All posts tagged Cultivate

Cultivate is Back!

by Tim Schraeder on 02/01/2011 in Church Communications with 3 Comments

Back in 2008, Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Kem Meyer, myself and some other friends were hanging out in Chicago having a conversation about social media and some of the huge implications and opportunities it brought to the Church. The conversation was incredible and we realized that it was a conversation that many of our friends and fellow church communicators were having. While there were some great conferences for church communicators out there, most of them were 101-level “how to add clip art to your church bulletin” type conferences and we needed a place to have a more in-depth conversation.

So, a rag tag group of us worked to make the conversation happen and in 2009 we welcomed nearly 300 people to the first Cultivate gathering hosted at Park Community Church. It was unpolished, loosely scheduled, and was a remarkable day filled with great conversations, connections, and opportunities for us to consider the role of new media in the Church. Speakers left their presentations at home and let the audience drive the content in an interactive forum where people could text or tweet their questions or ideas. We even made it in the Chicago Tribune and NBC Chicago!

After a very successful event we decided to hold off on doing it again for the sake of doing it, but in the past few months some momentum has gathered and we stoked to announce that Cultivate is happening May 4-5, 2011 at FCC Huntington Beach.

We’re going to the West Coast!!!!!

Check out the Cultivate website for details but here’s a quick rundown:

  • It will be spread out over two half-days.
  • There will be MANY opportunities for you to connect and have conversations.
  • We’re expanding the conversation to include churches and non-profits.
  • It’s a way for you to hear from leading-edge thinkers about how new media can be leveraged for good.
  • It provides an opportunity to explore new ideas and share your insights with others.
  • Cultivate is an in-depth conversation where the audience helps to drive the content.

This year we have invited some great speakers who will come ready to share a thought or idea that’s impacting them. No presentations, just an idea. Our confirmed speakers include:

More invitations are pending!

Then, we’ve assembled an amazing panel who will lead follow-up conversations and discuss how ideas shared by the speakers could be applied in their unique contexts. Our panelists include:

Dawn Nicole Baldwin and I will serve emcees along with our friend Curtis Templeton.

Registration goes live soon and there are a limited number of seats available. If you are creative, strategic, and responsible for influencing how your church or organization communicates, there is a chair waiting for you.

Proceeds from Cultivate will be donated to two charities: InvisiblePeople.tv and the Center for Church Communication.

Check out the Cultivate website for more info and hope to see you in the OC in May!

Monday Mind Dump

by Tim Schraeder on 10/04/2010 in Just For Fun with 10 Comments
  • Fall has officially hit Chicago. LOVE the cooler days and leaves turning colors. Only downside is that it means winter is on its way soon!
  • I spent the weekend with both of my moms. No, it’s not like that. I’m adopted but know my biological family and this weekend both of my moms came to visit. It was an amazing time and one I’m so thankful for.
  • Tomorrow I’ll be doing a webinar with M2LIVE at 11:30 AM EST on texting! Be sure to come and join the conversation if you’re curious about how we use texting at Park and how you can figure out if it’s a good fit for your church. Learn more here.
  • I completed my home office space this week… LOVE having a place to work, read and reflect that’s my own.
  • I’m officially over STORY hangover. It was such a phenomenal event. If you missed it, be sure and check out my STORY Appendix that includes links to all of speakers, sessions and everything else STORY related.
  • Personal highlight for me at STORY was being able to interview Jason Fried from 37signals. I’ve had the chance to get to know him over the past couple of years and think so much of what he has to say can apply to our context in the church. It was a blast to get to welcome him to STORY and have the chance to interview him on some of the ideas that he has that apply to our world as church creatives. One of the statements he said that impacted me the most was: “It’s always more about the message you are communicating and less about the technology that’s wrapped around it.” Brilliant.
  • I’m headed to Catalyst on Wednesday this week. If your’e going to be there, definitely try to make it to the Bloggers Meetup. Brad Ruggles does an amazing job putting on this event and it’s a great way to meet some of your favorite online personalities offline!
  • I’ll be an official blogger for Catalyst this year, so stay tuned for notes and updates from what’s happening in ATL.
  • I’ll turn around from ATL and head to San Francisco next week. My sister is getting married and it’s going to be like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Assyrian style. Can’t wait to celebrate with her and the rest of my family.
  • I haven’t seen the The Social Network yet. I feel so behind.
  • I’m a little floored/stunned/humbled that Ken Shaffer added the +41 to his Top 100 Church Blogs list. That made room for yours truly at #140! Pretty crazy and scary all at the same time. Thanks to all of you who read and follow.
  • Last week we had our first planning session for Cultivate11. More details are coming soon!

Cultivate Conference Announcement

by Tim Schraeder on 03/02/2010 in Church Communications with 4 Comments

Seth Godin recently challenged the idea of big events and said,

“If you’re going to have an event, better make it big. Or even bigger than that. It needs to be awe-inspiring, frightening, on deadline and worth losing sleep over.”

