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Archive - March, 2009

Wess Daniels: What Are You Passionate About?

March 13, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media with 9 Comments

Who Is Wess Daniels?
That’s hard for me to sum up in just a few words because Wess does a lot of different things, and he does them really well. He’s one of the more eclectic friends (loves technology, but also obsessed with vinyl records as of late) I have, and he’s definitely one of the smartest, and someone I look to for wisdom on many issues. I met Wess a couple of years ago at Fuller Theological Seminary where he is working on his Ph.D., studying under Dr. Ryan Bolger. Let me tell you in his own words a little about him:

I am a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena CA, and am in the School of Intercultural Studies working in the area of Western culture and peace church issues. My hope is to teach classes in a college or seminary setting on Church and Culture. As a Quaker, my interests lay in free church theology and practice. I am also interested in the growing green movement and how the church might embrace this as a call for the future.

You can also find out a little more about Wess below:

Gathering In Light Introduction Video from wess on Vimeo.

My favorite thing about Wess though is that he is a great father and husband, and we had some fun times walking through Old Town Pasadena pushing our daughters in our baby strollers, sipping coffee and trying to have deep conversation while our daughters were all over the place…but that’s real life and I enjoyed those times.

Check out Wess’ blog Gathering in Light which is one of my favorites. Connect with him on Twitter, as well as check out his writings at Barclay Press. And for all you tech/social media people, Wess is someone I would be listening to.

In His Own Words…

What are you really passionate about?

Currently I am working on research about the future of the church, with a direct emphasis on the Quaker tradition, because that’s who I am and what is closest to me, but really I am most passionate about vibrant, radical and inspiring expressions of Christian faith in our today’s “global information culture.” In my research I am looking for people who are traversing the various boundaries we have set up within our Christian institutions. You’ve already had people on here Rhett who are doing things very much like what I’m talking about, Tony and Mike, are both explorers, looking at new ways to express faith and they are doing this at the crossroads of something old/new. I like to call this hybrid or remix Christianity – take our tradition(s), add a dose of contemporary culture, multiply this by faith and throw in a bit of creativity and see what you’ve got.

Continue Reading…

ReThinking How We Do Conferences

March 12, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media with 7 Comments

A couple of months ago I started a series called ChurchTechCamp-8 Things To Know If You Want to Help Organize One. You can see my last post, with the previous posts at the bottom. I actually did have 8 posts within me, but got distracted which is easy for me to do. I could continue those posts, but I think I’ve made my point….(and to be honest, it’s part of my letting go process of perfection…I don’t need to finish 8 posts…haaa).

Conferences are changing, and the traditional way of doing them will disappear for many, but the few elite ones.

Church Crunch had a recent post, Hey Where’s My Conference?!?!

Eric Jones writes:

Has anyone else out there become aware of all the church conferences going on around the US? We’ve got leadership conferences, worship leader conferences, youth ministry conferences and more. It seems like every time I turn around I see a new conference popping up for my pastor, associate pastors, church staffers, worship leaders etc to attend.

I like to check out these sites to see what, if anything am I’m missing. The speakers are all people I typically am aware of and have much respect for. The topics are as expected, slanted towards church leadership and church staff.

But then I started to wonder, what about me? What about the church attender? Where is our conference circuit?

Cynthia Ware at The Digital Sanctuary says this in The Idea Camp Lives On (Idea Camp):

The entire event (free, of course)is still openly challenging all of us who are used to paying for conferences to see speakers we can listen to rather than those we can collaborate with.

And yet, Generation “We” seems to clearly resonate with a new set of values. Open source cross-pollenation, dynamic conversational collaboration, elevating innovation, celebrating creativity, participating, dreaming, designing, doing.

A taste of things to come.

So I’m wondering where you stand on all of this conference stuff. I know some people are frustrated with the sheer number of “conferences” or “unconferences” popping up, while others are thrilled.

