Chris sent me an advance copy, and I’ve been tearing through it and enjoying it even more than his first book, The Art of Non-Conformity. I had the pleasure of playing a small part in the launch of that book, and I’m hoping to catch up with Chris next week when his latest book tour brings him back to North Carolina.

This book is loaded with fantastic, practical information and advice, as well as inspiring story after story of successful entrepreneurs who took their ideas and a little bit of startup money and created a new future for themselves. Chris has done an incredible amount of research to put this book together, and more than that, he’s culled through thousands of stories and gleaned the-best-of-the-best ideas to share with all of us in a fun and quick/easy-to-read handbook to hustling, with great illustrations by Mike Rohde to boot.

While the ideas that Chris shares in this book are inspiring to me as a wanna-be entrepreneur (with a few side projects always cooking), I also believe they are transferrable (in some important ways) to the church work that I do on a daily basis. There is so much wisdom to be gleaned from here, that I’ll have to do several blog posts to really unpack all of them and show how they relate to church planting, missional community formation, etc.

For now, I’ll just leave you with this tasty tidbit from chapter 5 “The New Demographics”: “Most of us like to buy, but we don’t like to be sold. Old-school marketing is based on persuasion; new marketing is based on invitation.”

I would now like to invite you to purchase Chris’ new book through my Amazon affiliate link here — The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future. Seriously, it’s a great book! Get inspired. Pick up a copy. And go see Chris on tour right now!

It seems really hard to believe, but the campaign against the proposed constitutional amendment here in the state of North Carolina has become a very broad-based, bipartisan campaign with both conservatives and liberals coming together to voice concerns for the implications of this amendment and urging voters to vote against. This is not just a liberal, pro-LGBT equality campaign!

I’ve been asked now several times to prove this is true, so here’s just a smattering of the evidence I’ve come across that show the growing bipartisan campaign against:

• Brent Woodcox, former communications director for the NC Republican Party (and self-professed conservative Christian Republican), calls the amendment “anti-freedom,” “unchristian,” and “anti-family”:
  http://www.brentwoodcox.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-ill-vote-against.html
• A Charlotte law student and evangelical Christian makes a very compelling and detailed argument for at least giving this amendment very serious consideration before voting one way or the other:
  http://orphanedbelievers.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/ncamendmenton/
• Evangelical author and NC resident Margot Starbuck has written her “moderately conservative” case against the amendment:
  http://www.redletterchristians.org/a-moderately-conservative-case-for-the-defeat-of-nc-amendment-1/
• Evangelical author and NC resident Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove urges Christians not to be counted among those who have “organized themselves against homosexuals”:
  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jonathanwilsonhartgrove/2012/04/should-this-family-be-illegal/
• NC Tea Party representative Renee Elmers, John Hood (president of the John Locke Foundation), and other ultra-conservatives are AGAINST this amendment:
  http://static1.firedoglake.com/48/files/2012/04/conservativesagainstA1.jpg
• “Conservatives, Vote Against the NC Marriage Amendment” — editorial from Carolina Review, NC’s conservative journal:
  http://carolinareview.org/2012/01/conservatives-vote-against-the-nc-marriage-amendment/
• David Blankenhorn and Elizabeth Marquardt — president and vice president for family studies at the Institute for American Values and two of the primary opponents of same-sex marriage who were key in promoting Prop 8 in California — have come out against the NC amendment, saying “it goes too far”:
  http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/04/11/1992920/amendment-goes-too-far.html
• Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC, has spoken out strongly against the amendment, especially urging his fellow African-American ministers to stand against discrimination:

I hope that my conservative Christian friends would be open-minded enough to at least consider these very thoughtful, conservative, evangelical rationales for voting against this amendment.

Early voting in NC runs through May 5, and the primary vote takes place on Tuesday, May 8. I early voted already, and I voted against.

Matt Haughey is the founder of MetaFilter.com, and in this talk from the Webstock 2012 conference earlier this year in New Zealand, he focuses on starting with a long-term vision, rather than a desire for short-term success (“cashing in and bailing out”):

When it’s possible to get millions of dollars in venture capital funding, get a million users in just days, and then sell out to a larger tech company (what Haughey calls “the big fast route”), the slow and sustainable approach to growing a tech business that Haughey is advocating for is certainly counter-cultural.

Jason summarizes: “It takes longer but…

• you are able to develop authentic community
• which equates remaining authentic to the context and calling
• you remain a healthy model for those you lead
• you don’t have to be a wiz’ fundraiser to lead ministry”

It’s the last point that I want to flesh out further, as it relates to this question of funding the missional church.

