It’s FRIDAY!

Yup, another week gone by.

Like most Friday’s, it is a time for a pause and break from the weekly grind, for sure.  Today, I am asking myself some questions which I bring up periodically:

• The year is almost 1/4 over, how have you grown so far?
• Where are you on your New Year’s Resolutions?
• What are you doing differently today than 1 year ago today?

Personally, if I’m not careful with how I live out my daily or weekly life, time flies by like a blur and all of a sudden I realize that I’m in a never ending pattern.  Although it can be a healthy one, most of the time, it can be realized as a rut.

Doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again…and with the sense of purpose lost in the air somewhere back there in the distant past.

So one of my most sacred praxis that I keep is a randomization ritual.  Each month I carve out some time on my calendar and purposefully mix it all up.  Do something different.

We all need some randomness in our lives.   Otherwise, there’s a method to our madness madness to our [repetitious] methods.

Here’s some ideas for what I personally have considered for my own randomization rituals:

• Go out to lunch at a restaurant alone and bring nothing else — No cell phones, no dedicated Twitter devices, no people, no books, no reports, no nothing. Nada. Nunca.  EXCEPT a pad and pen. I eat slowly and observe.  People watch.  Listen carefully to the environment.  And I jot down random observations, thoughts, axioms etc.  I try to avoid at all costs task lists, reminders, to-do’s, etc.  This is a time of reflection & brainstorming.  And oh yeah, don’t order anything you’ve ordered before on that menu.

• Go the library and walk into the non-fiction stacks and start perusing books in a category I have no experience with.  Perhaps it is knitting, aerospace, crock-pot cooking, music genres I don’t normally listen to.  You’ll be amazed how curious your mind becomes when you set it in front of volumes of books just waiting to be picked-up and discovered.  It is not about reading books cover to cover, but browsing, investigating, being inspired not about the technical aspects of the category — I’m not so concerned about remembering the 12 different knitting pattern techniques, but rather more about planting seeds in my head about the creative aspects of the genre.

• Call  and talk to 3 people you have not talked to in 6 months or more.  These conversations are casual, non-intensive, but more importantly, they jog your brain about subjects, themes, interests, and ideas that were alive in me in the past.  Some of those ideas should stay dead and buried of course! but more times than not, these talks ignite old ideas reincarnated to help you with your future.

• Write a thank you note.  Yup, this is so old school that some of you readers might get offended.  Just to be clear, I am in fact suggesting that you use a physical writing instrument and get a note card out (for some, that means you’ll have to physically go out and buy some at the stationery store, but you have to do it!) to share the blessings you’ve received from someone else’s actions, words, or presence.  The easy way out is to send it to someone you know closely.  Here, I challenge you to write a thank you note to those who are in your sphere of influence, but to people would never in a million years expect something in the mail from you.  If you want to go a step further, write to someone who doesn’t know you personally – like a public figure, a speaker you heard at a conference, or guest speaker at church.  How about the head of a company regarding a recent positive experience with one of their employees?  You would think that writing a thank you note to someone who is technically a stranger is the easiest of the categories, but it’s not.  Your brain actually works harder to think about who to write, what to write and how to say it.  In the end though, this is more for you than for the recipient.  Going through this process reverses so much of the hard-wired processes we use on a daily basis.  It will loosen up that sludge in your brain and get your creativity going.  I promise you.  Plus I have never heard of someone getting offended for receiving a thank you note.  Have you? WARNING: thank you emails, text messages or tweets don’t count!
  

As you can see, they don’t need to be time intensive or cost intensive at all.  But you can bet that the benefits will be intensive changes to your life as you continue to infuse randomization rituals into your weekly or monthly routines.

What other ideas do you have for randomization rituals? Please share some new ideas with me so I can try them out in my own life! Leave one or two ideas in the comments below.

As of now, there are 48 fully online churches that exist in the world like www.liquidchurch.com and www.lifechurch.tv.

Full-fledged online communities complete with pastoral leadership and ministry leaders specifically attending to the online participants around the world.  “Online Church Pastor” is new title for many people to find out about.

CNN apparently has recently discovered that thousands of people are gathering online in community via the Internet.

Like many CNN segments, this one is cursory in nature, but at least it helps introduce the masses to this new, but fully-here-to-stay permutation of doing church:

What do you think was the takeaway which the public got from this TV segment? Is it an accurate portrayal of doing church online? Leave your thoughts in a comment below please!