Reclaimining Our “Birthright Gifts”

March 11, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 4 Comments

“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts–then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting other disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too many often betray true self to gain the approval of others.” (Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, pp. 12)

As I continue to revisit Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer, I was really struck by this quote of his. At the age of 34 I’m just now beginning to realize how much of what I do and have done is driven by the pressure to fit in. By the pressure to please others. By the pressure to perform. By the pressure to climb to the top. A lot of those expectations drove me to do some really great things, but as I reflect more on my life, those great things have not always been congruent with who I am, or what Parker would refer to as one’s true self.

As the son of a pastor I was slotted early on to continue the vocation of ministry. Those were not the expectations of my father or probably most of my family, but those were some of the expectations from those around me, and the unsconscious expectations from myself to veer toward a vocation that would be praised and revered. I think that is what drove me early on to enter into ministry, but that is hopefully what no longer keeps me there.

Confession: It is only after some extensive self-searching, prayer, working with my therapist, spiritual mentors, etc. have I come to embrace my “birthright gifts” and become less concerned with the expectations of others.

What “birthright gifts” do you have that you felt like you have abandoned early on in your life? How did others “disabuse” you of them?

Have you, or are you returning to them? Why? How?

First Kindle…And now Logos!

March 10, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media with 13 Comments

Moving from Hardcopy to Digital
I first shared with you my excitement after getting the Kindle after Father’s Day of 2008. For someone who loves books, lots of them, it was a huge step. Leading up to that I had been weaning my library down (from about 3-4 thousand books down to a few hundred–about a 6 year process which picked up intensity in the last year or so).

Why did I do that?
Ego & Identity: My books were sort of like an ego boost and homage to my graduate school degrees, as if my books made me smart. And my identity started getting wrapped up in them. They had become too important. They were taking over my life basically.

Cost: Books are expensive to buy, shelve, move, etc.

Space: Just didn’t have room and we didn’t want them all over the house.

Amazon Kindle: I could take as many books with me as I wanted, and they were cheaper than hardcopy/paperback books.

In Violation of our True Self

March 9, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 5 Comments

I have been returning time and time again to one of my favorite books on the topic of identity and vocation, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer. I first read the book in 2002 when I was finishing up my M. Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary at it greatly impacted me and some of my friends. I have since read it over a couple of times and I’m about to finish it again. It is very powerful. It is a paradigm shifting book.

Parker Palmer makes the insightful comment that:

“True self (this is what Parker also refers to as the “imago dei” in us), when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.” (pp. 4)

As we find ourselves in very different places in life (graduating from college, looking for jobs, looking for second careers, stuck in a career, struggling in a marriage, trying to overcome an addiction, trying to raise kids, etc.) we may find that our identity is being violated.

Palmer says:

“The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’”

This is something I have been thinking about, wondering if all of my indecisivness in life, especially around career and passion, is really the ‘imago dei’ God placed within me being violated. Bumping up against it…stumbling, until I finally find my way.

How do we know when we are in the right vocation? When do we know we have found our calling? How have you known when you violated your ‘true self’ or the ‘imago dei’ in you?

Matt Knisely: What Are You Passionate About?

March 6, 2009 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media with 16 Comments

Who Is Matt Knisely?
I first met Matt at ChurchTechCamp:.Dallas after we had spent some time chatting back and forth via Twitter, later getting the chance to connect again at TrainFriday, and then just a few weeks ago we had the opportunity to reconnect in Dallas and go out to dinner together with our families.

Over the last couple of months I have really come to appreciate his friendship, as well as the wisdom and insight that he has to share. I have also found his passion for storytelling, especially through film and photography to be inspiring, also giving me hope that there are those thinking differently and creatively about how to tell more effective and powerful stories through that medium in the church.

Matt is currently the Director of Communications and Media for Lawton First Assembly in Oklahoma.

Check out Matt’s blog (which is currently undergoing some awesomeness), his Twitter, and his wikipedia page. And by the way, I don’t know anyone with more Emmy awards.

In Their Own Words
What are you really passionate about?

