I was part of a group of IT leaders from very large churches that met a couple of times a year for three years or so. The group (which never had a name other than “megachurch IT group”) included Mike Gold of
Willow Creek, Terry Chapman of
Fellowship Church, Vic Mollett of
Southland Christian Church, Eric Busby of
Saddleback Church, and others. When last we met in May of 2005 I told the group I would host the next meeting here at
Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City area in 2006. Unfortunately, I got slammed last year with workload and staff turnover issues so I wasn’t able to make it happen. I recently exchanged e-mail with Mike Gold about renewing my invitation to host the group here and suggested merging the group with the Church IT Roundtable. He was very supportive and hoped to be able to attend and invite the old gang to join the Roundtable.
Accordingly, we would like to invite you to come to Kansas City for the Fall Roundtable October 3-4, which is right before Leadership Institute, our biggest conference of the year. After the Roundtable you could stay for Leadership Institute if you’re so inclined. I spoke with Tony Dye about getting this on the agenda for discussion at the Spring Roundtable to determine the level of interest. To get the conversation started, please leave a comment here and let me know if this sounds good.
National Church IT Association?
If you read Jason Powell’s blog, you already know about his hope to create some sort of
national church IT association. (Tony has arranged for
Phill Martin of NACBA to come to the Spring Roundtable to speak about this.) Now as for me, I strongly prefer the roundtable format for meeting with and learning from other church IT leaders. I worry that formalizing and scaling up what we’re doing into a national association would result in losing the powerful, peer-to-peer sharing of the roundtable format. I also worry that we’ll discover even the 25-30 people expected to attend the Spring Roundtable will be too many for everyone to fully participate. So what to do?
Fall Roundtable Format
Now here’s where it gets really exciting (we think?!) or maybe even crazy. For the last couple of years I have been meeting informally with church IT leaders here in the Kansas City area such as Mike Mayfield of
Pleasant Valley Baptist Church. I suspect many of you have had similar meetings with other church IT leaders in your own cities. Perhaps some of you have already held roundtables in your cities. This makes me wonder if the best way for us to scale up would be to
have roundtables in cities across the country and then link them technologically.
What if we made a first effort at this idea for the Fall Roundtable? What if we limit attendance here in Kansas City to 15-20 people and find some great way to link in roundtable groups from other cities? This idea is partially inspired by the Willow Creek Leadership Summit that brings together church leaders from around the world. We’re imagining some kind of “un-conference” that retains the strengths of peer-to-peer sharing but is scalable to involve many more people than you can fit around one table. We would like for everyone to be able to see/hear each other and use their own laptops to annotate/live blog the discussion and have side conversations. We’re not even close to figuring out how to do this from either a facilitation or technical standpoint, but one idea is to use Adobe Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze). Whatever the mechanism is, we would need to fully test both the technology and the method of facilitation prior to the meeting. And, no doubt, we’d learn a great deal from doing this once. At that point we would know either a) this works; b) this works but needs to be tweaked/improved; or c) it doesn’t/can’t work.
Please comment and let me know your thoughts or post on your own blog and link back to this post.
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Clif Guy sporadically 
Tony, Great idea! I love the idea of national networking either through a national church IT group or through a series of roundtable meetings or possibly a combination of the two. I would be happy to help in any way I can to make this Fall IT Roundtable happen and would love to have a seat at the table.
Clif, you know my answer since we have already talked about this, I’m in. I think it’s a great idea to integrate the church IT roundtable with the Leadership Institute.I’ll be there for both and I’ll help out however you need me to.
Clif – I think this is a great idea. I’m in as well. I think we might be able to swing being a host site if the distributed conference thing works.
Hello Mike, Thanks for the E-Mail about the round-table. I’m in, looking forward to seeing and networking with others.Warren NawrothThe Village Presbyterian ChurchPrairie Village, KS
Clif good to hear from you again! I’m in sounds like a great idea.Jim EdwardsIT DirectorKansas City Baptist Temple
Clif, you know I love both local groups and national get-togethers (and I know that most people have to limit themselves because of time or budget). Like Mike, I think there’s a place for a mix and match. I’ve already set aside the dates on my calendar. I’ll give this more attention once we get past our event next month in Houston.-Tony
Clif,Great idea! I’m in. Looking forward to learning and meeting other IT folks.Thanks!Jason WilsonIT DirectorIndian Creek Community Church
I just heard about this web blog and the proposed IT Roundtable this fall from Mike Mayfield and am interested in being a part of it. I am at First Baptist Raytown (MO) and now am the only IT guy here. I’ll keep my eye on this blog too.
I guess I should go ahead and say “yes, I’d like to be there!” (If I fit the requirements)Tony DyeIT DirectorPerimeter ChurchDuluth GAhttp://tonydye.net
Hi Clif!Thanks for all you’re doing to help organize this. Count me in!Nick NicholaouMBS, Inc.Huntington Beach, CA & Nashville, TNEngineering & Supporting Ministry networks Nationwide
I’ll be there.Bryson MedlockIT DirectorCollege Heights Christian ChurchJoplin, MO
I don’t know that my budget can afford another roundtable trip this year … but put Ed and I down as interested.Jason Powell – IT DirectorEd Buford – Network AdminGranger Community Church
I am definitely interested in attending.
