The magazine wouldn’t let us do the gun so we ended up going with a boxing glove. You’ve got to admit…that little rubber duck looks ten times more scared with the gun next to him than the boxing glove!

This coming month we are sticking with the scared rubber duck and doing another fun contest.

Check out the image below to see the ads and the progression. Thoughts? [click the pic to see a larger size]

That’s why we’ve got a new feature on the Revolution Church website!

If you are a Facebook user, be sure to click the new LIKE button on our website regularly. If you use twitter, you can hit the tweet button.

It only takes a second to click these buttons and when you do, you get to easily share what God is doing at Revolution Church with your digital friends!

Here is an image to make it easy for ya!

But here is what is incredible. Aside from the homepage, guess what the most viewed page is on the site?

I figured it would be the “I’m new” page or the media stuff.

Nope.

The first page people click is “Our Team.”

Just goes to show how important it is that we get the right people on the bus!

Revolution team, whether you are on the website or not know this: people are watching to see if our lives match who we say we are. This is why integrity and accountability are so important!

Today, ways for companies to win my heart:

• Make it simple. Whatever “it” is, IT must be simple.
• Give me my own account rep. I know its not “real” but have them take notes on me. Train them to act like they know me.
• DO NOT try to get me to sign up for your charge card.
• If I have to return something keep it simple.
• If you get my order wrong, fix it. Fast.
• If I am loyal to you, be loyal to me. (great example is Starbucks gold card program)
• Use technology. When I go to my dentist, I sit down at the computer to fill out paperwork and update info. I love that!
• Make sure I can try your product before I buy it. Make sure when I have questions that your sales staff can answer me clearly. (the Apple Store does this very well)
• I want to be able to buy it in person AND online, for the same price.
• Get your staff to say “my pleasure” or “thank you” often. (Chick-Fil-A does this very well)
• Smile while you sell. Whistle while you work. Don’t be a jerk.
• Have a no contract required option that isn’t ridiculously over priced. I’ll pay more to have it my way, but I won’t let you rip me off. And if I can’t have it my way I’ll go somewhere else.

When we called and set up our account we were immediately assigned an account rep. His name was Angel. Angel was extremely helpful and personable. He gave me his direct line in case we needed anything or had any questions. He helped us with the full refund and cancellation…the entire experience was amazing. I have no doubt that I will be a Clear customer again as they expand their coverage a little.

Here are some other companies that are INCREDIBLE when it comes to customer service in my opinion:

• Starbucks
• Quill
• PrintPlace.com (MY FAVORITE!)
• Chick-Fil-A
• Zappos.com
• Southwest Airlines
• Cabela’s
• Apple
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries
• Luling Dental

I like spending my money at these places because they treat me good and they deliver concisely and consistently. In fact, I’ll even pay a little more just because they make the experience simple and pleasant. When they mess up, I tend to have more grace because they’ve been so good for so long.

Do I think their products are superior to their competitors? Not really (well, except for Apple!) But the customer care level is so high that I just can’t imagine giving my money to anyone else. Maybe its just me, but my time and stress levels are more valuable commodities than my cash…

I don’t understand why we continue to spend money with companies that treat us like junk.

Tomorrow, I’ll share some quick ways to win the hearts of consumers.

Bil Cornelius told me recently that if he had it all to do over again he’d spend 80% of his money before launch on marketing. WOW!

Leading up to launch we did lots of doorhangers, handout invitations, postcards and personal letters to people in our database. For launch Sunday we went as all out as we could with two weeks of newspaper ads and a direct mail piece to the closest two zip codes.

Check out what it did to our web traffic. Crazy cool. Our unique hits on the website tripled.

Was it expensive? YES. Was it a headache? YES. Was it worth it? YES YES YES.

I’d pay to get the church logo and info in front of triple the people anyday.

Interesting stuff…just thought I’d share.

But when I flipped it over I literally almost threw up all over the place. It had the wrong date on it. I immediately retraced my steps through email, etc and found out exactly what I initially thought – that this was 100% my fault.

When you plant a church you have 10,000 times the info that any one person SHOULD  HAVE swimming around in your head. Dates, names, places, times, meetings, orders, prices, and more. And sometimes it gets all jumbled no matter how organized you are.

I barely slept last night because of the stress from my mistake. How could we fix it? The worst option was a sharpie marker, the one we landed on was printing 20,000 labels and sticking them over the mistake and the best was a reprint. But we couldn’t pay for the mailer the first time…how could we ever do a reprint?

At about 2am, I prayed a simple prayer…it went something like this: “God please work a miracle so that we can REPRINT this mailer.”

When I got up this morning a friend called with a $200 donation towards reprinting the mailer. A little later, another $100 was given. Then, the vice president of PrintPlace.com called me. He wanted to help, even though this was 100% our mistake.

He made an unbelievably GENEROUS offer. This was the GOD miracle.

God can do anything you know? Far more than we ever imagined or dreamed.

By the way, I have been using printplace.com for over 5 years now to print everything including custom booklets, business cards, direct mail pieces, rack cards, and postcards. They always have the most competitive pricing and turnaround time. Nobody beats them. I would have recommended them to you years before this week.

Order your next piece from them!

My buddy Randy Bryan asked me this week how we are using Facebook as a part of our strategy. I don’t think we are doing the greatest job at it – it could be better. But, we do have a simple approach that might help you if you are thinking about breaking in to the Facebook phenom:

First, create a Fan Page. If you haven’t done that yet, click here for all the info you’ll need.

Second, put every stinking event, tweet, status update, picture, video, sermon podcast, etc that you can into the fan page. This is the key to the whole thing. Don’t waste people’s time with ridiculous stuff, but get everything in there that you can. You MUST have NEW information on your fan page at all times!

Third, train everyone in your church to become a fan and “like” or “comment” or “rsvp” to events. This gets you into their news feed. That is your goal…to get into everyone’s news feed!

Fourth, get someone to do a status update once a day. A daily prayer request or Bible verse works great.

Fifth, if you have the money, do some facebook targeted ads. Crazy cool stuff. Find your local target and nail them with a good ad that links to your website or your event on Facebook.

On the mailer, I noticed they have a new snazzy logo. No doubt they got the idea from Revolution Church.

I always knew we were high class. Pastor Kerry, I’ll let it slide this time.

(Disclaimer: This whole post is me joking around. I LOVE Fellowship of the Woodlands. They have poured into my life and ministry!)

The first pic is our “Gift for you” cards. We stick these on donut boxes when we do our donut drop offs or have the barista give them to the person behind us in the drive through when we buy someones coffee. Just a simple way to show our community that we love them.

The second pic shows our invite cards for our first preview service. Give me two weeks and you won’t be able go anywhere in Schertz without finding one of these bad boys.

I’m diggin’ our clean, simple look. What do you think?

I got to hook up with LV Hanson and check out the Catalyst Vanagon yesterday. LV told me that they get a budget for food and gas. Notice anything major missing when you’re on the road for weeks at a time…that’s right…LODGING. These guys sleep on people’s couches or in the snazzy 1985 VW Vanagon popup sleeper when necessary.

They make stops along their trip to encourage leaders, interview, take goofy pictures, hand out free resources, pray together, and just show people some leadership love. These guys are intentional about doing good and changing lives.

They are even ministering while out on the road and helping people like the victims of Hurricane Gustav in Baton Rouge. Be a part of that here.

Oh, and best of all in the Vanagon – a picture of Andy Stanley wearing a T-shirt. Never thought I’d see that.

I’ve never seen a group of people pour their hearts into other leaders like Catalyst does. We are taking a group of at least 7 people to the conference this year and I am pumped up! Catalyst is more than just another conference – it’s a movement, a convergence, an experience where you find yourself fully immersed in learning, worship, and creativity. Catalyst brings the influencers, the do-ers, the cultural architects, and the change agents who will reclaim our communities and culture for good together. Then, those leaders go home and catalyze those whom they lead.

The potential for life change through the “ripple effect” is absolutely insane. God is in this event more so than any I’ve ever been a part of.

Check out the “before and after” video below. Then, check out their vimeo channel with other videos here.

Had a blast LV. Thanks for stopping by!

Catalyst Road Trip – The Beginning… from Catalyst on Vimeo.

The video art looks great, sermons are being nailed down, and videos are in production. Ahhhhh…nothing like that new smell of a message series!

But most of all, I see life change on the horizon…YES!

Check out the video art element:

You play a vital part in that perfect storm Connectors. So, invite people!

The details for the next series are up and out there. And I am PUMPED about this one! The art looks sweet and the sermons are in the making now. I get to preach the first week’s sermon called “The BIG ASK.” It is on prayer. I’ve never preached on prayer, so it is going to be a blast! We’ll be talking about a portion of Scripture from the most powerful teaching ever – the sermon on the mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) that Jesus gave.

What can you do connectors?

Send your friends an evite here. Talk it up. Don’t miss a week (its only a three week series.) Pray for God to give you opportunities to invite peeps. Then do it. Or, if you blog, blog about it.

• Who is God?
• Sex
• Politics
• Fame

We have never done a sermon that had anything to do with politics…that’ll be fun. I finished designing and ordering the card for the series yesterday…check it out below. This card will be mailed to 13,000 homes in our area. It also promos The Big Hunt, which is going to ROCK by the way (look at the card and see if you can find the awesome new thing we’ll be doing at The Big Hunt.)

Thoughts? Ideas for creative elements for this series? SHARE ‘EM!