Sticks & Chisels 4.Bonus

I know about 20 people who started blogging (or significantly increased the rate of their posts) about 5 months ago. They were all in the course I took which led to this Sticks & Chisels series of posts. Some of them have blogged before, some of them set up their very first posts on our first day of class. It's been fun to watch as they get into it (or don't) and I always speculate about the fate of their blogs now that the semester is coming to a close.

We were assigned a total of 17 posts - and my guess is that for a lot of the students, 17 (or maybe something less) will be the total number of their post count for quite some time. Some of the students only posted because it was an assignment. Now that the semester's done and the assignment due, the posting will stop. The motivation is gone.

Sticks & Chisels 4.4

This weekend, a couple van loads of WestWay students went to Cheyenne for a weekend focused on the Word - the emphasis was great and fits perfectly into the recent and upcoming flow of our student ministry. More and more lately, we're sensing God's challenge to dig deeply into the Bible and learn to recognize His voice there.

Weekend trips like that are almost always fruitful in developing relationships and intently focusing on spiritual development. But one aspect of these trips that always leaves me tired is this crazy thing that happens when you get to your housing assignment, throw down the sleeping bags, & turn off the lights on a room full of young guys: I'm still suffering the effects of a weekend of sleep deprivation!

Sticks & Chisels 4.3

The following clip comes from a messaged titled The Cost of Discipleship from Mark Driscoll out at Mars Hill in Seattle. I found the message link as I was looking at their FAQ page for the Mars Hill Internship, which I was looking at after reading this article from Mars Hill intern, Ross Lester. The whole message is a good one for the church to hear, but this clip in particular sums it up for me. Don't quit following Jesus.

Remember when you first decided to become a disciple of Jesus? You probably felt there was nothing you wouldn't do for Him. But maybe the years have lulled you into something other than discipleship, something much more comfortable and much less costly. Ask yourself what price you're paying for your discipleship right now. If the price is low, you may be buying stock in some kingdom other than Jesus'.

As Easter approaches, take some time to evaluate what you're really following in your life. Are you still answering His invitation to come and die? Is there a price you've ceased being willing to pay?

Sticks & Chisels 4.2

I came across an interesting study today dealing with the use of and attitudes held toward social media by college students. The study was originally done in a class of a couple hundred students at the University of Maryland, but was subsequently undertaken by a dozen different universities throughout the world. About a thousand students in Uganda, Chile,  the UK, the US, China, Lebanon, Argentina, Mexico, Slovakia, and Hong Kong participated in a 24-hour assignment in which they used no media: no phones, no newspapers, no video games, no tv, no internet, no iPads... you get the picture. These students unplugged.

While the scope of the study isn't really broad enough to say this represents all young people, it's interesting to read their responses. Technology is everywhere and media is consumed in nearly every moment of many lives. Some students enjoyed the break, but many recognized what they called their addiction to media.

There CAN be too much of a good thing. A recent Fuller Youth Institute article talked about a report in Pediatrics (the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics) about the use and effects of social media on children and adolescents (and their families). In addition to the benefits of social media use, the report highlights a number of new problems that are coming up like online harassment, "facebook depression", sexting, & what amounts to manipulation via targeted ads.

All this should simply serve as a reminder. We shouldn't just blindly buy into whatever is next in the social media/technology world. Think about what we're doing and the patterns we're setting. What kind of mess are we making when we thoughtlessly plug in to whatever comes next?

Sticks & Chisels 4.1

This is a recent shot at a map of stats from this blog. Notice anything unusual? Oui, that! Over a thousand pageviews from France in the past month! (Which is about a thousand pageviews more than in the rest of this blog's history.) "Hi, France." I don't know why there's been a sudden surge in French interest (the only French people I know live in Omaha & Lincoln), and to be honest, I suspect it's only some kind of exaggerated glitch in the stats reporting... but it reminds me, and you, that the reach of your message doesn't have to be limited to your local boundaries.

When I first started blogging, I didn't set out to build a worldwide following (not that I would say that's happened anyway). I just felt like I had a message to share, and blogging opened up the potential for me to do that with a whole new group of people. I have had interactions, both online and face to face, with new friends from far off and exciting places like L.A., Canada, China (where apparently my blog was banned at one time), and Intercourse, PA... because of windows opened in the blogging world.

I'm not out to be an international blogging sensation. Fame doesn't really interest me as a whole. Maybe I'm lying there, but even if you're a famous blogger, you're still viewed as some crackpot blogger. Even other bloggers downplay the significance of bloggers. But blogging has helped me share thoughts and encouragement with other people that I'd never have connected with otherwise. It's extended my reach.

