What could an online church look like and do?

Northpoint (Andy Stanley's church at Buckhead) is launching August 16th.

It's a live stream of their Sunday evening worship service from Buckhead plus other online ventures.

See the scoop here.

Anne Jackson nailed it.

Driving by my old church, my old Starbucks, my old house…all these things brought back so many memories. Every time I’d go somewhere public, my heart would race a little bit. I was afraid of running into the person who hurt me four years ago.

Four years..it seems like a lifetime ago. But the hurt still hasn’t gone away. And it’s still impacts me, my ministry, and my ability to take risks. I don’t assert myself like I normally did. I stay really quiet and don’t speak my mind as much as I should. I choose my battles too carefully.

I'm also afraid at times of "selling out." It seems that people with ideas are not always welcomed. And it seems that "we work in a business where Jesus is not always popular" - not even in the church! And, it seems, that my ideas need refining --even sometimes when I'm absolutely sure at the time that we NEED to move forward! (And even when I'm sure people are putting artificial and ungodly obstacles up.) I've seen church become an "us" and "them." It's not pretty.

Ah, but we're just like "them," really. Believe me, I'm not on my high horse here. But we do tend to retreat into guarding ourselves and not being as daring as we ought, right? Maybe I'm just speaking for Anne and myself. Perhaps that's a "whole church" problem and not simply a leadership issue? Don't "people in the pews" also hold back from risking beyond where they are?

How do we move beyond that "let's protect ourselves and hold back" syndrome? For me, it's moments like reading Anne's confession and remembering that the people of God can't afford to "hold back" anything. Too much is at stake. After all, the world's acceptance is not what Jesus was about either. I'm so glad that He didn't "hold back."

More than that ... like Jesus, I believe we need to practice what we preach, i.e. get into an active prayer time, tell God what you fear most, and allow God to deal with the places where we need healing and to forgive, as well as forgiveness. Remember the Garden of Gethsemane: "take this cup from me?"Fortunately, we are on a different path with Jesus.

It's not an easy path. But it's the right path, I believe. 

Do you find yourself working on digital files beyond work hours? Do you find yourself trying to squeeze in that moment to write something for your blog? Do you find yourself watching TV, eating dinner, talking with your spouse, and "tweaking on the internet"?

Then, you are out of balance in God's terms.

I know that hurts a bit. Some of our passions are hard to put at bay!

Balance is harder with technology. There are even productivity tools created via technology that should make life easier to manage - i.e. fit more into the time slots we have because they are managed so well. Gotta laugh at ourselves there, don't ya?

Time management is crucial. But it needs to also - or primarily - be done God's way. I'm speaking to myself and the choir.

In Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships, Randy Frazee talks about how we've lost some important boundaries in contemporary life that is hurting God's idea for relationships in our families. And he points out something crucial to this call for the church to go "digital." With an agrarian society (what used to be), "the day" in America was set by sunrise and sundown. Productivity happened between the hours of sunrise and sundown.

With the advent of a more technological society, and man's invention of baseball field spotlights, etc., we no longer have to follow natural rhythms of the earth. We can defy natural for unnatural. Technology is not a "no-brainer." We have to think even harder about the "rules" around technology that affect our health.

Technology allows us to play way past dark, and way past traditional working hours. But is that good or bad? How does it affect our spiritual health?

Randy says in his book that we need to be very proactive in creating God-honoring boundaries around technology and our personal lives. I agree. He goes on to point out the "Hebrew Day Planner" method: 12 hours of PRODUCTIVITY (everything we call work, whether it be preparing for work, work on the house, paying bills, internet or a job), 3 hours of RELATIONSHIP, 1 hour of winding down and preparing for sleep, 8 hours of good SLEEP.

Can you match your life to those numbers?

• 12 hours Productivity
• 3 hours Relationship
• 1 hour winding down
• 8 hours of sleep

Here are some links to great "cheat sheets" for CSS:

The Ultimate CSS Cheat Sheet

Another Guide by What You Want "It" to Do - By Style Type

W3School Everything There Is & Properties Table

Just read an excerpt from Kem Meyer's blog tour about her new book: Less Clutter, Less Noise. Here's the question asked: What if people only pay attention to the announcements for events made from the pulpit/stage?

