Anytime I get a chance to learn a lesson from another church, I get my pen out. I can’t write fast enough in an effort to avoid a future problem. Well, here is real simple lesson that can be learned free of charge to any of those that can find our new home.

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It’s real simple: Don’t let your web domain expire because companies in Taiwan will buy it and hold it hostage. Hostage may not be the right word. That would involve some type of negotiation and we can’t get anyone to call us back. Nevertheless, there are people smarter than we are that now have our old web address.

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As our church grows we are less focused on fixing the problem and more focused on fixing the system that caused the problem. So what did we learn from this one? Here are a few departmental shifts we’ll make to fix the problem not just treat the symptoms.

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1. Human Resource Department- Anytime an employee leaves the company for whatever reason we must have a systematic way to receive and filter future emails to their address.
2. Communications Department- We must, at all times, have a running spreadsheet of all websites that we currently have along with passwords, emails on file, expiration dates, etc.
3. Finance Department- Anytime we set up a credit card autodraft payment up it must be kept on a spreadsheet in the event that credit card number ever changes for any reason.
4. IT Department- They actually provide services at a very minimal cost to protect you from loosing your domain in the unfortunate event that you don’t renew.

There you have it. This was not an expensive lesson we learned- just a humiliating one. Here’s the headline: “Church blog designed to help other churches with practical ideas goes down because they don’t have their crap straight and they can’t even figure out how to renew a domain��?.

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Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

Filed under: Tech | Comments Off

Imagine me going to work last week only to find out that our Internet was down all day, for two days. That’s what I said, ALL DAY!
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I’m not sure that has ever happened to me since the Internet was in diapers.
I haven’t actually gone a whole workday in the last as-long-as-I-can-remember without being able to access anything online.
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The funniest thing about the whole experience was me trying to figure out what to do all day. It’s not like I couldn’t use my computer, couldn’t use the phone or couldn’t talk to people in the office. But because one part of my daily routine was thrown off, because one of my regular resources was taken away, it was like I went into a functional coma.
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This probably happens to us all the time, whether we realize it or not.
Something in our comfortable routine gets thrown off and we’re left standing there trying to figure out what to do. I think one of the things that sets the Great Ones apart from the Good Ones is the ability to adjust quickly.
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The Great Ones move on quickly, look for new options and think of ways to produce results. The Good Ones move on eventually, don’t really consider new options (usually because it’s easier) and don’t always think in terms of results, but in terms of what’s fair or what they’re entitled to.
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Be better than Good, a lot of people are Good. It’s really not that hard to just be Good every once in a while. It’s really hard to be Great, and Great for the long-haul. And we were all created to be Great in some way.

Larry Hubatka, Creative PastorÂ
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