New campuses lifts program attractiveness because attenders have a location closer to home to go to. Overseas missions and community assistance impacts reputation because it is always regarded as a good thing to help a third world country and those struggling in your own community. CCCW’s community assistance programs are aided by government grants, but you cannot really predict when you are going to get one.

There are some important conclusions from these causal loop additions. Firstly, there is a delay in establishing new campuses, so they need to be planned in advance. Secondly, all outreach expressions of “new campuses”, “overseas missions” and “community assistance”
introduce balancing loops (B5 campus impact, B6 community impact, and B7 community kudos, B8 Missions kudos) because they feed into “program attractiveness and “program attendance” which, in turn feed into the negative causality from program attendance to facilitator/ attender ratio. This means that increasing these outreach programs will not
produce program attendance in the long term, unless there is a corresponding increase in the facilitator/attender ratio.

–Report to the board of Christian City Church Whitehorse by Management Training Australia September 2005 12

Vocation anyone?

Then again the cccw site has a training link, to the school of empowered ministry and the school of empowered business - where some standard high school business stuff is presented - along with “the gift of giving” - as “kingdom business ethics” or something. Now that’s not to raise the “buy in” or “giving capacity” by any chance?

And as for that report (paying your self twice?Once as a pastor, another time as a “consultant”?) - that as much pure gold as it is disgusting.

It’s like take a few text books and replace some bits with references to cccw et voila: ccc’s ecclesiology. But it is also illuminating for that reason - all that talk of inspiration increasing energy reserves and energy reserves (high for converts etc) are what drives recruitment (as best form of recruitment in not quality programs but people bringing others to church)….and there, in all that management-speak and gobbledy gook you have a great illustration of Tanya Levin’s contention that Hillsong (or in this case CCCW, and I would say , many Aussie pente and mega churches) is about “recruitment and fundraising”.

In a bizarre way, this reminds me, from a different angle, of (yes, my favourite) the apostate ECUSA leadership which has mission statements which read like they are only there to promote their own existence.

The circle is complete.

Just another observation. When you go to the cccw website about senior pastors

http://www.cccw.org.au/?q=pastoral/senior

guess who is the only one not to have a bio nor a photo? yes! The guy who runs his own busines at http://www.mtaustralia.com while being a full time pastor at that church.

Maybe, I am paranoid but that also strikes me as strange for a church that talks about integrity and openness.
DB

We the punters think we are going along for worship, and yet we are being analysed and categorised in some massive machine. I searched in vain for the word “Jesus” in this report. There were three mentions of “God” more as a secondary contributor to one of the feedback loops after the “Vibe” which is the main contributor.

And this is just scary:
CCCW does not just exist for its members. It exists also to help others to become program attenders. It wants to grow the number of attenders because its belief that it has something to offer the community. It believes this on the basis of the stories of those it has already helped.

http://www.mtaustralia.com/upcomingseminars/Christian%20City%20Church%20Whitehorsereport.pdf

Some interesting bits and pieces about the Christian Shitty Church Whitehoarse (from shouting ‘ay-men’ too often).

“Report to the board of Christian City Church Whitehorse by Management Training Australia September 2005″

“CCCW resembles a stage III business referred to by Churchill and Lewis (1983). There has been enough success to enable the founder to disengage and the church still grow, provided the management factors needed as detailed in Exhibit 5 occur. These are a quality and diversity of people, strategic planning, systems and controls, and the owner’s ability to delegate.

CCCW also resembles a business that McMahon (2001) calls “capped growth” where the
operating preferences of the owner/manager are significant. The owner/ manager has a
proclivity for entrepreneurship according to Stewart et al (1998). He exhibits high
achievement motivation, risk-taking propensity and is developing a preference for innovation.”

“The accumulation and distribution of money is not CCCW’s primary aim, it is a means to an
end of having people attend its program. Like any organization, CCCW needs money. CCCW
receives almost all of its income from its member’s contributions. Referring to figure 13, more
donations means a better quality staff (R14, the peanuts/monkeys reinforcing loop), better
quality facilities (R12, facility loop), and better resources (R13, fund program loop). There are
a number of nuances surrounding money. Firstly, people only have a finite amount of it at any
point in time. All other things being equal, people have fixed assets and fixed income, so have
fixed ability to give. This is represented by the balancing loop “B2 finite money”. When people
have given more, they have less to give. Secondly, the causal link between donations and
quality of facilities has considerable delay. It takes some time to raise money to buy/ develop
new facilities. Thirdly, giving capacity can increase through training. When a person increases
their education and ability through training, they earn more and then can give more. This also
has a delay associated with it, as it takes time to develop one’s income earning capacity.
Fourthly, people give donations because they have “bought in” to the church, as a result of
believing in the quality of the program…..

