Seth Godin hit it out of the park – again – on his blog yesterday.
By the way, he’s at Seth’s Blog

Yes Substitutions
This, of course, is the opposite of “no substitutions”.

There’s a line out the door of the Pump every day at lunch. Why? Because people who love substitutions (the picky ones) go blocks out of their way to eat here. Is there anyone clamoring to get into the “no substitutions” place?

I’m with the Purple Cow man – a church that makes the statement “This is us, this is how we are and when we are” is doomed for failure, in fact it’s probably dead already but no one had the guts to bury it.

Like the folks at the Pump, we should be deciding the ingredients, but offering them in whatever way people find most palatable. This is a consumer society – choices rule and unless churches function that way, they are far more irrelevant than they may ever realize.

I am excited by the fact that 40% of the people in our building on Sunday morning were not in Worship Central. Some chose the Big Screen Cafe, others gravitated to the loud music in Altered and of course the kids had a whole selection of stuff to choose from too.

“This is our church, this is what we offer, but how would you like that?”

We do not exist for people to serve us – we are here to serve them.

Tomorrow evening I’m planning to spend a couple of hours at Fun 4 All in Port Jefferson Station as we’ve rented the place from 6.00pm to 8.00pm for a fall party. Simple soul that I am, I figure our kids should be able to go to school on Wednesday and join in the bragging about who had the best Halloween, instead of hiding in a corner, dying with embarassment and trying to explain why they don’t do Halloween at their house, even though they don’t actually understand why themselves.

I think our kids will have a blast. I love Fun 4 All, especially the big slide which I try to go down at least once, hoping I don’t get caught, as I’m waaay above the age limit specified on the sign beside it!

I’m glad to hear so many people are inviting unchurched friends and neighbors to come too. It will be a good connection event.

It amuses me how some Christians get freaked out by Halloween. You’d think that a five year old at your door asking for candy in his ill-fitting Batman outfit was a messenger direct from the realm of sulphur.

Look, I know all the history of the date. I’ve read a load of stuff about it and there’s no arguing on my part about it being the high holy day for Satanists. However for the 99.9999999999% of people who are not devil worshipers, it’s a dress-up, be scarey, have fun, eat candy day, period!

I don’t like the weirdness that goes with a lot of the scarey stuff and I also realize that kids can be in far more danger nowadays than they were when trick-or-treating a generation ago.

That’s why we’re throwing our own party and we’ll have a ball!

Just got back from my weekly weigh-in and am finally down to a single-digit weight loss needed to reach my goal.

Just over 122lbs down and only slightly more than 9lbs to go!

It has been a long haul, but I am looking to crack that last bit before I leave for India four weeks from today.

Gill got back while I was in service today and was I glad to see her when I cut out earlier than usual to head for home!

She got quite a shock because I completely re-did the den while she was away. New floor, re-painted, new furniture. etc. We had been planning to do it some time early next year, but I decided to surprise her with it.

She deserves it!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the office of former Jets head coach, Joe Walton, who now directs the football program at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania.

Seems his Colonials were coming to Long Island to play the Stony Brook Seahawks and they wanted a pastor to do a pre-breakfast chapel service on game day. So I was over at the Holiday Inn in Ronkonkoma early yesterday to meet Coach Walton – a great guy who didn’t excel in his years with the Jets but has worked wonders at RMU.

I chatted to the team members about a question some of us have heard a lot over the past few years – What on earth am I here for? – and then I prayed for them.

I actually prayed they’d win!

And they did – 21-6.

Several NFL teams have left messages for me today asking if I could not conduct a pre-game service, would I at least pray for them to win?

I am still waiting to see who makes the best offer before signing a contract!

Something’s up with this clock!

There will be with yours too tomorrow morning if you don’t set it back one hour tonight. Summer’s gone, daylight savings time is over, but here’s the good news…

If you forget to change your clocks, you’ll be in church one hour earlier tomorrow and can help us with set-up!!!

Nationwide church attendance in the United States is less than half of previous estimates, according to Dave Olson, director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, and director of the American Church Research Project.

According to a news release from Mission America Coalition, Olson addressed the Mission America Coalition annual conference on its closing day with groundbreaking new research about the state of the American church. Instead of relying on limited survey data which is then extrapolated to the entire population, Olson has worked for years to build a database of actual recorded attendance in over 300,000 churches across America.

And the findings are not pretty.

Here in our county for instance, in 2000 only 13.2% of the population attended church on any kind of regular basis. But of those,71% are Catholics.

No disrespect to anyone here and I don’t want any threatening letters from zealous friends of the current Pope or any of his predecessors, but since many Catholics do not fully appreciate the Gospel yet, the bottom line for Suffolk County is that less than 4% of the population attend a Protestant Church and it means that less than that again are probably born again.

BINGO! We did it. We won the lottery!
Of all the places around this great nation we could have ended up, God has dropped us right in the middle of what is possibly the biggest mission field in America. There are over 1.5 million people in Suffolk and these statistics confirm that most of them don’t attend church and the vast majority do not know Jesus.

Unlike many states, we don’t have a church on every corner and you can’t build a church by stealing people from other churches as hardly anyone is in church to start with.

This county is a church planter’s dream – there is unlimited scope!

Now, how best to reap this vast, vast harvest???

I was looking at these six questions today that were suggested as a gauge for how a church is doing. They were under the main question – Are your services enjoyable for visitors?

1. Does the worship music reflect a style the crowd appreciates?

2. Is the message addressing a topic that’s relevant to people’s lives?

3. Is there an appropriate amount of humor in the service?

4. Does the service flow smoothly from one thing to the next?

5. Are you using visual elements to capture people’s attention as they engage in worship and hear the message?

6. Do you periodically surprise people with something they weren’t anticipating?

I answered “Yes” to all six, but if I’m missing something, please do email me and let me know your perspective. Thanks!

I picked this off marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog today!

The two things that kill marketing creativity

The first is fear.

The fear that you’ll have to implement whatever you dream up.
The fear that you will fail.
The fear that you will do something stupid and be ridiculed by your peers for decades.
The fear that you’ll get fired.
The fear that there will be an unanticipated backlash associated with your idea.
The fear of change.
The fear of missing out on the thing you won’t be able to do if you do this.

The second is a lack of imagination.

I believe that every single person I’ve met in this profession is capable of astounding creativity. That you, and everyone else for that matter, is able to dream up something radical and viral and yes, remarkable. So why doesn’t it happen more often? Sure, fear is a big part, but it’s also a lack of imagination.

Basically, most people don’t believe something better can occur. They believe that the status quo is also the best they can do. So they don’t look. They don’t push. They don’t ask, “what else?” and “what now?” They settle.

Fear is an emotion and it’s impossible to counter an emotion with logic. So you need to mount emotional arguments for why your fear of the new is the thing you truly need to fear.

As for the second issue, just knowing it exists ought to be enough. Once you realize you’re settling, it may just be enough to get you wondering… wondering whether maybe, just maybe, something better is behind curtain number 2.

Spent some time getting things into order for Sunday’s message today. I want to talk about how you maintain your momentum, because that’s one of the biggest struggles for all of us in the journey God has invited us on.

To tell you the truth, it’s not rocket science – any more than last Sunday’s teaching on forgiveness was. But it’s essential stuff.

From time to time I hear about people who visit our church and others who even stay a while, who complain that they want “strong meat”. Well, here’s the deal, let me check with you whether you’ve got all the basics working well and then when I’m satisfied about that, I’ll start explaining Greek words, speculating about the Anti-Christ and screaming at you a bit like real preachers do.

But till then, we’ll focus on what really matters because the truth is that most people who say they want deeper teaching really mean they want something for their brain that doesn’t touch their heart or affect their lifestyle. You will not get that at CATMO.

+ We’re concerned about what you’re like at home, not just how broadly you smile in church.

+ We care about whether you really pray, not if you can teach a Bible study on the subject.

+ We want you to have a reputation where you work that reflects who you claim to belong to.

+ We want you to be serving others and getting behind the vision of the church, not just criticizing those who are already committed.

+ We’re interested in knowing that what you watch on your TV and where you visit on the internet will help you to be a positive influence in our church family.

+ We wonder how you are dealing with anger or other key issues.

And there’s a whole lot more before we’ll ever get into what many call “strong meat”. Of course the real insanity is they don’t recognize what real strong meat is when they’re getting it. Take a look through the list above once more – none of that is baby’s milk!