Five Capitals

Five Capitals is a program focused around five capitals that is intended to help a person live a more biblical based life. The five capitals are Spiritual, Relational, Physical, Intellectual, and Financial. The capitals are listed in priority order for a reason that reflect biblical values.

Get more information at http://fivecapitals.net

Thoughts on Skype and Hangouts

I have used Skype in the past but moved away from using it since cell-phoning and texting has gotten so popular and is now included in many cellphone plans. Texting and voice calls lack something compared to being able to see the person you're talking too, therefore my renewed interest in Skype, especially now that I have a Surface Pro 3.

As I said, I've used both Skype and Hangouts, both in Firefox and Chrome browsers, but I really like the simplicity of Skype. It seems like Hangouts has gotten overly complex in terms of joining a call, while in Skype, it was very easy to do so. Skype's capability to call landlines and cellphones is also a plus.

Both Microsoft (Skype's owner) and Google (Hangouts owner) are great tools and work on many different platforms, so they are nearly equal in the service they provide. If you lean toward Microsoft, then Skype will likely be your favorite and likewise for Google users will tend to prefer Hangouts. Being a Microsoft Office 365 user and supporting a church, I ended up preferring Skype, but not without trying to leverage Hangouts for conference calls, but as I Skype just seems to work easier.

In conclusion, it really pays to try both products out before favoring one or the other. I like that Google has such a wide selection of products and capabilities, clearly Microsoft takes a second place to Google in this measurement, but Microsoft has a strong productivity suite with Office 365, leveraging their products and capabilities makes them a strong competitor.

Finding the Truth

Have you noticed how many news outlets slate the news stories to their own liking regardless of the facts or the lack of details? To get a good source of the news requires some digging for the truth. Some sources I use to get the news without some much bias, here’s what I read.

1. For national and international news you can go to Reuters.com
2. Build your own news site using my.Yahoo.com, MSN.com, or similar web site
3. Look for web sites that analyze the data to produce news reports that provide an accurate story, one example is americanthinker.com

Everyone has biases, so every author of a story will either purposely or accidently insert their own bias just like I’m doing; my bias is that so many news stories are dramatized and includes so much speculation, I just want the facts! If a news organization wants to speculate, they should state that this is their theory or what they think might have happened.

Smart Phone Security Smarts

Having recently lost my smart phone for a period of time (I did recover it intact), I realized that many smart phone users have a lot of information stored in their phones, including myself. With the increased proliferation of smart phones, there will be increased cases of lost or stolen phones. All that data in the phone allows access to emails, web sites, text messages, photos, and your address book/contact list not to mention any Apps that give access to bank accounts and other services. Here’s some ways of limiting your exposure if your phone is lost or stolen.

- Use a password on your phone, make it something that’s not easily guessed

- Know what accounts and passwords are on your phone so that you can rapidly change them if the need arises

- Delete your text messages every few months (or more often depending on how much you text)

- Transfer your pictures to your home or work computer on a regular basis and delete the old ones

- Back up your address book/contact list on a regular basis

- Check to see if your smart phone supports encryption of your memory card, if so, enable encryption

- Put a contact number label on your phone or its case (such as a belt holster) where someone could call if they find your phone; consider an office number or home number. This will help in the recovery of the phone, especially if it’s locked

- Pay attention to where you sit it down at and how you carry it, make sure its securely stored

Hope you find this helpful. Other sources on this topic are listed below.

Rose, Brent. (January 10, 2011). Smartphone Security: How to Keep Your Handset Safe. PC World

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/216420/smartphone_security_how_to_keep_your_handset_safe.html

Key Points for Welcoming Visitors to Church

As an active participant in church ministry involving the technology and student ministry, I have been given the opportunity to look at what might inspire young adults to move forward in their faith journey. I found that the following points are critical to attracting or retaining young adults to church.