……
Implications for planning
1. Continue to realise the importance of money on quality of staff, facilities and program
2. Introduce training for financial capacity increase of members for long term financing of
the church
3. Pay more to get/ keep quality staff
4. Measure donations per attender as an indicator of member buy-in
5. Continue long range planning to buy/ upgrade facilities”

“CCCW has about 25 paid staff members, and spends about 50% of its operating budget on staff salaries. Internal staff recruitment is driven by “member buy-in”. Church staff are often paid a lot less than they would receive in a similar position in business, so a staff member recruited from the facilitators needs to have exhibited a high level of commitment. Staff training also drives the quality of staff.”

“Network marketing leader leaves (1997)
The network marketing leader (NML) leaving impacts the model in several ways. Firstly, the rumors spread by him involves the “key leader doing something stupid” flow that decreases reputation and program attractiveness and attendance. This impact would be balanced by the B1 balancing loop if the number of facilitators remained the same.

However, the NML been a program attender, added to program quality, leadership strength and inspiration. He effectively lead many of the network marketers in the church, so his change of attitude reduced the leadership strength, inspiration and energy reserves of the church directly, as those in his “downline” left the church. As discussed, energy level is an important factor in affecting the facilitator/ attender ratio. The reduction in the program quality when 380 people left the church, made the reinforcing loop R2 – the vibe a negative reinforcing loop on inspiration as those who remained were less inspired and had less energy.”

“Since the “business” of the church is about program attendance, the horizons revolve around building people.”
——-

And in a hundred years, all the heritage-listed early 21st century church buildings they’ve built will be restaurants, nightclubs and offices (or their 22nd century equivalent)…and all the people who never learned the deep gospel truths about the grace found through Christ - while the church crafted its ‘attractive programs’ and it’s ‘business’ - will be dead.

I’ve been away for a while. The Signposts group certainly changes rapidly ,with a lot of new people since Tanya was on Denton!
Anyway, I am not sure which post this belongs in but I will do it here.

I was doing the Google thing w.r.t CCC management etc when I found the following site
http://www.mtaustralia.com/download.html

I then found this file which describes

A NFP Growth Plan prepared by Management Training Australia (pdf) at

http://www.mtaustralia.com/upcomingseminars/Christian%20City%20Church%20Whitehorsereport.pdf

It was very interesting reading and even more so especially when I discovered that the author (i.e. the one and only presenter at the
http://www.mtaustralia.com)
is actually a full time pastor at the very same CCC

I do find this somewhat worrying when the biography states about the author that ‘He runs this company as well as still being a “hands on” manager in a large not for profit organisation’

This was all on a downloadable wevb site and so this is all above board! But if you were from church circles then this would not be quite so apparent.

Maybe it is just me but I do find this disturbing in the sensee that it always appears to be about the “business” and making it bigger and more profitable.

Your thoughts and discussions would be of interest.

Cheers,
DB

During his talk at Oxford Falls…..Thompson kept referring to ‘giving gifts that the other person wants…not what you would want to be given.’

That was Thompson’s thwarted attempt to lay the foundation for a financial gift-giving arrangement with CCC…like he has with Mike Murdoch…where Thompson and Murdoch exchange ‘birthday presents’…to shower on each other cars…money etc..generated by funds from each other’s ‘ministries’….so that the tax man (or tax woman…or tax trannie) doesn’t see it.

Come on IRS. Pull your finger out.

For Dr. C. Thomas Anderson it is Scrooge McDuck comics :

http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/CTAnderson112006.aspx

“When he was nine-years old he read a comic book about Scrooge McDuck that would influence him later in life. Uncle Scrooge was very wealthy, but he had a financial setback and lost everything. As he was walking one day, he found a nickel. He saw some kids fishing and bought the fish for a nickel. He turned around and sold the fish for seven dollars. He used this money to buy a scooter. He sold the scooter to someone whose car had broken down. The story went on this way until Uncle Scrooge had all his money back. This story of Uncle Scrooge taught Dr. Anderson some of the characteristics that the wealthy have: look for an opportunity to invest in something; don’t be afraid of failure; and buy low, sell high. It wasn’t until Dr. Anderson was in high school that his family had plumbing in their home – he knew there was something better out there.”

I take it that the reverse of “faith doesn’t work to heal” is that “faith does work to heal”. If this is so, what do you mean by that?

Cheers

MN