heart. It’s not enough to know about the Bible… the teachings of Jesus have to be in your heart to impact your daily life.

    I also know, as a leader, I’ll be judged by what people actually learn and what people actually do with what I am teaching them.

    As the years have gone by I’ve become less enamored with perfecting my lecture-styled teaching and more enamored with a discussion-based, conversational-style.

    Why? Because I’ve found, for me, that method to be a solid way to engage with the middle 70% of my audience. Folks in the top 15% aren’t my target. And folks in the lower 15%… I hope to teach them with other methods that work for them.

    Last Monday, I posed the question: Why are we, as believers, expected to listen more than we act?

    Some commenters took the post as an attack on the church, going to church, and those who lead at church. Others seemed offended that I’d even bring up Sunday morning as something we could collectively improve upon.

    My intention was to the contrary. It was an attack on doing something that is largely ineffective for the sake of doing what we know in opposition to what might work better. For all of the thousands of hours the average church goer has listened to we should have seen so much more fruit. Let’s not forget that the church is on decline.

    That pushes questions to the forefront of my mind: Is it the hearer who is disobedient to the teaching? Or is it the teacher who is failing to teach truth in a way that influences action? Probably some fault lies on either side.

    It is my hypothesis that the primary method we are using for educating our congregations on Sunday mornings needs alteration. Church leadership is full of brilliant minds. We should show off our brilliance in our ability to lead people in innovative way: Not just talk about leadership but do it.  Not merely preach a message that doesn’t move people, instead allow the message we preach to move us.

    At the end of the day results are all that matter. Jesus isn’t going to look at you and say, “Awesome preaching, my good and faithful servant.” He will look at your body of work and judge you by the results & intention of your heart.

    Photo by byronv2 via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    What are the physical restrictions to learning on Sunday morning?

    Nearly all churches are constructed the same way. Rows of seats all facing forward with a person on stage or behind a podium. That person lectures, sometime passionately, sometimes you fill out an outline, sometimes words are put on a screen.

    But the Sunday morning experience is typically based on a single teaching method: Lecture.

    Is that how you learn best? It isn’t for me. I learn best by hearing, discussing, and practicing. Passive-learning bores me. I need something to do!

    And when I look around on Sunday morning I don’t see a lot of learning going on. (Bear in mind, my pastor is off the charts good at what he does, he is my favorite preacher. Week in and week out, he’s just as solid as people who have sold as who we have at our conferences.) Instead, I see a lot of polite nodding, the occasional taking of notes, and virtually no way to respond.

    Sunday morning is highly assumptive.

    • There is an assumption that people in the pews are going to live this teaching out in their lives.
    • There is an assumption that people are going to talk about what they heard at lunch or with a small group, or somehow try to knead the message into their lives.
    • There is an assumption that the church staff spends the majority of their work week living that message out.
    • There are no checks and balances to make sure anyone is putting anything into practice. (Staff and attendee alike.)
    • The proof is in the pudding. There are hundreds of thousands of churches in America. Most use the same methods, few grow. Conversely, where the church is growing around the world and even here in the United States, different methods are in play.

    The “It’s not about Sunday morning argument.“

    I’ll be the first to admit that the Christian life isn’t 100% about Sunday morning. But, for most people, it’s the centerpiece of their walk with God. People aren’t just whining about being busy, they are. And they are sitting in your pews, bored, and saying to themselves… “You kind of waste my time on Sunday morning, why should I trust you with more of my time? We don’t need another program. We need this program to work for us.” If it isn’t about Sunday morning than why do we even do it? Of course Sunday morning is very important! Let’s not fool ourselves with double talk.

    Are the methods we use on Sunday morning “sacred?“

    Sure, Paul preached until a young man fell from a window and died. (Then Paul healed him.) And Jesus preached both at the temple and in public. No doubt, he was taught by rote memory as a boy growing up attending the synagogue. At the same time, oral tradition and discourse were both forms of education and forms of entertainment. We see from the New Testament that Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to build churches and hold meetings. Instead, he taught them while they were on the road from place to place. Or by sending them out in pairs to do ministry in His name. Or using parables. Or by asking them questions. In truth, we see a variety of teaching methods to communicate biblical truth in the Bible.