So thanks to Rev. Canon Dr. Jon Ignatius Lumanog for tweeting me regarding my original blog post that Legal Sea Foods wasn’t the first to focus their national marketing on Lent and the meatless habits of Catholics in our country.

I should have known that good ol’ American institution — McDonald’s — has an even older fish story related to Lent.

In turns out that 23% of all Fish-O-Fillets sold annually are consumed during Lent season.  Actually, the Fish-O-Fillet was originally created specifically for the 87% of McDonald’s customers who were Catholic — and thus observing the obligatory tradition of giving up meat for Friday meals during Lent.

What is interesting to me is that this seems like a typical bottom-dollar motivated story.  But another read on it would be that when almost 90% of your audience consciously tries to avoid meat during meals during a month every year, coming up with a non-meat alternative on the menu could also be seen as serving your customers (no pun intended!).

The other thing is that McDonald’s doesn’t make a direct, explicit appeal to Catholics or the religious calendar with its Fish-O-Fillet.   This seems a bit softer than the “get the most out of Lent” message from Legal Sea Foods we saw previously.

On the other hand, McDonald’s does ramp up its marketing for the meatless menu item during the Lent Season:

Apparently Catholics aren’t the only ones that enjoy Fish sandwiches on the McDonald’s menu since it is the only menu item that can be eaten at McDonald’s by people of some other faiths.

Is this like offering vegetarian options on a restaurant menu so that everyone who comes can enjoy something when you go?

So what do you think about all this?  PLEASE share your own voice and leave a comment below.

As we continue through Lent season, Easter is around the corner.

So what types of consumer marketed products comes to mind in our commercialized secular culture with this Holy religious season?

Cadbury Easter Eggs?

Marshmellow Peeps?

Go on, keep thinking. . .

How about LOBSTERS?

I just got an email from a merchant with suggestions for a new spin on the whole Easter/Lent marketing thing:

• TRY PUSHING LOBSTERS FOR LENT!

I’ve never thought about or even recognized any other product categories that have pursued LENT-based marketing.  Have you?

Legal Sea Foods is a premium product, and they certainly aspire to excellence in their business.  Their company is not a slimy or take-the-shortcuts-in-business type enterprise IMHO.  So shady business practices (or marketing practices for that matter) isn’t something which I normally associate with this company in particular.  (I have no idea if the founders are Xtian or not).  But I have to hand it to them that this one is quite creative.

As Legal Sea Foods tries to position themselves as a prominent option for “meatless Friday dinner ideas” –  Are they doing a service? Or are they exploiting the religious calendar?

I guess the question is where exactly are the boundaries for merchants to engage with those trying to live out their faith.

If you are ready to condemn Legal Sea Foods, what about the explicitly Christian companies that push other types of promotional Lent/Easter related products — like the re-purposed rubber wristbands as Lent reminders that I recently received at church — are these companies equally guilty of exploiting this community too?

My one criticism that does come to mind is that if this is *not* a simple ploy to exploit the church calendar, it would have been better to see the click through landing pages (or even a section on their site) helping their customers to explore the topic of meatless dinner alternatives. . . How about some sea food recipes? Or customer stories of their own family traditions involving friday night fish fry’s for dinner, etc, etc.  Once they become an actual resource, and not just a salesman, the authenticity in their communications efforts can really shine through.

Please leave a comment below with your thoughts on this issue.  I’m very interested to see what you think!

Sometimes the ministries can become consumed with who comes in through the front door of the church.

Our churches build out extensive outreach campaigns, coordinate home visits for new comers, employ direct mail and other church marketing tactics.

But there’s another door that goes unguarded and it’s becoming a big problem.  In fact, it’s big enough that 52,000 people a week leave the church through the back door.  That’s a lot of people.  No wonder our pews, especially in the mainline denominational churches are becoming a little bit more spacious every Sunday.  This is exactly why the church is dying, some may say.

Once you’re paying attention to the mass exodus out the back door of the church by existing members and attenders, I’m sure it is easy to guess why.  But do your guesses match-up with reality?

Here are the top 3 reasons why thousands of frustrated people are leaving the church in droves.

1. They do not believe they are being told the “gospel truth” by their pastors
2. They do not believe the church provides true Christian fellowship and community; and
3. They do not believe their individual giftedness and spiritual purpose on earth, as part of a body, are recognized.

