These are my very raw notes from the Saddleback CITRT event. If you're looking for something specific, maybe you can search for it here. Otherwise, I can't really suggest that these are worth reading.
What was said, what I heard, what I noted
Please don't make the mistake of thinking I took great notes on everything that was said. (Of course, I wasn't in every room, so obviously a lot was missed) Likewise, don't assume that all my notes are directly tied to something that was said -- sometimes my mind goes down "related rabbit trails" and my notes may reflect that. Hopefully not too distracting.
[9:00] Doug Hart, Greetings and Introductions:
Bill Crane – Saddleback CIO, COO (Doug’s manager) [responsible for entire operation: facilities, food service, and more]
Clif Guy for CITRT Leaders: “what is the Church IT Roundtable?” (UNconference, UNorganization, Church-centric & church-hosted)
- Sponsor thanks. 2 days, $75, that’s cheaper than staying home! Want sponsors to be part of the community
- NOT selling the mailing list to vendors. Welcome vendors to attend and ask for business cards
Jason Lee: reminder of CITRT.org; more ++ on vendors and partners
- What is YOUR agenda this morning? Do you have a problem (business or personal) that has to be solved before you get home? If you don’t get your questions answered, whose fault is that?
- Safe place. Yes, we stream & twitter & email, but self-censor what you pass along – let others feel safe
- Kingdom impact: ~100 people with passion for Christ + Technology
Jason Powell (the King)
- Ripple effect of what happens here on future of church and IT
- Review of roundtable guidelines
- YOU have to drive the agenda – don’t go away if you haven’t had your questions answered
- Build atmosphere of trust, build relationships
Doug: Housekeeping
- 404 will be general session room, food, etc. If you find 404, you’ve found the key
- Lunch to be served outside 404, can eat in 404 or outside
- Campus tours at 3:30, and vendor stuff too. Split into two groups, half to each. Get to ride in Disney shuttles around Saddleback
- Dinner back in 404, then worship time + communion. “Liked the food last night? Tonight will be better.”
Clif:
- 4 rooms available. Only using 3 this morning 404, 304, 306 [not 308]
- 404 will have live streaming. [41 people viewing the stream as of 8:40 am]
- If part of a multi-person team, split up!
- Attempting self-managed splits among the three rooms. If too many in one room, will “push” a few out
- One special focus: spiritual aspects, then open to “regular” stuff
- Afternoon sessions: based on job titles
[10:00] Breakout Session, Rm 306 (?)
About 24 people, Clif moderating
“How is running church IT department different from secular?”
• Focus on ministry
• Work is similar, but think about it differently
• More patience (?) Grace
• Also a lot of people who have never been in the “real” world; spoiled?
• Relationships, relationships, relationships
• Put IT people in middle of staff (physically)
• COR story, re: former IHOP person: relationships + prayer
• Different starting expectations and culture, re: technology, use of email (even reading of email)
• Ministry people typically aren’t technology people, and vice versa (some good exceptions though)
• Church staff want the benefits of great technology, without the investment (time or dollars)
“How is being part of a Church [IT] staff for your spiritual life?” [not exact question]
• The challenges can be great for your spiritual life
• Church IT can be overwhelming. Have to set boundaries. Have to reinforce those boundaries
• Compartmentalization issues. People failures. (People are still people)
• Some churches have mandatory counseling sessions for staff (with another church)
• Does CITRT represent cross-church accountability? (should it? How can we further foster it?)
• People have high expectations of church, church staff. We’re still people. “we are still human beings, we still sin”
“What are you doing, yourself, in your own life, to keep yourself spiritually healthy and growing?” (or what are you failing to do?)
• Weekly small group involvement. Close enough to know each other’s weaknesses and still like each other
• Audio Bible: continuous input of Bible
• YouVersion (on whatever device you happen to have – available when you have 5 spare minutes)
• Ortberg book suggestion: The Me I Want to Be
• Hard to work for the same church you attend
• High expectations, overburdening, desire to do more than is possible – we want to do what others want us to do, regardless of time commitment. How do you get to the point of being “satisfied” at the end of the day?
• When you go to work for a church, you are embracing their vision, taking it on for yourself, which somewhat raises risk. We eagerly take on more than we can possibly do. Must force an end of the day separation
• There will be plenty of work tomorrow – don’t try to do everything today
• Don’t want to neglect ministry, but must keep it in proper proportion of life. “wife’s rule: don’t take church keys with you to work”
• Perfectionism, workaholism, vs. dedication to God
[for those with IT departments of more than 1: “What are you doing to keep your team spiritually healthy and growing?”
• Is it the IT Leader’s job to keep the team healthy, or just to check the level of health?
• Have lunch together. Not a meeting, “just lunch.”
• Annual reviews (and mid-year) include discussion of spiritual status (staff covenant)
• Staff (leadership) responsibility vs. staff expectation and personal responsibility
• Obligation vs. responsibility vs. expectation.
• Leader has responsibility to gauge spiritual status of team; and do “something” if there’s a problem
[11:20] High Capacity Storage (& backup + DR)
• How to have fast, “backup-able” storage. 30TB or so
• How do you determine what’s worth keeping on highly available storage?
• The general storage question: how to recognize valuable vs. not-so, and put each in the right place
• Storage vs. “fast” storage – very different. Maybe “semi-fast” also?
• Must have offsite backup; must have onsite too, or else give up a lot of time/availability
• Do you need to keep off-line forever? What is the long-term need for historical backup?
• Deleted files, versioned files. If a file “name” still exists, does that eliminate the need for the historical version? (no – both are important)
• What is IT responsible for? Statement vs. actual
[11:50] Point-to-Point video streaming
• Per Ed Buford, per Jason Powell, per Terry Chapman, have found some solutions using 3 T1s
• Lots of OK solutions in the 3-4 Mbit, with a little jitter, 8Mbit gets fairly stable (Ed Buford knows a product)
[1:30] Web, Development
Doug Hart moderating
(Room mostly Web developers, I wasn't a great fit. Interested in user experience stuff, but no notes)
** Announcement of change of plans and need to be back in 404 for 'special guest' at 4:30 **
[3:30] Vendor room, tours
[4:30] Rick Warren
• Walked around and had 1-on-1 greeting/handshake with EVERY person!
• Saddleback was first church on the web, circa 1992
• Approx quote: When new technology is introduced, the Kingdom is advanced. Printing Press, Luther’s theses were taken down, printed, and distributed.
• Saddleback now has 100K+ people on the roles
• Saddleback still has 60 original member families
• Saddleback used FAX technology in the 80s
• 92 was the web
• Saddleback used iPods for all staff
• The message never changes, but you must use the new tools
• Constantly look for the new tools and how to use them
• “IT is the front line of …” evangelism, discipleship, worship, etc.
• Must have a systematic approach to turn a crowd into a church. (Purpose Driven)
• Churches will be larger in future generations
• 1980s, only 2 Megachurches: Willow & Saddleback. Today, thousands of innovative churches
• Saddleback learns from other churches, both supportive and the critics! Smarter to learn from your critics than to ignore them
• All leaders are learners. Growing churches require growing leaders. Stop growing (learning), the church stops growing
• Key to learning: humility. Only the humble are teachable. If you think you have it all figured out, you’re dead (in many ways)
• We all have strengths and weaknesses. God uses imperfect people
• Grace: God knows every mistake I’ve made and he still uses me
• Purpose Driven Life: 12 hours a day for 7 months. No new ideas.