    While the way we’ve always done church is held as sacred, the methods we use aren’t Biblically sacred. But what is sacred is the simple command to teach.

    A challenge

    Photo by SparkFun Electronics via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I want to challenge you to try something. Maybe it’ll sound crazy. But maybe it’ll just be crazy enough to change your church. (And maybe you don’t have access to try this with the whole church, so try it with your youth group!)

    Conduct a six-week experiment.

    Week one: Teach a normal Sunday service. On Thursday, send out a 5 question email (or Facebook) survey for Sunday morning attendees, asking them 4 basic questions about your message, and one open-ended question about how they applied the message on Sunday morning. (What was the passage? What was the main point? Which of the following was an illustration? What’s one way you are applying last week’s teaching today?)

    Week two: Teach, again, in your normal fashion. This week, acknowledge after the sermon that they will again receive a survey via email on Thursday. This will tip them off that it is coming, so expect the results to be higher.

    Take weeks three & four off from the experiment. You’ll be tempted to peak at the results so far. Show discipline!

    Week five: Try a different teaching method on Sunday morning. Maybe teach by discussion. Or get people into work groups. Do anything that isn’t one person up front teaching. Don’t warm people that this is coming! That’ll mess up the experiment. Then send out the same 5 question survey again. (Expect some negative comments, people coming on Sunday might hate any type of change.)

    Week six: Use the same method one more time. Send out the same survey. Just like in week two, tell them to expect a short survey on Thursday.

    At the end of the six weeks unseal the results and meet together as a staff to look at them. Did retention scores increase or decrease? Did the change in method cause more people to apply teaching? Did the workgroups hold each other accountable? Overall, what was the net change? (Heck, maybe the old method was statistically better!)

    Week seven: Send out one last email sharing the full results.

    This will serve two purposes. First, it’ll communicate to your congregation that you are taking your biblical role as a teacher seriously and being professional by sharing the results of an experiment which involved them. Second, it’ll invite the congregation into the problem solving. Chances are good that you’ll get a lot of feedback simply by conducting the experiment.

    Of course, I’d love it if you shared your results with me as well. Email me a Word document and I’ll share them on my blog.

  • Poll: Does Paul look like Harry Potter?

  • Why you should watch SDSU vs. BYU on February 26th

     

  • When God shows up

    The last 48 hours have been filled with God’s presence. Little moments of stillness amidst the storm of welcoming a new baby in which God whispered in our ear gentle reminder:

    “You are Mine.”

    “Jackson is Mine.”

    “I’m in charge.”

    The change started Tuesday morning as the sun came up. In the 24 hours preceding we had been in the hospital trying to get labor going nothing had happened. Like literally, we progressed backwards!

    We fell asleep exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged. We woke up refreshed, optimistic, and encouraged.

    I turned on the lights and I changed the music in our room to a playlist I call, “All U2, All Crowder, All the Time.”

    That little room reset set in motion a series of things where God loudly presented His voice.

    First, the nurses examined Kristen. A 25 year veteran and then the senior nurse on the ward both said… “I’ve never felt anything like that. I have no idea what that means or what’s going on.”

    We laughed. And both Kristen and I soaked in the reality that it wasn’t just that Kristen was a newfound medical mystery– it was that God was going to reveal Himself in an unexpected way.

    Then, the doctor came in. She answered all of our questions and was matter-of-fact about what was going to happen. His head was too big to be born

    As the hours progressed our anxiety about the realities of how Jackson would be born significantly decreased, too. We rested knowing that while we hadn’t intended for a C section, it wasn’t the end of the world. But it clearly a little test of our dependency on God as our Father.

