If you are reading this, you are at least familiar with what a blog
is – great!. Maybe you don’t have one of your own, but you at least read them,
maybe only occasionally, but you have discovered them. If you have
questions about the phenomena of social networking, why you should even
care about it, or whether it is something you should even engage in, I
hope you will read on and that this will be a starting point for you to
continue that search.

As a pastor, you know
that you are called to preach, teach, and reach others with the the
Word of God and to be a shepherd to the local “flock”.  The role of a
pastor has changed greatly over time and can vary greatly among
denominations, regions and individual churches.  While the culture and
the technology changes, if the church is going to have an influence in
the world and the local community, it must earn the right to be heard.
Gone are the days when, you could just set up a church on the corner
and people would just come. Gone are the days where there was a
generally accepted definition of what ‘sin’ was. While Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever, the world around us is different and will continue to change.

So,
if as a pastor, you know that to be effective you must follow Jesus’
teaching and proclaim Him as Lord and Savior, then you also know you
need an audience. What good is a “resounding gong or a clanging symbol”
if you are just making noise in the wind and no one is listening? In
today’s world, just because you have something to say doesn’t guarantee
that anyone will listen. People are not looking for a new place that
they can just be made to feel guilty or to be told that they are
sinners and going to hell. They may not even know what sin is or not
even believe in hell. They certainly are not looking for someone to
make them their ‘project’. They are looking for someone who will listen
to them, to understand them and willing to share honestly with them.
They are not interested in more talking heads. They are hurting, but
before they will take off their mask and share that with you in a way
that will allow you to reach them with a word of encouragement or even
the Good News of Jesus Christ, you have to be real to them. You have to
be willing to show that you care, that they are more than just a number
and that you mean what you say on Sunday.  You have to be willing to be
more than just that guy that talks from the front on weekends.

Jesus Christ demonstrated to us that he loved us so much that he wasn’t afraid to do whatever it took, short of sin, to reach them. He went where they were,
he didn’t make them come to him on his terms, like the religious
leaders of the day. He didn’t demand they hear him preach only on theSabboth in the synagogue and then take the rest of the week off to be only with his family and friends. He lived his life in front of them. He went to the market places and the gathering spots and he spoke in their language.
He loved them. He cared for them. He was real with them. He lived his
life among them and shared with them. Was it demanding – yes. Was it
difficult – yes. Was it so overwhelming that he had to withdraw and
spend time along with God – absolutely!  But it was the model he gave
to us and I believe the example He set for us.

While
many of the details of culture and technology changes over time, many
underlying principles remain the same. People are still hurting. People
are still spiritual, maybe even more today than ever. People are still
gathering in “market places” and still have a “language” that they
speak in. The question is, are as a pastor, and as a church, will to
meet them where they are and to speak in their language? Are you will
to do a learn to do a few things that might make you uncomfortable in
order to reach someone for Christ?  Or are you going to stay inside
that comfort zone and demand that ‘those people’ come to you on your
terms?  Do you really love them?

Okay, I will get off my soap box now and get more into some resources and examples that I hope will encourage you.

If you haven’t already caught on to the world of blogging, I highly encourage you to check out The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch.
It gives a great overview of the importance of blogging as a Pastor
(and a church) and does a fantastic job of outlining the thought
process behind why you should.  While blogging has been big and
continues to grow both inside and outside the church, a new aspect to
online communication is taking the digital world by storm.  Think of it
as micro-blogging – enter Twitter.

Twitter asks the very simple question, “What are you doing”?  In this earlier post,
I elaborated on that a little more as well as provided some links that
you might want to check out. It may sound ridiculous to some or even
blasphemy to others, but I honestly believe Jesus would use Twitter,
Facebook, blogging, and other tools to reach people.  He was all about
relationships and investing in people’s lives. Shouldn’t we be as
well? 

Facebook, is a more robust social networking
tool. In addition to sharing what you are doing (or what you have to
say), you can share many other things like photos, what music like,
movie reviews, your favorite sports teams, etc.  You can decide how
much or how little you share and who you share it with.  Sure there is
social etiquette that you should learn to follow and sure you might
mess up once in a while and look foolish. But aren’t you willing to
look foolish for the sake of Christ?  Didn’t he call us out of our
comfort zone to reach those around us with a gift that we cannot keep
anyway?

Even if you are not yet ready to
start blogging, or start ‘tweeting’ or start sharing on Facebook, I
strongly encourage to at least stick a toe in the water and observe.
Watch what others are doing and how they are doing it. See what the
have to say. Learn how they do it. Decide for yourself if it is for you
to do or not – but only after educating yourself about it. Jesus came to save the world not to condemn it.

Examples which show how Twitter is growing and becoming mainstream:

    From CNN:

Enjoying the end of summer with a warm sunny day at the pool! This was a fun event for the kids.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Click here to download:

Baby Whirlpool.3g2 (377 KB)

If you have decided to try Twitter (see previous post) then you might also be interested in this handy little utlity: TwitterFeed. 

