As I was reading, I came across the following lines:

But little by little, Twitter is starting to resemble a high school
popularity contest, where people campaign for votes and can tangibly
see how liked they are by how many people follow them or respond to
what they say.

As more celebrities and important people have come to the party
(fashionably late, of course), they see their peers already have tons
of followers, so they feel they should too. There is open campaigning
to “RT this” or straight-up asking for people to help them get more
followers. Left and right, even normal users are signing up for Twitter
sites that guarantee to get you “400 new followers a day.” (Just so you
know, you can’t do this without people knowing—it sends out a tweet in
your name to everyone saying you’ve signed up.) I’ve even seen pastors
sign up for those.

Which begs the obvious question—why? This Twitter shift is adding
fuel to the MySpace/Facebook culture that places value (and for some, a
means of self-worth) in the number of followers you can accumulate,
even if 90 percent of them are incognito spambots.
[read the whole article]

Some really great points there.  I'm just not sure that it's all that different from culture before all this technology was introduced.

He mentioned that pastors he knows have signed up for services to up the number of followers they have.
He talked about the culture of placing value and self-worth in the number of followers you can accumulate.
But is this really any different from how pastors and churches have operated for the past 50 (at least…probably more like hundreds of) years?  

So many pastors I know find their self-worth in the numbers.
How many people I can get to show up on Sunday.
How many people attend an event.
How much money was in the offering plate this month.
Even if the people sitting in those seats are proverbial "incognito spambots."
And I've been just as guilty as the rest.

Perhaps this is just a greater reminder that there are much better ways to measure effectiveness than the "number of followers."
Perhaps we should look at the deeper issue of where we find our self-worth.
Perhaps social networking and technology isn't creating new problems, but simply surfacing the issues that already there.

Let's try and care less about how many people are following us.
Let's care more about the quality of what we're doing and saying.
Let's care more about the amount of transformation in ourselves and the people we journey with.
Let's find our self worth not in everyone else's measure of success, but by the trueness to our own calling.
Or better yet, in being, rather than doing.

I'm still figuring out how to do all that.
You're invited to join me.
We can't do it alone.

This particular reading for reflection was exactly that.  A list of resolves.  This was one of them.

Last week I was tweeting about some randomness I was doing and had a moment of nostalgia.  I remembered back to a time when I didn't assume that everyone wanted to know everything I was doing and thinking.  Crazy thought, eh?

I'm one of the last guys you'll hear decrying social networking and proclaiming the evil of it.  But there is a challenging thought there about how we choose to use blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

Are the things you talk about simply focused on you, trying to create your own little rock star world where you are the center of the universe?
Or are you saying things to encourage, challenge, highlight, and better the people around you?

I want to try to do more of that.
Our culture already has enough consumers.
Let's create a culture that inspires people to become producers.

We all have something worthwhile to say.
Now figure out what it is, and go say that.

Shortly thereafter, the bedroom door swings open.
Pitter patter of little 2 and a half year old feet enters the room.
I get up.  Toast is made and cartoons are on.
I go to check my email.  Can’t connect to the internet.
We regularly have issues with our web at home, too.  Although slightly frustrated, I get my stuff together and head out to meet Ryan at Bad Ass Coffee.
At least I can get my emails when I get there.

I groggily walk in to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Ryan’s at the counter and I tell him I’ve got it covered this morning.
The credit card machine isn’t working.
She (the barista) informs me that their connection for cards is down, as is the internet, and both the barista’s phones have not had service, at home or there.
Now I’m trippin out.
Ryan and I don’t have service either.

She has some random cell provider.
The other guy has Verizon.
Ryan has AT&T.
I have T-Mobile.
And they’re all out?
How does this happen?!?

I must watch too much 24.  My first response…
I tell our barista this must be a terrorist attack.  They’ve hit us where they knew it would hurt.
She hears on the radio it’s a communication breakdown in Santa Cruz County.
I imagine some ominous voice on the phone with Barack,
“See what’s happening in Santa Cruz?  If you don’t give in to our demands, we’ll hit a bigger area.  Mass hysteria will break loose.  You have 45 minutes.”
(Of course this was at 7:15 because big events always happen on the hour on 24.)

OK.  Perhaps a bit of an overstatement.  But it made me think.
We rarely even leave the ringer on for our home phone.  We have all become pretty reliant on technology.  In a way, it was a bit scary to me that I had no way to really contact Rachel.
If you’re reading this, all is right again in Santa Cruz.
But it kinda made me think.

And one of the first thoughts that went through my head at the coffee counter…
“Oh man…I can’t even Twitter this!”

It’s time now to give it another go.

Introducing the new CLC blog home.
At least temporarily.
Let me know what you think.
We have about a week let to test it out and Typepad and decide if it’s
a good use of finances to spend a couple bucks on it.  I personally am
just a huge fan of the ease of Typepad.  Even though it frustrates me
at times, I still find it the easiest platform to really make a site look good.
Even if we stick with Typepad, the plan is to map it to it’s own domain soon.