Underlying the question: Announcements are eating worship alive and I don't know how to fix it without using the pulpit! I want people to enrich their souls with the life of community throughout the week. But worship time doesn't seem the appropriate place for it. AREN'T THERE ANY OPTIONS OUT THERE????

Kem says "Yes!" And she's got great options. Take a peek at her answer on the "Let Me Be Frank" blog.

Here are a few tips to help raise awareness and energy for the things happening all around the life of the church without being solely dependent on the platform announcement.

• Use the platform to reinforce and promote core values and macro steps from the platform, not individual events or teams. Practically, it might look like this:

Announced from the platform	Not announced from the platform
Volunteer	Men’s breakfast
Join a Group	Book discussion
Read your Bible	Community scrapbooking event

 Read the rest of her ideas on Frank's blog.

What's her overall communication point: Think about priorities in communicating and create the vision idea in the person's head so that then they can be a part of the "men's breakfast" for a reason (such as the communicated vision is that I be 'part of a group').

If only ... "we had a better preacher or staff ... if young people we work so hard with stayed beyond the college years ... if we had more monies to fund what we want to do ... if I was better equipped or knew what to do ... if we had a building given to us ..."

"If only" is questioned by God in the stories of Moses (but I need a better speaking ability) and Jeremiah (I need a better message) and Hosea (I'd like a faithful wife) and Isaiah (who am I to come into your presence, O God - a man of unclean lips).

Are you afraid? Are you nervous? What will it mean for your life?

Do you still have a whisper left to tell the stories of God's love? Does the Church have a whisper left to tell a simple story of a God who comes? 

It only takes a whisper. 

This was the end of a message brought to the Virginia Annual Conference by Bishop Hee-Soo Jung (Northern Illinois Conference Bishop of the United Methodist Church). Do you have a whisper left for the God who saved you?

 Jesus says "you feed them." In the story of the crowd who became hungry, as the Bishop says, they didn't need to go ask someone else if they were hungry. They KNEW they were hungry. But they didn't know where to get the food. Jesus says, "You feed them."

¹⁵As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food."

 ¹⁶Jesus replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."

 ¹⁷"We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish," they answered.

-- Matthew 14:15-17, NCV

 Scary stuff. Regardless of resources, regardless of abilities, regardless of staffing. It takes more faith than resources to do God's work. 

It's been my experience in church, that the needs coming through our doors far outweigh our abilities or funding constantly. It's been my experience that God usually calls me personally in "out of the box" ways to approach ministry and I wonder how I can sustain that ministry financially and people-wise.

Bishop Jung reminded me again, "Godly leaders act of a vision of God's future . . . We are born of the Spirit and live a life guided not by what we get but by what we give. . . Godly leaders may feel like they are too young, too old or can't do public speaking . . . But they are captured by a vision of what could be." (somewhat paraphrased)

God is challenging us.

God called YOU. You are 'them.' Jesus said, "Feed them."

I listened to Gil Rendle speak last night at the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He talked about the man who lay for 38 years, paralyzed, by a pool of water that occasionally would be stirred for healing those who got in quick. When the waters were stirred, healing came.Gil said, "You would have thought in that 38 years that he at least had devised a strategy!" It's when the waters are troubled, moving, stirring - that God is beckoning.

"We've been trying to CALM the waters when God is trying to cause trouble!"
- Gil Rendle, Annual Conference, June 16, 2009

 Leadership is to take action when the waters are troubling. Leadership is to courageously move when anxiety is high, and there seems to be no definitive answer. Leadership is not to make things feel calm, when God is moving and stirring up trouble.

Finally, leadership is to be willing to lead without knowing the way. Others will cave to a quick fix or immediate bandaid that simply makes us feel better about our church and ministry. Leadership means to say, "We don't know the answer yet. Let's ask some new questions of ourselves and dig deeper."

