Kay

My wife's best friend is Kay. Kay is 44 years old with three kids and an active faith. She has recurrent breast cancer that is now spreading all over her body. Sadly, it appears that the end is near, at least from a medical standpoint.

Laura (my wife, who is a church-planting pastor) visited Kay yesterday and wrote this e-mail to a number of her friends:

Many of you have been praying for Kay and have asked for updates. Most of you know that the breast cancer has now spread to her lungs and stomach, and possibly other places we don't know about. I got to see her today for the first time in 10 days due to a cold I have had. During that time, her new doctor has prescribed all kinds of pain medication in the hopes that her body could finally get some rest and maybe feel like eating a little more. The doctor has also started her on hormone therapy to help fight the cancer.

The difference between the Kay I saw 10 days and today is dramatic. The pain medication keeps her in a near-constant state of "doped" to the point that she is unable to have any kind of conversation at all. Her body looks very emaciated, and in the hour I was there today, it was a battle for her mother to get her to take three sips of Coke. And the hormones are making her agitated and irritable. When I walked in and saw her, it seemed to me like the end of her life is near - although I cannot say if that means days, weeks or months. Of course, our God can even now reverse the cancer and the damage it has done, but I think God is preparing to welcome her home soon.

Please pray for her family - for her three kids (Isabella, Micah and Juliana), for her husband Richard and her mother and step-father Zoe and Don. And I covet your prayers for me, as well. Kay has been my best friend for 14 years, and hardly a day has gone by in that time when we haven't spoken on the phone. She is such a huge part of my life, and I will need God's help to fill the emptiness when she is gone. I know that our goodbye is only temporary, but it still hurts so much to have to say it.

Internet More Popular than TV

An article from England tells us that the internet has become the favorite pass-time of folks in Great Brittan surpassing television.

AOL, Goodmail, and Non-Profits

This announcement is interesting. It seems that the PR hit AOL took from "Charging" for certified email has given non-profits a small win. AOL says they will provide a way for IRS qualified non-profits to be whitelisted and delivered around their spam filters for free forever. I guess this could end up being a good thing if others adopt the standard---At least for non-profits. I worry though that they might take the rout of some of the software companies and specifically forbid religious organizations. Though I'm not typically much for Moveon.org they seemed to help on this one. Nothing like riling up a bunch of social networking, internet savy, political activists.

Scoble on ugly design

Robert Scoble posts today about websites that are "ugly" but still commercially successful. He calls this "anti-marketing design."

But, go deeper: we’re sick of committee-driven marketing. We don’t believe it. If we ever did. We’ve built a bulls**t filter that filters out well-designed things in a commercial context. We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it.

That certainly contradicts studies I've seen that link credibility to appearance. The same content when presented more beautifully will be considered more authoritative. What's wrong with being beautiful and "real" at the same time?

Church IS Failing - Part II

In my previous post I expressed the concern of my wife and I about the worship service we attend. A service that has seen little growth over a year and is not nearly it's former self. Most of the younger crowd is missing. I'd say we met with just about everyone we should meet with, and expressed our concern for not being fulfilled in the worship service we attend. We've talked with the praise band director, the senior pastor, and the director of Foundational Ministries.

Our conclusion is that the church is not changing at the pace it needs to. Each individual we talked to has a different story. I'm not about to point fingers, and there are plenty of other circumstances you could attribute it to, but the cold hard fact is that change was needed more than a year ago - and here we are in the same situation today. It's no secret that the process of change has a greater lifespan within a church than outside of it, even in churches that are nimble. Our pastor, still newly appointed here nearly a year ago, has been extra careful with change. I understand not wanting to come off as dividing rather than a uniting - then again, how long do we continue to fail in face of not rocking the boat? In the life of a church, that can prove to be a while.

The questions that remain: Will as many people who needed the change still be around by the time change occurs? Will we still be there?

In talking with our pastor, he stated that he has implemented change in other churches quite successfully. He reminded us that change takes time. Sure, no problem. In fact, some of those changes took eight years to achieve. …. !?!?
[Insert another record scratch here]

Wow. In an age when technology allows information to flow at light speed and change to follow quickly behind, me thinks that churches need to learn how to change a bit quicker than that. I'm dumbfounded. I'm not suggesting that a change in worship style will take eight years to implement, but I'm not waiting around another one, all the time being unfulfilled in worshiping the Lord!

I will admit this is a localized problem. They're only losing the younger folks; attendance is strong among people in their 40s and higher. So even if a church like ours actually understands what is needed to survive into the future - can they do it fast enough? I'm not filled with hope at this point, and reading Barna's Revolution didn't help either. I'll talk about that next.

Brian Slezak

Blogs are postmodern wells

Mark Batterson: "For what it's worth, blogs are postmodern wells. I'm psyched about our blog groups that have launched this semester. Digital discipleship!" By "well" of course he means a place in the center of town where people gather and talk.

I'm hoping to learn something from this. If they are able to blaze the trail on the "blog groups" idea, I'll have a successful example of blog ministry to show ministry leaders at Resurrection. Go Mark! Go NCC!

Scott Reese on Myspace & Paul

In case you didn't see Scott Reese's post on Myspace & Paul, I wanted to highlight it even though it's been four weeks since he posted it. Scott is doing some very solid thinking here.

Since summer of 2005 I've been thinking a great deal about how blogging and social networking sites (like Myspace, Xanga, and Facebook) can be used for evangelism and outreach. See some of my previous posts on the subject here, here, here, and here.

I've made some efforts to educate management here at Resurrection about the potential, but haven't been able to spark them into action yet. Is anyone out there aware of a church that's effectively reaching out through social networking sites?

Postmodern Olympians

Over the last few days I have been fascinated as I watched Bob Costas and Tom Brokaw try to understand this new crop of USA Olympians. Both broadcasters are prototypical baby boomers having grown up in the era of the Miracle on Ice (that great hockey game that pitted good verses evil, US verses them, The United States Verses the Soviet Union). In those days the Olympics were serious business, the desire to compete was fueled by a nationalistic fervor intended to boost each countries claim not only to athletic superiority, but to cultural and political superiority as well.

With the fall of communism in Europe all sorts of worldview changes began to emerge. Militant Islam has filled a power and meaning vaccuume and willingly provided us with a new bad guy, but Islamic countries haven't ever competed well in the games so the joy of victory and the sting of loss just isn't the same.

Enter America's Postmodern Olympians. Here are some quotes I heard: "If I give everything I have and race the way I feel like I should race and don't come out with a single Medal, I will be just as happy as If I won 5 medals" That general sentiment was repeated over and over by Bode Miller, and though there was something about his attitude I didn't like, it was clear that part of the problem was the complete inability of Brokaw or Costas to even process that kind of postmodern, a-political, a-competitive thinking from a person who is a world class athlete. They can't imagine that Bode actually cares more about hanging out, partying, being with friends, and being in the Olympic "community" than he does about winning and crushing his opponents. Its not that they cant process his behavior, its that their modernist brains simply cannot fit it into their existing worldview as anything remotely ok.

Another Olympian that made a similar statement was Apollo Ono, In one interview he spoke openly about the fact that there is too much emphasis on the color of the medal and not enough focus on the Olympic spirit and tradition. Isn't that interesting, Ono has none of the arrogance or braggadocio of Miller yet he is echoing the same basic sentiment, we come we compete we do our best and were happy with the outcome---its you guys (read modern media) that aren't. Now at the same time watching Ono cross first to win the 500 Gold Medal and his total elation tells you that winning is still important to these new postmodern, but its just that not winning isn't quite as bad as it used to be. They seem to be more focused on the underlying purpose of the olympics to bring people of all cultures together so that they might promote understanding through the use of sport. Seems kinda cool to me...but hey I'm postmodern.

Oh one other thing: Sasha Cohen--not a post modern, Shaun White--Totally postmodern dude you can figure out why!!

Church IS Failing - Part I

This evening, my wife and I sat in a Chinese restaurant eating dinner and discussing our church. We attended the contemporary worship service last weekend, the first time in a few months to be completely honest. We stopped attending the service a while back.

A few months prior to today, we were driving home for lunch after leaving the worship service that ends just before noon. The both of us were quiet and unenthusiastic. One of asked the other, "How do you feel about the service now-a-days?" Thus began the journey into realization - that after two years of being a part of this worship service, (my wife singing in the praise band, myself running the sound board,) it was no longer filling us up but leaving us empty. The songs were getting slower, the enthusiasm lower. It just wasn't there any longer. We decided to try out some other local church services.

Here eating dinner out at our favorite Chinese place, we discussed the current condition of the service. It's pretty sickly, down around half from its peak attendance. What used to be an upbeat and growing service filled with 20's to 40's and their children, was now a slow, shrinking collection of 30's to 60's. You can see that many of the praise band members have left. We just learned today that the recent reaction to this decline was - changing to a traditional order of worship. .... !?!?!?!
[insert record scratch here]

Hold on folks! Huh!? Now, let's review that again. A contemporary service that was previously upbeat, enthusiastic, and strong, lost its impact for whatever reason - and a traditional order of worship is the shot in the arm it needs? We're desperate here! We want to worship but you're boring us! This is not a rant, but a plea. My wife and I are disappointed and unfulfilled, and we're quite obviously not the only ones. I can't say this builds a great deal of hope in my heart, from a church that has persisted over 100 years and is struggling to reach a postmodern group.

Why are they failing?

I'll make some suggestions in Part II, but if you're following me here and have any comments, I'm very interested and listening.

Brian Slezak

Online community is more than forums

Mark Stephenson, director of Web Empowered Church (WEC), posts here about how "online community" used to mean forums, but now takes many different forms. These days there are many places on a site where users could potentially post their own thoughts, requests, questions, feedback, and so on. Mark explains how WEC already has a wide variety of extensions for TYPO3 that provide church-specific functionality that fosters online community.

MegaVoice

Lee Grady at Charisma Online posts here about MegaVoice, a company that makes a solid-state, handheld audio player device, similar to an iPod. The MegaVoice is preloaded at the factory with audio that can't be changed by the user, and is capable of running on solar power. Using these devices, illiterate people all over the world can now hear the Bible read in their native languages. How cool is that?

More background here.

Integrating CRM and the Web

Duncan Rein, CEO of Silas Partners, posts here regarding how CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) should be and inevitably will be fully integrated with the church's website. This is further fuel for our previous discussion with Tony Dye and others about Church Management Systems (ChMS) and Content Management Systems (CoMS).

To put it in concrete terms, at Resurrection we're using TYPO3 for content management and Shelby for church management/CRM. I'm in agreement that ultimately we need to: A) integrate the two; or B) replace both with something else already integrated; or C) develop an open source church management/CRM that we can natively integrate with TYPO3. Right now we're working on option A, but somewhat reluctantly since this is inelegant and it's difficult to see how well it will work over the long term. Option B isn't a great one for us because we're fully committed to TYPO3 and Web Empowered Church. That leaves option C, for which my heart yearns, but we can't pursue because we have no funding or interest among executive management here.

Hmmm ... Maybe we take Tony's suggestion and sneak this in the back door by gradually building a CRM/ChMS in the form of TYPO3 extensions?

Blog Evangelism

Web Evangelism Bulletin has just posted a new article about Blog Evangelism. The article includes a brief but good overview of the difference between a blog and a traditional website. This would be good for anyone in your church who is struggling to understand the point of blogging and how it can be used in evangelism.

Naked Conversations

Naked Conversations, the long awaited book about blogging by Scoble and Israel is out now. Here's a review by Kathy Sierra. I'd be very interested in the thoughts of anyone in the church IT community about this book. Has anyone read it (or started to read it)?

What can we learn from b-linked?

A number of church tech bloggers have linked and commented on the reports regarding a recent study about teens and religion (for example: here and here). Teenage Research Unlimited did the study for B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO) an international group committed to reaching and teaching Jewish teens.

There are actually two stories here. The first story is the survey data (Word document) that BBYO released and many newspapers reported and bloggers have commented on.

The second story is that BBYO has built a new online community for Jewish teens called b-linked. The site is their strategy to address two findings: 68% of teens say religions is important to them and 92% say they want a better connection. I wish I had more time to investigate and comment further on this, but at first glance it seems that they've spent some money and built a really nice site. They report having 3,480 teens signed up so far. We need to pay attention to this. If they stick with this strategy and make it work, there will be a lot for us to learn.

1/20th of a second

Wired News reports that visitors to your website form an impression of the visual appeal of your site within 1/20th of a second. So how important are visual designers on your web team?

Another use for blogging in the church

Here's another use for blogging in the church. First United Methodist Church of La Vergne, TN recently started using a blog to publish their church newsletter to the web. I think this is a cool way for a small church to get started using web technology at no cost.

Mark Batterson on prayer

Mark Batterson: "Prayer is spiritual priming. When you live in prayer mode your spiritual radar is on. Your spiritual antenna is up. If you don't pray there will be countless God-given opportunities that come and go without you even knowing it. Why? Because you aren't primed and ready!"

MySpace is the top social networking site

USA Today just published an article on social networking sites. All the teens I know have Xanga, but it appears that MySpace is the place to be now. And of course Facebook is still exploding on college campuses.

Hat tip: Richard MacManus

Our default answer is "yes"

The people on my team will attest to fact that one of my favorite things to say is: "Our job is to find a way to say 'yes'." "No" is easy. "Yes" requires you to exercise your creativity. My "say 'yes'" philosophy is echoed in this post by Dave Ferguson.