    As a dad I like to be in control. Our kids are old enough where I’ve learned how to keep things in my family within parameters of my control. Those boundaries are often wide for plenty of room to be brave yet stringent enough to keep everyone out of harms way. Control is a necessary function of parenting. In many ways it isn’t that I like to be in control. It’s that my role as a father means I need to be in control.

    Yet, in this situation we were removed from the control position. We knew nothing about having a baby this way. We were going to have to completely give up control to people we barely knew and trust that they would take care of us in our most vulnerable state.

    On one side of the teeter totter was the birth process we knew. Being a known process, even if it ended in more frustration, seemed good to us because we knew it. On the other side of the teeter totter was the birth process we knew of, knew a lot of facts about, but couldn’t trust from our experience.

    Back and forth we went.

    All afternoon, we teeter-tottered between rationally knowing that the surgery was the only way to go and the fear of the unknown. And yet God’s peace began to fill the room with each passing hour.

    Finally, the hour arrived. With all of the preparations complete an OR nurse came into our room and started to pull Kristen’s bed out of the room.

    We were helpless with what was about to happen. We had zero control. We signed consent forms. Our “yes” was in writing! This wasn’t some sort of metaphysical letting go anymore… literally, Kristen’s life and Jackson’s life were being wheeled down the hallway.

    Kristen went down the hall into the operating room and I was left alone behind the big double doors. Alone in the moment. I was trying to think about anything but “what if?”

    My mind swirled in those moments. Thinking about seeing Jackson in a few minutes. Thinking about the order of who to call after he was born. Thinking about news of an earthquake in Christchurch, NZ. Thinking about the deliveries of Megan and Paul. Thinking about if I had watered the plant above my desk at home. Thinking about all the episodes of TV hospital drama I’d seen and never actually been into an operating room. Thinking about how I was going to juggle taking pictures with both my iPhone and my still camera. Thinking about what I wanted to say to Kristen when he was born.

    Round and round my brain went. 1,000 miles per hour and 1,000 directions at once. My world felt very small in those few moments. My whole world was limited to the two 12×12 tiles my feet were frozen in.

    There was never a place in my life so alone as in that hallway. And for Kristen, I’m sure there was never a more alone place than laying on that table getting prepped. If marriage is about oneness than we shared in the oneness of our aloneness in that moment.

    Finally, the door opened and a nurse moved me to another room. A real waiting area. More like a closet. I’d be brought into the operating room just before they were ready to pull him out. Fortunately, there was a chair there so I could sit down. I collapsed into the seat– still swirling and full of emotion. There wasn’t anything I could do. Just sit.

    As the nurse closed the door leaving me alone I felt God’s presence arrive and fill the room. It’s hard to explain. But I just started to feel the same phrases over and over again. Not audible, not in mind mind… but somewhere in between. “You are mine. Jackson is mine. I’m in charge.”

    I don’t know how long I was in there. Probably just a couple of minutes. But it was glorious! Now, all of a sudden, it felt like the whole experience was holy ground.

    The nurse came back to get me. I put on my surgical mask. And the next few minutes were a blur of seeing Kristen, hearing the doctors talk, and culminating with the phrase, “Time. Seventeen-eleven.” I leaned to my left and there he was… Jackson Tucker McLane.

    The bottom line is simple: When God shows up– Everything changes.

  • Stop learning and start acting

    Photo by Meredith Farmer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I’m surprised how much listening and reading we are expected to do as Christians.

    • Listen to a sermon each week – 35-45 minutes
    • Read from the Bible each day – 15-30 minutes
    • Listen to people read Bible verses and sing songs at church – 60 minutes
    • Attend a weekly mid-week service, small group, or youth group – 30-60 minutes
    • Listen to podcasts of even more sermons – 60-90 minutes per week

    Is the Christian life just about listening and reading or is it supposed to be about learning?

    Because if it’s about learning– I don’t learn very much by listening and reading in other areas of my life.

