Last night at Light Force we asked the following 3 questions…
Are you crazy enough to change the world?
Are you crazy enough to believe the Bible is true?
Are you crazy enough to change what you are doing to reach people?
Call me crazy, but I hope they answer "yes" to all 3.
I saw this on an old high school friends Facebook. Sorry Sharna, you aren’t really old… but you are an old friend.
It’s called "Blackle" and it’s a Google alternative that is essentially Google with a different style sheet. The theory is that by making the screen black/gray that the combined monitor energy savings will save 750 megawatts of power in the world each day. I don’t know if that theory is really true. But I do think it’s actually a very cool idea.
Slick marketing!
From a tech geek perspective what I like about Blackle is that it’s really just a super slick way for its developer, Heap Media, to get people to use their custom Google search… which they will make a tidy profit on the ad referrals. That’s right, they’ve rebranded something that is free for their own profit. Gotta love America. Oh wait, Heap is from Australia. With the Google custom search just around the corner expect to see a lot more sites like this one. No judgment one way or the other, just in awe!
Realization = the process of making something a reality.
In my context, my goal at Romeo has always been the same. Kristen and I moved 2150 miles from Northern California to the suburbs of Detroit to help lead a church into being "dumb enough to think they can change the world." In other words, despite the fact that studies show our area is headed into the abyss, the message of Jesus Christ will penetrate so deeply into our community that it will actually change the DNA of the community. It takes a brave people to venture into that goal. But they assured me they had it in them and we came east 2150 miles.
Over the past 24 months this has really taken shape. It started first as our staff jelled together. We are a very diverse group of people who always love one another but aren’t afraid to bump heads. As our working relationship became cohesive, that started to spread as the church really grabs hold of a crazy vision… we all want to deeply impact this community for life change. And now we are all agreeing on the methods we chose to use to reach those goals.
Over the past week or two I’ve started to pick up on some language cues that have changed as we think and talk about our mission in Romeo. Here is how the language has changed as people, from the staff to the newest attender, talk about our mission.
My guess is that this is the language of goal realization for a lot of organizations and teams as they set high marks and try to move forward. Let’s learn from Romeo.
What is so powerful about this is that it’s not a gimmick, it’s not a "thing I learned from a book," it is a thing that is happening right in front of me. This is an organic thing that has happened. We never sat down and said… "How can we manipulate people to talk like this?" This is much more simple than that as it’s simply how people’s language patterns change as they realize that the goals set are attainable. In reality, it’s the exact same language that the golf team used when they realized how good they were. And the converse is the same when they realized that using the wrong language ("We are the reigning champions, we are going to win by just showing up.") led to the complacency on not accomplishing the goals. (Losing a championship they were talented enough to walk all over.)
Question: For those who are leading a comeback process in their organization (job, team, small group, youth group, church, whatever you lead) how does language that is coming from the people you lead change?
I’ve gotten a sneak peek at Lifechurch.tv‘s new Bible resource called YouVersion. (To see full-sized screenshots, click on the images) Just in my initial look at their alpha test there are some features that are absolutely going to revolutionize how some people read/use the Bible online. As a Web 2.0 junkie… let me highlight what I mean.
It’s a Bible homepage, not just a place to look stuff up like on Biblegateway.com. (Which is an amazing Web 1.0 site) 
The thing I kept thinking as I gave this a first look… (I’ll be back to do more testing over the next few weeks too) is that a church is doing this. Not a major media player or even Gospel Communications… a local church. Granted, Lifechurch.tv isn’t your average ordinary church. But still, this is like taking on the Gutenberg Bible project as a local church only to give it away. Yeah… this seems like it’s going to be 100% free.
What’s missing?
Well, loads and loads of content will make this an unreal resource for small group leaders, pastors, and people interested in knowing what others think about certain passages of Scripture. All-in-all, I think this is going to be a web addiction for a lot of people for a long time to come. Bravo Lifechurch.tv. I can’t wait to see the beta test, and of course the production version.
According to Forbes Magazine, the Detroit Metro area maintains it’s hold as the worst housing market in the United States. Don’t know about other home owners around here… but consecutive years leading this list is kind of expensive. (More than 15% decrease in 2 years!)