Here is what it does for you – if you are a blogger and a twitter, you can use TwitterFeed to send your blog’s RSS feed to Twitter.  This has the effect of updating your Twitter status with a link to you latest blog post.  You can also add a prefix if you want, something like “New Blog Post:” or just leave blank. TwitterFeed will automatically add the title of your blog post to the message it sends to twitter along with a link to the post itself.

Just 3 steps to get started:

1. Create your Twitter account, if you haven’t already (you’ll need your username and password)
2. Logon to TwitterFeed using an OpenID
3. Supply the URL to your blog’s RSS feed.

After that, their server will check your blog’s feed at the specified interval and post any new items to your twitter account. Presto!   You can even have more than one blog being fed via TwitterFeed to the same Twitter account, which creates some interesting possibilities.  

In just a few weeks, on Sept 1, Shawn Wood’s first book will be available on Amazon.  “200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One: Creating a Life of Meaning and Influence”. I am very excited for him and am looking forward to reading it myself. In this excerpt about the book from the book’s website, you get a sense of the passion and excellence that all of long for in our life.

Everyone longs to live a life of meaning and purpose, to leave
something of real worth behind when we’re gone. All too often, we feel
that our day-to-day tasks make no difference in the great scheme of
things. The truth is exactly the opposite—God has given each of us
extraordinary power to create beauty and transform the world through
our daily work and ordinary actions. You have immense potential to
develop your God-given talents and contribute something that makes a
difference in the world, be it through construction or counseling,
doing people’s taxes carefully and ethically, or raising and teaching
children. Even if your contribution seems to go unnoticed by others,
you can rest assured that God sees and values your work.

Being a ‘techie’ I am always encouraged by examples of craftsmen who are using their craft to serve the Lord.  This message, however, goes well beyond any one specific craft or skill set, but that should not take away from the personal message for us as individuals.  As Shawn asks, “You too are an artist, equipped with a palette of skills and strengths
that can honor God and impact the world in amazing ways. Where will you
make your mark?“  There is way too much at stake to not use the gifts God has give you!

What is the connection to pomegranates you ask?  What the heck is a pomegranate?  You’ll have to check out the web site to find out!

That is the question that Twitter asks, “What are you doing”?  In 140 characters or less, you get to share your life with friends, family and anyone else in your life who cares to follow you.  It is a simple, yet powerful phenomena that has taken the social networking world by storm over the past year.

It seems strange at first, I know, but you really have to try it and practice with it to understand it.  This short video clip will also help explain it.

Many are aware of Facebook and what a powerful tool it is to stay connected with your friends and many probably wonder why would I also want or need to “twitter” about what I am doing?  Facebook is what I would call a fully featured social networking site where in addition to sharing your ‘status’ you also share what you music and books your like, pictures, videos, write on people’s walls, send private messages,  and many other interests.  Twitter is focused only on one thing – what are you doing? In doing so, you also get to follow others you care about and see what they are doing. When you are signed into Twitter, you see your Twitter ‘stream’ which is a running history of status updates. Unlike Facebook, which only shows you what your friend’s latest status is (unless you look at each one’s individual profiles), Twitter gives you each update in chronological order with the most recent at the top.  But don’t worry about have to keep both Twitter and Facebook updated with your latest status, the guys from Twitter have you covered. You can easily add the Twitter Facebook application to your Facebook profile which will automatically update your Facebook status with your latest ‘tweet’ from Twitter.

Before you scoff and shrug it off, I encourage you to give it a try for 30 days. What have you go to loose? It is free.  If you do, you can choose to follow me for practice.  What I really like about “micro-blogging” with Twitter, even more than regular blogging, is that it makes you, and the people you follow, real.  It is real life. If you are a church leader that is crucial. If you want credibility with people in your church today, you need to be approachable and real.

But don’t take just my word for it.  Twitter can be a great tool for the church as well, and there are several other blog posts about it. Check these out:

• Using Twitter for Ministry, Church and Missions
• Twitter as a Spiritual Discipline
• Tech you might want to use: Twitter (from the guys at LifeChurch.tv)
• What Would Jesus Twitter? (also from LifeChurch.tv)

As Kem Meyer from Granger Community Church put it,

Twittering. Tweeting. Do you do it? Does your youth pastor do it? You might want to think about it. It’s a simple, effective way
to get a message out to friends and people who need to know.

Twitter, like social networking in general, is about building relationships.  I believe Jesus would have twittered. Jesus was all about connecting with people and building relationships.  I believe it is our calling to meet people where they are and build relationships for the sake of Jesus.

Oh, and by the way, you might want to check out some of the “Top Tweeters & Church Leaders”.  If you want to get a feel for how some well known leaders make themselves real – check them out and follow them for a while and you’ll get some clues on how to do it yourself.   If you decide to give it a try after reading this, leave me a comment here. I’d love to know!

Sunday Pastor John kicked off the new message series, “Side Effects”.  I think this is going to be a great series as we are invited to ‘look beneath the surface’ and really examine the attitudes and the motivations behind our actions.

I thought the opening clip in the orchard was excellent and really helped to set the tone.  The point about how fruit is not produced for the tree itself, but for others was indeed a very important point that goes very counter to our ‘me-first’ culture.