Theoretically, a new church planter could get a bunch of VC money from a denomination to startup a new faith community. In reality, most denominations don’t have any (or much) money for this anymore. So the tech/church analogy doesn’t quite work.

The new reality is that church planters have to be entrepreneurial and think differently about how to fund new church starts, mostly by being bi-(or tri-)vocational and not working full-time for the church (or even expecting to in the short-term and possibly not even in the long-term).

But listen to what Haughey has to say:

• Self-fund to get started — “The hard part or the big question mark is, ‘Where’s the money going to come from?’ I wouldn’t necessarily focus on that on day one. I think it’s bad and sometimes leads to bad decisions if your day one worry is where some money’s going to come from. It helps to self-fund it for a while, let it grow a little bit at least. … I always have low goals, like paying for the [Web] server hosting.”
• Don’t be a free user — “Find mom and pop sites that will let you give them money, so there’s a chance they’ll stick around.” One could argue, based on this point, that you should be willing to invest your time and money into the new church start and ask/expect others who get involved to do the same. Create a culture of giving to support the mission of the community from the start. And, no, the mission of the community should not be paid staff, a cool building, etc. That’s old school thinking. Think different.
• Explore as many funding avenues as you can — On the Web, advertising (where appropriate) is the easiest, he says, but he also suggests funding drives, Kickstarter, merchandise, etc. I’d love to see a new church start launch a Kickstarter campaign tied to a creative project they plan to do, especially if it was something designed to bless and benefit the local community it was seeking to be a vital part of. Think local, contextual, blessed to be a blessing.
• Keep your day job — “I paid for my own sites for the first five-six years just by having a day job, and it wasn’t until the revenue really picked up that I could quit that.” Being bi-vocational is the new normal for people in ministry. Some communities will grow to be able to sustain having full-time paid staff, but many will not. And that’s OK.

As Haughey explains, “It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of risk, [but] … having a long-term viewpoint makes a lot of dumb decisions really easy.”

There’s so much more to learn from Haughey as he unpacks WWIC? (why wasn’t I consulted?) and the values of being “platform agnostic and super flexible.”

I especially appreciate that Haughey says it’s not about staying small: “You don’t have to sacrifice growth, it’s just going to take longer. It’s not going to limit your impact. You’ll eventually get there, and you’ll have a more stable foundation. … You’ll have a community culture that builds up over years and years, instead of just ramping up from zero in a few months. It doesn’t necessarily shrink your aspirations.”

So just because you choose the slow and sustainable (and intentionally small to start with) approach to church planting/missional community formation doesn’t mean you have to give up the dream of changing the world!

Please take a look at the video and post your thoughts/reflections in the comments. And if you’re going to be in Minneapolis next week for Funding The Missional Church and/or Church Planters Academy, please let me know. I’d love to connect with you!

Phil and I will be co-leading a missional retreat called The River Gathering, April 23-25, at Tamaya Resort in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Early bird registration deadline is Sunday, April 1 (NO JOKE!), so make your reservations now!

Register now for The River Gathering

Without further adieu, here’s my missional conversation with Phil Shepherd:

This month I’m looking forward to chatting with Bruce Reyes-Chow about his latest bold initiative — developing a new Presbyterian church on the Internet. As Bruce is very clear to point out: “Not an online church. A church that meets online.”

Bruce and I will be talking about this new church experiment and how Bruce’s views about “missional” are informing this process.

Join us on Twitter via the hashtag #missionalchat at 9pm ET tonight!

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice

“A/theism aims to rupture, not the actual beliefs of a person, but the way those beliefs function as a crutch to prevent the individual from actively participating in the difficult challenge of embracing the world. In short, this critique is not concerned with the content of our mind but is aimed directly at our involvement with a game that many of us do not believe in yet continue to support by our participation.” (p.72)

Rollins goes on to discuss how “the radical Christian” can “participate in the power of the Crucifixion” through structures, practices, and communities that “ritualize the full range of human emotions, bringing radical doubt, ambiguity, doubt, mystery, and complexity into the very heart of the liturgical structure itself.” (p.73)

It’s a pretty, well, radical vision for a new kind of faith community. However, Rollins cautions against being too optimistic that this kind of community would even “work,” because even if the new structure succeeds in “bringing radical doubt” to the center, there will still be individuals in the community who aren’t willing or able to fully participate: “There will always be those who act more like the critic, those who seek to protect themselves by avoiding full emotional involvement in any liturgical practice that seeks to bring us into contact with our pain and suffering.”

