ryan russell

Vegas (www.stripchurch.com) is going GREAT! I am very excited about the addition of Jessica who is heading up our local clubs & brothels initiatives. She is also working with our gal interns. Our prayers our that her leadership continues to flourish this summer and she will stay on a permanent staff. Check out the site — we are making lots of new headway into new territories. Going places where most Christians dare not going. Stephen who is charge of our guy interns and our strip outreaches is also doing a great job. All of the new efforts and the prayers are really starting gain some practical traction.

Also, for the next 2 weekends I will be filling in preaching for our man Dean up at Pathways. Our family attended there last weekend and the church is mostly made up of young couples with young kids — fits Dean well! I will write more about the ministry there as I fill in preaching and volunteer some with him.

Look for NEW CHURCH updates starting in Sept.-ish.

Everyone wants to be relevant in ministry, but no body asks “are we IRRELEVANT?” If you were, how would you know? Who would you ask? By what measure would you be satisfactorily convinced that the ministry you are working in is not really connecting with those who are in need of God’s grace. If some people show up Sunday, does that make you relevant? If a newspaper writes about your church, does that count? What about if you hold a concert or a conference? 

How about this…. What if the neighborhood or city in which your church exists doesn’t know that you exist? There was a church within walking distance from where I lived and the only thing I knew about them was that they had preschool registration open — evidently that was the most important sign they felt compelled to put out on a very busy street.

Here is my commitment – I am not going to just ‘do ministry’. What I do for Christ needs to have traction in every day life… and not just on the preschool open registration level.

How about your church; are you making a difference in the different cross sectors of your community?

— unapologetically passing along a great post on Communication form Seth Godin —

The two elements of a great presenter

1. Respect (from the audience) 
2. Love (to the audience)

There are no doubt important evolutionary reasons why this is true, but in my experience, every great presenter earns the respect of the audience (through her appearance, reputation, posture, voice, slides, introduction, etc.) and captures the attention of the audience by sending them love.

Love takes many forms. I love you enough to teach you this. I love you enough to help you. I love you enough to look you in the eye. Or, in the case of rock and roll presentations, I love you enough to want to engage in various acts with you, right now, backstage.

Margaret Thatcher was a great presenter, even though she had none of the glib charisma people expect from someone with that title. That’s because people (even those that disagreed with her) respected her before she started, and they understood at every moment that her motivation was to motivate and improve the lives of those she was presenting to.

In the famous interrogation scene in Basic Instinct (link not included so no one yells at me), Sharon Stone does a brilliant presentation. She instantly earns (a sort of) respect from the cops and their undivided attention at the same time. She replaces love with sex, and it works.

Tony Robbins is considered an astounding presenter for a similar reason. His stage presence and reputation and energy and sheer size earn him respect, and his generosity and complete connection with the audience is received by them as love. The result is a connection far bigger than the content alone would account for.

If you have love but no respect, you’re a lounge singer. Fail.

If you have respect, but no love, you’re like one of the rare self-promotional talks at TED. Fail.

Consider this clip from Patton. In 28 seconds, George C. Scott delivers both.

When you create a presentation, think about what your status will be as you begin the presentation. What can you do to prewire, to earn more respect from the start? How can you be introduced? Lit? Miked? What can you wear? If your reputation doesn’t precede you, how do you earn it?

Don’t apologize at the beginning of the talk. For anything. Don’t hide in the dark. Don’t hide behind a wall of bullet points.

And then, as the talk (pitch/presentation/interview) begins, don’t focus your energy or concern on yourself. It’s not about you. It’s about them. The presenter who loves his audience the most, wins.

I assume a good portion of you read our family blog as well, but just in case here is an update following ‘church planting assessment’. This is an unusual season of being ‘in-between’, however, Strip Church & Factor 1 Studios are going very well.

Jen & I just got back from “assessment” for church planting. Still processing the highs and lows of the experience… when I am have it sorted through, I will post more about the whole last 2 weeks here. In the meantime here is an article from Seth Godin that I think is pretty interesting and related to what we are charting out to do next.

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What are you good at?

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you’ve developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.

Domain knowledge is important, but it’s (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it’s usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it’s hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Venture capitalists like hiring second or third time entrepreneurs because they understand process, not because they can do a spreadsheet.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you’re world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain… that’s what the internet is for.

One of the reasons that super-talented people become entrepreneurs is that they can put their process expertise to work in a world that often undervalues it.