Saturday, September 30, 2006

Online Bill Pay

As I sit here waiting for the Ohio State game to start, I thought I'd pay a few bills and as I was doing so, I wonder many people take advantage on line bill payment?

I've been baking on line for more than 8 years now and I love it. I just scheduled my credit card payment (yes, I have one credit card used for mostly business purchases. I do not carry a balance on my cc and I never use it for unplanned purchases.) I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan! I digress. Here are some reasons why I bank on line:

  1. I can schedule exactly when the payment will reach the intended party.
  2. No envelopes or stamps ( I love saving money).
  3. My online bill pay is free through my bank.
  4. They keep track of all the payments I've sent. I can pull up a years worth of payment to my gas company to see how much we spend in this category each year.
  5. I love technology and this is a great way to make it work for me.

Putting on my Church Business Administrators hat, I see more and more "bank" checks each year from people in our church using bill pay services. We offered electronic giving for a few years now and that's been great as well.

Time to walk my dog then I'll be all ready for the Bucks! (Ohio State)

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

To POS or not to POS

We only have 7 weeks until we take over our building. Lot's to get done. I guess that's why I wake up at 2 a.m. and think I should get out of bed and get to work. Don't get me wrong. I'm energized by all that's taking place. I thank God every day that I get to be a part of what he is doing through Sugarcreek.

My latest 2 a.m. thing had me thinking about our cafe and how to intergrated the accounting for it into our church's books. (I still haven't decided the which way to go on this.) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Ok, POS - Point of Sale. This consists of a computer, scanner, cash drawer, expensive software. . . . This is the first issue at hand for our cafe. At least in my mind.

I've received some great suggestions on what POS sytems others are using in their cafes. Thanks Andy and Matt. We will get there sometime. For starters, mostly for cost reasons . . . . . ok totaly for cost reasons, we are going to start simple. We'll start out with 2 ROYAL alpha583cx Heavy Duty Cash Register I found the best price at JR.com. $179.99 Thanks Froogle.com



I think this simple solution will give me the reporting I need as it comes with software that will allow me to download the sales transactions into my notebook. Even right into Quickbooks if I choose.

Now what to serve at the cafe and what to charge? Decisions, decisions. What I do know is profits from the cafe will go to missions.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Next Hire . . .

During a break at the IT roundtable, I looked up Granger's "retail manager" Susan Chipman. She was very helpful and gave me lots to think about as we get ready to hire a food service coordinator.

We just posted this opening on our web site. In addition to coming up with great interveiw questions, I'm also looking for a POS system. Any suggesgtions on either issue?

I'm also trying to process how to best integrate the cafe's accounting into the church's accounting.

I love this kind of stuff.

I asked at the roundtable if anyone heard of bookstore manager (as we have a bookstore as well) and lots of people heard of it. That's all I'll share here. So no need to suggest this software.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Back from the IT Round Table

I'm back in the office after Granger Trip. My head is still spinning. It was very fruitful in multiple ways.

Here's a few key items / pointer that resonated with me.
  1. Church's are size and larger have at least one full time IT person. (At this time, our IT Superman is has other responsibilities.
  2. Most church's have laptops that can be checked out. Very few staff members have a laptop assigned to them.
  3. No local adimistration of PC's. (i.e. no installing software unless the IT department installs it.)
  4. No personal inkjet printers.
  5. Help Desk software / Ticketing software is a must. (We are looking into that today.)
  6. Most church's that were running Fellowship One has a back-up ISP.

As always with this kind of thing, the best part about the event was the networking and knowing there are other church IT departments and people who have similar needs and "opportunities".

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Greetings from Wired Churches.com

Good morning.

I'm waiting for the church IT round table to start. I'm jacked. About 20 of us got together last night informally to "hang out". I learned so much that I could drive home now and still be very blessed by the networking and knowledge I gained.

We are sitting in Grangers Jungle room. This is Dave Mast our very own IT guy. We are early. What can I say. . . . . It's always better to be early than on time.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Road Trip

I'll be hitting the road Tuesday with our IT manager, Dave Mast. Dave and I are headed to Granger Community Church for a church IT round table. Way Cool!

