Below is an interesting newsletter I received from Dr. Richard Yen COMPETITION The problem with competition is that you do not know who will be eating your lunch tomorrow. In 1995, the year Larry Page met Sergey Brin at Stanford, AT&T was celebrating its 110 years of history. It was at times the world's largest telephone and cable television company. At its peak, it employed one million people and revenue was $300 billion. The world has not yet heard of Google.com. What is a search engine anyway? Google of course has had its IPO. It announced on 11/05/07 that it is getting into the mobile phone business. Through the Open Handset Alliance, Google intends to give phone users better Web access, starting 6 to 12 months from now. And how does Google intend to break into the mobile phone market? Google intends to inspire software developers by providing a free pen source?development kit. Soon mobile phone users can obtain any information just like what they have been doing through a computer. When more people use the phone to find information, phone companies will make more money. So why should any phone company CEO worry? Advertisement dollars will support the Google endeavor. Text-based ads will appear on the phones as they have on Web pages. However, if it is successful, Google may be able to provide a phone service completely supported by advertisement dollars, with no monthly fees from the customer. Its core business proposition is the rganization of the universe information and then monetizing it with advertising revenue.? So who is going to continue to pay existing mobile phone companies a monthly fee? By now you ought to be asking why I want you to know that. The simple answer is ecause I do not want our churches to go the way of AT&T.?This is not to say that AT&T lacked smart people, or our churches devoted folks. Individual faith in Christ will continue, just like what happened under the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. But the collective practice of Christianity may have to change. Anyone who cares about the Chinese church in America will know that there are far more openings for pastors than qualified personnel. Why? Even successful churches have insolvable problems. A church with 200 families may have a budget of $1 million a year, half of which goes to mortgage. If half of these families tithe exclusively to this church, that means the average income of these families is about $100,000 a year, hardly middle-class tax-payers. As such the members will expect adequate parking spaces and air-conditioning in the summer, not to mention a robust Children Program and a pastor comfortable with their cultural and economic background. Let say the church is friendly. The existing facility is already filled to capacity. So they intend to build. But a new sanctuary will easily cost $5 million. Even if they can get a low-interest loan, by the time the new sanctuary is built, it will be filled again to capacity. How many more years will it take to retire the debt? Do the math. Most church leaders say they understand the problem and intend to exercise faith. They are grateful for the support of the members. But money still has to come from somewhere. Most of their members are already two income families. The missionaries in the mission field also have pressing needs. Today the competition is not about land or money. It is about the loyalty of our kids (to Christ). And the competition is not coming from the other church in the next block. I am already assuming that your church is filled to capacity and no one is stealing the sheep. Any church blessed with a caring and capable pastor will be filled. The math simply shows why this model of real-estate-based growth is not sustainable. Chinese churches in North American must understand the peril of a church-building based, top-down model of operation. We need to develop leaders skilled also in home-based, bottom-up models of faith. After all, the early church did that. The church in China is doing that. There will be challenges in adding home-based activities. After all, the average church member is tired after working at least 8 hours a day plus commuting and has kids to care for. Far easier to just encourage him to attend church on Sundays where professionals will preach and the kids can be parked at the Children Program, right? Today the competition may not even be the TV or the movies (too boring.) But the adults are all too busy supporting existing church activities to even consider who may be competing for the loyalty of our kids. BTW, AT&T was bought by SBC in 2005. The name AT&T will survive, because it is such a beautiful and well known name. You think that back in 1995, the CEO of AT&T had any idea what those two young men at Stanford will do the communication industry? Richard | 