Do you have something to say? Maybe a blog would help you say it (but if you spell like the blind chimpanzee in my last post, maybe not). Maybe you already have a blog, but it mostly sits idle. If that's the case, ask yourself why you started blogging in the first place. Go back and read a few of your very first posts and be reminded. Maybe you need to re-boot your blog. Maybe you need to scrap it and start over. Maybe you just need to write again. (Check out BlogRocket for some great new resourcing/encouragement for your blogging adventure.)

Sticks & Chisels 3.4

(Continuing thoughts regarding the use of media in ministry)

...First and foremost, the media ministry must always keep in mind that their function is to enhance the church's communication (internal, as well as external).

Anchored in that mentality, it’s best for a church to make use of every technology it can effectively manage. This will depend on a number of factors, like church size, location, and budget, and the personal expertise of the media ministry team. There’s little argument about the use of older technologies. Who would oppose the use of print in the church, or electricity? When it comes to adapting newer technologies, however, there is sometimes resistance to what can be seen as unnecessary innovation. The keepers of the status quo may even feel threatened by proponents of technology and media that they don’t understand. Balance is important here. We don’t have to always chase the latest and greatest, but we should certainly be aware of the pulse and pace of technology’s current advance. Imagine a preacher who carved out his messages with sticks and chisels. He’d be seen as a relic and much of his message, no matter how good it is, may be lost to the perception of irrelevance.

Which leads into my final assertion regarding media ministry. More important than any technology we use or don’t use is this fact: we are the media. We are the media that God is using to reveal Himself to the world. God has a message He wants to deliver, and He wants to do so through our lives. If a certain media technology enhances our ability to be used by God to communicate His love and ours, then we should take hold of that tool and put it to use. But we are by no means obligated to use any particular media just because it is there. And we should be careful to craft our use of any media technology to minimize our separation from the intended recipients of His message. 

Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This letter is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.              -Paul

Sticks & Chisels 3.3

We're closing out a missions emphasis period here at WestWay and had a guest speaker yesterday. Dave Robinson is a Bible College professor, an elder here at the church, one of my lifelong friend's dad, & my wife's uncle. More to the point, he's also very passionate about missions, having given several years of his life to translating Scripture for the Mbore speaking people of PNG (and many others to helping English speakers understand the Word as well). During Dave's sermon yesterday here at WestWay, he mentioned how we have to be faithful to the message of Christ AND creative in using every resource at our disposal to communicate that message. His statement reminded me of a paper I wrote a few weeks ago that I had intended to post here. I never got around to posting, but now I will... Here's what I think I think about using media in ministry.
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... And God has given us the task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others. We are Christ’s ambassadors, and God is using us to speak to you. We urge you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, “Be reconciled to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.             -Paul

The church has been entrusted with the greatest message known - that the reconciliatory love of our Maker has been offered to humanity in the atoning death of His own Son, and that the power that affected His resurrection is the same power available to work transformationally in our own lives. By any measure, that is a hugely consequential message to carry to an innumerably vast and diverse audience. Eternal life and death are at stake, so we should make the most of every available resource for the communication of that message. That is the essence of media ministry.

The word, media, is used to talk about a means of communication. Media is simply a conduit for the transference of a message from the giver to the receiver. Media ministry, then is not about the shiny, new toys of technology. It is about the effective communication of Christ. This is a key issue to effectively leading the media ministry of a church. It’s too easy to become so distracted by Dells and pixels that the technology can actually hinder our communications efforts. First and foremost, the media ministry must always keep in mind that their function is to enhance the church’s communication (internal, as well as external).
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I'll post the rest of the paper later this week, but for now:

• What are some creative uses of media you've seen? 
• How are you making the most of the resources available to you to communicate Christ's message?

Sticks & Chisels 3.1

Image: Kyle Key via creationswap.com

Without interaction, social media is basically pointless. Dare I say it... "Like so much other media!" Without the give and take and sharing of opinions, social media is just a bunch of introverted narcissists staring deeply into their own mirrors. Blogs are one part of the social media parcel. This blog, for example - I started it, I write it, I am responsible for it. But I don't want this blog to just be me spouting my opinions & collected thoughts. That's what books are for, right? Just kidding authors! A blog is completed (or maybe fulfilled would be a better word) by the thoughts of a community sharing perspectives. But there are some obstacles to that sort of interaction online. Here are several:

• Fear of Broaching Boundaries - We are afraid to say something wrong. Is there a different etiquette to online interactions? It seems some people lose all sense of civility when digitally interfacing. We know we don't want to be those people, but we're not quite sure where the line is, so we just stay quiet. If this is you, step out a little bit. Don't be a jerk, but share your thoughts.
• Fear of Exposure - We're afraid to reveal something about ourselves to people we don't know. A colleague recently stepped into the realm of facebook, very reluctantly. He'd been afraid that specters from his past would arise to cloud the respect & relationships of today. It was great to see those fears assuaged a couple days ago as he connected with a long-distance grandson he loves like crazy. Remember that the internet is a very public place and not every detail of your life needs to be shouted from the rooftop - but really being known in relationship requires taking the risk of letting someone close enough to see our faults.
• Technological Roadblocks - Sometimes, we just can't figure out how to comment the way we want to. I know this has been a problem here. I get e-mails often from some of you who wanted to comment, but had a hard time navigating the comment section. While I've tried to make it easy, the system doesn't always work. And if I make it too easy, the comments can quickly become a dumping ground for all kinds of unwanted junk. I'm actually looking at a couple options to make this easier - possibly installing a different commenting system in the template if I can figure that out, or moving the blog altogether to another service with easier commenting.