As Rollins’ ideas continue to make inroads into existing and new faith communities, I wonder what the implications will be — and whether anyone will actually take him up on the challenge in the first place.

What’s your take on Rollins and his merry brand of “a/theism”?

Charles is the Canon for Congregational Life in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Charles is also, as I discovered, a master potter and farmer, but in his work with the Episcopal Church he is responsible for planned giving, capital campaigns, membership growth, and many other things dealing with attendance and finances.

The three-year timeframe he was talking about referred to a revelation he had recently in regards to the major generational shifts that are happening in the Church and the radical impacts they will have on faith communities for the future. His calculations are this:

• The primary years that Episcopalians pledge and give to their church are between the ages of 50 and 70.
• Around 2015 (three years from now), the oldest Baby Boomers will begin moving out of the 50-70 age range, and the oldest Generation Xers (my generation) will begin moving into that age range.

Of course, there are two huge problems with this generational transition (which I believe will affect most aging mainline Protestant churches, not just Episcopal churches):

1. There are far fewer Gen Xers than there are Baby Boomers and older, so there’s no way we can “replace” those who will stop giving (based on the population numbers alone).
2. Generation X is the first generation that will no longer give to support anything based on affiliation (e.g., “I’m an Episcopalian/Disciple/Lutheran/Methodist/[fill in the blank], therefore I’ll give to my local [fill in the blank] church”).

Charles’ conclusion: Churches for the first time ever will need to really earn people’s participation and financial support, rather than simply expecting the “members” to remain engaged and cover all the costs.

According to Charles, “The average small church requires about $220,000 to exist with a clergy person, and I am not sure Generations X and Y are willing to pay the bills required for their wedding photos to be well-staged. I love our churches. … But I think the future of the church will be house-churches which use the church building as a meeting house.”

Charles also shared this amazing story of a new community gathering space being envisioned in his area.

What do you think about these calculations? What should we do in the next three years?

Bonus Points
My friend and pastor Dennis Teall-Fleming has written a scathing, honest, critical but ultimately hopeful article for Dmergent.org called “Let It Die,” which addresses these financial realities, especially as they related to our tribe (Disciples of Christ).

This question of funding our future churches will be the primary focus of the upcoming Funding The Missional Church conference, May 1-3, in Minneapolis. I’m looking forward to being there, and I hope you’ll make plans now to join me and continue this extremely important conversation!

One of the best TED videos posted this week features YouTube’s trends manager Kevin Allocca speaking at last year’s TEDYouth event on “Why videos go viral.” As Allocca entertainingly explains (in just 7 minutes), the three keys to viral video success are:

1. Tastemakers — famous people promoting your video to their large audiences
2. Communities of Participation — the Web community jumping on board en masse and remixing your video
3. Unexpectedness — basically, the X factor; your video shows something totally unexpected and/or something unexpected happens that propels your video to super-stardom

The line from Allocca’s TED talk that I want to highlight is this: “We don’t just enjoy now, we participate.”

The Web has not only enabled us to engage with information and media/content, but that enabling literally is moving us from being merely consumers (or enjoyers) to being co-creators and participants. We all have cognitive surplus, right? So let’s use some of that to contribute rather than just consume.

Irony Alert: Thank you for consuming this blog post! Now … What are you going to create? Any ideas for videos that could go viral?

Well, there’s a very promising new documentary film project that’s just getting off the ground, which promises to shine a spotlight on some of the more diverse voices in the conversation. I want to tell you about it so that you and I can help make it a reality. The film is called Anything Less Would Be Uncivilized, and the filmmakers are Alex Bowens and Tim Kennedy. Watch this preview:

My friends Brian McLaren and Glenn Zuber are both featured in the documentary, which I’m very excited about. But it’s the broader range of people that the filmmakers have chosen to interview that really has me intrigued.

They’re trying to raise a lot of money — $35,000 — via a Kickstarter campaign, in order to do post-production, marketing, etc. As of this writing, they’ve received a little more than $2,200 in pledges, or 6% of the total for the campaign.

I want to ask anyone who cares about seeing this conversation expand and bring new, more diverse voices into the forefront to please become a backer — for $25 you’ll get a digital download of the film when it’s completed or for $50 you’ll get a copy of it on DVD. At the very least, become a fan of the film on Facebook and tell others about it (who might then become backers).

These are important stories that need to be told and important voices that need to be heard. I hope you’ll join me in supporting this project.

The all-or-nothing Kickstarter fundraising campaign ends Sunday, March 18. Become a backer!

See the other Kickstarter campaigns I’m backing right now.

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice