I suppose The Afters have felt the same so they have been out hitting the road in more than just churches and it really seems to be catching on. Bands like these guys and the Fray are showing that Christians are not some weird space creatures that are irrelevant to today’s culture. They may not participate in all of it, but their focus is on the positive – they are moving towards something else instead of just moving away from others.

Anyhoo – great tunes.

Have a fun little song called Myspace girl which is tongue-in-cheek-cheesy to the nth degree… and I can’t get it out of my head 

Here’s a taste of their work off Youtube and you can check The After’s Myspace page as well.

And a live version

Got slammed by movie critics, but maybe that is also a point in the movie…

Looks very interesting – check out the site and trailer.

Another trailer below…

Guess it will be out on video soon so I’ll keep an eye out. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve actually seen it. Let’s leave out the opinions based on the premise or trailer

I watched the Alexa ranking on the blog drop like a lead balloon and I can’t blame you. I had been somewhat unfocused the last few months, wrestling with what God wanted me to do with the blog, and with laziness in my walk w/ the Lord. For those of you who kept checking back to see nothing new, I am sorry – I hate dead RSS feeds as much as the next person.

Fortunately, God has provided the new vision and motivation for this blog and I added a “cleaner” look (couple bugs to work out and some sprucing up to do).

The new focus of the blog is based on addiction and recovery and I just started back with a new post. (Yes, this was retroactively posted).

When I say addiction and recovery, we’re not just talking drugs and alcohol here. I’ve struggled with just about everything and the Lord has done some nearly unbelievable work – makes my blog posts about work just seem not quite as important. I just helped launch Celebrate Recovery in a new town here in SC so my weekly involvement with this new crop of guys will ensure the posts are more fresh and come with more frequency.

If you want to subscribe or re-subscribe to the RSS feed so you get notified of new posts, you can do so via RSS here or by email here. If not I apologize for the slacking and hope we can still be friends

Just added a new feature to the blog to make the conversations a little easier to follow. Previously when you or I left a comment, they were all in one big list so sometimes it was hard to tell when there were two conversations going on within the comments on a post, which comment went with which conversation.

Now you can reply individually to each comment by clicking the link next to each comment. I’m probably way more excited about this than you and more than anyone should be about something so dorky, but who cares? Enjoy

No… they’re still just mediocre at what they do, which is why they couldn’t make it competing with the real businesspeople in their market. Now they’re hanging out in the shallow end of the pool, putting a fish on their business card as a not-so-subtle sign to believers to give them more business, and hoping that people believing that since they’re a “Christian” purveyor of ‘X’ goods and services, it makes them more trustworthy or valuable to the economy.

Seems like that would just place me closer to the moneychangers in the temple square who got chased down the street by a certain JC.

I’m not innocent of this by any means – I’ve been tempted probably 4 or 5 times this past year to start a business or differentiate my business by doing just what I griped to you about. I don’t do rant posts unless I’m closing it with my own personal experience of partially soiled hands. I’ve written on this before, but as new technology opens up new opportunities, I see the same old tricks. I’m waiting for the first Christian Iphone unlocking service. Ok, now I’ve been tempted 6 times

If you want an example of what I mean, type in “Christian business” in google, and look at the ads at the very top and right of the page. What do you see? I see a bunch of Mult-level marketing pipedreams where people talk very generally about working from home, making insane amounts of money selling an unmentioned product. If a product is so fabulous, I wouldn’t be hiring some untrained professional off the street to sell it. I’d be hiring a real pro to sell to businesses. If the product is consumer-based, then I’d be hitting media channels to do it. The real kicker is that these companies ask their supposed brethren to pay money for information or to join them – no salesperson should have to invest unless they’re getting equity.

Another example? Check your yellow pages for your local, friendly “Christian Insurance company” – what does that mean exactly? Do you offer lower rates because you’re a Christian? My guess is your rates are higher. Are you saying you’re more honest? Maybe you are, but I know some very honest atheists, and some dishonest Christians. I’m one of the latter sometimes.

Sorry for the rant, but the original intent of the blog was how to be a businessperson that reflected Christ to the world. This topic had been on my mind for sometime. But enough about me – I want to hear your thoughts.

For the comments, does anyone have a negative story about how an overtly “Christian” business screwed them over? Share.

