Here are my recommended books for a good read.
Feel free to send me your best book recommendations as well.
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Talk for those serving God creatively.
Richard Reising recently put up an older blog from pastors.com. A man complains that his church is not growing and says that he doesn't know why. But as he's challenged about what he thinks a friend he might bring to church would actually say or think about his church, the man grows quiet.
And then he says, "I know why my church isn't growing."
Wonder what our congregation members would say their friends would say? Perhaps we should find out.
I just read a great overview report on a big wave coming through the social scene in a town near you - soon! Read all about Google Wave here. The hype says this will be like one gigantic dashboard of your social networking super-charged.
The part that really interested me for my line of work is the project management application.
Here's how the project management is said to work. You have an open ap on your desktop, and you invite your team for a live meet-up through Google Wave. Okay, 2 pm meeting with your church folks who all push back from their desks for 10 minutes to discuss a decision that needs to be made. The write-up says you can watch each other type, live, character by character.
Do you focus on strategies ... or on people and their feelings? This is an interesting dilemma.
What's the dilemma, you say? For the Church, our call is to follow Jesus. Sometimes to follow Jesus is in opposition to the mood or thought of the church! It'd be much easier if we were always about following Jesus.
To complicate matters, hearing Jesus as a community together takes a lot of concentration, work and trust.
Sunday's worship centered around Matthew 7 and Jesus' words about our human propensity to judge others, harshly. Planks were described: categorizing people, taking sides in an "us vs. them" way, spreading gossip (what we say when that person isn't around about them), and "tolerating" people rather than "challenging" people.
The concluding illustration was the piece from Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent April 11, 2009. The crowd was laughing at her. She seemed to stumble over her words and by first appearances didn't seem to be a "star" the country could root for. See the performance here.
But her singing began and she surprised the crowd. As one of the judges said, "That was a pure privilege to listen to."
Jeremiah Owyang wrote back in July, 2008 - "50 Ways to Use Social Media, By Objective." I am mentioning this so that I can use his objectives and mention a few ways for churches to adapt his take on Social Media objectives.
Just because there is social media available, and just because we might use it, doesn't mean that it will do anything for us.
Jeremiah and others have shown ways to be critically savvy with social media. I'll add my interpretation for the Church, ala Jeremiah's objective list, and in a future post consider ways to meet these objectives together as a church.
The United Methodist Church is stepping out and stepping up.
"The commission has affirmed the reality that the world has changed�that digital media have changed how we perceive the world, how we relate to each other and how we act out our faith in the world," said the Rev. Larry Hollon, top staff executive of United Methodist Communications. "In doing that, this becomes a priority for us to lead the church toward that new reality," said Bishop Thomas Bickerton.
They have hired Kintera, Inc. to build effective online community. Way to go church!
I listened to Shane Hipps in February, 2009 at the National Pastor's Convention in a seminar and then in this interview. It is great food for thought and I encourage you to listen and comment.
See also: Does Technology Alter the Message?
The story in worship this weekend is about how easily it is to criticize others. (Matthew 7: 1 -7) We're all a part of that story. I was looking for something from regular pop culture that could show how easily we criticize others, and what better than watching the American Idol judges. Simon has earned his reputation through distasteful zingers. And we hang out to hear how over the top he can be with the next comment. But Jesus said, "How can you think of saying, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,' when you can't see past the plank in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:4)
I haven't actually heard Simon sing. Hmmmm. Speck? Plank!
See the clip we'll use part of here.
10thousanddoors.com is a revolutionary site using social media and online community building (and feel) to ask the question: "What if church wasn't just a building, but thousands of doors?" It leads you to a question in your mind (the reader): "A door to what?" Visionary. From slick to meaningful and very interactive. Engaging. All of the right stuff that a church should be doing to engage others in real dialogue.
The site is the message: We are 10 thousand doors and there's one for you to open. The goal of the site is to get you to walk through one of their doors. On their home page, they provide a lot of doors to choose from with teaser questions or comments. WE LOVE CHOICES!
As I have been looking at templates and creating several concoctions, I've been tremendously grateful for Firefox's Firebug! Best of all, it's free!
Here's what it is:
You can use Firebug with other browsers. For social media connections, I HIGHLY recommend using "Flock" (called The Social Web Browser). With my Flock, I keep live connections in the browser sidebar (like Twitter and Facebook as well as the feeds to blogs and places I love).