I’m passionate about community and global awareness. I believe everyone was created to DO something genuine and to help their community and world. I have been charged with using my talents and passion of “visual storytelling” for non-profits. In this day and age with over-saturated non-profits, new media, and communication mediums a non-profits message and brand must stick out; the power of a story can make a huge difference. Visual storytelling is the key, whether video or still images bear witness to compassion, to the undying hope which persists in the face of suffering, and to the universal beauty of humanity, created in the image of a loving god.

Continue Reading…

Emerging Into Our Identity

March 5, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 9 Comments

Emerging Adulthood
I have always seemed to work with a lot of people in the midst of that life transition from college to young adult, or to what is often referred to as emerging adulthood. So because of the extension of adolescence, and the pushing of adulthood and it’s responsibilities to later years (late 20′s to early and mid-30′s) people often find themselves wrestling with questions that have often been resolved, or at least grappled with in early developmental stages.

In my work as a college admission recruiter, college pastor and marriage and family therapist, I often work with people who come to me with questions that they can’t quite formulate themselves, but that touch at the core of who they are, and are very existential in nature in many ways.

They are questions of identity, or “Who am I”, “What am I to do”, “What do I believe.”

Fundamental Questions
Over the last 6 months my supervisor has helped me formulate some questions that touch at the heart of clients that I work with that are going through this life transition.

So I often tell my client that they are asking 3 very basic, very fundamental questions:

Who am I?
What am I to do with myself?
How am I to be loved?

Questions that we have been asking for thousands of years, and in reality, each of the questions are components of one another, and sometimes one must be answered for the other to be answered as well.

Technological Expectations: Are You the Person He is Describing?

March 3, 2009 in Technology-Social Media with 2 Comments

A little over two weeks ago I read the blog post Miserable and loving it, written by one of my former college students and journalists, Brad Greenberg. I can’t remember a video clip that has made me laugh harder and simultaneously be convicted. I instantly showed my wife and “tweeted” about it a few times that weekend.

The comedian Louis C.K. says this about the bit:

This was my last time on Conan (ever, I guess, in the “Late Night” era). It went pretty viral back in October but NBC took it down off of Youtube because they are very very smart and they know that when people start spreading a clip around that raises awareness and popularity of their shows, that is a bad thing.

Anyway, some people put it back up and for some reason, the last few weeks, it has really blown up. It seems that Facebook was the main propellant.

You can read more of his thoughts on technology and the economy in the Vanity Fair piece, Starvation Can Be Character Building (warning: strong language).

If you haven’t seen this video yet, please watch it, and ask yourself: “Are you the person he is describing when it comes to technology? Why?”

There are a lot of reasons it resonated with me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it for sure. Probably because I didn’t like the idea that I’m that person who has become so impatient with technology and I have unrealistic expectations about how it should perform. And honestly, I don’t like that at times I demonstrate addictive behaviors around technology use. Way too often in fact. I think we are okay with our technological addictions, but if those addictions were in any other area of our life we would be super concerned or at least others would be.

One of my favorite bloggers on the intersection of technology and theology is John Dyer who blogs at Don’t Eat the Fruit. If you aren’t reading him, well then you are missing out. John wrote a post, Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy on this same video, in which he says, “His observations are a great example of Neil Postman’s idea that Technology Tends to Become Mythic – technology that was once new eventually becomes something we assume has always been around.”

If you haven’t read it yet, then read Brad Greenberg’s interview with Sling Media CEO Blake Krikorian, Sling Shot, which created the Slingbox.

Q: Before starting Sling, you spent 15 years working in Silicon Valley. What have you learned about our relationships and habits regarding technology?

A: First off, if I could see technology just completely go away, I would probably root for that.

Q: Why would you root to get rid of technology?

A: At the end of the day, a lot of technology is abused. People start to lose sight of what is really important and spend more time in virtual worlds. Everyone always has said, ‘Oh, computers or e-mail or whatever are going to make your life easier. It’s going to give you more time to spend in leisure.’ Who are we kidding? There is nothing farther from the truth. It just means you can work harder, harder and faster, faster.

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Reclaimining Our “Birthright Gifts”

In Violation of our True Self

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