Archive - July, 2008

New Kindle?

July 15, 2008 in Technology-Social Media with 0 Comments

New Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008……maybe?

I love my Kindle, and I just got it for Father’s Day. So if there is a new one, hopefully the older version (mine) can be updated with new interface stuff.

Short Term Missions: Are They a Waste of Money and Non-Effective?

July 15, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 8 Comments

Andrew Jones had a post the other day on “Are Short Term Missions a Waste of Money?.” Andrew has 10 very good responses, which stem from the article in the Washington Post called “Churches Retool Mission Trips.”

Here are some thought provoking and interesting statements from the article:

Critics scornfully call such trips “religious tourism” undertaken by “vacationaries.” Some blunders include a wall built on the children’s soccer field at an orphanage in Brazil that had to be torn down after the visitors left. In Mexico, a church was painted six times during one summer by six different groups. In Ecuador, a church was built but never used because the community said it was not needed.

The curriculum, for example, warns missionaries to think about their attire in conservative countries and what kind of message they’re sending when they bring expensive cameras and other electronics to poverty-stricken villages.

Despite the concerns with trips abroad, their popularity is soaring. Some groups go as far away as China, Thailand and Russia. From a few hundred in the 1960s, the trips have proliferated in recent years. A Princeton University study found that 1.6 million people took short-term mission trips — an average of eight days — in 2005. Estimates of the money spent on these trips is upward of $2.4 billion a year. Vacation destinations are especially popular: Recent research has found that the Bahamas receives one short-term missionary for every 15 residents.

I’ve been on and led about 12-14 short-term missions trips over the last 10 years or so and I have always been an advocate of them. They have always been very transformative experiences for me and the team that I’m with, but I think the article raises some great points, which I and others have been thinking about for a long time.

Are short-term missions good stewardship?

Are they beneficial to the hosting communities?

Are short-term trips more Christian tourism than anything?



What do you think:

Have you been on a short-term mission trip?

Where did you go?

What did you do?

Was it effective?

Was it good stewardship?

In the next day or so I want to talk about one alternative to the “go to a foreign country to build a house” approach to missions. But if you are curious about this topic you can go to Christianity Today where they ran a series “Are Short-Term Missions Good Stewardship?“

25 Twitter Tips for College Students

July 14, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 1 Comment

About a month ago I wrote a post Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry.

I was really only focusing on one way college students (ministry) can use Twitter.

How about 25 ways?

Howard Rheingold had a link on his Twitter about the article 25 Twitter Tips for College Students.

Changing & Developing Our Thinking in an Online Community

July 9, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 2 Comments

Scot McKnight has a great post, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, which is a take on the classic book of the same name by Helmut Thielicke.

The premise of the post:

Bloggers pastors or students or theologians, especially young ones, need to listen to the wisdom of this little word by Thielicke. Why? Let me begin with this: what you say on your blog is international, permanent, and universally accessible. It’s not that I think you need to hide your ideas; it is that some of your ideas are not wise to be aired in public. Keep them to your closer friends and give them time to dig roots. Some of them you may toss into the bucket before too long.

Recognize that you will change: I’m asking our pastor readers today to weigh in on this one. Here it is: Did you change your mind on something that, when you were a young pastor, you thought was absolutely important? What was that? Had I been blogging 25 years ago, I would have been harsh on the grace emphasis of a writer like Yancey.

Have you changed your mind on anything absolutely important? What was it?

For me personally, there is not one specific thing, but my theology has constantly been in a state of development over time. Some believe that we should have it at a fixed place, but I think as we grow, mature, gain wisdom our theology changes as we come to understand and know God in new ways.

When it comes to blogging, where have you made mistakes? What would you do differently?

I think I would be less critical. I have too often written posts critically about thinkers, pastors, I don’t know. And though there is a place for criticism, I really try hard to be more constructive than critical, but often fail at that. Even this last week I wrote a post about another pastor (Driscoll) that really didn’t need to be posted.

So I’m working on being more constructive.

What thoughts do you have on thinking differently, or blogging differently?

