Weekly Movie Quotes

One thing fun I used to do, actually still do with my buddies, is play "name that movie quote". We try to work famous movie quotes into conversation and see if anyone can recognize the movie it came from. I thought it might be fun to post a weekly movie quote and test you guys to see if you can get them. So I will start easy, and see how it goes.

Lock the door and key out SP1

If you are not ready for it and want to block the automatic download Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Microsoft Corp. yesterday released a tool kit that temporarily blocks the delivery of it through its updating services.

The new blocking tool disables the delivery of SP1 to subscribers of Automatic Updates, Windows Update and Microsoft Update, according to information on Microsoft's Web site. It is available as a free download.

FC Technology Organization

A question that I often get asked is, "What does the Technology organization at Fellowship Church look like?". Well, here ya go.



Technology Organization

New IDS up and running!

Our new IDS (Intrusion Detection System) is up and running! We are really excited about the new solution that Steven our Network Engineer, and Adam from Viyu put together.

From 50,000 feet, we are running Windows 2003 server with VMWare which allows us to run all probes and collectors from one machine. Each probe is collecting using Snort on OpenBSD and dumping all collection data into a MySQL database. And lastly we are using BASE for the front-end interface.

If you made it this far thru the post you are obviously a techie. And to answer the question that is in your head, yes even in a church, there is a need for an IDS :)

Finally, Gosh!

Well, it took them long enough, but Microsoft finally has a one stop shop to look for Microsoft updates. In the past you could only get OS updates and have to get each app updates separately at different sites. Now you can get them all from their new Microsoft Updates site.

I have witnessed GREATNESS!

I have witnessed greatness! Yesterday I attended the ITEC technology conference in Dallas. Just a generic IT conference that was ok, but the greatness was experienced upon arrival.

I registered online for the event and received an email instructing me to print out and bring the bar-coded registration with me. Upon entering the building they had many terminals setup with bar-code readers that you just walked up to and scanned your registration. Just a quick scan and you keep moving toward the entrance. Just before you reach the entrance there were several people pulling printed ID cards much like the ones from SAMS, off of card printers that were initiated by the scanning of your registration form upon arrival. These people just simply picked them up and began calling your name, you grab your card slip it in your badge holder and off you go. No lines, no wait, you didn’t even have to stop walking to get thru the process! The conference was able to process about 3,000 people without blinking an eye and without any wait.

Oh and it gets better. Upon entering the conference, the vendor booths were setup with card readers that can read the info off of your card. So if you want a vendor to contact you if you were interested in their product, just swipe your card at the terminal at their booth. The vendors leave with a contact list of everyone that swiped their card. These machines also print out paper receipts so that a sales guy can write any notes about your conversation and associate it to you. It doesn’t get much cooler!

I had to find out how they were doing it. After talking to the registration people, I found out that they outsourced the whole thing with a company that specializes in conference registrations. The company is called ExGenex, and from what I saw is greatness!

Registration Card

New iSCSI Initiator

For those of you using iSCSI initiators, Microsoft released a new version of the software yesterday.

Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.0 (build 1653)

Barcode Launch Recap

This weekend we launched barcode checkin and things could not have gone better. No issues reported and everyone involved was really excited about the new technology.

A big thanks to Lisa Martinez and her team for the great planning and communication that made all of this happen.

I hope to have barcode checkin to all campuses and events in the next couple of months.

Feel the Difference

Ran across this ad for Firefox. Too funny! Click Here

The Seeker Church

I have come to the point where I just have to say something. I’ve reached my tipping point. Enough already with the “seeker church” stuff! It seems as though every time I turn around the term is thrown out labeling one church or another, mine included. I am not sure where it started and for whatever reason it is something that has really starting becoming popular to label churches doing church differently than the traditional method, a “seeker church”.

It has got me thinking though. What does the bible have to say about what a church should look like and how should it reach people? What did Christ model? What was the New Testament church like and what should a church look like today?

Shouldn’t the church be a place that draws people to it, not push people away? Christ came and removed the darkness of sin from our lives and gave us the light of eternal life through salvation. If we hold up our end of the deal, the unsaved and un-churched should look at us and the church and see this light and be drawn to it just as those who followed Christ were drawn to Him. I have to believe that it is the way God intended it. I contest that all churches should be seeker churches. Sinners should be drawn to the gift of light that God has given to each of us that are Christians.

I know that one thing I have heard is that these “scary seeker churches” are more worried about “felt needs” than proclaiming the gospel. The fact is simple, very simple. People are lost and going to hell, what are we and the church doing about it. Where are we putting our focus? Are we spending eight weeks series on the historicity of a book of the Bible and the direct translation verse by verse from the Hebrew? Don’t get me wrong there is a time and a place and it is important to learn, study and disciple. But we are in the business of reaching people, and to the unsaved the literal translation of the Hebrew word hell or baptism doesn’t quite throw out the life ring to the lost, drowning and going to hell.