When you turn your gaze to the Midwest, the issue becomes where the
money is not coming from. Based on MBA calculations, Ohio, Indiana and
Michigan account for 8.7% of the nation’s loans but account for 20% of
all loans in foreclosure nationwide. The reason this is happening is
because people are losing their jobs and leaving the area.And this trend should continue into next year.
"We
expect another two to four quarter of modest rises in delinquencies,"
says Duncan. "And foreclosures lag one to two quarters behind that."
What is truly disturbing about this is that the morons in Lansing see fit to continue to raise our property taxes in line with the nations cost of living. (Not dependent on Michigan’s economy) When coupled with the county assessor who valued my home at 10% more than I paid for it despite the 15% dip in home values in the last 2 years, there is a 25% difference between what our home should be taxed at and what we are actually paying.
And people speculate why Michigan’s population is shrinking? Who can afford to live here? We’ve got inflation all around us and politicians telling us it isn’t inflation.
I saw this over at Church Video Ideas and I thought it was interesting. At Romeo we use MediaShout, which I like a lot. At least one person on our staff would like to see us switch to the Mac-based ProPresenter… but even if we wanted to you are looking at a $3000-$5000 switchover with loads and loads of issues associated with that. I like MediaShout for a ton of reasons. Number 1 being that it’s pretty easy to use. Number 2 being that each release has become more stable. At any rate, vote!
Location:
For those new to Romeo they may think that the Kroger’s on Van Dyke really is a new Kroger’s store built from scratch. In actuality it is just a rebranded store after the closing of Farmer Jack this summer.
Description:
The same nasty smell welcomes you to the "new" Kroger as welcomed you to Farmer Jack. The smell comes from a poorly placed recycling station between the two sets of front doors. Inside, it’s a fairly normal grocery store. If you can get past the nasty smell of old beer and pop, it isn’t the worst store in the world. Perhaps I’m unintelligent but I’ve never been able to find anything at this store as the store has always felt backward in my brain. (Most grocery stores seem to "start" on the right and work left, this is opposite.) The inside of the store looks identical to the way things were when it was under it’s previous owner. As I walked around I wondered if these were the same employees. The only difference I noticed was that the Kroger label was all over the place. Other than that it is the exact same "ho-hum" grocery store.
Service:
Non-existent. In fact, when I checked out there wasn’t even a cashier at any of the stations so I was forced to use the self-checkout system. No one greeted me when I walked in, no one spoke to me in the aisles, no one helped me check out. This is as close to shopping online as you can get in a physical store!
Cost:
Pretty normal prices. I’m sure that if you use their discount card you may save a couple pennies here and there.
Ranking:
While the location is somewhat convenient the smell walking in the door says it all. If they want to save this store they have to do some serious remodeling. As far as I know this is the 3rd grocery chain that has tried to make this location work. I don’t see Kroger lasting terribly long. That is, unless they are interested in the location and not profits. Did I mention that there were 4 cars in the parking lot? I’ll give them a "2" as at least they exist and it isn’t an empty store.
Agree or disagree?
After a week at the merchant area of the Armada Fair, I thought I’d share in a couple of merchant lies that I picked up on. Both of them have to do with the contests you enter. Just be aware of these:
See, the thing about a fair is that it only lasts a week. There is no regulation of any kind as to whom is there. If you pay the money, you get a spot. If you pay $100 cash for a craft… do you even know the persons name whom you bought something from? Where would you return it? What would you do if you found out that they sold you a "handmade craft" from India and not Indiana?
A lot of vendors didn’t like us very much by the end of the week. Sure, we drew a lot of traffic. Sure, we made a 1500 kids smile with free balloons. But at the end of the day we frustrated some vendors because our authenticity reflected on their fraud. The booths who sold honest products at an honest price did better because they looked at the long term gain instead of a one-time, 6 day profit.
I just hope we get a chance to go back in 2008. It was a monster win for KidsTown.
Posted Sep 15, 2005
The Microsoft bigwig teamed up with Napoleon Dynamite in this spoof video from PDC 2005. The camera’s a little shaky, but you get the idea.
Ever wanted to say "Yes" to the replacement plan at Best Buy? Here’s a great example of why you should. Brought to you by my 2nd favorite viral video folks… Blendtec. This should be on every youth workers "most wanted" list… the blender! Buy it now