“In short, American Christians increasingly feel like strangers within the church that is supposed to be the body of Christ,” according to W. Hendricks, author of Exit Interviews

What is your church doing specifically to guard against #1, #2 or #3 above? Please share your thoughts with us and leave a comment right now.

Perhaps the Protestants *do* have something learn from the Vatican even after breaking away a long time ago.

First Pope Benedict XVI said to his troops, go ahead and blog away!

Next he launched his own YouTube channel – called Pope2You (gotta love that!)

If you’re a Pope that’s hip with YouTube, you’re obviously already on Facebook.

And what ultra-hip clergy would be without his own Pope Iphone App?

If these were not evidence that the Catholic Church has embraced the digital sanctuary and church online, here’s another dose of example of how the Vatican sees technology’s usefulness and validity in the expression of faith:

Every year, over 1 million of the 5 million people in Costa Rica make a yearly pilgrimage to the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles Basilica in Cartago.  But with H1N1 making the rounds, the country’s top health official banned the pilgrimage last year.  What did the Catholic Church do?

Nope, they didn’t protest (well, of course they did a little).

But instead, they embraced technology and launched www.romeriavirtual.com to that hundreds of thousands could still participate in the 288 year old religious ritual — and still do it in community.

Participants log in, upload a photo, choose their own walking feet/shoes and make the pilgrimage online amidst thousands of others doing it at the same time, sharing all the while to the destination, Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Our Lady of the Angels Basilica):

The H1N1 threat has subsided enough that the offline pilgrimage is back on this year, but what’s happened is that a virtual version has been birthed and will continue as this new tradition evolves and becomes part of the annual rite now involving participants from around the world.

You might say that, faith really does have no boundaries — at least in this case!

I have no idea who is behind this product I came across on Amazon today, but IMHO, their product marketing guys need a little help.

Christian themed book, music and other products are big business these days. . .

Christian themed toys are a big business these days. . .

But for some reason, I just didn’t think I would ever encounter this action figure, at least not in this manifestation of it:

There’s two things that just struck me when I first saw this:

1. Why is there a “DELUXE” version of Jesus?  What is a plain old Jesus then?
2. How do you discount Jesus…by 7%?

What would kids do with Jesus Deluxe anyway? The fish and loaves of bread are a good idea, but without the “after” what good are they to tell stories or really portray Jesus’ works?

This is either blasphemy or a brilliant way of reaching out to kids in a very contextual manner.  But which one is it?

Please leave a comment below and say your $0.02.

This one left me without words to describe it.

Never would have thought about this one: Gospel Aerobics.

If you like this method of ‘praising Him’ you’ll like the Sanctified Slide

There’s 56 other Gospel Aerobics workout videos available where this one came from.  That’s more than a year’s worth if you work out once a week to this new expression of the Gospel.  Just think about it.

If you’re involved with ministry on a daily basis, you know that sometimes you need a breath of fresh air once in awhile.

This is what the AHA! web conference look like it is going to be.

It is a free conference that is webcast just like The Nines, recently put on 09/09/09 by Leadership Network.

They’re back, but this time it’s 40 speakers providing 40 great aha! moments.

So sign-up and clear out next Wednesday March 3rd on your calendar.

Here’s why you should register now:

• It’s FREE.
• It’s a one-day event, no need to kill your week or weekend
• Instead of just one or a couple of people going to a conference, you can make it an group event in your church or ministry org.  Put it up on the big screen and inspire everyone on your team!
• Did I mention, it’s FREE?
• It’s efficient — you get to hear great content from FORTY leaders in our field in one place.

Are you planning to register?  Please leave a comment with which of the 40 speakers interests you the most right now

There’s tons of stuff that you should be doing with your church website.

But at the base of it all, one of the most important things that matter are the 3 C’s for church websites:

1. CONTENT
2. CONTENT
3. CONTENT

Pastors and church webmasters are always struggling on how to churn out relevant content that will pull current church members back to the site more than the first week after announcing the website was revamped, relaunched, etc.

Surveys and polls are a great way, but most implementations to date have been awkward and non-optimal.  Here’s one that someone how gets people to answer multiple questions – it strangely works to get people to answer even looooooonnnnnng surveys with over 100+ questions.

What is the first survey you are going to set-up on your site after reading this post? Please feel free to link to the page on your website that includes a survey or poll to we can see examples in action.

Do you pray?