Keeping this fair and balanced – does anyone have a story about how a businesperson acted out above and beyond their call of duty in such a clear fashion that you saw Christ’s love through them? Tell us about it.

Thanks -

Promise keepers has now released the 2008 schedule – there is usually an early-bird discount for registration so get on the ball, guys!

June 27-28	Fresno, CA Venue: TBA
August 1-2	Atlanta, GA Venue: TBA
August 8-9	Peoria, IL Venue: TBA
August 15-16	Dallas, TX Venue: TBA
Sept. 5-6	Cleveland, OH Venue: TBA
Sept. 12-13	Charleston, WV Venue: TBA
November 14-15	Tacoma, WA Venue: TBA

————–

You’ll have to pardon the seemingly odd discussion in this post. I’m running a small experiment with Google as to the factors by which they rank websites for particular phrases that search engine users enter such as Promise Keepers 2008 Schedule .

As I mentioned earlier, I work as a Search Engine Marketing consultant (helping companies improve their online sales efforts) , and am a full-on dork despite my sporadic boyish charm. Last year I was at Promise Keepers in Jacksonville and I thought – “this is absolutely great, the minute I get back to town, I need to create a post that tells the people that frequent my blog all about Promise Keepers 2007.” I then created a few other informational posts that hopefully answered some common questions about Promise Keepers since there is some dirty work afoot in some organizations to spread ludicrous lies about what goes on at their conferences.

After a month I noticed that the amount of visits to my website had increased about 150%. I was curious to see what was the cause of this influx of readers, as it would mean I’d have to step up my topic choices and perhaps grammar (see mom, I read those emails ) Turns out that Google ranked this site #1 or #2 for nearly everything having to do with Promise Keepers. In some cases it even outranked the official PK site for its own conference.

Thank You, Promise Keepers

Was that because of the quality of the posts? No way! I’m not posting this as a brag by any means – this was 1 part accident, and 1 part what I do for a living. Its great that churches are really starting to embrace the Internet as a method to both reach people within the church to disseminate information. However, there are a ton of people that are searching the Internet for exactly what they provide to their community, but nobody will ever know about it.

Are there lessons Promise Keepers or the Church Could Learn from this in 2008?

I conversed with a church leader that said they didn’t put much into marketing via the Internet because they’ve found that the greatest portion of their current members were there because somebody gave them a personal invitation.

I will do something only after it proves to be effective? That doesn’t even make sense – actually, it’s outright impossible. This is a typical instance where Christian leaders look from within and assume the rest of the world matches their personality profile. I’ve mentioned before that tests like the Briggs-Meyer and others tend to split people into 4 profiles which can be broadly described as

• Social (loves to be around people – the social butterfly)
• Driving (the “get it done”person)
• Studious (loves information and analysis – the planner)
• The “Sensie” (sentitive, caring, loving) – sorry for the pet name, but JD on Scrubs called himself that, and it just stuck. Blame him

Now, every person has some of each of those characteristics though some are more pronounced than others. Understanding what drives each of those personality types gives us a better approach to reach them on their level for Christ.

Did you know that about 80% of church members’ strongest personality characteristics come from only 2 of those groups mentioned above? I’ll give you a hint as to which two. They are the ones who would be most likely to be in the position to receive, or respond to a personal invitation to church…

If you guessed, “Social and Sensie” you win.

So that means that studious and driving personalities are typically not related to well by the church unless there is a concerted effort beyond church-sponsored softball leagues.

Tying back into my “full-on dork” comment earlier, I rate very strongly in the studious and driving areas. I listened to Christian radio sermons for years before I ever joined a church – years. I mentioned to my small group that I got saved watching TV and they were shocked. Most didn’t know anyone who came to Christ in that manner.

Check your local Athiest/Agnostic discussion forums – not many “sensies” there. It’s a bunch of people who think they’re smarter than God. I’d give them a harder time, but I forget that God is watching me on a daily basis as I sin and I actually believe in Him

Now that I’m thoroughly off-topic, what does this rant have to do with Promise Keepers 2008?

I’ve noticed that if you are one of the first articles on a web to specifically optimize a page for a keyword phrase like… say, Promise Keepers 2008, you can rank very highly on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. . Now, there is a lot more to it if you’re try competing for really profitable terms like mortgages, dating, ringtones, pharmaceuticals, poker, etc. but fortunately for us there is little money in marketing many Christian-related terms.

