This is my first blog post. Well, actually, it’s my second or third try at a first blog post. I’ve posted an attempt or two before, but decided they weren’t really what a first blog post should be. I’m new at this, you see.
Why am I beginning to blog? An honest answer goes something like this: I’ve written a book, and I’m about to publish it. The publisher, Xulon Press, urged me to build a platform based on the book Platform by Michael Hyatt. Mr. Hyatt urges authors to blog as an important element of their platform.
So, what’s my book, and what’s it all about? My book’s title is Tell Me a Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories. It tells about a method to develop new ministries when they are going to be too large or complex to simply think them through or adapt a ministry people have done may times before. Further, since all design is really redesign (a claim I explain in the book), it applies not only to creating new ministries, but also to improving existing ones.
Tell Me a Story is aimed at pastors, lay leaders, and leaders of para-church ministries. I’m an engineer and engineering manager. And, because you who do this, are not generally inclined to my world, I needed to find a way to translate my world into your language. After a couple of tries, I was encouraged by some friends to write the book itself as a story, so that’s what it is, hopefully, nice and friendly.
So, that leads me to my last and final question for this blog, and that is, if I’ve written Tell Me a Story and want to talk about it, then, why do I title my blog “Ministry Design?” Here my answer is that I’m was motivated to write the book out of a desire to help people (specifically, my church) design and improve better ministries. I’d like this blog to gather a community of people who share my desire to design and improve ministries.
Blogs are all about dialog between a host and his or her readers. I’d like to focus my blog’s dialog around ministry design. Of course, I’ll blog about the book, but I’ll blog more about the bigger topic, and I’ll eagerly enter discussions with you, my readers, about either. So, if you already have thoughts you’d like to share, let us all (me and the other readers) hear them. If you’re not ready to dialog yet, come back and see if what I say in a future blog post stimulates a conversation that can help us all.
Ministry Design 