I recently came across another great resource for creating signage. The book is called, “The Wayfinding Handbook” by David Gibson. What makes it a great resource is its full coverage of the topic of signage. It provides concise guidance on fonts, text sizes, colors, icons, materials, and project management. Since it’s a new book (2009) it also has a ton of relevant examples.

I did find the text of the book to be rather wordy. The book also covers the project planning side of a signage project. While this is valuable for large signage projects incorporating multiple vendors it seems a little grand for most church sized projects.

In my opinion though the design inspiration from the pictures alone is worth the price of the book.

Sales of Office Antics are slow (not that it was ever on fire). A friend mentioned that I should create a website to help promote it. Good idea! Here’s the result… http://www.officeanticsapp.com

Probably not going to win any awards… but it was fun… and only took me a few hours. The best part is you can get some ideas about how to use each sound effect.

If you won’t mind, I’d really appreciate it if you would consider Tweeting, Facebook’n, and/or emailing your friends about it.

A week or two ago I mention I had 3 must reads for you. Here’s the second one (remember “Switch” was the first), Spiritual Leadership By Henry & Richard Blackaby (authors of Experiencing God). This book is the best I’ve read in years. It has so many simple, but brilliant points. Please don’t write this book off as only being for pastors. Any Christian who wants to grow in leadership should read this book. I’m not sure why it took me so long to find it and why I’ve not heard anyone mention it before.

Below are just a few of the points that hit me. There’s so much more I could add but doing so would probably break copyright.

Society longs for statesmen but it gets politicians. Statesmen are leaders who uphold what is right regardless of the popularity of the position. Spiritual leaders must be spiritual statesmen not merely spiritual politicians.

In the case of churches emulating the success of other churches, it seemingly elminates the need for Christian leaders to cultivate an intimate relationship with God.

If a vision must be sold to others, it is not a compelling vision and is probably not from God. Spiritual leaders don’t sell vision; they share what God has revealed to them and trust that the Holy Spirit will confirm that same vision in the hearts of their people.

Integrity doesn’t happen by accident. It happens on purpose.

In God’s eyes, how something is done is as important as what is done.

If growth in numbers is a sure sign of God’s blessing, then many cult groups are enjoying God’s blessing to a far greater extent than many churches.

The single most important thing leaders should do is pray. Prayerless leaders are like ship captains without compasses-they can make a best guess at which direction to go, but they have no assurance they are heading the right way.

While all Christians have the Holy Spirit’s presence in their lives, the condition of being filled with the Holy Spirit come through concentrated, fervent, sanctified prayer.
Leaders cannot truely serve people they do not love.

Some leaders offer a token prayer and then compile a list of pros and cons from which to make their decision just like an unbeliever would. Leaders must be cognizant of the fact that determining God’s will is not a matter of merely compiling a list of pros and cons; it is a matter of relating to a personal God who is more than willing to guide His people.

When spiritual leaders struggle to make decisions, they need to immediately examine their relationship with God.

God never piles on more than someone can handle. God never overbooks people. God never burns people out. When people become overwhelmed by their commitments and responsibilities, they are operating on their own agenda. God does not give people more than they can handle, but people regularly assume responsibility for things they should not be doing.

Dave Ramsey gives this equation for momentum.

Focused Intensity over Time multiplied by God = Momentum

You can argue that his understanding of math is off a bit, but that’s not the point now isn’t it.

Lately I’ve had this feeling of holy discontent worry about network security.  I think we do a good job of securing our network and servers, but… well… I don’t have anything that shows that.  Stack on the amount of time we proactively spend auditing network security and well… maybe I should worry.  What about you?

Recently I went on a hunt for some tools that could audit our network for known vulnerabilities.  We used these tools years ago when I worked for Honeywell.  I found a real gem in Nessus from Tenable Network Security.  This product is dead easy to install on Mac, Linux, or Windows, has thousands of security checks that are constantly updated, and is  dare I say fun to use.  And the best part… it’s only $1,200 per year for a feed of the latest audit checks… unless you’re a non-profit… then it’s FREE (just follow the instructions on their site to apply for the free license).

Running it on our servers brought up several issues that we needed to address.  Mainly some missing patches and software updates.  Each finding has a clear summary with solutions and links to vendor websites for more information.  It audits not only the operating system (all versions) but also web servers, database software, and much more.

Here’s a quick video on how to use the product.

I hope you’re able to get as much out of this product as we have this year.

Over the last few months I’ve read three books that have impacted me significantly. One of them (I’ll blog about the other two later) was just released on Amazon today. I was able to get a pre-release copy in December as I know a great many big wigs I was won a lottery on the authors website so I was able to get through it over the last few weeks. Switch is from the authors of Made to Stick (another must read for anyone in marketing). This book covers how to implement change in your life and the lives of others. I won’t cover the meat of the book (as it’s a must read so… you must read it) but let me say that this book can/should/will make a huge difference for the church. If we can learn and implement these concepts of change we will not only improve our own lives but also help those around us. If you’re a fan of Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin (and who isn’t) you’ll love this book. So what are you waiting for… read… enjoy… be enlightened.

A few months ago I did a post on running your membership data through a local sex offender database. We’ll here’s your quarterly reminder to re-run your database. Think you don’t need to run it that often? Perhaps the fact that we found two new matches in our database since we last ran ours will change your mind. Once you get the process down it should take you less than an hour to complete the process. A small price for protecting the children in your ministry.

My youngest just turned 6. Here’s a little glimpse of his personality. And no I didn’t teach him this… I have no idea where he learned it…

Our senior pastor, Don Wilson, was recently interviewed for the Catalyst Blog. If you want to know more about the ministry of CCV check out this two part series.

Part One

Part Two

Do you ever hear a quote that punches you in the gut? Lately, I’ve literally been stalked by a thought; reading it in numerous places. It goes something like (sorry I don’t remember it exactly… this dispite reading it in several places…)

We all have the same number of hours in a day Einstein, Mother Theresa, etc.. had.

We often look to our heros and forget they managed their success in the same number of hours we have each day. Sure some of them had gifts we don’t, but their ability to focus on doing the right things is where their success stemmed from (in fact, studies show that there is little correlation between intelligence and success.) Planning our time and limiting our focus is probably the most important key to success.

Update: Found the exact quote from Zing

“”Don’t say that you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Hellen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr. – pg. 113