I’m convinced, that just like working out our theologies, mistakes and differences has taken place in communities and groups for thousands of years, we will see this same process happen online as well. More people will be privy to it, but it’s part of the “publish, then filter” that Clay Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Please share with us some of your thoughts.

Hiring for Ministry and “Success”

July 8, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 5 Comments

I’ve long wondered about how to know who to hire in ministry, or why I got hired for some positions. Some people have lots of credentials, experience, etc., and don’t pan out in terms of what they were hired for. Others lack those things and go on to do a great job.

Malcolm Gladwell gives a great talk at the New Yorker Conference on the challenges of hiring in the modern world, so click on this link to watch the video. (HT: Guy Kawasaki)

He didn’t say it, but maybe the problem is that we hire based on our notions of living in a modern world, when really we live in a very postmodern, glocal one.

His basic premise is: The world has changed, but how we hire hasn’t.

He tells great antedotes from the world of sports and how those who score at the top at the football combines (as well as other sports), don’t often go on to do well, and vice-versa. And he talks about the practice of hiring teachers.

There is no specific formula of how to hire in a changing world. A person’s success in a job has to be projected into the future by a number of criteria.

What Is Important for Hiring for Ministry Positions? (I know positions differ, but speaking generally)

Spiritual life? (prayer, fruit of the spirit, etc.)

Theological Degree?

Experience?

Ordained?

Personality?

Leadership?

Resume?

References?

Etc?

What are you looking for?

Or why were you told they hired you?

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming

July 8, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 3 Comments

This is actually the form of social media and online sharing that I am the least familiar with. I have only had a Flickr account for about 6 months, and I just upgraded to Flickr Pro. How many videos have I uploaded to YouTube? Only a couple. So this is new territory, but a territory nonetheless that I think ministries need to explore more often.

Let me start with a couple of reasons for why you should use these tools:

  1. People like watching videos and looking at photos. Period. In my opinion, they are often more likely to do this then read a post or follow a debate on a forum page.


  2. I think ministries need to start creating more of their own content. Why? One, because how many churches use stock photos of people on their websites that don’t even attend church. I usually hear, “Hey, I’ve never seen them at our church.” Or my favorite, “Our church is not that ethnically diverse.” That’s usually the typical Bible study photo that has a representative of every tribe, tongue and nation represented, and is nowhere close to the actual makeup of the church. Two, video and photos give great insight into people’s lives.


  3. Shooting, editing, creating and uploading video and photo content has never been easier.


  4. These tools are so easy to use that anyone in the community can create content and participate. You don’t have to leave it in the hands of professionals or video/photo department people. This does two things. One, allows for community participation. Two, reflects more the reality of a community, than stuff being created by one department. And when communities participate, the content doesn’t have the constant professional look to it, but looks more reality which is nice. Not that professional is bad at all…but raw footage from the community is great also.



What Would This Look Like?

For example in the college ministry that I used to pastor, The Quest, here is what I think would have been helpful if I had done it. Obviously Facebook is one place where people share photo and video content with each other, but who is going to go look at each profile?

So I think what would be helpful is to have a “central hub” webpage, as I discussed in The Purpose of Your Website. And on this page you would embed the code from Flickr, YouTube, etc. that would automatically stream the content from your community to the page so that everyone could see it. You wouldn’t need to go look at multiple locations, but go to this one home page and share video and photos. This can be done by creating accounts that everyone can upload to.

Then you can develop some creative team to use those photos and videos that are uploaded to the site and post them at various sites in your community, like Facebook, a blog, etc. So you have one site where all the content is uploaded to, and a team that sifts through the material and places it in different ministry locations online.

Some Good Tools

Like I mentioned at the top. I’m a rookie to this, so please chime in with some suggestions. But here is some tools that I have found helpful and have used.