It is also not uncommon in our results driven world to fall into the trap of believing that it is all by our own strength or ability that we accomplish anything for the sake of Christ. Hosea 14:8 is a great reminder that God alone is the source of our ‘fruit’. But the question still remains:

What is being produced in your life? Gal 15:19-21 is a not so gentle reminder that the fruit we produce can be bad as well as good.  Producing the good fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self control isn’t easy and does not happen by accident. We have to want it. We have to desire it with all that is in us. We have to pray and seek it from Christ.  We cannot have it both ways.  either we will produce good fruit or we will produce bad fruit.

While perhaps not the best art work, Pastor John’s metaphor of the
iceberg – that was an iceberg, right was a great at symbolizing the
how the part of us that shows “above the surface”, our actions, is only
a small part of the total and how the part which is “beneath the
surface”, our attitudes, is actually much more significant.

I believe those of us in the IT world, tend to focus quite a bit on the part above the surface, both in ourselves and in others. Techies often don’t like to let the part beneath the surface show or be seen by others. That is why I think this will be a great series for us. We need to focus much more on that part which is beneath the surface – that part which is much more significant and controls the part which appears “above the water” to others.

I am looking forward to it.  How about you?

If you are a WordPress blogger, you should know that the latest release, 2.6, is now out. I don’t use WordPress myself, but I do maintain a few WordPress blogs for some pastor friends (John, Buddy). I reviewed the new features and they are definately worth upgrading for.  The main iteams include:

• Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits. Pretty cool if you create drafts of your posts before publishing them or have multiple authors and / or an  editor.
• Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web. A real sweet browser short cut you can add with a click and drag to make posting even easier.
• Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging. (Good idea if you have a slower or unreliable internet connection).
• Theme Previews: See it before your audience does – Finally! I have been waiting for this one for a long time!
• Additional (smaller) Features (including word count, image captions, reording of galleries, plugin interface upgrade, various bug fixes and more.

You can watch a brief video tour and read about the new features of the upgrade highlights here: 

For the past 2 years, I have been using a Motorola Q smart phone. It was my first experience with the Windows Mobile and I must say I was pleased.  The functionality was good, the phone was slim and the feel of the keys was nice. It was a definite step up from previous phones I had and allowed for web browsing, the installation of other apps like a Bible reader, and NewsGator Mobile (for RSS feeds). I also liked how it sync’d contacts with my Yahoo address book.

This month my Verizon Wireless contract was up for renewal and I was eligible for a new phone. Naturally, with all of the hype about the new 3G iPhone, I was seriously considering making a switch to AT&T.  However, Verizon just came out recently with the a touch screen phone – the LG Dare. Wow! was I impressed. 

I visited the Verizon store on Sunday and came home with my first touch screen phone.  I must say it was strange not have any keys to to press!  I am sure the iPhone is still superior in many ways, but I was able to pick this baby up for only $159 (with my contract renewal) and I was able to lower the monthly payment on my family wireless plan! 

If you are considering making the jump to an iPhone you might also want to check out the CNET review of some smart alternatives.  They had the following to say about the Dare:

What makes it cool? The LG Dare has a touch screen that allows icons to be dragged and dropped so that it can be customized for shortcuts on the home screen. It offers a sketch pad that allows users to draw pictures that can be sent via MMS to friends. It also has a 3.2 megapixel camera with face detection, panorama photo stitching, and SmartPic technology designed for taking photos in low light. It offers an embedded camcorder. And like the Voyager, it can be used with Verizon’s VCast Music and Video services.

What are its shortcomings? The Web browser and media player is not as good as the iPhone, according to CNET Reviews editor Nicole Lee. There’s no Wi-Fi. And also no integration with Microsoft Outlook to access work email.

The Dare also has GPS capability. A rotating full QWERTY on-screen keyboard, mobile web, email, and more. The battery life has been outstanding and what’s better than the iPhone – it can be replaced!  One of my biggest disappointments in the iPhone is still the lack of MMS features.  No ability to take a picture and send it to someone! 

Also, before you make the jump to an iPhone, you might want to know what it is really going to cost you.  Making the switch isn’t cheap and the new AT&T data plan with the 3G network does cost more. I understand that a portion of the month fee also goes to Apple. 

I am certainly not bashing the iPhone. In the past year, it has had a great influence on the mobile phone industry and has caused others to step up. I like that!  It is also and interesting metaphor for inspiration within the church. We should never be content with the status quo. We should always be looking for new and creative ways to reach people for Christ. God has given us creative brains and we need to always be tapping into the potential he has blessed us with! My the work of others also inspire and motivate us in the journey! 

I love that tag line for the Innovate 2008 Conference.  If you haven’t seen the new conference web site, you really need to – very cool.  They just added the trailer video clip for the conference (Sept 18-19) which you can watch from the registration page.

I’m looking forward to seeing the team from LifeChurch.tv as well as Steven Furtick and the top notch team from Granger itself. I made my first trip last year and found it to be incredible.  Very much looking forward to this year’s trip and all of the things God will do with what we learn there and what we can bring back and apply to Fellowship Church here in the Delaware Valley as we seek to elevate what we do and how we reach out to a community in need of Jesus!