SFMC is the smallest in weekend attendance numbers that will be present at this event. The largest church is Seacoast at 7,500.

What exactly is a roundtable? I'm glad you asked.

DEFINITION OF A ROUNDTABLE: roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is:

o Small enough to emphasize interactive learning

o Led by a facilitator and peer

o Includes participants who have an affinity with each other

o Does not include a strong agenda beyond sharing knowledge Roundtable members are selectively invited with less than 25 per group

PURPOSE OF THIS ROUNDTABLE
1. To meet other innovators· Encouragement - "I am not alone." "Here I am understood."· Confidence - "I'm not so crazy after all."· Relationship - Develop on-going friendships

2. To advance the diffusion of innovation in a given topic area· Sharing knowledge, lessons learned, and experiences· Sorting out the big picture. How does it all fit? Where are we= going?· Synergy of new ideas, new perspectives, and new dreams

3. To facilitate collaboration· Explore opportunities for teaming up to accomplish common goals· "Network" - Learn who knows what and who is doing what

I'll update you from Granger. . . . . Pray for Dave & I

Thanks

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Basketball at Church? . . . . It's not what you think

Today, our weekly all staff meeting was two hours. Usually our weekly all staff is only an hour and here's the agenda.
  1. We share stories of life change that happened last week. (This is what makes life great!)
  2. We communicate with staff on what's going on so we can be informed and inform others.
  3. We pray together and for each other.

Today was different. No we didn't play basketball. We had the defending, two years in a row, Highland Hawks basketball coach Dave Schlabach speak to us. He came to share his leadership principals with us. I was very excited to hear from him and to see if these principals would be transferable to us.

I very surprised. He really didn't talk about basketball at all. His principals were all about leading people. And man did these principals apply to me. Here were my take aways from the church.

  1. Have a passion for what you do.
  2. surround yourself with Energy Givers
  3. Give people a roadmap where to go
  4. Make your goals big
  5. Never be on time, always be early
  6. Sacrifice is needed for special things to happen
  7. Understand your role and do it very well (not everyone is the shooter)
  8. Ask for help. No one knows it all or sees it all
  9. Don't assume people know their role. Help them see it
  10. with a "big win" thank the smallest contributors first. Make them feel like hero's. Everyone will thank the person out front.

I know if I would diligently work on these ten things, I'd be a better leader!

Saturday, September 09, 2006

What is most important to you?

I woke up this morning thinking about the same thing as when I went to bed last night. Life moving in fast forward. In my quiet time, God asked me what am I willing to say no to in order to slow down a little bit? At that moment, I didn't have an answer.

In doing some reading in success magazine, I was reading a profile on Chris Gardner. At 27, he was homeless and living on the subways of Chicago. He's now 52 and president of his own company. He said something in his article that stuck with me. "Money is the least significant aspect of success. It's more important to look in the mirror and go Yeah. A lot of folks with a whole lot of money can't do that." His quote brought me right back to God's word. Your treasure is where your heart is. I say all this to say, God's asking me to say no to a few things and to check where my heart is.

When I slowed down and thought about what God challenged me with this morning, he brought me back to it's all about relationships. That's what's most important. My relationship with him and with people.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Did you miss me?

Ok, I know it's been some time since I was last here. To be honest I was thinking about giving up the blog world for a while. I guess in a way that's just what I did.

Over the last few day's I've had more than a few people ask me where my blog has been. The last person who asked was Jeff. Jeff's our sales rep at Fellowship One. (Hi Jeff!)

In talking with Jeff today he said life feels like it is in fast forward. I totally agreed and thought to myself that's a very accurate statement about the lives of most of the people I know.

As I type this, I just finished doing some consulting work, my wife is on her way to pick our son up from football. I've put my daughter to bed for the third time tonight and our puppy is finally sleeping.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my life with anyone if I could.

I'll be blogging again on a regular basis. We are only 10 weeks away from opening weekend in our new building. I'll keep you posted on this from my point of view. Pray for us!