Your Table is Smarter than You

I don't have much to say about this, other than this is pretty cool.

God, iPod, and Microsoft

I recently stumbled on this video parody of the Microsoft version of iPod. It is funny in its own right, and I've seen millions of "If Microsoft made..." kind of writings. When I viewed this one though, something struck a chord with me. Its the difference between simplicity, elegance, excellence, and "overdone".



This made me think of church outreach, evangelism, and of worship. We often talk about how the message itself is fundamental, but the means of communicating the message are changing and changeable.

But it certainly is possible to overdo the message and create a lot of distracting "noise" that diverts people away the fundamental message.

Maybe this is an offshoot of the KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid). Its easy to create fancy bells and whistles in our message and in our worship, but sometimes simplicity, elegance, and pure excellence is the most effective way.

Church Marketing - Seriously

In my previous post I noted a cartoon about church marketing. I also posted this to our church's forum, and the question of why this was so close to home came up. I've been doing some thinking about this, and here are some random observations.

Marketing? Can that be Christian?

Most people think of "marketing" in a secular sense, and it seems somehow foreign to church, in that trying too hard at marketing may be a "bad thing" and not Christian. But I think Paul was all about marketing. 1 Corinthians 9 comes to mind:

I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?
Run in such a way as to get the prize.

That sounds like "good marketing". Its the basis of the Great Commission too, isn't it?

So why do we Christians feel somehow "guilty" about good marketing?

Equipped?

There's a whole webiste and blog devoted to (bad) church marketing. This web site and the cartoon say a lot about equipping in our church. A marketing firm is full of trained, experienced marketing people. In church, we look for volunteers. Maybe the volunteers know how to do marketing; maybe they don't. I don't think its an issue of a church recruiting trained marketing people, its an issue of making sure the people who volunteer are properly trained and equipped.

Again, Paul is all over this - look at the next verse of the 1 Corinthians 9 passage mentioned above:

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.

When we talk about "equipping disciples" in church, its easy to imagine "churchy" things, like Bible studies, etc. But equipping in areas like marketing, outreach (and technology) can be, and should be, just as important.

Time? I don't Have Time!

I recently stumbled across a post in Tony Morgan's blog describing an article in Men's Health about volunteering. I don't read Mens' Health, and I couldn't find any information on their web site, so I'm going on the data from Tony Morgan's post, but here are some figures:

• Women are more likely than men to volunteer.
• 32% of women serve in some volunteer capacity compared to 25% of men.
• Working mothers are the most active as volunteers.
• Busy people are more likely to volunteer.

The interesting one to me is the last one. I think this is some indicator of the old 80/20 rule, that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. So with the same people doing things, are we maximizing our resources?

And those 20% are already busy according to the survey. I know a common refrain heard around our church is "I'm so busy, I just don't have time!" I can hardly argue with that - balancing work and family is hard enough, let alone church. But is it easier sometimes to just say you don't have time for something rather than making a sacrifice for Christ?

I'm reminded of the "Cost of Following Jesus" passage in Luke 9. For the longest time I wondered how I would react if I was asked to leave everything behind to follow - I always imagined it as some "big moment"; but I came to understand that this applies to even the littlest things and in the smallest of moments, like making extra time to do something for discipleship. Discipleship ain't easy.


I don't mean for this to be any kind of slam on people doing marketing, especially in our church. I think we are trying, and are succeeding in areas. But I'd like to think there's always room for doing better.

Here are some interesting church web sites, for example, and some interesting uses of billboards.

Church Marketing

I recently came across this cartoon about church marketing (click on the cartoon to enlarge)

The cartoon is courtesy of Cartoon Church.com.

While I'm not sure its entirely accurate, I think there's probably some amount of truth to it ;-)

Tower of Video

Blogger just introduced a new featured called the Video Bar. It allows you to specify a search for video from Google Video and YouTube, and will show a small tower of video links which will play at the top of your blog when clicked.

I put this in my blog as an experiment - it searches for "Church Outreach" and "web2.0" - I'm got to see if this shows up anything interesting. Since I can't necessarily control what shows up from those searches I'll have to apologize in advance if something "bad" happens to show up.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

I recently came across this interesting illustration of web 2.0, from Professor Michael Wesch from the Kansas State Cultural Anthropology Department.

(full size version from YouTube is here)



Its one of the most powerful (and dizzying) explanations of the current state of the web. If you've been around the web for a while, its easy to stay stuck in the past, and think of static web sites that are controlled by others. This video shows that the power and content of both reading and publishing lie with all of its participants.

Two things come to mind when I think of church outreach

1) the possibilities of sheer numbers for outreached (his video has reached over 1.7 million viewers)
2) the opportunities to boost ministries through information sharing and collaboration.

I'm trying in my own way to help the cause at our church, through this blog, use of del.icio.us, flickr, and ways of consolidating feeds into manageable content. I'm finding that the more I read, the more I find, and the more I need to read.

Technology in Worship: Pixel or Perish

I found an article in the Arizona Republic recently titled "Technology Advocate tells Pastors: Pixel or Perish". I found the original online article here.

I don't think I found anything incredibly new or exciting here, but I wanted to share it.

I think the one part that stood out for me is this quote:

"People under 50 don't remember what they hear," he said. "They remember what they see. If you look at a church that's dying, they have nothing for the eye."

I'm really interested in use of worship visuals to aid in making a connection between worship and personal discipleship. I think the visual aspect is a key element to worship.

Here's an interesting warning though:

"But if screens in churches have become ubiquitous, too many use them to project sermon notes or song lyrics...That becomes so deadly...Why put more words on the screen? The human brain needs access to a lot of information and can handle it. Action, movement, makes it more dimensional."

There's definitely a fine line between too-little and too-much.

Why Anxious?

Naming something new is always hard. When I was coming up with a name for this blog last week I was trying to think of something technical at first. But I knew that I wanted to discuss other things that were perhaps less technical, but still related to outreach ministry.

So I decided I wanted a name that would reflect my general state of being. Number one - I'd like to be a disciple. Our church's ministry is about making passionate disciples. Check. Secondly, I also wanted to describe the passion I feel about my personal ministry of trying to help our church with technology. But at the same time, I wanted to reflect some sense of how overwhelmed I can feel.

While running through words in my head the word "Anxious" came up. Sure, I feel anxious a lot - I'm sure anyone who knows me can tell you that. Being anxious can often be thought of as a bad thing. Dictionary.com says

uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried

Well, OK, maybe a little extreme, but I have worry and fear some times when faced with the "great unknown" of technology for Christ.

But, here's the cool part. Anxious can also mean

earnestly desirous; eager

So...bingo. At the same time, I feel fearful and worried, but also very eager and passionate about what I'm doing. So, I'm the anxious disciple.

What's all this then?

So, then. It's the first post. The "hello world" program. The Initial Program Load.

Why am I doing this? Well, good question. I don't imagine many people will read this, and I think that's one reason I haven't started a blog before now.

For the longest time, I thought that blogs were primarily meant for other people. Over the last few weeks, however, I've been reading lots of other blogs, and I've come to the realization that blogs can be useful for organizing personal thoughts and writing things down. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I suppose its not shocking that I haven't realized this before.

I decided to start this blog because I wanted a place to write down, keep track of, and organize random thoughts about my involvement with technology and media ministry in our church.

Over the last year or so, I've been working in creating a web site for our church. I'm interested in web2.0 and exploring new ways of doing outreach through the internet and the web. I don't feel I'm "there" yet at all.

So I plan to use this blog to mention other stuff I've found that I like, write down where I'm at, and maybe where I'm not at either. So there you go.