what is the goal of marketing your church ?

The Christian faith looses over 3000 members daily.   Thats an astounding number – these are not people just leaving the local church – but the Faith.

I think a lot of this has to do with Friendship.    All to often I am asked – Glenn will this help increase the membership in my church?   and all to often I want to scream, stamp my feet, have a hisssy-fit and say — YOUR ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION !!!! @#$!#@*$*$#(#$*(@#!($#*(!@#$)!@#$   Then the Spirit of the Lord kicks me in the shin – and I answer…

Your primary goal is the key to your failure -   Membership is not the primary goal, neither is attendance.   Nothing should ever replace friendship as a primary goal.  Nothing.

I once was asked – Glenn what is so great about heaven,  what is so great about the church ..    FRIENDSHIP is the answer. I know its not the most liturgically correct answer – but its my answer.

I believe the Kingdom of God is all about friendship – finding friends, being a friend,  bringing other friends to be friends with your friends – and most importantly – introducing your friends to Jesus – The only Friend that will never leave or forsake us.

So what is the goal of marketing in your church ?   Is it  about numbers – the number of people in the pew’s during service ?   Is it about the number of people you can convince to join the church as a member – as if this was the cooler place to belong vs. the Elk lodge ?

Don’t get me wrong – discipleship, conversion, community impact, etc… are all great goals – but Friendship is the key:   Friendship is the vision – Friendship is the goal that preceeds all others…

apple theme – Safari

Chuck – I am not sure if you have been able to sort out your issues w/ your powerbook yet – but my Toshiba Tecra powerbook wanto be is a step closer —  Tonight I downloaded the Safari 3.0 beta – and my laptop feels, although for just a moment – just like a MAC… (then I had to right click…. ) :-)  

linux security for a DDOS

ok – so your under a DDOS …. chances are its to late @ that point – however… being proactive is better than reactive…

Here are a few ways to help you survive a DDOS

Install & Utilize Mod_Evasive

mod_evasive is an evasive maneuvers module for Apache to provide evasive action in the event of an HTTP DoS or DDoS attack or brute force attack. It is also designed to be a detection and network management tool, and can be easily configured to talk to ipchains, firewalls, routers, and etcetera. mod_evasive presently reports abuses via email and syslog facilities.

Detection is performed by creating an internal dynamic hash table of IP Addresses and URIs, and denying any single IP address from any of the following:

• Requesting the same page more than a few times per second
• Making more than 50 concurrent requests on the same child per second
• Making any requests while temporarily blacklisted (on a blocking list)

How to install:

a) Install mod_evasive

# wget http://www.zdziarski.com/projects/mo…_1.10.1.tar.gz
# tar -xzvf mod_evasive_1.10.1.tar.gz
# cd mod_evasive

# /usr/local/apache/bin/apxs -i -a -c mod_evasive.c
# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

b) Also include the following lines in the apache conf file

# vi /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

————————————————-
<IfModule mod_evasive.c>
DOSHashTableSize 3097
DOSPageCount 2
DOSSiteCount 50
DOSPageInterval 1
DOSSiteInterval 1
DOSBlockingPeriod 10
</IfModule>
————————————————-

c) Restart the webserver

# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Utilize ModSecurity for Apache

With over 70% of all attacks now carried out over the web application level, organizations need every help they can get in making their systems secure. Web application firewalls are deployed to establish an external security layer that increases security, detects, and prevents attacks before they reach web applications.

ModSecurity can also act immediately to prevent attacks from reaching your web applications. There are three commonly used approaches:

1. Negative security model. Negative security model monitors requests for anomalies, unusual behaviour, and common web application attacks. It keeps anomaly scores for each request, IP addresses, application sessions, and user accounts. Requests with high anomaly scores are either logged or rejected altogether.
2. Known weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Its rule language makes ModSecurity an ideal external patching tool. External patching is all about reducing the window of opportunity. Time needed to patch application vulnerabilities often runs to weeks in many organisations. With ModSecurity, applications can be patched from the outside, without touching the application source code (and even without any access to it), making your systems secure until a proper patch is produced.
3. Positive security model. When positive security model is deployed, only requests that are known to be valid are accepted, with everything else rejected. This approach works best with applications that are heavily used but rarely updated.

To install Mod_Security on a cPanel server – the steps are quite simple:

WHM >> cPanel >> Addon Modules >> Select “modsecurity ” >>save

Mitigate attackers using iptables

a) Find the IPs those have established a connection with the server

(The following command is the better one to get the IPs, as this will sort the IPs
according to the number of connections).

netstat -ntu | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

b) Block them using IPTABLES

# iptables -I INPUT -s ipaddress -j DROP
# service iptables save
# service iptables restart

Optimize the httpd.conf file

# vi /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

Change the bellow options as follows, original values are shown in the
bracket.

