For starters, paying the pastor is good.  ”The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.”

(I read not a few comments of folks who look at Paul’s example in context, denying his right to take a salary, and decide therefore that pastors should work for free, or cheap.  This is dumb.  It is the minister’s discretion to return some or all of his salary.  If he does, it’s a love offering; if you make him by withholding wages, it’s a tax).

So how much should pastors make?

Money is a wonderful tool for observing how much you value something.  You always value what you pay through the nose for.  In the business world, clients who spring for high-end vendors tend to be less of a headache to those vendors.  Why?  Because they are paying them to be the experts, resulting in respecting them as the experts.  They treat them as a partner, not an employee.  So if the church values the pastor, they should pay them a valuable wage.  The pastor should feel valued.  The pastor should look at his paycheck and think “wow, they must really value me!”

Here’s the truth: a pastor would work for free.  Those who are called to preach are overjoyed to do so (most of the time).  The world is full of successful businessmen who are starting new businesses, not for the money, but for love of the game.  Similarly, the church is full of people who volunteer out of love for others and appreciation of the Gospel, and never see a nickel, including those who preach & teach long before they’re ever paid to do so.

The reason we pay pastors is to make it easier for them to work for free (get it?).

But I’m training myself not to care, unless I first get an answer to “but how will you market it?”  This is the hard question.

The magic of Craigslist, eBay, Pinterest, Twitter, etc., is not in the sauce (the product itself).  But how did they get millions of people to taste their sauce?

“Hey Stephen, I’ve got a great idea for an app that does—”
“But how will you market it?”
“Don’t you want to hear my idea first?”
“No.”

His point: you get good by repetition, not by a single best effort.  You get good by crossing the finish line (and crossing it again and again and again), not by trying to run a marathon.

Wanna start a blog?  Great.  Aim for short, frequent posts.  Don’t try to write well, just try to write often.

Wanna be a good cook? Don’t try making gumbo. Start with PB&J, then grilled cheese, then a hundred other things, then gumbo.

Wanna become a developer?  Start with “Hello World” and ship it.  Show your friends.  Like this: (“Hey, look at my awesome iPhone app!”)

A TV & an xBox?  So far so good.  I’m interested, so I turn the box over:

Now it’s suddenly “some of” the hottest toys.  I’m growing suspect of their offer.  It gets worse:

Actual prizes may vary?!?  ”We showed you a picture of an xBox, but you actually won…a vacuum cleaner.”

Odds of winning: zero.

It was all a lie.  Thanks, Kellogs.  I’m done with my cereal now.

lead·er (noun \ˈlē-dər\): one who leads

And it’s true: To appoint a leader, find the guy (or gal) who is influential and respected, and give him a leadership role.  In other words, identify the leader, and just start calling them “leader”.

To appoint a church elder, find a man who already meets the qualifications of an elder, and give him the role.  You should find that very little changes, for he was already an elder of sorts.  (Just be careful not to now “meeting” him to death!)

If you feel called into missions as a “goer” (or you think you might be), ask yourself, “Am I a ‘missionary’ here at home?  Am I burdened for the lost in my neighborhood? Am I a prayer warrior? Am I an opportunistic evangelist? Do I have a handle on the Scriptures, armed to give an account for the hope within me?”  If not, then don’t expect to become these things magically after you move.  Like a leader and an elder, a missionary is already a missionary before getting the title.  Or to put it simply…

mis·sion·ary (noun \ˈmi-shə-ˌner-ē\): A mature Christian who moves

So I went to Thailand (I just got back). While there, I came face to face with human trafficking. For four days I spent most of the day in poor villages where girls are trafficked away (either voluntarily or forcibly) from their families for financial gain. I saw the store fronts where those girls live & work. I saw transactions take place.

Reflecting on this heinousness, I saw the need for workers to rescue & rehabilitate these girls. To provide a means of escape to those trapped by the industry (there are those who are fighting this battle).

But rescue is not enough; the girls need a paradigm shift. To be taught that their lives are more valuable than that, that their bodies are sacred, and to be given purpose. These are fruits of the gospel, so we’re back at the cross.

I saw the need to decrease supply of trafficked girls. That if policies and enforcement would rise to a certain level, trafficking would decrease (there are those who are fighting this battle). But…

Supply exists because demand exists. The root of the problem is that creepy men want to buy girls. The marketplace exists in Thailand because it exists in the heart of evil men. So in order to fully solve the problem, these men need a conversion. They need a change of heart. We’re back at the cross again.

