Time - The most precious non-renewable resource

Time. We all have a limited amount of it to spend on this planet, and none of us know exactly how much we have. 

This thinking, good thinking, is why we invest so much money in time saving products and services. But is that a good idea? Consider:

Rather than build our own furniture, we buy it. Sure, some things are better this way, but more often then not the furniture we buy is a compromise, it isn't exactly what we want. 

Rather than grow vegetables in a garden, we buy them pre-packaged and preserved.

Rather than take a few minutes to throw some ingredients together for soup we toss the chicken carcass and buy soup in a can. 

and the list goes on. What do we do with that saved time? Most people either work longer hours at the office or watch more TV. 

Why have replaced tasks with inherent benefits (The satisfaction of making something, the joy of planting and harvesting a garden, the creativity of cooking) with more labor or with the time suck of television (or games, or surfing the internet, this isn't a tv rant)?

I think it's time to start removing time savers from life and go back to enjoying the time we spend rather than trying to save it up only to waste it on garbage. I've started by wet shaving. 

Wet Shaving is, quite simply, shaving like everybody did fifty years ago. I started with a bowl, brush and soap set that I found at Target for $20. I started learning how to make a lather with a bowl and a brush, and found that (1) I actually enjoyed this slower way of shaving and (2) It was a million times better than using shaving creme from a can. Don't even get me started on how much better than an electric this is.

After finding an old razor and getting some blades, I now shave like it's 1959. And not only is it cheaper (blades cost $.09-$.20 each rather than multiple dollars) but it's vastly more enjoyable. It is NOT faster. 

For thirty years of shaving I did it wrong, abusing my face in the interest of saving time. Now what I've found, almost two years into shaving this way, is that I was cheating myself out of a quiet morning ritual and making my face feel much worse in the process. 

Wet shaving is infinitely better than the modern way. I'm certain this can't be the only area in the world where the time saving way is worse. I need to find more ways to put the enjoyment back into the mundane in life!

Why is this blog seemingly abandoned?

It's pretty obvious I don't blog anymore. The question is....why not?

Two reasons, really. The first is that I don't have the time to make it part of my weekly or monthly routine in the office. The second is that I don't find I often have something to say that I simply must share with the small portion of the online world that finds their way to this blog.

When I was knee deep in church database nearly every day, there was a lot to do, a lot to write about, a lot to cover. The market has changed a LOT since I did my research in 2008. I'm grateful that people still read this blog because of it from time to time, but there should be better resources by now.  Incidentally, if you are looking for a church database, I'd start by seeing if Rock could work for you. It's written by people I know and trust personally, and it's free if you can make the technical side of things (decidedly NOT free) happen...

Before that, I was in seminary. And before that, I didn't blog :-)

How much has the world changed since I started writing this? In October of 2007 I posted about Apple having $6 billion in sales for the quarter, and how remarkable that was. In October of 2014 their net profit was $8.5 billion for the quarter. Think about that. Seven years later their Q4 net profit is $2.5 billion HIGHER than their total revenue was in Q4 of 2007. Astounding.

So with this out of the way, I do have something to say today, and that will be my next post.

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job

My most recent read is The Three Signs of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni. I picked this book up at the library book sale, and after completing my bookshelves I sat down to read this. As with his other books, Lencioni writes a parable that illustrates the business principle he is trying to communicate.

The three signs of a miserable job are:

(1) Anonymity: Managers need to know their employees, know who they are and what their lives are about.

(2) Irrelevance: Do your employees know who their work impacts and how?

(3) Immeasurement: Managers need to create clear expectation and measurable goals for employees.

The book does an excellent job of unpacking these through story telling, and the principles are clear and, IMHO, correct. For my role the biggest challenge to me is how to create measurable goals without removing the Holy Spirit from the role of a pastor. This is a serious challenge, but one I am putting thought into as I seek to become a better XP.

Well worth the read.

Joel

Of new jobs, new homes, and abandoned blogs...

After a LOT of work, my library shelves are all built, my books are unpacked, and I finally have a place to read again. I read a book the first night this was all completed, and I'm anxious to review it, but it made me realize just how neglected my blog has been...