I have to ask myself, what did Christ model when reaching people? When he met the Samaritan women at the well did he grab his Bible (King James of courseJ) and wave it all around and yell and stomp around and call her out for being a whore how she was going to burn in hell! Did he ask her what the Greek word for “help” or “repent” was? Did he say you tell me a word, and I will show you how the root of the word comes from the Greek? (Just kidding, Big Fat Greek Wedding reference) No, He met her where she was, in her sin, and started from there. Not approving nor condoning her past, her lifestyle, or sin in any way, but met her where she was in life and extended His gift. Am I really to believe that we and our churches should be structured and led any differently? The truth is that they are being led differently. Many churches are only reaching the “already convinced”, and if you don’t meet their mold or criteria you are not welcome and there is no effort to reach people with open arms where they are.

I think this “seeker church” stuff started because of change. Mark had a great post about change and the conflict that comes from it. I think the resistance to creativity and change in the church relative to the changes in culture is the root of this labeling of the seeker church. The change and movement away from the traditional church. The change in how to “do” church, in how to reach people, in how churches are structured and led, and how worship is done. It has nothing to do with watered down teaching or anything of the sort, but just change, and people don’t like it. If you are doing what you have always done, then you will be where you have always been. My opinion is that the way it has been done sucks and I get frustrated when thinking about how many more people might have been reached if church leaders were more open to change and creativity and creating environments to reach people.

A healthy church should be a place with cocaine snorting, skirt chasing, hell raising non-believers and seekers (Ed reference), as well as new and mature Christians. We should see growth in all of these areas all of the time if we are to remain a healthy church. Non-believers becoming new Christians, and new Christians becoming mature believers, and so is the healthy life-cycle of the church. To move people through this cycle there must be discipleship and teaching, which is a big part of maturing.

I believe that all churches should be a “seeker church.” We are the light to share the awesome gift of salvation. Hopefully, we never forget the great commission! For those who are “Mature Christians” and believe that seeker churches are shallow I challenge you to look within yourselves and your church and question are we being successful? Are we reaching people with the way we are doing things? Do we need to change?

Trip to Prestonwood

Today I spent some time with a good friend of mine Patrick at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX. It was great to see and catch up with Patrick and all the things they are doing in technology as well as to see how God continues to bless the church in amazing ways.

We spent some time just strategizing and talking about where both of our organizations are and where we are heading for the future. It is really great to have someone so close to bounce ideas off of and learn from.

I don’t do it as much as I should, but I think it is important to always be learning and asking questions of other ministries to make us more successful. We are all working on the same team after all. Some of us run plays a little differently than others, but we are all just trying to get the ball in the end zone and reach people for Christ.

It’s important for us not to only focus on ministries that might be where you are as a church (size, type etc.) but to talk to others where you were, where you are, and where you are going to be in the future to be most effective.

Barcode Checkin Launch

It’s finally here, this weekend we will be officially launching barcode based checkin. Those participating will be issued a bar-coded keychain tag, much like the ones you get a grocery store, and that will be associated with the persons record in Fellowship One and upon scanning will automatically check them in for the event or activity. This functionality has been long awaited and is going to speed up checkin processing a lot. I cant wait, and I will post how it goes next week.

Mobile Checkins with Scanners


Key Chain Tag

Meetings with Avaya

I had a great meeting with Avaya discussing their VOIP telephony solutions. We are currently using NEC as our telephony vendor, but want to keep our options open for what we are doing for the future as we expand as well as we continue to have more and more mobile staff.

They really seem to on the cutting edge of telephony along with Cisco. Some of the cool stuff that we discussed was we could plop in one of their gateway appliances that could service a satellite location and be a full PBX and provide all kinds of added functionality to those users that we do no have today. Integration with Outlook, and the ability to make calls directly from outlook or the web was one of them. You can just right click on a number and click call and it would dial out your desk phone. You of course can also use their soft phone application and make calls directly from your laptop without a desk phone at all. You can control settings like call forwarding, voicemail, etc all from your desktop without having to touch the phone itself.

One of the other cool things that we discussed is the use of our wireless infrastructure to have cell phones use the corporate wireless if they are in the building without having to use minutes on their cell phones. And when they are out of range of our wireless network, it would just work like a regular cell phone. We have looked at this before but the technology has always been proprietary and we would have had to buy all new wireless to make it happen. We would not have to with their solution.

All in all it was a very exciting meeting to see some of the possibilities of where the future might take us.