Count me in.Jason LeeIT DirectorNorthwoods Community Church
Fantastic ideas, gang. Very exciting stuff. I am interested in attending onsite in KC.James Arnold
i would also be very interested in attending a fall round table in Kansas City. It is a bit closer to Iowa than the rest of them are.Austin
Count me in! David Szpunar, Network & Systems Manager, Lakeview Church, Indianapolis, IN.I think the technologically-linked conference idea sounds interesting, but when I read this post it gave me pause: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/sxsw_interactiv.htmlI know I personally am looking forward to face-to-face time.
Sorry this is the link I meant to post: Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video…(sorry, I don’t use Blogger often, comments work differently than on WordPress!)~David Szpunar
I’ve added it to my calendar and I’m looking forward to finally meeting a lot of you.Sean T. StricklandInformation TechnologyNorth Point Ministries€Browns Bridge Community Church€Buckhead Church €North Point Community ChurchDirect: 678.892.5455Cell: 678.576.4149 Fax: 678-892-5601Email: sean.strickland@northpoint.orgWe enable our ministries to lead more people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by leveraging technology to provide excellence in our products and services.
The first church IT roundtable in Granger was awesome but, I totally agree with you that 20-30 people limits the effectiveness and intimacy of the group. The small regional groups sound good as the travel would be less and would help churches with smaller budgets. Another idea that has worked well in other areas for our church is to group churches by size. Churches of similar size deal with the same issues, have closer to the same IT budgets and IT staff size. A 500 member church with one volunteer IT guy has a hard time relating to a 20,000 member church with a full time IT staff of 3 or 4 people and 10 volunteers, but their needs to have a round table are just as great (probably more).On another note, the thing with all the vendors coming to the round table bugs me a little (just my opinion). As IT decision makers for our churches, we are bombarded by so many vendors daily, these round tables are a forum were we can actually just let our guard down and speak and share freely with our peers. I’d rather pay for my own lunch and leave the vendors out of it (just my opinion).Count me in for KC.ThanksJesse GoodwinIT DirectorGrace Covenant Church & Grace Covenant AcademyCornelius, NCjesse@gracecovenant.org
Keep me posted.Nancy SmithBlackhawk Church, Madison, WInsmith@blackhawkchurch.org
I would be interested in their case local or national. The advantage of national is vendors and more people to connect with, and local is cheaper and better for time to work together. Houston will be my first meeting, but I plan on getting involved either way. I am planning on Kansas City it will be real close for me here in Nebraska.
After being at the Spring roundtable at Sugar Creek this week, I’m definitely interested in coming to KC in the Fall. Please add me to your list.
Clif and Brian… you guys have a tough act to follow. Looking forward to it!kdl
I am interested. Keep me posted Clif. Glad to get reconnected online too.
Clif,Count me in. After attending the Spring Round Table in Houston, I am even more excited as to how I can serve the group and learn from the group!
After the last Roundtable how can I say no to this one. So I am in, and I hope I can bring 2 or 3 others from Frist Pres of Bellevue with me.David CristNetwork AdminFirst Presbyterian Church of Bellevue
I’m interested, please keep me in the loop.Andrew NortonBusiness ManagerGrace Brethren Church of Lititz501 W Lincoln AveLititz, PA 17543www.lgbc.orgalnorton@lgbc.org
Cliff, count me in…I’m looking forward to it!Chris ToddDirector of TechnologyChampion Forest Baptist Churchwww.distractible.com
I’m in.
Mark me down as well. I am very excited about meeting everyone and participating. God is going to use this in a mighty way-Chris KehayiasDirector of ITCalvary Chapel Melbourne
Count me in. Was at the first RT, couldn’t make the second but I’m totally down for the 3rd!Michael SainzIT CoordinatorSunset Presbyterian Church
Clif,Arena guys will be there – so count our team in!RebeccaMarCom CoordinatorArena Division of Shelby Systems, Inc.
Knock Knock… can I come in?Dean LisenbyACS – Director of IT.
I’d be interested in attending – locally or remotely.
I am interested in attendingThank you,Randy SmithWhittier Area Community ChurchWhittier, CA
Clif – great idea to leverage live meeting technology to fit more people around the table. I’m located in Nashville, TN and work with both a large local church (Bethel World Outreach Center), and the ministry organization of which Bethel is a part (Every Nation Ministries). As such, I’m interested in this discussion both from an end user point of view and a provider of services point of view. Count me and my team in.We’d certainly be open to hosting a local gathering, as Nashville is home to a large number of active and growing technology-savvy churchesMark MingusIT DirectorEvery Nation MinistriesBrentwood, TNmark.mingus@everynation.org
Hey Folks!Ken Celecia from Fairway Consulting Group here. We are interested in attending the IT Roundtable again. Who do we get in touch with to discuss speaking opportunities, sponsorship, etc?
Wow, this sounds like a great idea. I don’t know if our budget can swing a flight out there (we’re located all the way in San Diego), so put us down as a maybe, but we would love to participate in a regional roundtable!
Hey guys, how are things coming for getting registered? I’m ready to commit flights, hotel, etc. Any guidance? Thanks!