    • I have only read 1-2 books and maybe watched a couple of television shows about parenting, but I’ve learned how to parent.
    • Outside of the Bible, I can’t think of any non-fiction book I’ve finished… ever. I start books but never finish them.
    • I go to a job each day where I learn lots each day, and I’ve never read a book or listening to a lecture on almost any of it. “On the job training” has defined my work life.
    • I’m learning how to garden, but I haven’t read a book about it and I wouldn’t even know where to start to find a lecture about it.

    On and on. In most areas of my life I learn mostly by doing and almost never by sitting passively and listening or reading the same book over and over again.

    The Christian life is so passive. It is repulsive. We believe all of the right things and act on none of it.

    Who is all of this instruction for?

    The people hearing it or the person teaching it?

    If I’m honest, I learn way more when I’m asked to teach from the Bible than I do if I just sit on my hands for 30 minutes and listen. And yet pastors teach and everyone else is expected to just listen… and even if we learn something no one is ever going to ask us to put it into action, nor follow-up with us, nor hold us accountable. Each Sunday is a new data dump. There will never be a test. We’ll never be asked to write papers. No one ever asks us if we are actually learning.

    If the Christian life were a class– church is the lecture series we audit.

    Did Jesus die so I could go to church and listen to sermons I’ll never put into action?

    Is that what we really believe? All of the empirical evidence seems to point to that. Our systematic theology says no, but our practical theology says yes.

    For all the messages that have been preached to me, the thousands of hours of Bible study, and the thousands of hours of mid-week teaching I’ve received you’d think, the hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into me– at some point, someone would look at me and say, “Dude, you know everything you need to know. Get out of here and live this stuff. Stop learning and start doing!”

    That’s never going to happen. Why? Because we measure passive activity and mislabel it as success. We lie to ourselves by rewarding the wrong people, we label passive reception of God’s word as good, and putting the Word to action is tertiary.

    It’s not supposed to be this way.

    James, who knew Jesus’ teaching well, was right. He addressed this danger directly.

    Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

    James 1:22-25

    Get out and live the Gospel. Stop learning and start acting on what you’ve learned.

    Jesus didn’t die for you so that you could go to church and hear people preach. Of course you don’t believe that.

    Live otherwise.

  • Pause

    Sunrise over the Cuyamaca Mountains

    Kristen and I were laying around this morning and talking about where we are at in this moment.

    I am so future-focused that I struggle to think about the present. Even when I give my full presence I have a tendency to think, “What’s next?”

    We took some time to breathe in this moment. This hour. This day. This stage of life we will forever label, “pre-Tres.”

    In the next 36 hours Kristen will give birth to our third child. We agree, we are completely over waiting for him to arrive.

    Kristen made the remark that typically February is one of those months that just flies by– but Tres’s arrival has made it different. This February has dragged. Each day seems a couple hours longer than the day before. I compared it to the last two weeks of school before summer break. Impatient anticipation.

    So, with the sun revealing a new day over the Cuyamaca Mountains and the pitter-patter of rain giving way to a glorious lazy Sunday, we hit the pause button and remembered the days Megan and Paul were born. Glorious days. Hallmarks of our life.

    Each day, so unique and special. Each day seems like a million days ago and yesterday at the same time.

    The next 36 hours will bear witness to and create unique memories for Tres’s arrival. Things will happen which will become folklore in our family. Some moments we think are precious will soon be forgotten. And other moments that seem insignificant in the moment will become significant as time passes.

    In these last few hours of our life, pre-Tres, we are a mixed bag of holding on to the life we know and eagerly awaiting our new life to begin.

    But mostly, we are ready to hit the play button and meet our new son!

  • Conversation with Stoney

    Last night, Stoney decided he wanted to go for a walk. I stood in the living room, talking to Kristen, and Stoney sat next to me with those eyes.

    If you have a dog you know the eyes.

    The only problem? A strong winter storm had rolled in. While it was sunny, clear, and in the 70s on Monday. It was dreary, raining, and about 50 by Friday night.