Thoughts on my new role:

   - It's interesting how different it is being a technically minded executive pastor vs. leading the IT department as a direct part of my role. Although I am involved in setting direction for the IT work at LEFC, I necessarily have to allow my staff to make decisions and choices that I would not make. Leadership from this level looks very different than direct IT leadership.

   - I love to lead, it is what I was built to do, but it means having to make hard decisions, and those are... hard. Profound, I know. :-)

   - Staying connected to God is more important than ever.

A few comments on life:

   - It took a lot longer to get settled than I expected.

   - Building my own furniture is cool, but exhausting. I don't love the process of building as much as I love the final product of something built exactly the way I want it.

   - We need people. I could not have done this project without the help of my dad, his missionary friend from Germany, and one of our elders who has the skills necessary to mount the cabinet doors perfect on the first try...

   - I love Pennsylvania, and I love serving at LEFC.

I don't know what format this blog will take long term, but I expect to start putting book reviews here again shortly. I use them not only as reviews, but as my own reading journal...

Joel

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive

The hardest part of moving is getting your rhythms back (for example, I update this blog once every few months whether it needs it or not...). I used to read a lot, but after moving I've found it quite difficult. I am looking forward to getting fully moved in to our home (all our stuff is there, but there are boxes everywhere) and being able to create a space to read again.

Last night I got a chance to read a book that a friend of mine handed me: The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable. The book tells a story of two companies who are competitors in the same industry. It's an easy read, and a compelling one. The fable is designed to illustrate the four obsessions and how they make a company effective:

   - Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
   - Create organizational clarity
   - Over-communicate organizational clarity
   - Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems

This book was a great read for several reasons. First, it kicked me in the butt a bit as a leader, reminding me that I need to focus on the important things, the big things. It's easy to get bogged down by the little stuff, the stuff that doesn't matter long term. For me, this motivated me to re-engage some of the organizational techniques I used after reading Making Ideas Happen. Without a clear strategy to remain focused, it is incredibly difficult to keep the right things at the top of the pile.

The most gratifying thing about reading this book is that the tasks I've devoted the most time to since arriving are building and maintaining a cohesive leadership team, and creating organizational clarity. It's reassuring to know that we are on the right track, and I'm looking forward to reaching the point where we can add points three and four to the mix...

I found the fable more interesting and enlightening than the "business book text" style sections afterwards that tried to unpack the fable. Quite frankly these chapters seemed unnecessary, and were probably suggested by an editor who doesn't get the idea of letting people think for themselves.

Still, a worthwhile read.

Joel

Siri

Siri is one of those things that you either use a lot or not at all. I am on the new phone cycle for Apple, meaning I had a 4 before upgrading to a 5, and am a year late to the Siri party because I didn't own a 4S. I started using the 5 this week, but have been extremely busy and have spent almost no time just playing with the phone.

Yesterday Patty and I were driving around, and we needed to pickup a replacement headlight bulb for our van. The one auto parts store in Lititz had moved to a neighboring town, so we were driving a bit aimlessly looking for something else when Patty said "why don't you use Siri?"

So I hit the button and said "I need an auto parts store" to which Siri replied with 17 nearby options. Yes, there was superfluous information in there, but she did identify a Pep Boys not too far from us. Because of where we were, I asked Siri where a Honda dealer was, and she identified Jones Honda about a mile away. Rather than just drive down there, I said "Call Jones Honda" which she did, and I was able to confirm that the parts counter was closed for the day.

After finishing that I realized that what I had just done was the stuff of science fiction just ten years ago, and inconceivable twenty years ago. Sure, twenty years ago I would have had to dig through the yellow pages to find something, but consider what I would have done without Siri:

(1) I couldn't have done this (safely) while driving
(2) I would have used google maps to search for an auto parts store.
(3) After filtering through the chaff, I would have clicked on one of the dots to find the phone number.
(4) I would click on the phone number and called them.
(5) Repeat the whole process for the Honda dealer.

I did all of that without having to type anything, no need to lookup the phone number and no need to figure out what was closest to me, Siri had already sorted by distance.

