Aspen Group Blog

I’m excited to announce that Aspen will be holding another in our series of Pastors Luncheons in Chicagoland on June 10th.  Guest speaker Michael Trent of Third Place Consulting will be presenting along with our president, Ed Bahler at the new café facility at Moraine Valley Church (MVC).  Please join us as we discuss the characteristics of a truly engaging café and how it relates to your church ministry.

This will be an opportunity to hear from an experienced consultant in the Third Place/café arena and also to see the newly completed facility at Moraine Valley Church.  Also on hand will be the café staff from MVC—to answer questions and serve you some great coffee!

Call 815-806-1705 or e-mail kruther@aspengroup.com today to sign up for this event!  You can also download the postcard for the event at the Downloads section of this blog.

See the Photo Gallery and the Moraine Valley Opens Café post on this blog for information on the MVC project.

I just got back from the Exponential Conference in Orlando.  In addition to some very thought-provoking sessions, it was great to connect with several friends.  The team from Community Christian Church did a fantastic job with the conference -- Dave Ferguson was conference president and the CCC team was there hustling on stage and behind the scenes to make it a great week.

One of the best parts of the conference was seeing some friends and clients from “back home” such as Tim Harlow, Bill Brown and several others from Parkview Christian; Jerry McQuay of Christian Life Center, Jeff Robinson of Lincolnway Christian Church, Jul Medenblik of New Life Church, Lance Hurley of CDEA, Brad Leeper from Generis and others.  And as always, it’s great to hang out with our good friend, Bill Couchenour of Cogun, our partner in Cornerstone Knowledge Network.

Having just read “The Shaping of Things to Come” (see post below), I was primed to hear what Alan Hirsch had to say.  Among my many notes:

• The root word of mission is “sent”
• The Contemporary Church Growth Model appeals to at most 40% of the U.S. population (in Australia, where Alan’s from, it’s more like 15%) – you must become missional if you want to reach the other 60% i.e. act like a missionary would when taking the gospel to a foreign culture. America is becoming a foreign culture' we can't rely on the Judeo-Christian ethic as universally understood or embraced e.g. Europe is almost entirely post-Christian
  
• “Hell is the only place you can be safe from the disturbances of love” – C.S. Lewis.  Risking enough to truly love is a biblical imperative
• China went from 2 million to over 120 million Christians in 60 years without church buildings!
  
• The primary confession of the church should be “Jesus is my Lord and I cling to Him”.  Everything the church does must be calibrated back to Jesus.
  
• Consumerism is the alternate religion of our society.  It’s too easy for churches to play into this.

Andy Stanley had some great stuff on vision.  It had been awhile since I read his “Visioneering” so it was a good refresher:

• State it Simply (memorable is portable)
• Cast it Convincingly (Define the Problem, Offer a Solution, Explain Why and Why Now)
• Repeat it Regularly
• Celebrate it Systematically
• Embrace it Personally and Publicly

One more comment about the CCC team – the “co-emcee” was Eric Bramlett, their arts director.  Eric is one funny and creative dude. Speaking of that, you might enjoy the “Dude” series they played at the conference below:

In my reading of The Shaping of Things to Come by Frost and Hirsch, I came across this quote at the beginning of the last chapter:

"Strategy is all about commitment. If what you're doing isn't irrevocable, then you don't have a strategy--because anyone can do it...I've always wanted to treat life like I was an invading army and there was no turning back." -- Troy Tyler

Compelling... 

As you may have seen, the book “Bit Literacy” by Mark Hurst was reviewed by Jim Couchenour on the CKN website. See below for that review.

I got another “review” from an Aspen co-worker, who told me it had “one good chapter”, which was on the topic of e-mail. So, I had to read it myself. And yes, the chapter on e-mail is the best. The most challenging thing in the whole book is the encouragement to get your e-mail Inbox to zero items at the end of every day. Yes, zero. Yes, every day. It means you stop using your Inbox as a Task List. It means you start benefiting from the freedom that comes from a clean Inbox—no more nagging feeling of unanswered mail, lost “To Dos”, etc. So, I tried it. And for the last week, I’ve enjoyed the freedom of zero Inbox! And that’s with all the spam, e-newsletters, FYI notes and humorous stuff we all get on a daily basis. I encourage you to shoot for the goal of an empty Inbox. Pick a day that you’ll do it. It’s possible! Oh, and the rest of the book is OK. Being a “compulsive completer”, I had to finish it. And there was some decent stuff mixed in with his crazy, self-serving ideas about “To Do Lists”. But my "reviewer" was basically right, it’s a one chapter wonder.

You can read the review by Jim Couchenour, Director of Marketing & Ministry Services for Cogun on the CKN site under Recommended Reading.

One of my favorite activities when visiting a friend is to browse their bookshelf. You can learn a lot about by what they're reading! Now I can do that without leaving the computer when people post their favorites on a blog or website. You can checkout what we at Aspen are reading below and also what the CKN Partners find interesting at the Cornerstone Knowledge Network site -- click on Recommended Reading and enjoy browsing! And yes, that's a picture of my bookshelf here at the office - look for it above all future book reviews!