What other boundaries do you see to connecting online?

Sticks & Chisels 2.4

I found a link to something called The Table Project that looks interesting. It seems to be an attempt to accomplish some of the community building that I've mentioned here before. In light of discussions in and out of class, I thought I'd share the video here as well.

Basically, The Table is a platform built for group interaction. I really like the potential for this to connect people - from basic introduction to praying and working and playing together. Being a part of the same crowd for a couple hours on Sunday morning is just not enough to be discipled, to be an integral part of the Body.


The Table Project - Introduction from The Table Project on Vimeo.
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What do you think of this use of technology to deepen relationships?
What other ways are you seeing churches really engage with each other in the mission we're given?

Sticks & Chisels 2.2

This time of year here in western Nebraska usually brings with it some adverse weather. The weather app on my dashboard is telling me it's cold enough to keep Lassie inside even if Timmy was dumb enough to fall into another hole. It's up to about 11 degrees this afternoon and will be 20 below tonight. Last night, we had several inches of snow blow in and blow around and just generally blow all night long.

The technical term for all this cold, snowy iciness: winter.

We like to pretend it's a surprising annoyance, but it's pretty much like this EVERY year. Days without a clear sky or a non-icy surface street... cold, cold, and more cold... fresh clean blankets of snow slowly coagulating into a slushy, muddy mess... This is winter. In a lot of places, these kinds of conditions would be paralyzing. Here, we bundle up and kick winter in the teeth.

It's not because we're so tough and ready to fight anything - you'll hear more than an earful of whining today, I'm sure about how this or that should have been cancelled and how the piles of snow are so inconveniently placed. Actually, we owe a lot to the technologies that allow us to keep going when everything around us is frozen. Road sanders, salt trucks, plows, snow shovels, gloves and coats, well insulated buildings, furnaces, boilers...

Frozen fountain in Tucson!

This has all led me to thinking about the usefulness of various technology. These technologies that are so useful for a west Nebraska winter are mostly useless in Palm Springs (where it is currently 66 degrees if you're interested). What would you do with a snow plow in Galveston?

In ministry, we're often quick to jump on technology bandwagons (when budgets allow of course). We see technologies put into use and quickly try to find a way we can justify the shiny, new, light-blinking system for whatever it is that we weren't doing before. Maybe we need to slow down and think about context - is the tool useful? Is it useful, HERE?

I ask this as someone who likes new technologies. I'm not the best capacitor on the motherboard when it comes to all the new technological developments, but I do like discovering something useful that wasn't available before. But I don't want to try to force things to be useful. If the technology is more work than its capacity for being productive, that kind of misses the point, doesn't it?

Then again, this picture was taken last week by my brother in Tucson. Maybe I should send him a snow shovel, just in case...

Sticks & Chisels 1.4

Aggregate is a pretty versatile word. Noun, adjective, verb. Aggregate hits the cycle. Aggregate is like a Swiss Army knife of a word - maybe not the one with everything, but at least the one with the micro scissors and a the toothpick in the side. Aggregate has a lot going for it. According to our friends at Merriam-Webster to aggregate is to collect or gather into a mass or whole.

One of my favorite apps so far in my iPad experimentation, flipboard, is essentially an aggregator of selected RSS, twitter, & facebook feeds. I like how it takes a lot of information, photos, videos, articles, etc. and puts them all into one magazine-like digital space. It occurs to me that we're all aggregators - we all gather information, experiences, people, and stuff. Every day, something new is brought into the cluster of my life (and yours). I want to make sure that whatever the raw material is that I'm gathering, I am also faithfully caring for whatever God has seen fit to allow into my life.

• What have you been aggregating lately? What kinds of people and attitudes have you been gathering & clustering around you and influencing? 
• Into what have you been aggregated? What bodies or groups are you a part of that are influencing you? 
• What kinds of ideas are you aggregating (and curating)?

Sticks & Chisels 1.3

Last weekend, I got to take a group from our student ministry to a gathering of about 300 students and youth leaders for a great time of worship, challenge, and skiing. I know, I know... the proverbial youth group ski trip sounds like a bunch of fun (and it was), but I can honestly say that the skiing was not the highlight of the weekend.

Delusions of Pluto led worship for the weekend and did a great job drawing us into a musical celebration of God's presence. Both my students and adults were inspired to worship God and enjoyed being led by these guys.

Terry Davis of Greeley's Journey Christian Church  challenged us in what it means to be Salt and Light in the world today. Terry's a great guy and it was awesome to see our students responding to his call to live out the word of God.

On the way home, right after lunch, I was thinking I may be able to keep the noise level down in the van if I could get the students engaged in something all together. I pulled out my iPad, plugged it into the van's tape deck, and asked if they wanted music or a podcast. We ended up listening to Francis Chan speak to a group of leaders at last year's Unleash at Newspring Church (you can see video of the whole conference here). This wasn't a fluffy, stand up act of a podcast - it was Francis Chan poring over Scripture and pouring out his heart for Jesus and leaning into the courage it takes to believe like the people in the Bible did.

After a whole weekend of listening intently to God's Word, they wanted more! So for most of the rest of the ride, we listened to Mark Driscoll speak (from the same conference) about the idea that we won't be used greatly by God until we've suffered deeply for God. (Did I mention I was driving the van full of high school kids?) These students are going to change the world - even if it's one diaper at a time.

Sticks & Chisels 1.2

There are 168 hours in every week. The highest proportion of church members will spend about 2 of those hours "at church" on Sunday morning. Add in a couple hours with a small group and an hour or so in a Sunday School class or Bible Study and you get 5, maybe 6 hours for the people who seem to be at church "all the time".

What does three and a half percent look like?

Most people would consider someone who goes to Sunday School, worship, Bible study, and a small group to be pretty heavily involved in church. But this heavily involved person, in reality, has spent about 3% of his time in those congregational activities. (Doesn't sound so heavy when you look at it that way...)

It's obvious that 3% of a person's time is not enough to be truly connected with the body and engaged in Jesus' mission for the church. If we really are the Body of Christ, we need to be connecting with each other outside of a congregation's weekly-held, regular programming. We can do that through meals, sports, hanging out, working out, working for the good of someone else together... Projects like Habitat for Humanity and the soup kitchen are some great opportunities we have locally to connect with each other AND engage in His mission. One of the greatest assets of the trips we take in our youth ministry is the time we spend together, getting to know each other and growing relational connections to each other.

It's easy to see how these things help us to be a continuous church - one that is always open. But I wonder, too if we can effectively leverage technology to help people in the church stay connected outside of Sunday mornings? What could a great web site coupled with solid social media training do for our level of engagement? What if every message and lesson were echoed by dozens of tweets, blogs, and status updates?
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In a related post for leaders, Ron Edmondson lists these 7 Reasons You Need Social Media as a Christian Leader: (though he does qualify that "need"may be too strong a word)

• Networking with people who are making a difference.
• Go where people are. 
• You’ll meet great friends. 
• Keep updated on breaking news. 
• Wise use of time. 
• Breaks down barriers between people. 
• Stay current with culture. 

Sticks & Chisels 1.1

"Sticks & Chisels" will be an ongoing, weekly post reflecting on a class I'm taking this semester at Summit Christian College. This is the first of the series.
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What if we ignored technology's development?

Technology is with us. It always has been. Creative use of sticks and chisels, the wheel, the fulcrum & lever, pulley systems, weapons, wagons, the battery, lightbulbs... the discovery and ability to manipulate these technologies and others have shaped our world for ages. Ancient cultures often advanced or fell (at least in part) due to their mastery of new technologies. Some sociologists & anthropologists have even made careers of exploring the relationship of cultures and their technologies. I won't dig too deep into that hole here, but if effective use of technology has shaped the history of humanity, then I think our use of technology in the church is vital to our current and future progress.

Part of why I started to blog in the first place several years ago was to take advantage of social media technology's capacity for sharing a message. This was a technology at that time, of which most of the people I knew were afraid or at least skeptical. Today, the skepticism has subsided, but not completely. There is still a lot of fear toward social media and skepticism that most new technology is nothing more than fad.

So I was excited to enroll in a class called Creative Uses of the Computer in Ministry. We started Tuesday night, and I'm anticipating some very productive Tuesday nights this semester! I knew ahead of time who was going to be in the class for the most part, but it was awesome to get to know the 1 guy that I didn't already know. He's a 70 year old retired pharmacist from Gering who just wants to get a better handle on how he can use computers to serve Christ.

It was awesome to watch as he set up a blog for the first time. He was unsure of this new territory, but excited to jump in and try something new. I have no idea what technologies will exist when I'm 70 years old, but I hope that I'll have that same attitude. I hope to always be willing to learn something new that will help me to reveal God to people who don't notice Him.