    Here’s how the scene played out, real life conversation recorded for you:

    Adam [staring at the dog, his eyes bright and tail waging] – What? What do you want?

    Stoney [Sitting politely at his owners feet, gazing up at his beloved inquisitive face] – I want to go for a walk. Take me for a walk. [Eyebrows up] Please?

    Adam [hearing the rain beat against the roof] Dude, it’s raining. You don’t really want to go out there. You just think you want to go, but it’s pouring and cold outside.

    Stoney [ambivalent to the news, tail wagging] OMG. You just said “outside!” Outside is like my favorite word! I can’t wait! Thank you for understanding me, master. You are totally awesome!

    Adam [walking to the blinds and opening them, convinced that if the dog saw that it was raining, that his dog/friend would not really want to go for a walk] Seriously. Stoney, look outside. Its pouring. If we went out there we’d get soaked. We can’t go for a walk in the rain.

    Stoney [his excitement has built to a frenzy. This is shaping up to be an amazing evening] I know, that’s OUTSIDE, where you just said we were going. Holy crap… did you say WALK too? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. [prancing and licking his lips, he can’t stand still he is so excited] You said outside and walk. This is the BEST DAY EVER! YES!

    Adam [looking at his wife, full of disbelief at what is happening, then looks back at his dog] No. Really. We can’t go for a walk. It’s raining. Sorry buddy.

    Stoney [his head sinks down for a moment of sadness] Are you kidding me? I sat in this house all day waiting for you to come home. You haven’t been home all week and I haven’t really cared. I just thought it’d be a good time for us to reconnect a little. The pecking order is going to change in like 3 days. You’ll bring home that baby and you’ll have even less time for me. So I just thought… I know it’s raining. But that doesn’t bother me. I’m a labrador retriever. My coat is wicks moisture away from my skin and keeps me warm during a fall duck hunt. Wet is in my DNA. It’s hard wired as exciting. And you… you bought a $100 rain jacket… even though you live somewhere that only rains like 10 days a year. I knew you didn’t love me. It’s all just words. You are full of excuses. Jerk.

    Adam [noticing the instant and deep sorrow of his friends body language. The words were a jab with a knife, but the body language twisted the knife to maximize damage to internal organs] You don’t seem to care that it’s raining outside, do you? And I did buy that jacket. And you really are made to be wet and cold and not really get cold. [checking Kristen’s face, it’s smiling as she sees Adam’s heart break for his friend.] I guess we could go.

    Stoney [gives a little wiggle to his eyebrow. It’s a give away that his act of playing the abused dog worked] Did you say OUTSIDE and GO? Yes! Yes! Yes! I knew you wanted to take me for a walk. What are we waiting for? [cue: tail wagging]

    Adam [searching his closet for his rain jacket and a change of socks] OK, let’s go for a walk.

    [End of scene]

  • 5 Things the App Store Teaches Us

    A living exhibit of current apps being sold. Photo HT to Sachin Agarwal

    More than 1 billion apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store. Believe it or not, there are lots of people who still don’t think of it as a serious marketplace. A billion is 1,000 million folks. That’s pretty serious.

    Here are 5 things that the app store has taught me

    1. Free is a legitimate business plan.
    2. Financial success isn’t so much about profit margins, it’s about price point.
    3. Traditional high margin businesses with complicated business plans can’t compete.
    4. The one hit wonder is just as powerful today as it was yesterday.
    5. Big business will always manipulate a free market system.

    Some brief explanations to unpack the list above.

    Free is a legitimate business plan

    Would you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail if it cost you $2.99 each to belong? Of course not. But how did Google, Twitter, and Facebook get to become some of the most powerful companies in the world without charging you a dime? TV has been doing it for years.