What does that mean for churches? Learn the basics of search engine optimization and apply them to your website. You don’t need an IT guy to run the program because it’s more of a marketing issue – maybe you might need him to push a few buttons for you, but that’s it. You don’t need a fancy search marketing consultant to help you out because much of the information is available for free on the web.

What are the benefits for your church?

What would it be worth to rank in Google for “church (insert your town name)” or a myriad of other related searches. If you have a celebrate recovery program, you could rank for “12 step program (insert your city) most likely within a couple months if you put forth the effort. Put forth the effort! Just get one volunteer to learn this stuff and coordinate with your webmaster. The amount of people that have familiarity with running a website is growing every day – check your youth groups. There is probably a 5th grader that could do a bang-up job.

I’ll post more about search engine marketing for churches on this blog or another site later, but for now we’ll leave this article up for Promise keepers 2008 schedule and see how long it takes for me to get this ranking #1 – checking the calendar… it’s August 28th, 2007 and…. go!

P.S. I’ll replace this article with the real schedule as soon as Promise Keepers puts it up. I think they’re taking a little longer this year after they had to cancel some events.

Guys tend to struggle with a tendency to isolate themselves. That topic is covered every Promise Keepers – how we need accountability and fellowship with other Christian guys. It’s a tough world out there that is slowly trying to chip away at God’s word and our love for him, and the support is necessary.

Same for women. Since I’m (obviously) a guy, I never knew exactly how mean women can be to each other until my wife went through pregnancy. She went from every woman wanting to tell her every miscarriage/stillborn story they ever heard (to “prepare” her for the small possibility.. jerks), to bashing her for getting an epidural during delivery, to now bashing her for going back to work after “only” taking 3 months off.

It’s tough to avoid the “comparison game,” for guys or ladies, and it’s even tougher when we’re by ourselves. You won’t hear this from people who don’t know Christ, though. They’ll tell you that people at church don’t think for themselves. They’ll tell you that “groupthink” is bad. God has a slightly different take on people joining together in his name. (1) (2) (3) (4)

If we all turned into mindless drones the second God’s name is mentioned, I might agree to a point, but that is an extreme generalization and improper stereotyping… ironically from the same people that judge Christians as being judgemental
Being connected to a small group of other Christian parents doesn’t mean we all think the same. I’d say there are  many more issues we don’t see eye to eye on in my small group than there are ones that we do. God knows this – that’s why he makes people different.

However, we view the important issues the same.

1. God should be first in our lives,
2. The parental relationship is second – we swore this to God on the marriage altar/
3. Strong love for our kids  with a dedication to raise our children to know and love the Lord.
4. Pour out what God has graciously given us (everlasting life) to others. Material blessings also fall in with this. Love (choice, not feeling) others as we love ourselves.

If you’re not in a small group of fellow Christians journeying through your same phase of life, I strongly recommend it. Find a church that makes extensive use of small groups to carry out God’s will and hook up with them for small groups even if you still attend your regular one for services. The most important part is to get over the procrastination, apprehension, and preoccupation with how “busy” we are. I was freaked out before we joined a small group, since that was my first real social interaction with Christians besides filing in and out of church on Sunday mornings. I found that they were just like me – a sinner who is now saved, trying to fight the good fight to turn my life and will over to the care of Christ.

When I was less mature, I thought about God’s word in the reverse – how it relates to others, and then myself (oops). An even more powerful sign of spiritual IM-maturity is not just pondering how a message relates to another person’s life, but then acting on the desire to point it out to them in the guise of “helping them.”

This is a perfect example of when in the parable about the seed and the sower, when the birds come to eat the seed that fell on the road. God gives us a nugget of wisdom, but allowing Satan to tempt us into thought or action with self-righteousness and hypocrisy allows him to essentially “steal the word, ” since it no longer can bear fruit in our lives.

Hindsight is 20/20, but its always nice to see when God is working in our lives. I often get an unbalanced equation, looking to improve the next area of my attitude with which I am not pleased. God wants us to see the good that he does in our lives, so we give him the glory, and also so we can tell others about his goodness and mercy.