| Rhett Smith:. Transitioning Life's Journey – Reflections on Writing, Therapy, and Faith | Archive

Archive - August, 2008

Donald Miller’s Pre-Benediction Interview with Christianity Today

August 28, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 3 Comments

I found this video of Donald Miller’s pre-benediction video over at Brian Kiley’s blog.

The video is done by Sarah Pulliam for Christianity Today.

Good video. Curious what you think?

I hesitate to get into politics because it never seems to turn out well…conversationally speaking with many people.

When Donald Miller came to our college group a few years ago, it was definitely a great night. But one of the more heated moments during the night was during the Q & A where Don was faced with some political questions by some of my college students. Though I would say the majority of my college students lean more liberal and Democratic, the more conservative group and Republicans were not happy with his answers.

I have always found Don to be very articulate in his interviews and I like what he has to say on many topics.

So check the short video out for yourself.

Is (Your) Church in “the dead zone of slick?”

August 27, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 10 Comments

The below is an excerpt from Seth Godin’s post the dead zone of slick.

There was a terrific duo playing live music at the farmer’s market the other day. They were well-rehearsed, enthusiastic and really good. Being a patron of the arts, I bought a CD.

I hated it.

I’ve thought a lot about what turned me off, and I think it’s the curve above.

Faced with the excitement of making a CD and all the knobs and dials, they overproduced the record. They went from being two real guys playing authentic music, live and for free, and became a multi-tracked quartet in search of a professional sound. And they ended up in the dead zone. Not enough gloss to be slick, too much to be real.

BINGO. Seth gets it.
Seth, as is his style, precisely and briefly puts in words and a graph what many of us often feel about church.

“Not enough gloss to be slick, too much to be real.”

A complaint I often heard in college ministry was that church was too slick, whether it was their home church where I pastored, the church down the road, or the one they grew up in. It’s a complaint that is hard to describe, but we all know what everyone means when they express it.

It’s that fine line between authenticity and being overproduced. Not everyone likes the duo on acoustic guitars leading worship, but not everyone is into the eight musicians on stage with lights glaring and moving images behind them either.

I’m someone who so desires authenticity in our churches and community, but I also want us to think through how we do things as well and do them with a sense of integrity, hard work and passion.

Too Slick

If I had a choice, I would usually prefer the “not slick” versus “slick” everyday of the week.

My 10 Reasons of how you know when is church too slick?

When no one else is allowed on stage/upfront on Sunday, but the paid clergy/staff.

No one is allowed to share or preach but the handful of ordained staff, etc.

Everything is on perfect cue that when there is a mishap it becomes a big issue to the staff or congregation.

When children (crying, talking, walking around) have no place in church, are given dirty looks, or ushered out.

The service is broken down into minute detail…minute by minute. No room for the Spirit to move as some say.

Professionalism reigns (oratory skills, musicianship). There is a difference between putting “capable” people up front, and allowing only the best of the best or professionals to do everything.

When a staff meeting becomes the place where the service is dissected, but very little time is given to prayer, theological reflection or why we do the things we do.

When the pastor or band/worship leader carries with them superstar status that if they weren’t up front on a Sunday people might choose not to attend or bring their friends.

When those up front reflect only a segment of the population of the church (usually the pastor’s demographic or circle of friends), and there is no room to try things differently, with different people.

When people’s reflection upon the service was more about the technicalities, than it was about the content.

Thoughts?

When is church too slick?

What makes church authentic?

Using Pictures to Teach, Create, Innovate, Preach and More…

August 26, 2008 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

Just posted the below blog over at Leadership Network. Take a look.

A few months ago I noticed the book The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam appearing over and over again at Amazon in the section "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought." It was alongside a lot of my favorite books so I figured I should give it a read.

The subtitle of the book is "Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures" which is something that intrigued me as possibly being a very effective tool in ministry, leadership, counseling, business, social media, etc. I figured that it must be an effective means of communication if the idea for Southwest Airlines was diagramed on the back of a napkin (see image at bottom).

Diagramming on a whiteboard also seems to be one the teaching methods of Rob Bell, especially on his Everything is Spiritual tour, or the method of teaching for influential leaders.

I think this is a very important book especially in our technological driven culture. It’s almost unheard of that we should be unplugged or unwired and communicate in a means that doesn’t involve technology. Teachers, pastors and leaders have been communicating important truths forever through the use of pictures, whether it be on a whiteboard, or flannelgraph if you want to go way back to our early Sunday school days.

What if there was a way to more quickly look at problems, more intuitively understand them, more confidently address them, and more rapidly convey to others what we’ve discovered? What if there was a way to make business problem solving more efficient, more effective, and–as much as I hate to say it–perhaps even a bit more fun? There is. It’s called visual thinking, and it’s what this book is all about: solving problems with pictures.

I think in our fast pace, high tech culture, it’s nice to sit down with people in small or large gathering and walk people through your thinking. One of the advantages of drawing pictures is that you give people a visual where they can follow your thinking. For example, instead of just handing over a picture for them to see, you can actually walk them through the process of how you arrived at your idea, thought, etc. The power of this process really empowers those that you teach to better understand your ideas, clarify your thinking, and receive feedback for possible flaws or better avenues to innovation and creation.

About two weeks ago I walked out of the ECHO Conference after hearing Donald Miller speak on the idea of "story." I was talking with Tony Steward afterwards about the talk when he opened up his Moleskine and showed me the visual map or picture diagram of the talk Miller just gave. It was amazing to see the talk laid out visually on paper and it made more sense to see it visually then it would to have just written the talk down by bullet points and only with words.

Reading this book, talking with Tony Steward, and realizing that pictures can often explain and clarify what words cannot has turned me into a believer of this practice.

Therefore, I have a few recommendations:

Buy and read the book, The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam.
Start reading Tony Steward’s blog. It’s great in this area of technology, social media, visual thinking, etc.
Start practicing your ideas, sermons, lectures, business ideas, etc. by drawing them up on pictures on some paper.
If you want to move from paper to computer, then check out Mind Meister. (HT: Tony Steward)

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry, And Working Yourself Out of a Job (Or Maybe a New Position)

August 26, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 5 Comments

Opening Up Your API

An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.[1]

* Language-dependent APIs are available only in a particular programming language. They utilize the syntax and elements of the programming language to make the API convenient to use in this particular context.

* Language-independent APIs are written in a way that means they can be called from several programming languages. This is a desired feature for a service-style API which is not bound to a particular process or system and is available as a remote procedure call. Source: API on Wikipedia

Yeah I know….probably too techy for most of us. I barely understand it. And if I don’t know what I’m talking about, please correct me. This is a learning process for me as well as I’m trying to stretch my mind on this topic.

But what I do understand is that many successful online applications open up their API’s for outside development. You Tube and Twitter are just two examples. If you are wondering on whether or not a company does this, you can usually find it at the bottom of the page. Another company such as Facebook has a place for developers who want to build an app on the Facebook platform.

Successful companies allow and encourage outside collaboration on their product and platform?

Yes. Why?

Because collaboration and voices from within a company or organization, or those voices outside of a company or organization can bring much innovation and ideas that those at the top of the company or organization’s hierarchy are often blind to or don’t have the skill themselves to achieve.

Hence, the reason why you have tons of Twitter applications that many people are using, and that Twitter didn’t develop themselves but that are highly successful. Twitterfeed, Tweetdeck, and on and on it goes.

Great example of how one company harnesses the creativity, energy, passion and innovation of thousands of other people.

What If Our Churches Did More of This

The parallel that I draw from this example in technology is that churches need to not “run”, “create”, or “plan” everything from the central office, but rather, need to harness the innovation and creativity from the dozens, to hundreds, to thousands of people they have attending their church.

Most churches function via committee, and most of the power is centralized at the executive staff level that only a handful of people have the “privilege” of sitting on. And I use the word privilege here lightly, because you know what I mean if you ever attend these meetings…they are sometimes more life taking than giving and innovation is usually not created here. There are exceptions I know.

Rather, I believe innovation is created, harnessed at the lower levels of a hierarchy, or where power is decentralized. There are many good books on this topic, but a few of my favorite are:

Fear of Losing Our Jobs

I think that there is a great fear in ministry to decentralize power and unleash the potential and creativity of the people we minister to and serve with. I get it. Because if we truly let go of power than maybe we soon realize that our job is no longer needed when tons of people are doing it for free…and possibly better. I was fearful of moving my former ministry The Quest (at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles) over to Facebook as the main way of communicating. Fear of losing control of content, of losing power and control of being the central hub of ideas along with our student leadership team.

But ultimately I think that the most Biblical thing we can do is give our power away in our church (Jesus obviously embodies this, the Sermon on the Mount), as I believe that’s what Paul was striving for in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 in his teaching on the body.

If there are many members and only one body, then why is power so centralized in the Church? And the power I’m talking about is not usually centralized where it’s supposed to be…in the person of Jesus Christ as its head. Rather, we have centralized power to only a handful of people…usually men, and usually ordained, and usually among people who have been in a church setting alone for too long that innovation doesn’t really happen where it is needed.

Steps to Open Up Your Ministry’s API

There are a lot of things that need to be done in this area, but let me just suggest 5 steps (but keep in mind that each one involves a lot of other things…but that’s for another post).

Decentralize Power: Haaa. If it were that easy. It’s not. But that would be nice. So let’s start with step 2.

Evaluate Your Organization: (interview staff, observe, talk to “outsider”, etc.) find out where the “bottleneck” is occurring and where communication is lacking.

Develop an Online Strategy: that utilizes tools for doing this effectively. It’s not good enough to use Facebook, Wiki’s, Twitter, etc., but there needs to be a strategy for using these tools and how these tools will help decentralize power and allow for more voices and innovation.

Allow for Other Voices: Ministries need to invite other people to the table. Just not the people at the top, or those with the money and power. Let a wide spectrum of people within the church give voice, suggest and create.

Collaborate: When you have set up the tools, developed a strategy, allowed for other voices, then we must begin to collaborate as a team. Only when we work together will we truly be in a place to move in a new direction, or try new things, or create “effective” ministries.

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed.
Part 2–The Purpose of Your Website
Part 3–Why You Should Be Blogging
Part 4–Using Facebook Effectively
Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry
Part 6–Using Social Network Platforms as Your Central Hub
Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming
Part 8–Ministry Collaboration Using Wikis
Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry’s API

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.

Framework for Chapter in Book: 5 Movements for Online Social Networking

August 21, 2008 in Technology-Social Media with 0 Comments

Just wrote my first blog post over at our book blog for The New Media Frontier.

My chapter is New Media Ministry to the Myspace-Facebook Generation:
Employing New Media Technologies Effectively In Youth Ministries. And the following is some of the framework I laid out in the chapter.

It’s hard to keep up on the social media scene as so many things have changed in the last year since I wrote the chapter, but I have learned so much and will continue to do so. Though I might think through some things differently I still like the general framework laid out in the chapter.

I tried to approach the chapter more from a spiritual/psychological/philosophical framework, then a how to tech manual. The technology is the tool, but how we approach and apply the technology and how it shapes us in the process is very important for us to think about.

Check it out.

5 Movement Towards Online Social Networking

The Process of Writing and Creating Literature

August 21, 2008 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments

So true. Found this over at ixthus Agitator

If you are a writer (professionally, or as a hobby), where do you spend most of your time in the graph?

Your Daily Workflow and Social Media Tools

August 20, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 5 Comments

Does that chart scare you?

It scared me the first time I saw it. I was given a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. And well, the book and method were hardly stress free for me, while others thrived on it.

Many of you out there are disciples of David Allen and GTD aka “Getting Things Done.” You talk about it incessantly and you have the results to show that his methods work.

Most of us on the other hand fall somewhere else and our personality, gifts and skill set help us determine the best method of workflow for us. Though I wasn’t a big fan of GTD in the beginning I’m coming around to it.

Let me point you in the direction of a couple of other sources that I have found helpful, mention my own workflow situation, as well as get suggestions from you.

Other Methods

Let me just mention a few other methods that I really like and that I have tried picking up. At the end of the day I think that most of our workflow methods are a an array of various ones that we have brought together into one workable, if not messy method at times.

First, I love this method from my friend Wess Daniels, Create a Moleskine PDA: The Student GTD Hack. Who doesn’t love a Moleskine, and how many of us need a break from “technology” and need to remove ourselves from the computer. I haven’t mastered this method yet, but I always carry a Moleskine and am slowly creating the system.

ECHO Conference: Great from top to bottom

August 18, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 7 Comments

Last week I was debating on whether or not I should attend the ECHO Conference, mainly because I was pretty exhausted from just moving here. And second, I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to pay the $329 for the conference.

I debated, but ultimately I felt like it would be a great opporunity to take part in this new conference. I thought I would make some good connections and hopefully some friends as well. And last, I hoped to really take away some valuable things from my time there.

Hands down, it was one of the best conferences I have been to, and I have been to a lot. I realized on Friday while I was looking at the snack table and pouring some more Starbucks coffee for myself, and for that $329 fee I was easily getting my money’s worth between the great speakers, the great food, the great connections, the challenges put forth, etc.

At this point, let me just state a few of the highlights for me and what really stuck out for me.

Hospitality: It was the most hospitable conference that I have been to. It began on Friday when I swung by only to pick up my registration packet and head home. I wasn’t planning on staying since I had my daughter with me. Two young women offerred to hold my daughter for me while I walked around the place too see what was going on and to find Cynthia Ware. First, let me say that I would never just hand my daughter over to complete strangers, but there was something in these women that made you feel like you knew them personally as friends. Great people to have at the front greeting conference attendees. But I did. I passed my daughter to the two of them and I walked around, only to come back and find my daughter having a great time playing with one of the women’s i-phones and smiling. Thank you Haley Thomas. That type of hospitiality continued all three days of the conference and it was one of the easiest conferences to mingle amongst not only the attendees, but the speakers and workshop leaders as well. Great hospitality.

De-Centralized/Flattened Leadership: This is a really important ethos for what I want leaders to embody. And even though I knew who was putting the conference on and who was in charge, it was nice to watch them serve people all three days, and not be above setting up things, helping cars find parking spots and being there to resolve any issues that may have arisen. You just don’t see that enough. Most speakers and leaders are often the first to leave after they speak and never stick around to help with the day to day work. So props to Rob Thomas and the people at Igniter Media, those at Worship House Media, and Scott and the crew at Collide Magazine.

Great Challenges from the Speakers: I’m sure if I were to poll the people at the conference everyone would have something different to say about each speaker. I didn’t attend all keynote sessions, but I did attend Donald Miller’s and Mark Batterson’s. Mark had me thinking all weekend about the quote he shared by Martin Luther: “It is wonderful’ proclaimed Luther, ‘how at this moment in history all the arts have come to the light…like the art of book printing, God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of Gospel is driven forward.” His challenge that Christians and churches should be on the leading edge of innovation, and who of us in the room would develop that tool to drive the gospel forward has been echoing in my mind a lot. And Donald Miller’s message on “Story” was amazing. It held special importance to me because my wife and I were listening to that message about 6 months ago (he had given it at Mars Hills in Michigan; check here for it) as we drove from Los Angeles to Phoenix to visit my family. After his message all we could think about was the story God had given us and were we truly living in it. That message gave us courage to continue our move to Dallas, and to hear Miller give it on Friday night was confirmation of God’s grace in my wife, daughter and I’s lives as we had safely made the journey from Los Angeles to Dallas…desiring to live a different story than the one in LA…desiring to live the story God had given us. I know many of us are still chewing on that talk as it continues to resonate with us.

Networking: This is probably one of my favorite things to do at conferences. But there was something different about the networking going on here. It wasn’t the typical, here is my card, and if you can meet my needs, then we should hang out more. Rather, I genuinely felt like that the people I networked with are people I want to spend time with. Over dinner, drinking coffee, going to church, dreaming, etc. The networking had a sense of humility and friendship, and I think it was evident that people’s connection with Christ and ministry is what motivated them, and not money and power. That is a very different feel. So at the end of the day, networking was about friendship and dreaming together, not money and fitting a peg along someone’s ladder of success. I have to believe that that tone was not only set and embodied by those putting on the conference, but also those who came through the door. I am looking forward to the new friendships, and the times we will eat together, play together, and dream big dreams together.

Innovation and Creativity: Truly the keynote speakers, lab leaders and workshops were led by people doing very innovative things in their field. So no matter what breakout you attended or speaker you heard, it was always challenging and refreshing. Who saw the creative work of Barton Damer and was amazed? Everyone. Those are the type of people doing ministry that a conference needs and ECHO had plenty of them.

Christ, Church and Ministry: No matter who I came into contact with during my time at the conference, I was impressed with which everything came back to Christ. It is Christ who has given us our gifts, our talents, our relationships, and it is Him that we glorify when we use our gifts, and so in humility, always pointing towards Him who has given us such grace. I was excited that not only was Christ evident during our time there, but people were concerned about ministry. How does what I’m doing affect ministry? How does it spread the gospel and enhance ministry? So the talents and gifts and creativity were embedded in the local church of these people and they all came together to learn from each other. Obviously not everything must be tied to ministry and church, but when it’s a conference on media arts and church, well, it’s nice that it lived up to its billing.

I learned a lot, made a lot of new friends and was encouraged by the passion in others. And I’m looking forward to many coffee times and Mexican food lunches and dinners here in Dallas with many of you.

You can find some of the notes from ECHO here.