Got a Spare Billion? Buy YouTube

As a church leader, I am fascinated by the incredible migration of time and people’s attention to the social networking sites and the personal film clip sites like YouTube. What is it in our human nature that drives people to spend hours on the computer in social networking sites? So imagine my reaction when I [...]

Just Who Does Go to Hell?

Last week, MSNBC did a piece on people’s attitudes about hell. The correspondent stated that there are no more central questions for every single one of us than the questions about belief. Is there a God? Is there life after death, is there a heaven, or hell? His data showed that Americans, as we all [...]

R & R in the Big D

Folks – It is time to take the Tour de France, Floyd Landis, the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek, the middle east, Lebanon, Hezbollah, blogging, ministry planning, and church planting and put them on the back burner for a week’s rest in Dallas, compliment of my parents, who reside in McKinney….See you on the flip [...]

City Changing Prayer

Just finished a great read called “City Changing Prayer” by Debra and Frank Green. The subtitle for this book is “Insights From Manchester’s Impacting City Wide Prayer Movement”. Frank and Debra Green have written this book where they describe the journey of how they implemented radical prayer initiatives and joined forces with other ministries that [...]

Move over Google Earth….

First, there was Mapquest….Then Keyhole….which became Google Earth. But like everything these days, the power continues to shift to the individual user. Now comes Wikimapia, which was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev, inspired by Google maps and Wikipedia. WARNING – THIS SITE IS ADDICTING!! This will be a good, FREE way for churches [...]

The Mall Church – Good Idea?

As the Executive Pastor for a good-sized church in Chicago and a serial entrepreneur (see About Steve), I am always searching for different ways people are using to present the Gospel…to get the message of God’s love through His son Jesus Christ.I now see that there is a church which is being started at a [...]

50 Most Influential Churches

Once again, the Christian community ventures into a weird area with the annual rankings of the “50 Most Influential Churches” list, which recently came out from The Church Report. I am not sure what rankings do for the church and its leaders (given that the message is the centrality and life-changing message of the Gospel) [...]

Live from Chicago: Lollapalooza!

Sue and I got my mother-in-law to come in a watch the four kids, and off we went for a day of Lollapalooza, a terrific 3-day band-fest in Grant Park on the lakefront in Chicago. After a long and ill-starred history, Lollapalooza seems to be settling in for a great ride in Chicago, and this [...]

Blast from the Past — YouTube: The Evolution of Dance

YouTube: The Evolution of Dance: Judson Laipply Wow! This 6 minutes of pure fun brings back many memories of trying to have the latest dance moves. How many of these can you say you have done yourself? Thank you Judson!

Podcasting for Churches: Lessons from the Field

About six months ago, the communications team that I am a part of at Park Community Church began to set out on a journey to update our website. Key elements of the update included a new home page, an online calendar, a summary of events that we call “the Quick Six” and the ability to [...]

Building Permit In Hand!

WE RECEIVED OUR PERMIT TODAY! Praise God! In just over four months, we maneuvered our way through the labyrinth called the City of Chicago Department of Construction and Permits and now have our construction permit! …stay tuned as the building process begins to get exciting! Click here to learn more about the new building. Also, [...]