KevMcCord

Diplomatic answers to awkward new parent questions

Q: Will you vaccinate your child? 

A: I'm not licensed to practice medicine.

Q: Was it a natural birth? 

A: I was indoors at the time so, no.

Q: Do you spank your kids? 

A: I certainly wouldn't spank yours.

Q: Does he sleep with you at night. 

A: Yes, he sleeps at night.

Q: Is he on a schedule? 

A: We're all creatures of habit.

Q: Does he sleep through the night? 

A: I don't know, but I do.

Q: Are you breast feeding? 

A: Not at the moment.

Q: Do your kids have the same daddy? 

A: Paternity tests are so last season.

This post is in honor of Max Decker McCord born on the twenty-third day of the month of June in the year of our Lord two-thousand and ten.

Government

The uninformed think government should solve their problems. The delusional believe it will. 

Surrender the need to control your problems to Christ even as you submit to government.  Focus on making the next loving decision based upon your trust in Christ alone.  Make someone else's life better and your problems will diminish in significance if not also in severity.

Note:  substitute "church" or "marriage" for "government" above.

Inspired by John 14 and Matt 6 and Romans 13.

For better insights, go here.

Recession Proof Your Life

Make someone happy.

Charge a fair price.

Save some of that money.

Repeat.

Idealists and Perfectionists

Idealists won't let you start until you agree 100% with their goal.

Perfectionists won't let you finish until you've reached 100% of their goal.

Idealists who are also perfectionists won't let you start or finish or even enjoy the ride.

Elect Me A President That...

Elect me a President that promises to stop trying to solve people's problems!  Elect me a president who hates social problems so much he won't make them worse by institutionalizing ways for people to take advantage of them.

The Voting Age

The voting age should be raised to 10 consecutive years of paying 5% or more in income taxes.

The Drinking Age

The legal drinking age should be changed to each person's 10th anniversary of Marriage.

How To Be Productive On Your Computer

Step 1:  Turn it on.

Setp 2:  Disconnect from the Internet

Step 3:  Work

Let me know how that goes.  If I could take that advice myself I wouldn't have written this post.

Web Presence

Churches should stop thinking JUST about their website and start thinking about their web presence.

I'm going to keep this blog short, but it could scroll for hours.

Q. Why focus on your web presence?
A. Because a website is not enough.  A website may be little more than a brochure that no one ever finds and no one gives away.  Speaking in Solomon terms it may be merely vanity.

Q. What do you mean by web presence?
A. All the ways in which your cause, community, and corporation can benefit from being online.

Q. Whose job is it to think about this?
A. Everyone's (staff and church body), but the senior leadership has to lead.  However, there better be someone on point!  Someone with delegated authority who knows their value added is to champion this specific area of concern.

Q. Why should we think this way?
A. Because whether you realize it or not you have a web presence and it is going to define and impact your church whether you want it to or not.

Here's a quick story.  We had 27 people from Europe visit our newest campus in North Miami last week.  They came because they found us online.  That's 27 people who swelled the ranks of our usual 100 person crowd in this brand new campus. 

They added energy to our worship gathering.  They blessed us. We blessed them!  I wish I had been there, but I was at Pines.  Sure, they found our website, but the website could be found so easily because of our web presence (all the other things we're doing online).  What is even better is that our web presence lived up to the live experience (according to them).

What if you spent $15,000 on a great website that over-sells who you are or is out-of-date?  What if your hyper cool website is not in search results because it is all flash and invisible to search engines?  What if you are in a high density area with lots of churches and you show up 11th in a search because no one on your staff blogs and comments on other blogs and links back to your website?  What if your people are online and they don't know how to help your church's web presence?

This last question is the one that is at the top of my mind now for Oasis Church.  Our people are online.  Are we helping them connect people back to our church?  Are we doing all we can to help them create, extend, and enhance our web presence?

Customer Service

Lots of people are blogging about bad cusomter service.  I figured I'd get out there and do it BEFORE I have a bad experience to cloud my judgement.  So, this morning I gave this important topic the 5 minutes of serious thought it deserves. Of course, I now think I have customer service in the 21st century nailed down...

in the 20th century we started with, "The customers is always right".

In the 21st century we start with...

• The cusotmer is always right the more he listens to you. (Lecturing)
• The customer is always right, but he's not correct nearly as often. (Patronizing)
• The customer is always right until you're talking to the next customer. At that point they were either brilliant because they agreed or crazy because they didn't. (Taking ALL Credit)

Then I think there is an entire way of thinking about prospective customers...

• The PROSPECTIVE customer is not nearly as right as she will be when she hires you or buys your stuff. (Over comitting)
• The PROSPECTIVE customer has not yet paid for the right to be right. (Diminishing)
• The PROSPECTIVE customer is right on at least one thing, they are talking to you. (Blowing smoke/ego)

Armed with these insights I am now ready to go to the mall, have my tires changed, or engage in other complex, free-market transactions where someone will assume I can't possibly be right if they can't understand what I am saying.

Finally, to prove I can empathize with the guy or gal behind the counter, I'll share this story.  I used to work in retial shipping while going to school.  We had a button.  If you annoyed us we pushed the button.  The button added between 10 and 20% to your bill.  It was actually called the "oversize package" button, but I liked to think of it as "the I'm pretending the customer is right while the customer cusses at me" button.  I won't tell you I never used it.