Zappos is a growing company with a unique culture, an innovative marketing style, and a brilliant reputation.  Compared to most young upstart companies, it’s pretty amazing what they’ve accomplished.

In 10 years Zappos has grown from “nothing” into a billion dollar industry leader, no small feat if you’re just selling shoes!  When this happens in business, it’s no accident.  When a company is doing this well following their launch they’re worth studying.

Given, the Church is obviously not a “business” that can be governed by “best” practices.   But that being said, can your church learn anything from Zappos?  In fact, is it possible that Zappos may be activating spiritual principles and successful because of it? And if more churches were doing the same we could see greater things accomplished? Zappos has been fruitful, and multiplied.  How’d they do that?

According to the company, it’s pretty simple.  They’re able to define their core values in 10 sentences.  See the following….

Zappos Core Values

As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the Zappos core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

I don’t know about you but I can think of scriptures that most of these values reflect.  Do you see any scriptural foundations in Zappos core values?

It’s likely that having a clear vision, mission & set of core values might be what sets your church apart…. or not.  Clear definition creates intense focus, momentum & effectiveness.  Think of ambient lighting versus a laser beam.

Can your church state it’s core values?

Earlier in the year, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that scamming had arrived at Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a Facebook message from LifeChurch Internet Pastor, Brandon Donaldson.  Brandon works in video (like this one) a lot.  And since we were working on LifeShare at the time and the message indicated that he wanted to share a video with me, I clicked on it.  Oops!  What I got was not from Brandon.  When I let him know he told me that he was already aware that his Facebook profile had been compromised.

Chris Fobes, author of the ebook Facebook for Pastors, also knows of a ministry leader whose Facebook profile was compromised.  Again, an unknowing leader sent out embarrassing spam messages to his Facebook friends list.  So, Chris put out the following message:

Facebook has been hit with attacks by spammers a little more lately. But don’t worry, with a little education, you can protect yourself and enjoy all the best of Facebook for ministry purposes.

Here’s what happened to cause the situation. The pastor received a note from one the his Facebook friends that said something like: “I saw this video with you in it”.  Since pastors often travel and speak in various churches and other venues, he curiously clicked on the link.

Instead of seeing a video, he found himself at what appeared to be the Facebook login page. He assumed he was somehow logged off and used his user name and password to log back in.

Had he looked closer he would have realized he had given his name and password to a “Phishing site.” Learn more about Phishing on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

To remedy the situation, my friend had to change his password by logging into the real Facebook page.

There is a group: “Facebook Phishing Scam Awareness” with tips for what to do if this happens to you. Here are a couple immediate helps:

• HOW TO RECOVER: If you think you have had your account compromised, immediately change your Facebook password at https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php Also, report the scam to Facebook by sending an e-mail to privacy@facebook.com.

• HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Before entering any sensitive information like user names or passwords, make sure you are on Facebook.com and not a similar, but different domain.

• HOW TO RECOGNIZE A PHISHING WEBSITE: It is easy to make a domain name look legitimate when it is fraudulent. The only part of a domain name that is unique to the owner is the part immediately before the .com or .org, etc. So anything that ends with Facebook (like ilstu.facebook.com, or photos-d.ak.facebook.com) with no single forward slash (/) to the left of it, is legitimately Facebook.

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

How about considering doing things differently.  Non-traditional thinking can be quite liberating.

Do you suffer from what seems like a loss of vision?  Are you feeling uninspired, apathetic or dull?

Do you feel like your ministry is black and white instead of technicolor?

Sometimes we need a change of thinking to see change in ourselves.  And sometimes we need permission or inspiration to change our thinking.

As a pastor, for example, maybe you’ve kept your staff off Facebook & MySpace during working hours.  Instead, how about sending them on to social networking sites for a portion of each day.  Inspire them with simple goals during their online communication, like inviting 1 person to attend a home group this week, etc.  Tell you staff they’re also free to take a half hour to write posts about what God is doing in their lives for their personal blogs.

Do you keep all your church office hours on site at your church building?  Try moving some of your “on duty” staff time to a coffee shop, book store or local park.  You’d be surprised how much gets accomplished when people have fresh wind in their sails from just the slightest variation in routine.  And bring your laptop.  You can always get wifi access and then you’ll fit right in with the digital natives (their work space, their marketplace, etc.).

Some people fear things changing, but one of the worst experiences people can have at church is that things never change.  It’s particularly deadly because it miscommunicates the creativity of God.  It also miscommunicates that He’s not on the move (pillar/cloud).  And instead of creating a movement we accidentally create a monument.

What helps you see things differently?  What inspires you, challenges you to think or do differently in ministry?

HT – COLLIDE Magazine blog – EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment