Like a fire

Why I Don’t Twitter

Back Online

So I haven’t posted anything since last week. My server was hacked last Friday and I have just got it back up again. I am now with a new host (hostmonster.com) and have left my old one (siteground.com) whose tech support used to be really great and now is nonexistent. I’ll have more updates this week, but I am switching almost all of my sites over to hostmonster, so I won’t have a lot of time.

Smitten

I have been blogging about a lot of deeper issues lately, so I decided to put a little levity into the mix. That, and I had this great visual from Maker today. It’s called the Smitten and it is for people who like holding hands but don’t want to brave the cold weather.

This picture makes me feel a bit like a grumpy od man though. Back in my day, we cared enough about our loved ones to get frostbite. And my circulation was strong enough that I could usually warm not only my hand, but my girlfriends as well. Oh well, enough said.

Twitterpated

This may come as a bit of a surprise to many of you, but I don’t use Twitter. Not only do I not use Twitter, but  don’t really ever plan to. I usually try to stay ahead of the curve on technology and this would be a good way to do that, but there are some hang ups I have about it that I think bear mentioning. In case you don’t know Twitter it is “frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

First thing, I don’t really think anyone wants to know what I am doing throughout the day, at least enough to check. Don’t get me wrong, I have my share of stalkers and I do enjoy a bit of celebrity since I live in Alabama and used to have a mullet. I just don’t really have any people that want to follow my day like that.

Second, or B as Cathy would say, I don’t really want people to know that I just got finished with a big project, or went to eat lunch, or got a great deal on my car insurance. Also, I’m too lazy to update said activities since I would rather be doing them that talking about them. I know that there are celebrities who have amazing traffic on their Tweets, but that just isn’t me (and I don’t have a PA to update all of that for me).

Having said all of that, I do some great uses for Twitter especially in ministry. Several youth guys are using Twitter to update their groups on specifics for meetings. Imagine doing that to coordinate small groups or many of the other activities that operate on the fly. It could also be useful for project management, though only to update status (I use basecamp).  Of course, all of this hinges on your community being open to using Twitter. I don’t have a community that even knows it exists, so it doesn’t prove very useful for me right now.

There is a great little article over at Church Marketing Sucks on this if you want some follow up.

Play Informs Our Work

I just watched this really great TEDS video from the Serious Play Conference where Tim Brown about “the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play - with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t)”. In the talk he uses many examples, some of them play, to show how people need to play and have fun to be creative. It was very informing and tells me more about how people are created to play.

I was wondering how much the church does this and how we could incorporate more of this into the church, both in the clergy and the laity. If many large successful corporations use useless seeming things to open up their work force to being more creative, then can the church ignore that.

The most interesting thing is that they create rules at his company Ideo like “defer judgment” or “go for quantity” that limit the creative process. But in some way, the limitations are what spark new ideas and ways of thinking about old ones. I remember in my days as a jazz major when learning to improvise. My professor told me to limit myself to only two notes. It was a hard exercise, but proved very useful in teaching me to be creative.

The church has no shortage on rules, but I wonder if they are the right ones. How have these rules forced church leaders to be creative and are those ways really helpful or even healthy to the church. Well, here I go thinking creatively. Give a listen to the talk if you have time.


New Way to Communicate With Teens

Those crazy guys over at Simply Youth Ministry have broken the teen barrier. It seems they have come up with a new way to communicate to teens called “txt”ing. I did some research and it seems that the mobile phone companies have been holding out on us. Apparently, most cell phones can send and receive short messages in the form of text (for those uninformed, text is another word for words or letters). Not only that, but unbeknownst to most youth leaders, the teens have known this for quite some time and have been using this technology to communicate secretly all the time. In fact, there are several plans that they are undertaking using only this technology.

The good news, at least for us youth pastors, is that SYM is helping us be more relevant (for a small fee) by providing a service to “txt” teens we know and work with. For just 10-40 dollars a month, youth pastors can communicate the teen way. This is actually a bit of a tradeoff, though. On the pro side, you don’t have to get into the other techonology that most people don’t know about yet called the “cell” or “mobile” phone. On the con side, you have to deal with another very new techonology called the “internet” or “World Wide Web” (don’t worry, it has nothing to do with spiders).

So you will have to make up your mind for yourself. I will say that SYM has a great track record since making available the “web site” in a box. I also look forward to the new technologies that SYM may tackle in the future. There are so many possibilities with some hints at things to come like:

“peer to peer” file sharing - you could sent the notes from you sermon to your kids at home on there computers. This probably won’t be feasible until much later when most homes have computers and the “internet”.

“MMOG or Massive Multiplayer Online Game” - this one is really out there but I think it is possible. One day (probably in the distant future), people are going start playing games online. When they do, they will get more for their experience if they play with a lot of people online all at once. I could see people getting together in groups, maybe called clans, and playing together. What better place for your youth group?

“Social” or “User Generated” content - this would be really cool. What if your youth group could host a site where teens could make their own user pages and put information about themselves, maybe even pictures. Again, this won’t be feasible until probably 2112 because people will have to have computers in there homes, but I think it is a possibility.

Having said all this, if you are a youth worker in the US and have never heard of any of this stuff (and your not Amish) then you might want to check out some of this stuff. If you do know about this stuff, forget about this whole article and continue doing what you have been doing all along. And if you need to send a “txt” message to many people all at once (and can’t do it from your Facebook account) then head over the Tim Schmoyer’s blog and get the lowdown on how to do it for free with txtsignal.

UPDATE: txtsignal is a pay service. For a free ride use Broadtexter.

Star Wars and Better

I am really lame. To start with, the first app I downloaded to my iPhone was the lightsaber. Not particularly useful, but impressive. Proof in the pudding is that when people see it, they don’t care about all the other really cool things it can do.

So here I am one afternoon entertaining my girls with the lightsaber app and Jane asks what it is. After a brief description followed by doe eyes from Jane, I can tell she doesn’t get it. So we watch some Star Wars. I edit some of it through fast forward, but she is enamored. Anytime I need a buddy to watch Star Wars, she is in.

So what’s better that Star Wars with your daughter? THIS!

Nothing says I love you like chocolate carbonite.

Coolest Car Coming Soon

I had a conversation with one of my youth the other day about cars. He is soon to be turning sixteen and his parents are having him pay for half of his car. This is a bit uncommon for his area and a friend of his just got the new Infiniti sports coupe from his grandparents. We were talking about what kind of cars we would get if we had about $50k to drop on one. He had a couple of ideas, but I was really stuck. I just could think of a single car I would drop that much on. I now have it.

This is the Tesla car. It goes 0-60 in 3.9 seconds and costs less than 2 cents per mile to drive. It’s not bad on the eyes either. This car screams “YOUTH MINISTRY”. Well not actually, but I hear they are announcing new lines of this car including sedans and vans. I really hope this is a hit and that the fearful gas dependent manufacturers are taking notice.

Deadly Viper Talks Sex

I have just stumbled upon a new site and group that I am really loving called - Deadly Viper. It takes a bit to capture my attention but they definitely have. How is the best part of it.

1. Their site looks amazing. I know all the common wisdom about judging a book by its cover, but I just disagree. Good design equals confidence, and these guys get that.

2. They are committed to radical grace and radical integrity. Enough said.

3. They are … quirky… and that is enough to make them remarkable (thanks Seth Godin).

Nest week they start a series on the S word. I can’t wait to hear how they tackle it. I highly recommend it.

Best use of Flash Award

This is the best use of flash I have ever seen. Arcade Fire and flash. Sweet!

http://www.beonlineb.com/click_around.html