June 2007

Monthly Archive

He who thinketh he leadeth and has no one following him is only taking a walk.

Posted by on 29 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: thoughts on life., Uncategorized

He who thinketh he leadeth and has no one following him is only taking a walk.
-John Maxwell

true or not?
what about the opposite–He who thinks he’s only taking a walk and has everyone following him is leading.
is that true?

The Viral Church

Posted by on 28 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized

One thought Seth Godin had in his book Small is the New Big (i do recommend this book in case you were wondering):

What Makes an idea viral?
No one sends an idea unless:
1. they understand it
2. they want to spread it
3. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their piece of mind
4. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No ones “get” an idea unless:
1. the first impression demands further investigation
2. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
3. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time.

so the question i have been dealing with since i read this: Is church viral? if it’s not, why not? how can we assist people to make them want to spread the idea of attending a church? how can we help people “get” it?

have we instituted barriers for entry? do we turn people off without even knowing it?

Job 16: What kind of a friend am I?

Posted by on 27 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: my life., thoughts on god., thoughts on life.

FriendsThis morning i was reading Job 16. Something jumped out at me in these verses, as Job is going back and forth with his friends:

Then Job answered and said:
“I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
hall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and shake my head at you.
I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
Job 16:1-5, ESV

What kind of a friend am I?

‘I could strengthen you’
or
‘I could…shake my head at you’

made me take a step back and look at my life.
Optimistic or pessimistic, the choice is mine.

lungs, running and reading the Bible.

Posted by on 27 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: my life., thoughts on god.

I’ve been running the past month or so. Running keeps getting easier for me as i continue to do it.
last night marked four days in a row of running–the first time i’ve done that in likely eight years. seriously.

My knees no longer are aching. my legs are so sore right now, it feels really great. I have been going out slowly and coming back moderate to hard. it has been a very good week of running for me. I am getting much closer to hitting the 20 miles/week mark.

As I am training, there are two different things i have to work on. They are really completely separate, but completely related, too. I need to get my lungs in shape, and also need to get my legs used to running faster. I could easily–very, very easily, get in 20 miles each week, just by running very, very slow. But running slowly actually does more harm than good, due to the pressure of pounding on the knees. So i need to train my legs to run faster. I can run very fast (let me know if you want to race 100 meters sometime!)–but only for a short amount of time, because my lungs get tired.

I can’t run faster without my lungs supporting the sustained speed. These two things are related, but i have to train very differently for each type of improvement. It’s worthless to have lungs in shape if i’m just running slowly (jarring my knees and doing tons of long-term damage to the knees!). One without the other gets me nowhere.

That got me thinking about my walk with God. What if all I do is go to church and that’s it? Is that enough? What if all i do is read the Bible, is that enough? What if all i do is pray, is that enough? Is it enough to just send in a tithe every month?

Or, is getting off-balance in my spiritual life actually doing more harm than good? Is it even possible to get off-balance in my spiritual walk?

My week: Development, Wi-Fi and a Flash Plugin

Posted by on 26 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: my life., New Hope stuff.

I’ve been working on several things this week, and just wanted to let you know what it was I’ve been doing.

bythebook.com
Working on customizations, including seo URLs and the introduction of a forum, which will be coming in the next few weeks. This is the company which produces the church management software we use.

CMIFellowship.com
I am working on setting up online registrations. I was hoping their new site (not designed by me) would be up and running by now, but apparently it will be several more months. This is the fellowship of churches to which New Hope belongs.

Public Wi-Fi
I have opened up public Wi-Fi at New Hope. No passwords, just free. Stop by sometime and chill in the waiting area. This is currently only strong signal in the office area and Unity Hall. I expect to strengthen this signal with high-gain antenna in the next couple of months. (please let me know if you encounter any issues (other than signal strength) with Wi-Fi at New Hope.) I do have some slight filtering in place.

Sermon Downloads
I rolled out a new flash player for sermon downloads. It is a nifty little flash player that was developed for WordPress, but was ported over to work in Joomla! as a plugin. The player seems to be working very well.

What have you been up to this week (or last!)? Something exciting, i hope!

Good Boy! How we are like pets, sometimes.

Posted by on 26 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: my life., thoughts on life.

My parents have been out of town for the past few days, visiting with my sister, who just gave birth to a son 10 days ago.

I have been taking care of their dog and two cats while they have been out of town. Although they have three pets, the three pets all act quite differently.