The biggest point was that I didn't even think about doing it in the first place. It took my wife, who had seen the commercials, to suggest it. Of course now that I've actually seen how awesome it is, I will do it again. I also had a lengthy text conversation with someone while were driving, entirely by dictation (and having her read the replies). That was pretty cool as well.

Siri may be misunderstood, but when you actually use it, it's pretty amazing.

Joel

Facetime & elevating baptism

I've been quiet for the last few months. Starting a new job tends to take up a lot of time, making things like blogging take a back seat for a while. And being an executive pastor means I'm not as immersed in technology as I was at HDC, but it doesn't mean I've stopped caring or paying attention to what is going on in the tech world.

LEFC does not own a baptisty. Instead of doing baptisms in the auditorium, they are done across the street in the stream. Everyone I've talked to thinks that is "really cool" but there is a big downside: We can only put about 100 or so people on the bank of the stream, and there are around 1000 adults that go to this church.

Baptism is one of the most exciting things in ministry. In baptism we see and hear the testimonies of those whose lives have been changed by Christ! To "hide" this away for only a hundred or so people just seemed wrong, but at the same time, nobody really wants to go away from doing it in the stream because, and I quote, it's "really cool."

For this past weekend's baptism, we decided to try something to bridge the two issues. We did the baptisms in the stream during our service, and then used Apple's FaceTime and two iPads to bring a live feed of the baptisms into the auditorium. The setup went like this:

Sound System for Baptisms by the stream connected via a cable to the iPad's headphone jack (which can also accept audio-in, giving us a direct feed from microphone to sound board to iPad).

iPad 3 mounted to tripod with Fat Gecko mount from B&H.

A second iPad located in our auditorium, connected via a VGA cable & a 1/8inch audio cable to our sound and projection system.

FaceTime to connect the two.

We used FaceTime rather than Skype because the video quality is better, and we needed all the quality we could get.

To get our wireless signal all the way to the stream we used a 200 foot ethernet cable and a similar length extension cord for power to put a wireless switch directly across the street from where we were filming. We ran tests and were getting about 2.5mbps from where we were filming, so we could get decent quality.

At the end of the day it wasn't perfect, but it did the job of putting baptism in front of everyone, rather than just those who are willing to stand at the side of the stream after church. In a weird twist of scheduling, I was out of town, so although I helped design and test the solution, it was setup and run entirely by Kathy (our IT staff) and a few volunteers.

Since we already had the iPads and wireless equipment, our total cost was about $60 for the audio cable and iPad mount, and the marginal cost of a 200 foot ethernet cable. This was a huge win for a very little amount of money. Woohoo!

Joel

Stress is deadly

Recently we packed up our life, got in our van, and moved to Lititz Pennsylvania where I have taken the role of Executive Pastor at the Lancaster Evangelical Free Church. Generally I am a guy who does not "stress out" and is, in fact, pretty good at knowing when to shut down and blow off stress to keep my life balanced.

A quick google search of the top five causes of stress led me to this article which identifies five points. Lets go over them:

1. Financial Problems - We are doing ok, but having a house in California that has not sold yet while needing to add the cost of living in Pennsylvania plus having a lower salary than before, well, lets just say that there might be a TINY LITTLE BIT of stress here.

2. Workplace Stress - I believe that I finished well, very well, at HDC. I didn't coast to the finish line, I collapsed over it. That's great for my work ethic, but not so good for the stress-o-meter. Add to that the stress of starting a new job, which is huge, and well, I think we are two for two so far.

3. Personal Relationships - Move 2600 miles away from all your friends and see if this doesn't mess with your personal relationships a bit. Add to that the fact that my kids are stressed about the same thing...

4. Health - Had some personal issues crop up here as a result of all the stress of working, packing, moving, trying to sell the house, trying to find a house to buy, learning a new area etc. Add to that some issues with my children (which is MORE stressful to me because I worry about them far more than me) and I think we are 4 for 4 so far.

5. Irritants - The article defines these as the little things that add up. For me this is the fact that we are in a furnished rental with all of our stuff in a storage unit. HUGELY stressful and we really can't' relax in the rental because it doesn't feel like home. It's like staying in someone else's place where you can't change anything or resolve any issues that are bothering you. 5 for 5, plus a bonus for getting all the questions wrong...