    Financial success isn’t so much about profit margins, it’s about price point

    When I developed my first apps for YS, the content was valued based on the retail price of the book. Consequently, they never took off. People aren’t going to pay the same $7.99 for an app version of a book that they’d pay for a hard copy because the perceived value is different. The question app buyers are asking is, “Will I get the free version or will I pay $.99?” Remember… all of Facebook, Google, and Twitter are 100% FREE! So your buyer wants to know why your app, compared to what they know is already free, has more value to them than that. To pay more than $.99 for an app you have to demonstrate ridiculous value. Consequently, if you lower your price point or eliminate the cost, you will access millions more customers and potentially make infinitely more money as a result.

    Traditional businesses with complicated business plans can’t compete

    Traditional media and brick/mortar retailers are struggling to figure out how to take advantage of apps. Look for yourself. Retailers apps aren’t really necessary but are just attempts to have “something” in the app store. An online catalog is pointless because of Google. A store finder is pointless because of Google Maps. Most traditional brands apps aren’t adding value– they are marketing. And people are extraordinarily good at sniffing out marketing thanks to the popularity of bloggers like Seth Godin. Companies with simple business plans are beating them in the app store because simple business plans have lower overhead, can take more brand risk, are more nimble, and will rely less on expensive “experts.” (If an app maker is an “expert” than why would they sell your company something for thousands when “experts” are becoming millionaires? Additionally, the counter-intuitive business strategy of free is nearly impossible for traditional business leaders to comprehend.

    The one hit wonder is just as powerful today as it was yesterday

    Angry Birds is to the app store what Don McLean is to the record business. Except we live in an age when a company that has a one-hit wonder in the app business will get a royalty checks from Apple for millions of dollars per month. Not bad for some college students from Finland, eh? Take that– Mattel or EA or any of the other major players in the game industry! Each of the original creators of Angry Birds will not only make a lot of money off of Angry Birds… they are now solid gold for life.

    Big business will always manipulate a free market system

    The editors at Apple have always claimed a certain level of editorial control of the app market. In other words the stuff at the top of the pile is at the top of the pile mostly because it is the best in the marketplace. But, in truth, they have allowed that to be manipulated by some levels of marketing of new stuff. Go to the app store today on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad and you will see ads for featured items. That wasn’t free and it is almost always big, publicly traded companies, who have bought that influence. Consequently, some of the biggest selling apps are not, indeed, the best apps in a totally free marketplace. There has been some manipulation.

  • Hope reigns over youth ministry

    Hope makes humanity unique.

    No matter how bad things may look, you can always choose hope.

    Hope is the reason a widow can smile at her spouses funeral. And hope is the reason a woman living in a tent can shock you with a smile and call out to God with thanksgiving when she is destitute.

    Hope is the fire that brings warmth to your heart during your darkest hour.

    The way I see it, hope is winning in the lives of many friends in youth ministry right now.

    The last few years have rattled us to our core as two realities crushed our confidence:

    1. We realized that the way/methods/modes we experienced youth group and even came into a relationship with Jesus weren’t effectively reaching the students in our lives in the ways or with the veracity we had grown used to.
    2. The economic crisis changed, foundationally, the way our ministry was financed. Many of us lost our jobs or were forced (or given the opportunity) to take on additional responsibilities in the church.

    While, from a humanist perspective, those crushing realities should have devastated youth ministry, I think it has made youth ministry better. When circumstances should have snuffed out the dreams of our heart, hope blew a steady, gentle breath onto the embers, igniting the flame once again.

    From my perspective this last period of youth ministry has brought about two amazing things which I aim to demonstrate more vividly in the months to come:

    1. Youth ministry was never truly about a model anyway. Youth workers have created fresh ways to share Jesus’ love with adolescents built on the best practices of “what we grew up on” and melded into the needs of individual communities we serve.
    2. Youth ministry was always a calling as much as a vocation. When the money got cut back and even when people lost their jobs– they still chose to minister to adolescents because that is who they are more than what they were hired to do.

    So, here we are! We have run the gauntlet and survived! Circumstances can not snuff out hope!

    I am snubbing my nose at those who have declared youth ministry dead. Swooned? Maybe. Knocked down? Definitely. Humbled? You bet.

    But giving up? Never.