Allie, the nine-year old chocolate lab, pretty much sits in the garage all day and does nothing. She is always laying down when i stop by.
one of the cats, Gray, is rarely around. It seems he likes to go hunting for weeks on end. I haven’t seen Gray at all.
the other cat, who i call Charlie because he looks like Charlie Chaplin with his cute mustache, loves to rub up against your legs. But don’t pick up Charlie, because he doesn’t like that. He’ll jump down and rub up against your legs again. I saw Charlie when i was at my parents on Friday, but haven’t seen him in four days, and he hasn’t eaten any food in three days.

I was thinking about how different these three animals are. they all get fed and get taken care of, but they are very different, and they want different things.

How much more different are we from each other? Some of us like to talk a lot. Others don’t. Some of us are really knowledgeable about a certain area, while others of us are completely ignorant in that area. We are all very different, and we all need different things to make us thrive.

Can a church provide something for everything? Can a church provide only things that one certain person likes, or should it provide a more of a variety of things–something for everything?
everything for everyone, or something for each one?

Time to stop using PowerPoint?

Posted by on 25 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Communications, New Hope stuff.

PowerPoint: Waste bin
I’ve been holding this one in for a couple of months. But I wanted to share it now. Presentation Zen asks a great question: Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?
Well, is it?

I stopped doing design in PowerPoint (PPT) about three years ago. As i watched presentations, I became bored. They were annoying. Fairly disgusting, really. I now develop everything possible in Photoshop, utilizing its great advanced image editing capabilities. I do use PPT to display the images, but only as a means of display. PPT is a great display tool if the slides are properly designed.

This is a great read, and asks some great questions. Do you have any thoughts on PPT?

proper man-hug technique.

Posted by on 25 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: random., Uncategorized

No particular reason, but I wanted to share with you this great video, which details the proper technique behind giving a a proper man-hug.

Enjoy:

Hamburger.

Posted by on 25 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Communications

hamburgerEver wonder why people at McDonald’s do not greet you with, “Hello, what are you going to buy from me today?”

Instead, it is, “Hello, what can I get for you?”

Do you see the difference? The first is about me. (you buy from me), the second, is all about you.

People don’t care about you (sorry). They care about themselves. If you want to help get people from point A to point B, it has to be for their own benefit, not yours. In their timing. On their schedule. On their terms.

Ice Cream is Like Life.

Posted by on 22 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: thoughts on god.

Cone My wife Emily and I like to eat ice cream. It’s a nice treat for us. Last year, we stopped by Zesto Ice Cream in Auburn, and enjoyed our ice cream cones. Zesto is our favorite place to ice cream because it’s so creamy and smooth.

After we finished that ice cream cone, we decided to eat another cone as a race–to see who could eat their cone quickest. But since I’m a cheapskate, I decided we should race to a McDonalds cone.
We got our McDonalds cones, both took a large lick/bite/gulp, and both went, ‘Gross!’

The McDonalds cone was so grainy.

I have had a McDonalds cone probably 10 times in my life. I’ve never minded the texture before, but on this particular day, I did. I hated the texture. The McDonalds cone was always okay with me previously, but now that I had a taste of what real ice cream could taste like, the McDonalds cone was no longer enjoyed as much.

This got me thinking–often our walk with God entered the same place. After we have had a particularly great God experience, we try to go back to what we used to do, and it just isn’t the same any more. Once we’ve experienced what could be, we have a hard time settling for less.

If I could find an ice cream shop serving ice cream better than Zesto, I would switch. So the question is, am I looking for a better ice cream shop, or am i happy where I am?

Am I happy where my walk with God is, or am i looking and searching for more?

Upgrading: Just for blogs?

Posted by on 21 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: thoughts on god.

I just upgrade my blog to the newest version of WordPress, 2.2.1, released just a few hours ago. There were some security fixes, so i thought it was important to get it upgraded quickly.

That got me thinking: Do we ever need to ‘upgrade’ our walk with God? Will the things I did in my relationship with God when i was six get me by today? are the spiritual disciplines i practiced when i was ten sufficient and enough for me today and when i’m 70? Or are there logical next steps–upgrades, if you will–to my walk with God?

I think it is important to note at this point, the older things are important–note WordPress 2.2.1 didn’t change everything–it just tweaked things. It adds to the old, not replaces the old with new.

What have you found? Do you need an intermittent upgrade?

Next Page »