For instance, I charge my church a tiny fee to host sermon files.  Since my servers are already being paid for by other clients’ hosting fees, you might ask “why do you charge your church, when it doesn’t cost you anything?”  The answer is: I want to make sure they want it.  If they don’t want it, don’t waste my time.

I’ve learned to scrutinize when folks say they want something.  They might be lying (to themselves first, and you second), and when you charge for something, it exposes the discrepancy.  There are lots of people swearing they’ll buy the iPhone 5 when it comes out, and not all of them will.

• “I really really want X.  It’s for a good cause.  It’s a big part of what we’re doing.  It’ll really help.  We need this!  You’re the guy for the job” (the lie)
• “I’m happy to help.  I’ll charge $x for it” (the lie detector)
• “Nevermind”
• “Then you don’t really want it, do you?”
• “Hey look, a butterfly!”

Another thing: the church will automatically review my recurring charge every budget season. That means I don’t have to. By nature, the people being charged are accountable for the project.

A while back, Seth G. wrote a similar post worth checking out.

If no one eats at McDonalds, McDonalds will either rebrand or shut down.

If the world upgrades from Folgers to Starbucks (and Starbucks is not the best), such that the demand for bad coffee diminishes below profitability for Keurig, Inc., they’ll start selling truly gourmet coffee.  And the world will be a better place.

Praise and worship music is 99% bad wine — often intolerable by those of us who savor the good stuff.  But I’ve come to see a fundamental shift in my gripe with the Christian music scene: my complaint is not first & foremost with the artists.  Like bad wine shops, they’re creating something because the market asks for it.  My frustration is that there’s so much bad wine out there, that it’s simply called “wine” now.  If you say to me “praise & worship songs”, I hear “bad music about God”.  Unfortunate

I hope that the musical palette of the church becomes more sophisticated.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that crappy music can’t lead you to worship. For many, it can (and does) solicit real, God-honoring worship.  But I might throw out that better music & better lyrics leads to better worship.

1. Big budget -> I build it myself
2. Mid-sized budget -> I refer it to a trusted colleague (simply because I’m too busy in this season to take on new work)
3. Small-budget…?

OK, so I didn’t know what my response should be for a small budget.  And I’m writing this post because she had a small budget.

So before you read on, you can already think of logical responses:

1. Tell her all my contacts are currently too busy to take on new work
2. Ask around and see if any of my web friends are bored and want to take a huge pay cut.
3. ?

Rule #2 out. One rule I know is that I won’t make the ask to my friends to do a website for a huge pay cut.  A savvy real estate agent is not going even mention to me that someone made a $75,000 offer on my $200,000 house.

Rule #1 may be true, but either way it’s really a lie.  So what to do?

I ended up referring her to 99designs.com, which is a place where people can post their project and the price they’re willing to pay, and see if any applications roll in.  The moral of this story is: know when to turn down work, and when to not refer work to entry-level professionals.  Entry-level web developers and clients new to the web are due for their first big professional lesson.  For instance, I don’t know a single seasoned developer or designer who has not paid their dues with bad client or scope-expoding project where they average $2 p/hr.  So if I directly refer client I don’t know to a developer I don’t know, I’m sowing the seeds for a bad client-vendor relationship that can be traced back to me.  No good.  The answer: I don’t make the personal referral.

P.S.  My brilliant friend and co-worker Jon Dale also pointed out that clients with smaller budgets tend to be more headache than clients with larger budgets, which is true for a number of reasons I’ll save for a later blog post.

As a result, I’m always on the hunt for great music.  My favorite finds are bands on the rise, who put on fantastic shows at smaller venues.  Don’t wait till they’re hot; get ‘em while their not.

I use these tactics in searching:

1. Find an artist’s profile page in iTunes, and look for the “Listeners Also Bought” panel.  Do you know these artists?  Try Amazon too, and there are other sites who cross-promote similar artists with more comprehensive lists.
2. When you see a festival line-up such as this one, sample music from the artists in small font.
3. Pandora. I pay for the pro-version ($39 p/yr) which I think is money well-spent. Thumb-up artists and songs you like, and you’ll hear new stuff you might like as well.  On the down side, Pandora is limiting.  After a while, you may realize your station is just a playlist of a hundred songs or so.  Secondly Pandora resembles FM radio in that it doesn’t play the lesser-known songs on albums.  I hate that about radio.
4. Research artist influences.  Artists biographies, interviews, profile pages, etc will give way to the great bands of yesteryear.
5. Record late-night talk show host episodes.  They have live music on every night, remember?

Happy listening!