- The traditional physical church setting (the traditional sanctuary) is not ideal for attracting those who have not attended a church for a significant period or those who do not like the traditional setting. The more contemporary the facility, the better it is for welcoming those who are new to church. Churches are now located in warehouses, large department store buildings, and other nonconventional facilities with great success.
- Interaction and welcoming people to church is critical for visitors, the greeting part is easy enough for churches to do, the harder part is to make them feel welcomed and to engage the visitors in a low key manner to help them get situated with the facility and worship service.
- Having a coffee bar (coffee, tea, hot chocolate, water, etc.) is important to welcoming visitors and existing worshippers alike as it provides the opportunity to create relationships, which is critical in one’s faith journey.
- Some kind of opportunity after the worship service to engage visitors and existing worshippers also provides another opportunity for relationship building. During a visit to Hawaii, I visited New Hope-Kailua Church in Oahu; they did a simple lunch after the service, which provided a great opportunity to meet new and existing worshippers.
- Using small groups to do a bible study of some sort is a key method of encouraging one’s progression of faith study. Small groups should only go for a specific period; otherwise, they become a click, which is not what you want.
- The use of multimedia is important in conveying key points during the message and during the music. People really like the words of the music being projected on large screens, it makes following along a lot easier.

I hope this provides some useful information for church leaders.

The Global Leadership Summit

I was blessed with the opportunity to again attend the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit this year. Some of the key points I thought valuable and worth sharing are listed below.

Bill Hybels, Opening Session

• Not challenging people will result in a high turn over

• If you do not deal with the people who challenge your organization, you discourage all the other employees. You have to address the challenging people, they also are some of the unhappiest people

1. Are you naming the problems that exist in your organization? Some signs to look for include:
2. External reviews can be helpful to identify problems
3. Volunteerism was identified as being a decelerating
4. Stewardship also was in the same place along with evangelism

Five words that most describe the products or services of your church or business? Per Bill they are:

• Love, John 3:16
• Evil
• Rescue, God can rescue you with forgiveness
• Choice
• Restoration

Len Schlesinger, Action Trumps Everything

• Entrepreneurship can be learned
• If you can’t predict the future, then create it

Corey Booker (Mayor of Newark, NJ)

• Love, the central theme of the Christian faith
• Attitude speaks to your character
• Focus on the good and the potential
• How you live is defined by your values and actions

What a great speaker, he is realistic and honest.

Other speakers during Day 1 was the Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil, Seth Godin, and Steven Furtick. They all had a great story to tell that very much was inspiring and brutally honest, especially Steven Furtick’s presentation.

From Mama Maggie Gobran, Tough Callings

• Forgiveness is between you and God
• When one has nothing, God becomes everything
• Silent our body to listen to words, silent your tongue to listen to your thoughts, silence your hear to listen

Michelle Rhee, Students First

What a great and tough story about her experience as Chancellor of Washington DC schools. Her efforts to cut waste and poor productivity were very note worthy and something that I believe that needed done. It’s also says a lot about the DC Mayor Adrian Fenty in how he supported her even to the point of losing his reelection bid. In my opinion, school districts need more people like Rhee!

Dr. Henry Cloud, The Evil, The Foolish, The Wise

• Correct a wise person and he will get wiser still
• Listen to the truth
• Give me a gift! Aka give me feedback
• Being resourced is being given feedback
• Make sure people are gifted in what you want them to do, give them good feedback and coaching while being challenged appropriately
  
• Fools will try to adjust the truth or they shoot the messenger
• They (the fools) deny the message or situation, and they get angry and have a meeting after the meeting to spread their angry

Patrick Lencioni; check out his books 5 Dysfunctions and Getting Naked.

If you ever get a chance to attend the Summit, I would urge you to do so, it is very uplifting, offers great suggestions, and is grounded in Love, even for the hard choices.

2011 Global Leadership Summit

I attended the Willow Creek Association's 2011 Global Leadership Summit on 11-12 August at one of their satellite locations in Columbia, MD. What a great event, I'll be posting additional details later this week. For information on next years Summit, see the Willow Creek Association's web site at:
http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/