  1. Flickr: Great photo management site. You can get quite a bit of space and ability with a free account. But a Pro account is fairly cheap and gives you lots to work with. I mainly migrated to Flickr based on what I have read in various books on this topic and by the many praises from other such as Wess Daniels and Terry Storch. Flickr is great for photo management, but also you can upload video as well. They have a 90 second limit for video which I think is great. It really helps when determining what you want to shoot and share. I use Flickr video for my blog intro., but I don’t use it for a longer retreat video, etc.


  2. Vimeo: I love this video site. I have migrated from YouTube over to this site. I like the look of the site better. I like that my videos upload faster, etc. Check it out. You can create communities around your videos and create your own channels.


  3. YouTube: This is obviously the standard. Some people love it and it’s fun to go to their YouTube channels to see what they have done.


These are the only three I’m sharing.

So what photo/video management/sharing sites do you use and like?

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

DISCLAIMERS: 1)There are better technical people out there concerning the web. 2) Do as I suggest, not as I do. I’m trying to keep up myself, and our college website reflects almost nothing of what I talk about. That’s how fast things change. 3) There are a lot of college ministries out there, and there are a lot of online tools to use, but it doesn’t seem like many are thinking through how to best utilize the new media and Web 2.0 (and yikes, Web 3.0) in their groups. 4) Knowing that things change overnight in technology, I hope to somehow impart to you some of the things I have been learning and wrestling with in these areas. You don’t need to be an expert in this area, just know enough to think critically about the issue. 5) If you have feedback, suggestions, criticisms, please comment. This is by no means all encompassing.

Tired of the First Question from People, Pastors and Leaders Being “How Many People Were There?”

July 7, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 5 Comments

It was not uncommon during my years in ministry to be asked how many students were at the college worship service during the week. I’m okay with that question per se, but why is that always the first question, and why are numbers the measuring stick for successful ministry?

We are always looking for some standard or metric to determine ministry success, but why numbers?

It would have been nice to be asked, “Hey, how were the students last night?” Or, “Tell me a story about a student?” Etc.

Eventually (but hopefully not for you) if you are in ministry long enough there will be the push for numbers in ministry, and that will be how your success is often determined. Then begins the vicious cycle. Do whatever you can to maintain and raise numbers, often forgetting what ministry is about, or who we are supposed to be following…Jesus.

And that’s just really sad I think. As my good friend RO Smith has said to me, “If we measure our success in ministry based on Jesus’ ministry, then we have 12 people following us, and one of them is trying to kill us.”

How’s that for success?

That’s why I love the following post.

Anne Jackson is so right on in her post The Competition-Driven Church.

Society today is competitive. We feel that our voices must be the loudest and carry the furthest in order to be heard and validated. It breaks my heart when I hear pastors of small churches say, “we only had seventy-five people today” or “only two hundred people showed up.”

Only? I’m sorry. Are those seventy-five or two hundred people not enough for you?

I am not going go into length discussing the perceived importance of numbers. Keeping track of “how many” is a valid metric to measure some kinds of effectiveness in what we are doing. Numbers do represent people. Christ did say that he would grow his Church.

However, our view is so limited as far as what that actually looks like in our church today.

Help?

July 6, 2008 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments

As you may know, we are moving from Los Angeles (Pasadena) to Dallas at the end of July.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for moving companies, etc.? Any company, moving truck service you like and can recommend?

Just let me know.

We are moving a small house (1,330 sq. feet–2 bedroom–1 and half bath) if that helps.

Thanks.

Practice, Participation and the Art of “Remixing” Church and Community

July 3, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 7 Comments

In class my adviser, Ryan Bolger, often tells a story about a pastor of a mega-church in Arizona. One day the pastor, while walking with his son across the campus of the church he built, said, “Son, this is all going to yours someday,” and his son took a step back and responded, “I don’t want anything to do with this kind of Christianity.” It was then that this pastor realized his church was rooted in a boomer culture phenomenon (and has since gone on to rethink their mission as a church). This “mission-station” approach is rooted in a different time and sensibility than that of our younger generations. Theirs is a do-it-yourself culture: sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and open-source community-based software need community cooperation in order to work. These sites represent a rejection of powerful top-down hierarchies where the flow from producer to consumer maintains control, predictability and efficiently. Those influenced by the participatory culture, actively participate in creating where they see need and they do it with or without permission from those in power, they share information and welcome low levels of control, they are highly energetic and creative and they want to be active in shaping their future through a variety of grassroots means. (From the article, Remixing Faith in the 21st Century by Wess Daniels)