When the worship attendance numbers are down, it's easy to find new programs or "this solution" to increase numbers. It's more troubling to ask other questions: "Who's missing?" Are children here? Are people coming but slipping out the back door? Who is it that we are chasing away? Is our vision of what God wants to do with us slipping away unnoticed? Where is anxiety felt in our congregation and why? What do we tell others about our church? What do we tell ourselves about our church behind closed doors?

To change the system of any congregation from death to fruitfulness, a Leader has to have courage to live in troubled waters, and lead others through the places God is asking for a new sight in seeing the stirred up places.

There's nothing like a fresh, clean sheet of screen to design, huh? If you're like most "non-designers" that fresh, clean screen can become like your worst nightmare! Where to start? The Non-Designer's Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site by Robin Williams and John Tollet is for everyone without a design degree in school. What you don't know can hurt you!

 If you want some online guidance that matches some of the book, look no further than "ratz cafe," a clever design and tutorial cafe. This book is comprehensive and assumes you know nothing to very little. But unless you're by trade a web designer, you'll find useful information here because it covers the spectrum from beginner to slightly more proficient than your average software coder. (Design and coding are two completely different ballparks.)

The top five things I learned from this invaluable source of information from excellent designers:

1. On Google, a more effective search can be accomplished by going to "Google Directory" where you can search by topic. But if you want a really good search, read the directions at the Google Help Center: Basics of Search and Advanced Search Tips. Amazing.
2. A good browser like Mozilla Firefox helps with design. Best yet - it's free! They have a web development add-on package that has proved invaluable. And another blogger, Christopher Heng, has written a tutorial to use the free Mozilla Composer for creating websites. One of the hardest parts of website design is that different browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape, Firefox, etc.) interpret code differently, thus creating a different website appearance (or breaking your nice appearance). It's important to test your site in multiple browsers before launching.
3. Typography. This blog uses "Trebuchet" - which is one example of a "sans-serif" font (aka letter). "Sans" means "without" and it is without the serif (or closing marks at the end of lines). Typically, headlines use a different type of font - "serif." However, on the web, a sans serif for the body text is crucial. It affects our ability to read and not get frustrated trying to read. The screen greatly affects how our brain processes images - fonts being one of those images. Arial is a common sans serif font. It's important to use a common font, as people must have that font on their own computer (without special coding tricks).
4. I learned about alignment. Any really good template will be especially careful about alignment. That's why some of the open source cms templating systems are frustrating, although they are improving (in my humble opinion). The open source templates often leave gaps or spaces through their css coding that doesn't allow for proper alignment. Imagine a ruler from every edge on your webpage - down and across text, images, columns, headers. It should neatly align to guide the eye on a feast of discovery. There's a lot more in the book.
5. You want to decide before design what the most important things are on your page! Your design revolves around "showcasing" what's most important (especially if people only stay on your site for less than one minute). There are several pieces of design that affect this one fact.

Here are the key components in the book:

• What is the web, a plug-in, a browser, and how do you do an effective web search in a browser anyway?
• The mechanics of actually making a web page
• How to organize your files so you can find them two years later
• How print vs. web affects design: planning, costs, information sharing, file size, etc.
• Basic design principles that MUST be used every time (and worth the price of the book alone)
• How to design navigation that creates flow rather than traffic jams - or worse yet clicks away from your site when people can't find stuff
• How to use color and monitor resolutions
• Understanding graphic formats and their optimal uses
• How to create typography that can be EASILY read online
• Lots of advanced tips and tricks (beyond the basics) - slicing, layers, using photoshop, rollovers, making forms, flash
• How to test your site
• How to market your site

Whew! There's a lot of great stuff in here.

I can’t believe it worked! I’ve tried to install LAMP before so that I could have a localhost server for testing pages and joomla previously – with much growling and frustration unbecoming to a lady. I was reading here (http://techwhimsy.com/local-development-installing-xampp) today as I was getting ready to launch this new blog site and a whimsical thought attacked my brain: WHY NOT TRY IT AGAIN! It’s so good to see the browser come up with XAMPP all fired up and ready to dance!

Thanks Shane Perris in Australia!

If you don’t know what XAMPP is – look at Shane’s article and he’ll explain what you would want it for!

To install Joomla onto this localhose XAMPP – see Shane’s tutorial at www.techwhimsy.com.

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