So, after glancing at this article, I guess you could say that Joel's stress-meter has been pegged for a while now. The result? Wow. I had no idea what this could do to me. My body has been in revolt.

So what am I doing about it? Yesterday I came to a realization that I really needed to laugh. To just laugh. And not do anything that would let me be distracted from laughing. So I went into my room, turned off the lights, and turned on pandora and listened to stand up comedy. Never done that on Pandora before, but I laughed out loud frequently and by the time I turned it off, I felt a LOT better.

I then spent some time in prayer (probably always a good idea after listening to an hour or so of standup comedy...) and went to sleep. I woke up today with a regular temperature for the first time in almost five days. Finding ways to de-stress just became a lot higher on my priority list.

How's your stress meter?

Joel

Why does baseball hate it's fans?

First it was the DH


Then 7 game league championship series


Then interleague play


Now more playoff games to add to an already overcrowded off season


The latest apostasy is even more interleague games??? What is the commissioner's office smoking?


Bring back baseball!


We want an end to the half-a-skillset DH.


We want playoffs that end before thanksgiving.


We want an end to the expansion of the playoffs. Four teams per league. Period. We don't want to be basketball where the regular season is pointless and irrelevant.


We want an END to interleague play. Keep the leagues separate and preserve the awesomeness of the all star game and the world series.


We hate to admit it, but the wildcard is good for baseball.


Bring back the real game of baseball!

90 Days of Scripture

On Christmas Eve I was talking to my friend Kyle about his year overseas. One thing he told me that struck me was that he had read through the bible something like 5 times during the year. I was blown away. One year reading plans are pretty common, but I was intrigued by the prospect of reading the bible at an accelerated pace. So on January 1 I started a 90 day read through the bible plan.

I finished it right on schedule at the end of March, and I absolutely LOVED it. There were several reasons why I enjoyed this so much:

• The accelerated pace brought new insights and caused me to see things in scripture that I had never noticed before. 
• It takes a lot of time to read that much every day. Spending that time in God's word on a daily basis is really good for me personally.
• When reading at that pace, the cohesiveness of scripture is really evident. 
• It was great discipline.

After finishing up I've rejoined HDC's one year reading plan to stay on the "same page" as the rest of the church, but I am pretty sure I will do a 90 day plan again. If you've never done something like this, consider making the time. I guarantee you will not regret it. 

Joel

Wagons East!

In 1983 my family packed up the house and made the move from western New York to California. My dad was helping to start the School of Intercultural Studies and World Missions at Biola University. As a kid, I wasn't amused to leave my friends and move to crazy California. It took a while, but I've made the most of living in California for the last 29 years.

In 1987 my wife Patty decided to leave Utah and head to California to attend Biola University. We met there and the rest is history. We were married in 1993 and California has always been our home.

Until now.

After a few years of feeling that God was telling us it was time to move on, He has finally showed us where. I recently accepted the position of executive pastor at the Lancaster Evangelical Free Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and will start towards the end of May in my new role.

We are very excited to be starting this new phase of ministry. The church is a wonderful community of believers that are deeply committed to God and have a real heart for prayer. The senior pastor, Tony Hunt, started in August and the current executive pastor is retiring. When we interviewed we had a great time getting to know everyone, and are really excited to be part of what God is doing at LEFC.

This new role will change the focus of this blog a bit, as I will necessarily not be as deeply involved in the technology side of ministry; however, I do not intend to stop writing.

Exciting times ahead!

Joel

Mac OSX Lion - Safe for networks at last?

Back in July we installed Mac OSX Lion on the machines of the IT staff to evaluate for use at HDC. It didn't take long before we discovered an absolute show stopper: Using files on network volumes almost guaranteed dataloss with Lion. Read my first report, and then the followup (with video) if you need a refresher on what was happening.

With the release of 10.7.3 it is now safe to allow people to use Lion on your network without worrying about them inadvertently destroying files on your server. There is a new dialog box that looks like this:

This is a lot better, in that now a user can click one button (revert) and have it put everything back the way it was and quit the program. My only complaint is that "Do not show this message again" only works for "OK" which is the worst possible choice (OK destroys the data forever).

Is this a fix? Not really, but it's a big step forward. At least the user has the opportunity to intervene without wiping out the data, and can actually get out of the program with the click of one button.

Now if they could only fix the rest of the problems...

Joel

How will you be remembered?

I am reading through the bible right now on a 90 day reading plan. I have never had so much fun reading the scriptures before. Today I was reading in 2 Chronicles, and something really struck me:

“Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.”
(2 Chronicles 21:20 NIV11)


Jehoram passed away, to no one's regret. 


He was king of Judah. A descendant of David.


And when he died, NOBODY was sorry to see him go.


How do you treat others? What kind of a mark are you leaving on the world? When you die, will it be good-bye or good riddance?


Joel

Multi-Campus, Multi-Cultural

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”” - Acts 1:8 ESV

This is a picture of a hitching post. Most of you reading this blog have probably never seen one. What is remarkable about this hitching post is that it is installed at our Phelan campus, and these horses were ridden here for our Sunday morning service. Phelan is rural community and is very different than Victorville, where our main campus is. 

The people of Phelan tend to be up early to feed their animals, and indeed, Phelan is the only campus where the early service is the larger service. Phelan also is horse country, and the installation of the hitching post was met with great enthusiasm by our people. It would never work at any of our other campuses, but in Phelan, it's perfect. 

Joel

Mac OSX Lion - Apple loses the story

I have been a fan of Apple for a long, long time. I have been running Mac OS X since March 24, 2001, in other words I installed it the day it was released. It ran slowly on my 400Mhz G3 (state of the art for the day) but it was worth it to be running the future, not the past. With every release, Mac OS X has gotten consistently better until 10.7. With Lion, Apple lost the story of what makes a successful OS.

Behind the hoopla there are some serious problems with Lion, and they have not been addressed and we are at version 10.7.2. The first I have written about before, and that's the ability to lose data on network volumes. It still exists. Don't believe me? Copy a photo onto a network volume. Open it with preview and crop it. Quit preview. Try to get back to the original. Note that you can't. It is lost, gone forever in the interest of making things "simpler" for new users. 

When you try to work on a document on your own system you often get a message about the document being "locked" and requiring you to either unlock it (and make permanent changes) or duplicate it. What if I don't want to duplicate it, I just want to rotate it and print? Mac OS X inserts itself in your workflow. You cannot choose to work on something and not save it. It must. be. saved. 

Ok, so what if you want to put confidential information in a temporary document and then destroy it after you are done with it. Well, it might be hidden in a version. How nice for you. 

Today I discovered that they removed "bounce" from mail. Why? Who cares! It's a feature that some people used, and they took it away. 

I didn't begrudge Apple removing Rosetta until I went on vacation and wanted to take a few old mac games with me. I have a soft spot for Starcraft, and I never did get around to finishing Warcraft III. Guess what, both of those are PowerPC apps. In fact, I don't have a single intel native game. So my laptop can no longer play games since I installed Lion.

So, I have lost the ability to work the way I want to, I've lost the ability to control when files are altered or not, I've lost the ability to bounce email, and I've lost the ability to run any games I own. 

What have I gained?

(1) A version of Address Book that was supposed to be better, but is actually worse than the one in Snow Leopard.

(2) FileVault that I don't use because what Apple calls "imperceptable" is an unacceptable performance penalty in the real world.

(3) Finder changes. I don't notice any of these.

(4) Mail. I lost bounce, haven't noticed anything better. 

(5) Mission Control - I like this, but it totally doesn't make up for what I've lost.

(6) Preview - Add your signature. Never used it. I fear preview because it permanently alters documents I don't want it to. It freaks when you run something from a CD because it can't change it. It is far worse than the old preview in almost every way.

(7) Launchpad - Pointless

In short, Lion is a complete pile of Vista.

I think I'm going to downgrade for the first time in my Apple using career, spanning all the way back to the 128k mac. Sad days, sad days indeed.

Joel

What have we done to thanksgiving?

“It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,” - Psalms 92:1–2 ESV

In September of 1620 the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. What followed was a brutal winter in which about half of them died. The remaining people set about making a colony, and after a successful harvest they organized a feast, starting a tradition of taking time out of the fall season to give thanks to God for His incredible provision for us. 

Nearly four hundred years later we still celebrate Thanksgiving, and taking time to stop and give thanks for all that we have is still a great idea, just like it was in 1621.

I don't remember when I first heard the term "Black Friday" but it wasn't as a kid. What was always quietly acknowledged as an important shopping day has taken on a life of its own with the era of the internet. 

Each year the frenzy of black friday has increased a little more over the last year. Stores that used to open at 5 am started trying to out-do each other until this year it finally happened. Stores were going to open at midnight, and then Wal-Mart announced that they were opening at 10pm.

It's happened subtly, but now the time of giving thanks has become a time to look at the ads and think about all the things we DON'T have, and plan to buy them. This year people were camped out in front of Best Buy for days to buy a $200 tv. 

How long before we supercede Thanksgiving altogether with a day of "early bird" sales?

When we value a great deal more than we value giving thanks for what we have, we have seriously lost focus on what matters.

Joel

Smart TV is really dumb

A friend of mine asked me to help him buy a tv this week. We went to Best Buy and to Costco to learn what we could and find the right choice in his budget. After talking with people and looking at the various choices, we settled on an LG tv from costco.

We talked with an incredibly informative guy at costco who had great information on all of the TV's, but he was partial to LG's. He made a big deal about LG Apps and how there were tons of them etc. It made absolutely zero impact on our purchase decision, but after we got it home we decided to set it up and see what these apps were all about.

My friend has more patience than I do. I wouldn't have spent any time, but he wanted to know what he had purchased so he spent time going through their app store and this is what he found:

Having Netflix on the TV is pretty cool. You can turn the tv on, select Netflix and be watching something. Netflix + a smart tv rocks for its simplicity. Vudu is a cool idea, but seems kinda expensive ($6 to watch a new release in HD?) and at those prices has little chance of unseating redbox for blu-ray rentals.

Everything else, EVERYTHING, was colossally stupid. Do you want to get on Facebook on your tv? And type things in using a remote control? Yeah, didn't think so.

App after app was poorly executed and hampered by the interface of a remote control. Some things would want a bunch of information and then say "this is not available in your region" despite the fact that you set the region with the tv. At one point we got the error shown above when he was trying something. Gotta love it when a tv can crash and throw a .NET exception...

At the end of the day, "Smart TV" is really, really dumb. I like having Netflix built in, but otherwise I wouldn't spend a single penny to get a tv with apps over a tv without them.

Joel

TV Experiment 2.0

A couple of years ago we pulled the plug on the tv for the month of November. It was a great month. I read more than I had in the six months prior, listened to more music and found that life was just better. The kids discovered other hobbies and passions, and by and large it was a good thing.

Last time we did it we wanted to see what life was like with no television at all. It was good. This time around our plan is a little different. DirecTV is gone indefinitely. Don't know when we will turn it back on, if ever. It's not that I don't like the programming, I enjoy it immensely, and that's the problem. It's too easy to spend your life in front of the tv keeping current with Falling Skies, American Restoration, Pawn Stars, Top Shot, etc. All of those are really good shows, but they make themselves more important than they should be by always being on.

So the rules this time: No TV at all Monday through Thursday. Friday we may throw a movie on if we want to do a family movie night but otherwise no TV. We haven't decided about the weekends, but Jacob is lobbying hard for a little video game time, and we might work that in.

The interesting thing about it is that our kids were excited about it this time.

Good times ahead!

Joel

Anthem vs. 1 Cor 12

I have a few friends who have been reading Atlas Shrugged and I realized that I've never read anything by Ayn Rand. I was in a used bookstore and I found a copy of Anthem for $2 and decided to pick it up to see what all of the fuss was about.

It's an earlier work and rather short, but I quite enjoyed the first 90 pages or so. Basically the story is set in a post apocalyptic society that is all about "the brotherhood" and has completely removed the notion of self from the world. Even the word "I" is forbidden (and unknown). Everyone refers to themselves as "we" and even personal relationships are forbidden, as you are not to value one person above another.

The book is a fascinating look at the communist ideals applied to a futuristic society. The last ten pages or so are where the book gets its title, as our hero discovers the word "I" and it becomes little more than a worship of the self, completely rejecting any notion of collective good or value in anyone other than one's own self. After reading this book (it took little more than 30 minutes to read) I set it aside and opened up to the passage I had planned to read before bed. It made me smile:

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” - (1 Corinthians 12:12–31 ESV)

The Christian faith absolutely does not diminish the value of the one, the value of the individual, but rather exalts every person as uniquely formed in the image of God. At the same time, we are not meant to be alone, and we are better when we work together. God has given us each different talents and gifts, and to function at our best we need to involve others to do what we are not able to do well.

This is directly contrary to the message at the end of Anthem, that is essentially all about the "I" with no regard at all for anyone else. When reading a book like Anthem, it's striking how distasteful it is when the worship of self is put on display. I genuinely disliked the last ten pages of the book despite enjoying it up to that point. We are called to be servants, to treat others better than ourselves. In the words of Jesus:

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”” - (Mark 10:45 ESV)

Joel

ChMS - BVCMS

Although RefreshCache is generally a meeting of Arena developers, this year two guys that work on BVCMS were invited to present as well. This provided me with a great opportunity to see bvcms and ask questions of Dave Carroll who is the primary driver behind bvcms and the owner of bvcms.com, an organization offering hosting, service and support for bvcms.

BVCMS was the internal database project of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. After putting a lot of time and money into its development, their elders decided to release it as an open source project in April of 2009.

It's impossible to tell how many churches are using bvcms because anyone can download it, install it and get it running without telling anyone; however, bvcms.com has 74 churches that are using the database and paying for their support. Additionally, Dave said there are at least five churches that have contacted him for some assistance that are not clients of bvcms.com, meaning the real number is probably right around 80. Six of these clients have over 5000 records in their databases (averaging 18,347), and 51 have fewer than 1000 records. This data indicates that bvcms is becoming a web based database of choice for smaller churches, but scales well enough to be used by some of the largest churches in the country.

One of the things I did not realize about bvcms until this week is that it is available as a fully hosted and supported solution through bvcms.com. This means that you don't have to have a big IT staff and a group of programmers to run bvcms at your church.

After the initial release by Bellevue, the banner of BVCMS has been carried by David Carroll & bvcms.com. If I understand it correctly, the lion's share of development since 2009 has been done by David himself. At RefreshCache 2011 David said some of the keys to making this possible were a methodology of do the simplest thing that could work, avoid complexity unless necessary, don't repeat yourself and don't build things you're not going to need. David details his approach to development on his blog under the title Agile Methodology.

David also uses a novel approach to support that I really like. He takes support questions by email, writes the answer on the wiki and then replies with the link to the wiki. By doing this he insures that the wiki continually grows with valuable information on how to solve real world problems, and he doesn't spend time rehashing the same solutions over and over again. As a bonus, that creates a nice documentation library for anyone to access on how to use the software.

The biggest shortfall that I can see with bvcms support is that there is no set of community forums for the churches that are using bvcms to help each other and discuss things. With the open source nature of bvcms any church could set one of these up, but so far it does not exist. Based on our experience with the Arena community, this is a big loss. Hopefully as this product grows this shortfall will be addressed.

Because bvcms is open source, you can investigate it yourself if you have the IT staff or expertise to pull it off. All you need to do is download the code and then follow the directions that are posted on Dave's development blog.

So, what does bvcms offer? Quite a lot actually. Aside from the usual basic chms requirements, it has a very nice query builder, online registration, a check-in solution, iphone app, etc. In short, bvcms stacks up nicely against the rest of the market, with the huge benefit of being free out of the gate.

Unlike most of the solutions, there is zero risk to test out bvcms. From bvcms.com you can watch video demos on a lot of the basic features, and then connect to a demo site you can play with. If you want to investigate further, you can download the source and install it and start playing on your own.

There are two ways to run bvcms. The first approach is the traditional open source approach. Download it, install it, and start using it! This is a solid option if you have the technical expertise to pull it off, and if you have programmers on staff or volunteers, you can begin to customize the product and make it your own. The second approach is to contact bvcms.com about getting setup as one of their customer churches, and letting them do all the heavy lifting. Either way, bvcms is a solid option in your search for the right ChMS for your church.

Joel