That’s quite a charge.

I have to admit, as  “professional conferencegoer,” I’ve grown a little bit weary at the incredible amount of conferences that have dotted the landscape of the past few years. It seems to me like we’ve fallen into a pattern and relying on old ideas, methods, and ways of generating hype.

The result has been some dull events with the same speakers saying the same thing.

When the idea for Cultivate was born last year it was because we felt there was a legitimate need to create a non-event that would focus on providing space for a conversation… nothing fancy, nothing polished, no presentations. We didn’t pay any of the presenters, had no budget for marketing, and what profit we did make was donated to two charities.

It was a great event. People loved it. The Chicago Tribune and NBC Chicago even took note of it… so the obvious response would be, “well let’s do it again!”

Earlier this year a core group of us sat with our calendars and the list of Christian conferences and set a date for Cultivate 2010, amping up to rock it out again. But after some prayerful consideration have decided we’re going to pull the plug on it… at least for this year.

The reasons are simple: we want to ensure the same level of quality and attention are invested to make this gathering worthwhile for you and that it’s serving a unique need.

So, instead, we’re going to take the year off to evaluate and plan a bit more. And if it makes sense to move forward, then we’ll line up some of the BEST speakers we can find and strategize how we can make an even GREATER impact while still being unscripted, unpolished and focused on conversation and collaboration.

We know many of you were looking forward to it but can assure you that it will be worth the wait. And in the meantime, there are some awesome conferences coming up this year that are totally worth checking out:

Jon Acuff :: Cultivate 09

by Tim Schraeder on 10/27/2009 in Cultivate 09 with 2 Comments
  • I want to clear away the clutter of Christianity so people can see the beauty of Christ.
  • “I’ll pray for you” can become a version of “I’ll call you.”
  • Booty God Booty… love it.
  • We hit walls when we try to tell God’s Story.
  • We don’t talk about the Devil much.
  • If hell has a branding deparment, kudos for them for working their way out of our conversations.
  • Oftentimes we associate words like hell, Satan, etc with old school fundamentalists that we want nothing to be like.
  • We need to bring the Devil back into the conversation; he hates when we bring God into the conversation.

The devil tries to destroy our story.

  • He’s not all-powerful, so he has to take short cuts.
  • One of his short cuts is attacking things that matter.
  • He  attacks our areas of giftedeness… he tries to destroy them.

The devil tries to get us to discount our story.

  • The Devil wants us to think that other people have a real story; we don’t.
  • [ Sort of like the people with 'dynamic' testimonies. ]

What do we do when we discount or destroy our stories?

1 – We need to give it to God.

  • We need to engage with God about what the real story is.
  • We can get drunk on our own sense of awesomeness.
  • Fame is gross thing to pray for… it’s a drug that destroys ministers and ministries.
  • Get inspired, encouraged and excited by other people’s stories… but don’t tell them.
  • Tell your story.

2 – It usually means we’ve forgotten why we tell them.

  • The second group of people God addressed in Exodus [after the priests] were the artists, designers and craftsman.
  • Exodus 36:2
  • Everytime we share our story, we are helping to rebuild God’s temple.
  • We can’t sit in the desert with our giftings, we need to build God’s temple through the sharing of our stories.

How do you give everything you have and get lost in it?

  • Our goal is to not CREATE a story, but to REVEAL a story.
  • We need to get quiet
  • Anytime we try to pour our what we’ve got to pour out, we’ll run out fast.

Satire is humor with purpose. Oftentimes, we put humor over hurtful sarcasm.

  • Satire is a mirror we can use to stand beside and truly see ourselves.
  • We overflow what’s inside.

We don’t use our best creativity to celebrate the Creator of creativity.

We need to be more deliberate about the messages we create and be mindful of where we are sending them out to.

We need to be quiet enough to engage with God … we need to be something before we become something.

Tell your story to the  people you have.

In a private sector, people are watching you.

Too often we write about theories instead of reality — we get too far off and too disconnected.

Too often we write about problems we think people have instead of the problems people have.

You have to leave enough room for people to tell their story in yours.

Leave room for others.

Everybody has a rock… judgement, hypocrisy, etc… that they want to throw at us the moment we talk about Christianity; we usually talk around it… we need to talk about it and hold their rock for them… give them something new to hang on to.

I keep asking God geography questions and He always answers with where He wants us to go in His presence.

There’s things we should not joke about.

You stay in line with God’s will for your story… daily, hourly, moment by moment. You can’t read it and go away from it.

Too often we do the “Christian courtesy” of rejecting compliments.

We need to create platforms for other people to tell their stories.

Mockery is a great shortcut to laughter but takes away the ability to speak love

The greatest disappointments in life happen when we ask other things or other people to be Jesus for us.


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