The beginning of a most exciting conversation…

It's high time to really dive into this. We've got an Illumine 2.0 to build, and over the course of the summer I've had a lot of time to think on it and am more excited for it every day. What we have done so far is good. What we can do next will be better, as will Illumine 3.0 be after that. We'll never have it perfect, which is why Illumine's guarantee is "See Life Better" instead of "See Life Perfect." What follows is a huge amount of stuff, because we have a lot to think about and church is a big thing.

Before diving into the real discussion

(which will take months, not days) let's talk about the coming months, particularly October-December. Rock Hill has functioning ministries, to include (potentially) a significant shift in the Community Service side of things (this has to do with Dr. King asking Donna if Illumine would take over the work of his Nonprofit. Lots to unpack there.) But you guys are both in Rock Hill, and the long-term success of Illumine depends on the short-term success of Rock Hill. 

There are pieces to this: first, the ministry.

I suggest a simple approach: Sundays & special events only. No Illumine Evenings. Thanksgiving will carry you through October & November (as far as having non-Sunday things to do) and then it is December and Christmas. This means you have

• Thanksgiving

• 14 public worship events including Christmas Eve

• 6 private worship events

• a 5th Sunday Potluck

• Advent by Candlelight/Firelight (which I'm doing, too, and can we consider renaming?)

• Christmas Camp

• & Christmas Day.

Add to that Nathan's efforts to connect with all the members and clean out the prospect list and you may not need more ministry stuff.

Of course, if I’m ↓, ignore.

ILLUMINE 2.0

Next, the 2.0 work and discussion. I'm going to be suggesting that we

• design 2 almost-totally-new experiences,

• build out a new ministry calendar,

• develop supporting processes in a new platform,

• and commission an app.

• On top of that, we have these buildings to deal with, and we really need to make forward progress in all of this during these three months, so that we can have it all buttoned up and ready to run full throttle by September 2020 (or Jan 2021.) 

It's a bunch. We'll rest in Jesus' arms in heaven. For now, we have a church to redesign. Maybe.

Worth noting: There's a natural division of labor that comes out of this, based on our present circumstances. None of us are doing all of the things on that list - which is absolutely the point of collaboration. We can do more and better together. Speaking of which, what about January and beyond? I think (if you guys want) we can actually already be putting out the same general products beginning in January. That's right - the collaboration in ministry content creation can start that early (if you're feeling like that works for you.) 

Beginning with receiving the call to Rock Hill and finding special definition as I took the altMBA course, it seems to me that Illumine 2.0 and the church in general in the coming decades will do two basic things: create content and develop communities. In one way or another, this has been the work of the church over the centuries, but the internet and other cultural factors are continually decentralizing the whole thing. No more universal lectionaries. No more publishing houses making Bible Studies. No more grateful congregants, simply thankful for the circuit rider braving the cold and snow to serve them communion and bring new literature. The people we find ourselves in a historical-social context to serve both expect and deserve content that is relevant and designed for them and simultaneously connects them to a generous, broader meta-narrative. They are not the consumers to distract that the seeker-service movement lived on. They're people to empower, and they are people with power - power that the laity has not had in Christianity since before the 400s. 

These people need scripture-based content that will help them develop an interdependent relationship with God. (Dependent on their part because they can't even without him, dependent on his part because that's how much Grace he shows us - he considers himself incomplete without you!) The delivery mechanisms for this content have a couple main purposes: first, they should be as accessible as possible. There was a time when letters and mission journeys were the only ways to connect people to content. Those days are long gone.

• The share of Americans that own smartphones is now 81%, up from just 35% in Pew Research Center's first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011.

• The share of Americans who don't know God and do have smartphones is even higher. They're giving us a way to serve them, and they no longer think it necessary to gather in a specific place and a specific time to get content. (You guys know this. I know you do. I'm writing this out so we all are talking about the same rationales as we proceed.) 

Beyond content, these people need to develop interdependent relationships with one another. This is a hard nut to crack. Sin means that not everyone is going to get along well. Sin means that people aren't harmonious. We certainly hope that all the people who learn to know and love God learn to know and love each other, but we acknowledge that it happens in that order: God first, others second. Variations in spiritual maturity will mean that Christians can't all get along at the same time, and that the big thing we call the Church-on-earth will be fragmented. 

There's a big, human-centered-design question that I've been wrestling with when it comes to the community development piece of the church. We sometimes hear pastors talk about how they wish everyone knew everyone else, and that they don't, and so we try to make events for the whole church, but the congregation stays fragmented, and then those same pastors complain that the people aren't doing enough to get to know each other or care about each other. (I've done this as Illumine has grown.) Human-centered-design would teach us not to blame the user, but to blame the designer (not God. Me.) When I stopped blaming the people for not getting to know each other, not only did it show some of the flaws in what was designed, but it also opened the door to a bigger question: What should the communities within Christianity on earth look like? 

The "small group" approach to ministry got some things right - some of the same ones that the Pietistic movement got right (monasticism got this right, too - in certain places. The problem with using monasticism as an example is that it is such a behemoth. So there's that tangent for you.) What these various movements in the Church got right is that people can care about each other, but it takes time to develop trusting relationships. What I think they might have got wrong is how you get these relationships to happen. In all these examples, people are assigned to groups. The relationships are forced, as though relationships don't happen in the wild, which they certainly do. 

When I look at the book of Acts, I repeatedly see communities of people who are already connected by some outside structure, whether it's the family or work or household or something else, serve as the mechanisms for person to person (micro) evangelistic growth. The called minister (& the content the minister produces) connects with someone and they in turn connect their naturally occurring community to the content. (To any counter-examples that might be coming to your heads, I hear you, but look: if the Holy Spirit whisks you away to the carriage of an Ethiopian, you can bet your butt this is a special scenario. Embrace those miracles when they come, but remember - we don't make miracles happen. That's above our pay grade.) I'd even go so far to say that in our ministries, the strongest relationships between members happened because of something more than a small group or shared task. They happened organically. Those didn't hurt, but they weren't really what made it work. 

Ergo, I'm proposing that we find a way to give people permission to lean into the relationships they have (and therefore stop making them feel guilty for not knowing everybody else) and that we encourage, equip, and challenge them to pursue those relationships as evangelists using the very content we create. (Which means it not only needs to be accessible, but also relevant and sharable. Side note: I was trying to think of an example of something that is the opposite of accessible, relevant, and sharable; I think my favorite example so far is the "WELS Archives"). 

So, more points can be made, but CONTENT CREATION that empowers COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. That's the thing at 50,000 feet. 

How does this CONTENT/COMMUNITY bit connect with what Illumine is about already? 

Illumine has pretty much always been making the argument that for the people we serve, a complete version of what God wants for them is accessed through the proper distinction of law and gospel seen through the lenses of Worship, Education, and Community Service. Another way to phrase this is that people really get what God wants for them when they access his promises with Rest, Wisdom, and Purpose. Anything less would be incomplete and unsatisfying. 

I'm increasingly convinced that this is a good framework for ministering to people. It has a universal appeal and challenge to it - some like worship and are uncomfortable with service, others are uncomfortable with worship and like service - so it works for marketing but more importantly it helps people more by inviting them toward a natural path of maturation. Ironically, despite developing that good framework, I didn't design the ministry according to it (or I didn't go far enough.) We created a ministry calendar that attempted to highlight all three of the foci using “rest months” and varying weekly products, but in the end we tacitly and mistakenly stated that people should be able to choose between worship, education, and community service if they want (forever). 

As a result, not only did we have an imbalanced schedule that was hard for people to track, we had imbalanced people. Not their fault. The fault lies in the design (HCD). People are people whether the product works on them or not. Ergo, in the ministry calendar and product suite I'm suggesting below, we almost always have all three in one experience. 

The ideas that follow are influenced in part by both the reality of the subscription economy and its connection to the lean startup, SaaS and feedback iteration models. Having written on subscription myself, I found the book "Subscribed" to be very enlightening and confirming. What I'm suggesting here is, to some extent, a subscription church. (We can chat in the long run about the ramifications that this might have on membership and fellowship and the complications that this will bring as far as interaction with the rest of the WELS is concerned. It all ends up coming down to goals/purpose and serving as well as we can, including how much time we don’t have left to start serving that well.) 