In addition, we’re experimenting a little with our own social networking site at Ning.
So all you CLCers, roll on over and join our network!
We’ll keep working on it to see how we can use it effectively as a connections tool.

Basically I’ve really been bouncing this around in my dome for a while.
Everything on the web is really moving in the direction of social interaction.  Basically, web 2.0.
In reality we are way behind the curve as the Church.
Most of our church websites are simply nice brochures on the web.
So what can we do to move our website more toward interaction with others?
Hopefully this is a step in the right directions.

So 2 questions for y’all:

• Any thoughts on the blog or Ning sites?
• What other ways can we as a church, or is your church, creatively using the web to reach or interact with people?

Please, do share.

Part way through, Dan and I thought it would be worth broadcasting on Mogulus.
If you weren’t able to catch it live, there is about an hour of it up looping at my Mogulus page.
Sound gets a little messy part way through for some reason.  Sorry.
This should give you an idea what the forums are like and give you some great things to think about.

This was forum number four. If there’s one coming within driving distance of you, go check it out.

This Week
Just took my wife and kiddo to the airport.  Bachelor for the week.
Flying to Washington with Ed to interview a potential Youth Pastor candidate.
Taking a final (hopefully…if I pass) CLEP test to finish the units for my degree.
Helping plan sermon series for the rest of the year.
Training day for Royal Family Kid’s Camp.
Trying to get worship sets planned, creative elements ready, and Life Group flows written for next 3 weeks ready because…

Next Week
Royal Family Kid’s Camp.
It’s a camp our church does for abused and neglected kids in the foster care program.  I’m the camp pastor this year so I’ll be out all week long.  No time for planning.

The Week After
Road trip south with David Thaw to Saddleback Worship Conference.  So for those who were wondering, yes, I’m going.  Hopefully we’ll be getting together with some old friends Sunday night.  And if you’re in the area and wanna try and hook up for a lunch or somethin, hit me up please.

And In Other News…
A little gift arrived in the office for me today!

Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection!!

Thanks a ton to our IT extraordinaire Michael Larson for the hook up on this baby!
InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, Encore.
Don’t know how to use most of those programs well.  In fact, a couple, I don’t even know yet what they do…yet.  But I can’t wait to learn!!  I’ll be makin some time for that!

How’s your month shapin up?

So I ordered one online, 2 day shipping.  They were back ordered though.  So the next day I ordered another.  Different company.  Thought it was all good.  2 day shipping again.  On Friday, wondering why I didn’t have it yet, I checked the status.  It hadn’t shipped yet.

At first i was gettin hot, then I looked at the site again.  My fault.  I missed the spot where this lamp says typically ships in 6-8 days.  Shoot!

So I had to get creative to make it work.  So, spare projector from the youth plus gaff tape plus a 14 foot ladder =

Yep.  I gaff taped another projector securely to the hanging one.  Wasn’t quite a large enough image for the screen, but better than nothing.  Not ideal, not long-term, but it worked!  And the new lamp just showed up in my office!

So when was the last time you had to get a little creative to solve a problem?

I’m usually pretty skeptical about this sort of deal.  I saw this at Rick Bambrick’s blog.  So if it ends up sucking, we can all blame him!    There’s a short video that describes how it works at the end of this post.  Quick note on that – the video suggest the Stamps.com offer.  I agree.  Good offer.  Except one thing.  If you only have a Mac…no dice.  It’s Windows based software.

So here’s the deal.  I want a 16gig iPod.  Actually, I want a 32 gig, but why be greedy, right?  So that means I need 8 of y’all to take the plunge and help me give this thing a shot.  I know we can make that happen!  Please?

So…
Click here.
Find an offer that isn’t too high on commitment level.
Hook a brotha up.
Make sure you click here though (or up there)…that’s my referral.

Who’s in?

So I figured, what the heck!  So I now have a Mogulus channel.  Check it out here.

Right now it is just a bunch of looping YouTube videos I’ve made.  The live feed feature is pretty cool, but I was trying to figure out what I do that would actually be interesting enough for anyone to join me for it online.  My first thought was a sort of new form of Worship Confessional I guess you could say.  I’m wanting some excuse to just try throwing it up there, so maybe I’ll try setting it up during worship practice tonight.  If you’re just chillin at home and wanna hear some music, see if we’re there!  We usually start playing between 7:30 and 8, after taking some time to connect as a team.

I also thought it could be cool at some point to have a life group where people who weren’t sure what to expect by just going could see one first, and even interact through the chat feature.

What would you like to see a live broadcast of?
Anything sound interesting enough to watch live at Mogulus?
Get creative!  Ideas?

So, today I came across a great video explanation at Nate’s blog.  Twitter in plain english.  I was once Carla.  I was the skeptic.  Now the believer.  Watch and understand:

There ya have it.  Even if you don’t sign up, at least you get it.
Do you Twitter, yet?

Oh and for those of you who missed this in the past, or still don’t understand the whole RSS thang, be sure to check out this video, a reposting from the past.  I would have to rank this as way more important than Twitter when it all comes down to it.  Enjoy: