Star Wipe
For a certain period of my life, the Simpsons was on my list of most-watched TV programs. In college, it was a weekly event. The Simpsons’ occasionally irreverent, but often insightful, humor has always stretched my mind. One of my favorite moments of dialogue rightly lampoons amateur videographers: Lisa: OK, I finished editing the gardening [...]
Twitter and the Church Website
Congrats go out to my church, Mountaintop Community Church, as well as my team for being featured recently by our website hosting/design firm for our website/Twitter integration. In their words, “we know that Twitter is not news anymore, but most of you haven’t done much to really integrate it into your communications strategy. We want [...]
Piper Says NO to Media
The Barna Group indicates that over two-thirds of Protestant church congregations have projection screens in their auditorium. A church which avoids using media in its worship services in now the exception nationwide. Enter John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church and noted author/theologian. When recently asked, “What are your thoughts on drama, movie clips, and [...]
Cathedrals Make A Comeback
Lifeway Research recently discovered what many of us in the church world already knew: the unchurched prefer cathedrals to contemporary church design. By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio over any other option, unchurched Americans prefer churches that look more like a medieval cathedral than what most think of as a more contemporary church building. The survey found [...]
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights In cups of coffee In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty-five thousand Six hundred minutes How do you measure A year in the life? A year ago we began planning and working towards a new online presence for [...]
The Crew
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this group of people… The crew. It has now been over four years since I stood with them as leader of the volunteer ministry they participated in. Some were techies, some weren’t. But no matter. Most importantlym, all were friends. In the ensuing years, many have moved on to [...]
Website Update
Coming September 20, the new Mountaintopchurch.com. It has been a loooooong time coming, but we’ve worked through most of the details and are nearing a launch. Having completed the design phase, the new website has been turned over to us and we are populating the information now. Its going to revolutionize our online presence and [...]
Ad Aware
Perhaps it is the economic downturn. Perhaps it is a new passion for quality. Perhaps it is completely random. For whatever reason, businesses that rely on churches for a portion of their income are beating the bushes looking for business. There was a time where I would receive a couple of ‘cold calls’ a month [...]
Department of Redundancy Department
Church signs have always been a bit humorous to me. And as technology progresses worldwide, I think they simply keep getting worse. I’m not sure who designs these things, but the sign companies need to invest in real graphic designers. News Flash: You’re giving the church a bad name… er, face. But until today, I’d [...]
2008 Website Redesign
Here at church, we are six months into a process that will result in a complete redesign of our website and a move to a new CMS system. While we are very excited about the end result of the process, a sweet website with tons of uber-cool features, the design process has been a bit [...]
Open Media and IT Position
Mountaintop Community Church is searching for both a full-time IT Guru and a full-time Associate Media Director. Give me a holler if you are interested or know someone who is! Job Descriptions are available on the website under /About Mountaintop/ Staff Openings.
TV Show Open
I’ve been working on an Open/Close sequence for our TV Show for weeks. Song Selection… song editing… length… shot acquisition… editing… graphics… etc… etc… aaargh. It still has some work to go but we’re getting pretty close to getting it to completion. What I like about this open is that it really shows who we [...]
Any Given Sunday – remix
Those who know me well, or remember my past, will be surprised by the news. Some will say they’re not surprised… but they might be shocked to know that it did surprise me. When I came to Mountaintop I had hopes of leaving media behind. Though I accepted a position that included it to a [...]
Never Made It
As a peek behind the scenes in web design… here I present the graphic that never made it to our homepage at Mountaintop Community Church. Would you come to this Singles Ministry?
UPDATE – Online Communities, the fun continues
[In followup to this post] So, I e-mailed the system administrator for the Church Tech site mentioned, the one that automatically created 27,000 user accounts, login ID’s, and passwords for their e-mail list subscriber base, then sent them the information and said “Welcome to the Community,” also offering to convert them to a PRO member [...]
Online Communities – the fun continues
This week I was signed up for an online ‘community’ without ever having registered for an account. This Church Tech forum has a relatively large number of subscribers and a comparatively small number of active participants, like many online forums. But this week, in an effort that I can only assume was meant to artificially [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Seven
THE END OF THE MATTER My long-time blog friend Cindy Swanson commented on this series of posts by saying, “Wow, Kevin. I’ ve never seen such an in-depth look at online Christian communities. I was part of such a forum for two years, and ultimately I had to walk away from it as well. The [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Six
CUTTING THE UMBILICAL CORD Throughout this series I?ve spoken a lot about problems and principle in relation to online communities. Many have cheered, others have questioned, and some have disagreed. I appreciate all your opinions and insight but it?s time to begin moving toward some conclusion on the matter. Before I am able to draw [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Five
WILLIAM GOLDING COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN Sadly, the madness does not end with the ‘groupthink’. That’s simply the beginning. A groupthink that is either not recognized in its early stages or is encouraged by the proletariat will eventually become lethal to the fabric of the community. I’ve seen it time and again. Occasionally I am [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Four
GROUPTHINK Dr. Irving L. Janis passed away 15 years ago but made startlingly true observations about community long before the online communities ever became widely popular. A research psychologist at Yale University, he was most famous for his theory detailing the systematic errors made by groups when make ‘collective decisions.’ Dr. Janis coined the term [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Three
IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA Utopia. For a long time I really believed that online communities might be preferable to real community. When asked to be a moderator at one of these forums I jumped at the chance. It was a great feeling to serve at a higher level and give something back, but it was also a bit [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part Two
PARADISE LOST I am convinced that no one initially joins an online community with impure motives. No. Their motives for joining are almost always pure. At least in my experience that was the case. Maybe some hoped to learn more about their chosen career field. Maybe others intended to use their knowledge to help others. [...]
Thoughts on Community – Part One
THE BEGINNINGS of MY PERSONAL JOURNEY Online Communities. Forums. Chat Rooms. We were once told that the internet was the final frontier of community. We were once led to believe that social interaction was destined to occur more and more in bits & bytes and less and less through face-to-face communication. We’ve been told again [...]