Greg Atkinson

Today through Friday at I’ll be at the ECHO Church Media Conference here in Dallas. I’m teaching on innovation tomorrow and looking forward to it. If you’re coming in town for ECHO, let me know. I’d love to meet you.

Did you know you listen everyday with your eyes just as much as your ears? I listen everyday as I read through Twitter posts, Facebook statuses, people watching, etc. Listening is an art, but it helps to approach it like a science.

I follow a wide variety of people on Twitter because I’m listening through technology – a science I learned from my friend Tony Steward. Christians, non-Christians, atheists, New Agers, Jews, Muslims, tech gurus, musicians, celebrities, news outlets – you name it, I follow them. I get a pulse on culture and the world via the people and companies I follow and listen to.

• “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.” – Wilson Mizner.
• “The first duty of love is to listen.” – Paul Tillich

The thing about listening is it goes hand-in-hand with intentionality. I can only share this concept with you, but you have to put feet to it. I listen because I care. I listen because I want to learn. I listen because I want to grow. I want to join God where He’s at work.

I often talk about having our spiritual antennas up. If your spiritual antenna is up, you won’t miss opportunities to be Christ to someone in need. In the book and study Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby says, “God’s activity is far greater than anything we could aspire to do for Him.”

Listening is another way of saying being sensitive to the Holy Spirit. If we truly believe God’s activity is greater, then we would have to take steps to seek His moving. Ephesians 5:1 reads, “Watch what God does and then you do it.” (MSG) As we open our eyes, ears and hearts and truly listen with all our ability (again this takes intentionality), we have the great privilege and opportunity of getting on the same page with our Creator and joining Him in His work and mission.

As I said in my last blog post for Outreach: If you want to be truly innovative and start doing new and exciting ways of ministry you must be dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah 33:3 teaches us, “Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.” If we “call to God” and He promises to answer, this inherently requires listening on our part. God will reveal things that we would never figure out on our own, but we have to be ready, available, sensitive and actively listening.

From time to time I’ve referred to the ARC (Association of Related Churches) – a church planting organization that I’ve been working with a lot lately. I just returned from speaking at their BUG Conference. What you may not realize about ARC is all the great churches that partner with them.

What do Craig Groeschel and LifeChurch.tv, Mark Batterson and National Community Church, Chris Hodges and Church of the Highlands (remember they are the fastest growing church in the country), Greg Surratt and Seacoast Church, Jonathan Falwell and Thomas Road Baptist Church, Dino Rizzo and Healing Place Church, Matt Fry and C3 Church, Stovall Weems and Celebration Church and Rick Bezet of New Life Church all have in common? They are all ARC partners and choose to plant churches through the ARC.

I don’t know about you, but that’s an organization worth getting to know. I got to attend the ARC’s annual conference (All Access) back in April – it was awesome and can be seen on Daystar. I spoke at and attended their Bug Conference. I’m attending their CPR (Church Planters’ Roundtable) in September in Colorado Springs. I’m getting to see them real up close and personal and I like what I’m seeing.

I’ll share more about them in the near future, but I just wanted you to get to know them and explore some of their events and opportunities for growth. By the way, if you’re a church planter or about to plant a church: I want to hear from you! Give me a shout. If you’d like to know how your church can get involved and plant churches through ARC: Give me a shout.

I’m amazed each day as Google comes up with a new homepage image. I thought yesterday’s (seen above) was pretty cool. Can you imagine having to come up with a different look every day of the year? I want to hear from you. Do you have a favorite Google homepage image? What are your thoughts on why they bother to do that? What does it say about them as a company?

This week VideoTeaching.com launched. This is actually a form of an idea I had about a year ago. I’ve had my eye on this project for the last 6 months and have been eagerly awaiting the launch.

I think this will be a great resources for pastors around the world. I do hope they will quickly add more messages and a few key speakers that are noticably absent (to me) – Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Andy Stanley, Erwin McManus, Dave Ferguson, etc. I realize that their absence may not be the fault of LifeChurch.tv – it may be the speaker’s issues or preference, but I hope things change in the future and we see the addition of these high quality communicators.

In the near future, I’ll write more about my version of this idea and how I think a resource like this could be used. It will require more time and length. I think this just scratches the surface. Greater things are yet to come! I’ll share more later.

After over a year of traveling to 15 different cities, I’m finally bringing the Church 2.o tour to my hometown of Dallas, TX. This Thursday, the 23rd we will host another Church 2.0 Local Forum at Fellowship Dallas off Park and 75.

If YOU are in the DFW area or know someone that is, PLEASE consider joining us or inviting someone to attend. You (or they) can register HERE.

Some have asked what goes on at these gatherings (this will be the 16th one I’ve led). The Church 2.0 Local Forum is a true unconference and is very informal/casual, but I’ll give you a little overview of what the day will look like. We’ll go from 10am to 2:30pm.

• First hour: We’ll discuss new media/technology – specifically Twitter and Facebook and how they can be used for ministry purposes. I’ll share 6 key realities of these new technologies. *** I’ve added 2 since the last one.
• Second hour: We’ll dive into a huge discussion on the topic of innovation. I’ll share 7 ways that innovation is born and what God is teaching me about innovation. *** I’ve added 2 ways since the last one.
• We’ll then break for lunch and encourage people to go eat somewhere close by with someone they don’t know and get to know them over lunch.
• The post-lunch part we’ll discuss social justice/what breaks my heart and the heart of God – as well as have time for Q & A.

Sponsors for Church 2.0 Dallas are:

• EasyWorship
• Fellowship Technologies
• Planning Center Online

You may have never heard the term (I haven’t and neither has Wikipedia), but I’d like to introduce you to it: digital real estate. It’s a term that I use often and think more people ought to be talking about.

To me, digital real estate is when you (as an individual) or your church or ministry claims your name on the web. A long time ago I went through all the social media and social networking sites and grabbed up the name “Greg Atkinson”. My blog is GregAtkinson.com, my Twitter is @GregAtkinson, etc.

Get this: when Facebook started offering vanity names I was on vacation and missed grabbing my name by 2 days. On Facebook, my personal web address is www.facebook.com/greg.atkinson1, instead of www.facebook.com/gregatkinson. Another Greg Atkinson beat me to it!

Do you have your name reserved on various websites? Have you claimed your church’s name? There can only be one Grace Community and one Hope _______ and one Calvary _______. Whatever your church’s or organization’s name is, it’s important to grab it before someone else does.

Hear me, I don’t mean this in a vicious, beat out another Grace Baptist way. I mean someone else (not a church) could grab that name and do horrible things with it – really misrepresenting you and your church. Earlier this week I was speaking at the Bug Conference in Birmingham and heard horror stories from Maurilio Amorim, owner and president of The A Group in Nashville.

That’s why you see LifeChurch.tv (left) and Willow Creek (below) have already grabbed up their Twitter names, though they are not yet using them.

Did you know Rick Warren had 5000 followers before his first tweet? Someone on his staff (or him) grabbed the name and held it in-case Rick wanted to start twittering. Rick is now twittering and is quickly approaching 10,000 followers. His first tweet is below:

@RickWarren – 2 tweet or not 2 tweet? I fear the narcissistic possibility, but can’t pass up any tool to encourage you! Jumping in! .

And so he dove in. At the time of this writing, Rick has 14 tweets. The point is all the people you see above, including worship leader Matt Redman, grabbed their name – they, whether they realized it or not, practiced the rule of digital real estate and claimed their territory.

Maybe you, your pastor or your church isn’t into all this social media and social networking stuff. Who’s to say that you won’t be in a year or six months? Why not go ahead and grab your space now, so as to reserve it in-case you change your mind?

As you know I spoke at the BUG Conference on Monday. I arrived Sunday evening so I could attend Church of the Highland’s 6pm service. With 12 Sunday services across 5 campuses, Church of the Highlands is the fastest growing church in the US.

I visit a lot of churches and have been to all of the “big boys”. I must say, Church of the Highlands and pastor Chris Hodges lived up to the hype. The worship experience truly was a celebration. I (as a former worship pastor) truly appreciated Chris Hodges’ heart for worship and how he led by example and through exhortation to the attendees.

Their music was solid and well done. Their tech (sound, video and lights) was great and reminded me a lot of what we did at Bent Tree. And Chris Hodges is a terrific communicator. I appreciate his spirit, his humor, his liveliness and all around excitement that he brings to the stage.

All this and you’d never know that there was a thunderstorm that knocked all the power out twice! We literally sat in the dark and then when the lights came back on there was no video, no sound, nothing – and God still moved. I still think it was a wonderful experience and can’t wait to go back this coming Sunday night again. I’m going on a church planter assessment with the good folks of ARC on Monday and Tuesday and since I’m flying back to Birmingham Sunday night, I hope to catch their 6pm service again!

The BUG Conference was  a total success. For a first year, I think ARC and specifically, Guy Walker, did an amazing job putting it together. The main sessions were solid and informative. The workshops were all great and well taught. The community and relational side of the conference was great, too.

As you know, I’m at a lot of conferences, but again, there was something special about this one. Maybe it was the topic of social media/social networking and seeing how relevant and educational it was for the attendees. Maybe it was the smoothness of the conference experience and how it seemed they’d done this before. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I wholeheartedly endorse it and encourage you to go if there is another one in the future.

My friend, Dan Ohlerking, just posted a video he took of me teaching on blogging at the BUG Conference last week. You can check it out HERE.

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