Recently I have been thinking a lot on two terms that author/consultant/professor Clay Shirky used in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He discusses, among many other things:

  1. An “architecture of participation” (coined by Tim O’ Reilly)


  2. Communities of Practice

Both embody what I think are two important necessities for the Church. That we create an environment that allows for and encourages participation among everyone. Not just pastors, directors, paid staff, or those that we often single out as having special gifts. Rather it is a community that everyone brings something to the table. And that we foster a community environment that encourages practice, which allows for mistakes, failures, successes…everything that comes along with practicing.

Churches are often bad at these two things. We don’t allow for failure, and therefore we inhibit a participatory community.

That’s why you rarely see anyone up front during worship on Sundays unless it is the paid staff. That is the way that we minimize mistakes, which therefore limits total participation. It’s a vicious cycle which eventually leads us to being consumers of Church, the community and all that is offered.

I have great hope for the Church as I see many new communities and Churches embracing some of these values of participation and practice, while also moving away from being consumers of the Church and worship. Many are also moving away from top-down hierarchies that maintain command and control. I think these moves are a step in the right direction.

Wess Daniels has got an amazing post over at Barclay Press, Remixing Faith in the 21st Century. I leave you with another great quote from the article. Then go read it for yourself because it is well worth the time.

This past April Radiohead did another thing that sparked imaginations and challenged the preexisting structures of the music industry, yet again. They setup a website and invited people to remix one of their singles, “Nude.” Along with the invitation, they released the audio tracks containing the guitars, strings, drums, bass, and vocals through the iTunes music store. They invited people to participate in a contest to see who would make the best remix of their song, all the votes would be made by Radiohead fans (the winning remix received 38568 votes). By looking at remix culture, I think the church can learn something about how creativity and imagination interacts with existing ideas and structures and builds off those resources while also moving beyond them in new ways.

How Long Should You Stay at a Job? Or What is Your Best Career Advice?

July 2, 2008 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments

I’ve been given the advice before that 5 years is a good length to stay at a job. I know of people who switch every 5 years to keep themselves fresh, and constantly learning. Many, who are Christians feel this a good opportunity to take some risks and step out in faith as well.

Some people master a job in a few years and get bored. Or the routine just kills them. I wonder how many of us stay in jobs we don’t love or are passionate about…just because we fear change, failure, etc.

I made a commitment to myself when I took the college director job at Bel Air I would stay at least 5 years. I stayed 6. And I think it was a good opportunity for both sides (Bel Air and I) to branch out, try new things and continuing learning.

Charlene Li of Forrester says the best career advice is:

I’d love to say that a wise mentor told me to do XYZ and that it changed my entire career. It was much more blasé.

At a career management course for HBS alumni, I learned that a person typically gets sick of a job after 18 months. This is a natural cycle, as you go through the excitement of learning a new job, become expert at it, and then gradually, it gets routine. So the advice I got was to plan for job obsolescence every 18 months. This didn’t mean that I had to leave the company and go to a new place – it had more to do with redefining my current job first to incorporate new challenges.

The impact has been tremendous – I’ve stayed at my current job at Forrester for almost seven years because every 18 months I’ve essentially gotten a “new job”. I actively think about what I need from the job and fortunately, the management at Forrester have been extremely flexible and helpful in helping me find those challenges. They have included:

- Moving into management

- Moving out of management

- Moving to California to manage the San Francisco office

- Shifts in research coverage areas

- Starting a blog

- Championing new research themes at Forrester

- Initiating new products and services for clients

So my advice is to think “outside of the box” but within the job. It’s much easier to design your dream job within the confines of a company that likes and trusts you.

18 months! That’s about the average length of a youth pastor in the United States.

What is your best career advice?
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