• Einstein: make it simple (Note to self: need to find that exact quote)
• A great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission will grow:
o A great church
o A great Person
o A great Corporation
• In technology, always ask “why are we doing what we’re doing?” The “how” is easy, the “why” is the key
• 26 Services every weekend (temple courts) at multiple locations
• Technology enables multiple services, small groups, etc. 4000 small groups
• 50k WWA churches will be common in ~10 years because of technology
• #1 benefit of technology is to make the big church personal
• People don’t come to church because it's large. (Only pastors like large churches) People go to churches that meet particular needs; larger churches can meet more needs
• Spiritual health can be quantified just like physical health
• Q: multi-site vs. church plants: Use facilities, caution on extremely large facilities (big room, only used once per week). New churches grow faster than old churches
• Bell curve peaks. Start something new before the peak.
• Radical == “root” (NOT ‘excessive’)
• Judge a church not on seating capacity but on sending capacity
• Fastest growth is on newest branches, not on the trunk. Saddleback is now a mature trunk. (still growing, but not as fast as branches)
• Easter, Saddleback will take “everyone” to Angel stadium. Never before have all of Saddleback been in one place. Filled it up, so have to do two services, so still can’t have everyone at once!
• Planning planting academy to sponsor ### new churches a year (nation wide)
• Future of church planting is Nascar: multiple labels on each car (church). Sponsored by denomination, trained by Saddleback, fueled by {somebody else}
• Totally believe on hearing the voice of God AND totally believe in knowing the facts
• Fast, Fluid, and flexible. Be ready to turn on a dime
• Vision is not the ability to predict the future. Rick doesn’t believe in long-range planning
• Does believe in scenario planning. If it is the Lord’s will, we’ll do xyz. If this happens will do this, if that happens we’ll do that… We give God the opportunity to mess up our plans
• Vision is the ability to see the opportunity in the current situation and jump on it. That can only happen when you are fast, fluid, and flexible
• Only three times you can be F, F, & F. 1) When a new leader comes in {Reagan introduced all changes in his first 100 days]. 2) When in a crisis. (even if you create a crisis!) 3) When you have created a culture of change (Saddleback)
• We’ve done far more things that failed than worked. Try something else. “Future book: 1000 ways to NOT grow a church”
• Q: thoughts on using Internet to present gospel. A: Of course you can, but no different than TV. Use Internet to create participation. No interest in spectators.
• Most people won’t join Saddleback because of high level of commitment in member covenant
• Use Internet for feedback (feedback is the breakfast of champions)
• Creator of Survey Monkey should be given a place in heaven. Special dispensation
• Internet bypasses every international boundary. Cant be taxed, tariffed, or stopped (consider Google/China)
• Saddleback will be in EVERY nation by the end of 2010. Technology enabled that!
• Main benefit of technology is elimination of distance and time
• Favorite hot sauce: bad girls in heat. “I don’t just believe in hell, I eat it”
• Family: extreme priority. Influence of dad – wasn’t turned off by ministry, jumped at the opportunity. Dad made family a priority and ministry at the same time
• Divert daily, Withdraw Weekly, Abandon annually.
• Mentors prayed for Rick early in Saddleback history. Rick now does this for other young pastors
• Rick’s original list – about half are no longer in ministry!
• If you’re worried about criticism, don’t go into ministry. The most blessed ministries are also the most criticized ones.
• Be willing to respond in silence to criticism. Love them back
• Ministry is a marathon. To make it 30-40 years, you need to last. You need to finish the race. Rick spends 100% of outside time mentoring the next generation
• Divert daily: do something to de-stress, DAILY. Dump daily worries in “worry can” before coming into the house. Don’t bring them in to family
• Withdraw weekly: Not just a day off. A Sabbath. Take a day off is one of the big 10! NOT optional. Don’t call it your day off – if you do, you’ll cheat on it. Rest, recreation, relaxation, relationships, and worship. Nothing else! (30 year history for Rick)
• Annual vacation: no iphone, no notebook. Disconnect. Can’t hear from God if you’re always connected
• Wait on the Lord. May take hours, or days
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