So might go the front-facing, B2C part of Illumine 2.0.

What's under the hood? What's the machine that produces this goodness? 

Under the hood are three basic components. Evangelism (assimilation & planting), Administration (resource management, PR management, and org/vision management), and Fellowship (strategic partnerships and hospitality.) Believe it or not, it's in these that we'll see the truest power and potential of the collaboration. 

Speaking of the collaboration, if we haven’t yet and we still have time, we should take a break and plan for the good days.

Before getting into the systems, let's talk about the soft/hardware that we can run with. There are two basic things that should be able to rule them all: ClickUp & Office 365. (Very soon, ClickUp will actually have an Office 365 API extension and they'll really work hand in hand, though they already work really well together. There's already ClickUp for Outlook, which is worth getting to know. The ClickUp Chrome Extension has become a must for me after only 1 week of use.) ClickUp is how we'll manage all ministry processes. It's where the actual work gets done. 

It’s worth noting that part of ClickUp are these things called Spaces - they’re the broadest version of a bucket. I think there would be 4 of them: Illumine Church, Illumine Content, Illumine Rock Hill, and Illumine Greenwood. The basic rule for organizing things into those spaces is that the localized ones only get those processes that are only managed at the local level. Everything else tries to float to the top. 

Office 365, especially their new app called Teams, will provide the environment that surrounds and supports the work in ClickUp. To use the metaphor of baseball, ClickUp is like standing on the mound and winding up for a pitch. Office 365 (Teams, Outlook, Sharepoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Sway, and others) are the mound and the field and the dugouts and the stands and the stats and the fans and the practices and the coaching strategy and the network and everything else. It takes a lot to throw a pitch, and the quality of that pitch will be affected by the quality of that which supports it. We've struggled a little with next-level excellence in Illumine's past. We do this right, and we'll struggle less with it in the future. 

What you want to use personally as you work is up to you, but there is plenty of room in these for you to privately manage what you're doing, be it professional or personal. For what it's worth, I am going to try to switch completely to these platforms. 

On to the behind-the-scenes systems. 

Let’s start with Evangelism.

Micro-Evangelism

• We can use ClickUp as our Assimilation Management tool, it is very equipped to be a customizable CRM that automates where we want it to and doesn't offer bloat that we don't need. I'm setting that up now and it's going to rock - better than ChurchTrac ever was or could have been. Micro-evangelism is managed at the campus level.

• Following up on delinquents and otherwise closing the back door will be managed with processes that are shared by the campuses but are separately managed. Nathan, if you’re interested in my input, I’d gladly be part of the conversation about Illumine’s current prospect list and delinquent members. 

• Evangelism also includes some of the biggest expenses, from swag to advertising. There are a lot of ways that, if we can work together, we can maximize the power of a dollar in bulk ordering, design fees, and distribution costs. A few projects that might be on the horizon if we decide they’re worth the time and effort: revamping Illumine’s apparel line, leveling up the quality of our connection cards and 36 hour postcards & ministry anniversary cards (and possibly automating those processes…), paying someone to learn about and to manage social media (which will have 9[!] accounts now - three for each major platform, and really does need to be run a lot better. Every study shows how much this matters.) 

Macro-Evangelism

• Macro-Evangelism can also be managed very easily with ClickUp. Speaking further on Macro… a big part of the goal in the collaboration is to allow there to be more churches planted more quickly. The bet here is that we’ll get ourselves into a place where we can independently start new churches, which would allow us (who know the Illumine model, how it works, where it can work, etc.) to make strategic decisions about where future Illumine’s would be and to what extent we’d partner with other churches. There’s certainly questions about how this all works: how many is the max number of collaborating campuses, is there a way that this incubates but doesn’t hold campuses, etc. I suspect these will get answered as we go. 

On to Administration, which is a BEAR.