MaxKeepAliveRequests 50 (100)
KeepAliveTimeout 60 (30)

Also edit the following options too, according to the situation.

Timeout
KeepAliv
MinSpareServers
MaxSpareServers
MaxClients

Install & Configure a 3rd Party DDOS prevention application

We can also use the most trusting 3rd party script ‘DDoS-Deflate’ for preventing DDOS attack effectively.
Steps to install this script are as follows.

# wget http://www.inetbase.com/scripts/ddos/install.sh
# sh install.sh

Add the script ‘/usr/local/ddos/ddos.sh’ to cron as follows

# crontab -e

*/5 * * * * /usr/local/ddos/ddos.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

baptism – is this biblical for infants?

The baptism of Jesus Christ was a significant act, for it embodies God’s blessing and annointing. While I believe children, like adults, have a place among the people of God – I am struggling with baptism being biblical for infants…

Before Baptism One Must Hear and Understand the Gospel.

Mark 16:15,16 – The Bible clearly states all who believe … can a baby believe? The bible teaches those who believe and are baptized will be saved…

In Acts 2:38, God’s Word says to repent and be baptized. Repentance is required before one is baptized.

John 6:44,45 – No one can come to Jesus without being taught from the Father. I don’t think this just means – hearing a sound or 2 … I think that someone must learn – they must understand the meaning behind what is being taught (See 1st Corinthians 14 vs 20)

1 Peter 3:21 states that baptism is the pledge (also translated as a Response) of a good conscience toward God. I am not sure if a baby has a clear understanding of God – and therefore a good conscience …

From what I can gather – a person must first Believe in Christ as the Son of God, Repent from their sins – and be aware via an inward principle which decides to the character of Christ – before they are eligible for baptism… I do not think children are at this level…

So – here is my dillema – I have started down the path of looking into being a Pastor in the United Methodist Church – and the first chapter I read – condones baby baptism…

hmmmmmm……..

2 dimensions of leadership

“There are 2 dimensions of leadership that are absolutely essential to every growing movement:  visionary leadership and strategic management.” – Mike Slaughter

As many of you know – I am  beginning the candidacy process to become a pastor within the United Methodist Church system (although I am open to other systems as well such as Disciples of Christ and also Christian Missionary Alliance to name a few.)

I read this and began to wonder -  if I am the visionary – who will be the strategic partner in this ministry.

While I have come up with many different options and plans for this ministry God is leading me into – I can’t help but think I need to find that strategic partner…

At some point – the day-to-day systems that are essential for the implementation of the vision will just be to much for me to handle… So here is my prayer:  that God would send someone along that can help with the strategic side of this ministry.

Microsoft to be Yahoooo-oo-oooh ?

Well – it seems Microsoft is @ it again. It seems with the Big Giant Google looming like a shadow over these 2 companies it may be a natural fit for the 2 marketing firms to come together… Yahoo and Microsoft.

The New York Post this past Friday reported on its website – Microsoft has intensified its pursuit to take over Yahoo.

With Google taking over DoubleClick – who knows what is next for the software giant Microsoft…

Microsoft Missing Virtulization

What is it that makes Microsoft unable to do what others can…

REDMOND, Wash.-Microsoft said on Thursday that it is pulling features out of the initial version of its “Viridian” hypervisor to avoid having to delay the virtualization technology

The move limits gives more breathing room to competing projects–most notably Xen and VMware.

I think its more of the same from Microsoft… their standard development model:
talk , talk, talk, talk, slash features, release cut down version late, more talk….

OpenSourceChurch

It is time for the Open Source Church …

In an attempt to build a resource location for all OpenSource software available for the church as a whole – I am going to build opensourcefellowship.com  / opensourcefellowship.org

I was hoping to use OpenSourceChurch.org / com – however those domains – although not currently being used – are taken.

So – how can you help – its simple:   respond here to let me know any and all opensource software that you know would help the church -

Examples:

www.WebEmpoweredChurch.com / Typo3 Content Management System.

www.WordPress.org / Word Press Blogging System

Thank you for helping the Kingdom in this endevour.

Find that Customer Service Number

I hate when I call somewhere and here – for more options please dial 2, to reach please dial…

sometimes – we just need a person…

When you’re sick of pressing 2 for more options, consult the GetHuman database of secret phone numbers and codes that get an actual, live person on the line for customer service at various companies throughout the U.S.

The Wireless Church

Recently I was asked to help a church go wireless throughout their campus. The task was relatively easy – or so I thought – until I got on location and was given a requirement. Enforce every user to first be directed to the churches internal website – agree to terms etc…

 After thinking for  a few minutes I took a look @ what wireless router they were asking me to use – GREAT i thought – Linksys… a WRTG model…

to make a long story short – the church now has all users authenticate into a radius system – all open source – and stable.

Click here for additional details.