(Before diving too deeply into it, though, I’ve been throwing a question around in my head…Is Nathan a great administrator? Certain signs point to yes. If that’s the case, this might play into how we divide things as far as answering the question: “What particular things is each campus pastor responsible for?”)

Administration, broadly speaking, has three categories: Resource Management, PR Management, and Org Management. 

Resource Management

• This covers both Finances & Facility Management. These are probably best managed locally, though we can refine the processes together. On both facility and finances, it seems likely that both of our campuses will have significant rental income. Is there interest in donating a portion of that to Collaborative expenses, like staff or new campuses? Additionally, can we have a discussion about each campus maybe donating a portion of its annual offerings to new campuses? Illumine Content and the earnings from that are another thing entirely, and so you know, my gut says that all Illumine Content monies should go directly toward shared staff. They’ll be the ones doing a lot of the publishing work, so it seems like Illumine Content as an outlet should support them (and to some extent that incentivizes the coordinators to do the Content work.) A lot of the work of Resource Management belongs to the Campus Councils. The President is essentially the Trustee and the Treasurer, well… They should be able to do their work pretty independently. 

• I am interested in a conversation about the extent to which our campuses should look similar. I do think some things, like screen usage and multi-use priorities, will affect the way things look. Speaking of which, have we talked about the multi-use priority? Is everyone on board with that? Similarly, we should talk about the altar idea some time soon… 

PR Management

• Paying someone to manage social media will be a big help.

• We can have the same letterhead and all that.

• The big thing is the website. How does that get managed? What does it look like? The good news is that we have an ace-in-the-hole named Alyssa Tyler who can make this work for us. If we adopt something similar to the suggestions above, then the website is obviously very key.

Org Management

Illumine (the organization)

Illumine Operates A Scalable Organization That Creates Useful, Accessible, & Sharable ContentTo Build and Drive Deeply Relational Communities

 Illumine is a practical framework for collaborating campuses to support two basic functions: creating change through content and creating connection through community.

• Illumine consists of a team that runs 6 basic systems (departments). 

  • The team consists of:

    • Guidance

      • Pastors

      • Administrative Council

    • Support

      • Coordinators

      • Campus Councils

    • Implementation

      • Task Teams

  • The systems consist of:

    • Evangelism

    • Worship

    • Education

    • Community Service

    • Fellowship

    • Administration

• Illumine manages a Content Delivery system (which includes feedback.)

  • The Content Delivery System has as its basic steps: 

    • Planning

    • Promoting 

    • Creating

    • Publishing

    • Promoting Use & Feedback

    • Analyzing 

  • Through modular meditations, video vignettes, written posts, group discussions, and a catalog of actionable community service opportunities, this system creates online experiences that lead the groups that go through them on a journey of spiritual rest, mindful wisdom, and heartfelt purpose. 

• Illumine manages a Community Management system (which includes assimilation.)

  • Through pre-existing connections (either from life, such as friends and family, or from the introductory course, called See Life Better) we develop selfless communities - either physical or online, neither is better or worse, easier or harder, they have the option in onboarding - that are coached by other communities in scheduled, multi-community meetings. All of the groups get together for larger, local events once a month. These larger events are products of the small community gatherings and include exceptional Worship, Education, & Community service on a backdrop of fantastic Fellowship and approachability. 

  • These communities will refer to pastors for 1:1 care when needed by a member.

In the long term, success in this goal will yield a scalable network of local ministries that efficiently create great content so that local communities can thrive. It will all be managed through an app. 

• A note on the app: anyone, anywhere could anonymously use the app to access content - including the See Life Better course. Behind all the content is a push toward joining a community - seeing life better through the eyes of others. In order to become part of a community, one would have to create an account.  

Video conferencing and a chat feature would either be included in this app or included in a second app that one downloads when one creates an account in the first app (think Facebook and Facebook Messenger, but Illumine and Illumine Connections.) The first app would be a near-carbon-copy of the website, and the second would be exclusive to the app.

And Fellowship…

Remains organic, though it’s worth noting that for things like Evenings and Large & Locals to be great, food & drink should be, too.