All day yesterday I got hit up by people excited about Facebook’s announcement of their new groups feature. (Actually, this is a very old feature with some newish features.) Mashable wrote about it. Techcrunch wrote about it. And tons of youth workers were left saying, “This thing is going to be great for youth ministry.”
Here’s what I’m thinking. No one, not even the creators of Facebook, can predict what the next cool feature on Facebook will be.
Mini-rant about Mashable, Techcrunch: These are now just hype factories for the big social media companies. I’m tiring of their private parties and exclusive access. All that tells me is they are all in bed together. Other than publishing social media companies press releases, their utility is gone for me. My trust for those sites impartiality has vanished.
When it comes to social media hype never equals mass appeal. The best you can do is create something and hope people discover it and like it.
That’s the funny thing about social media. Open system theory defies hype and that’s what makes it amazing. Big companies and their R&D departments [and overhead and patents] simply can’t predict what will be hot. (And almost always shoot themselves in the foot because they need ROI when the only way to grow is to acquire customers.) So the game isn’t now, never in recent history has been, about creating cool things. It’s about masses of people (cough, 12-19 year olds) adopting the technology as their own and it spinning out of control in unexpected uses.
Closed system thinking implies that you can control how your users interact with your product. Apple is really the only organization on the planet that gets away with this. They decide what features you will like and they force them on you and you like it. But every time Facebook tries it they get hammered by user backlash. Microsoft learned the hard way that this just forces customers to another product like Apple or Linux. Their latest media campaign is a direct attempt to lie to you by convincing you that their ideas are really your ideas. “I’m Adam and Windows is my idea.” Windows isn’t your idea. If it were it’d be free.
Open system thinking implies that users control how they interact with the product and the owners/app developers respond. This is the secret ingredient for Apple’s recent success. Twitter will be the first to tell you that they do everything in response to how users utilize their app. To some extent, this is why Facebook has survived to date because the app developed on their open API have people hooked on crap like Farmville. (Their growth of late has been in middle-aged folks using Facebook for gaming, largely at work.) I’ve done dozens of consults with ministries and businesses trying to make a name for themselves with a new technology– I tell them all the same thing, which they balk at. “If you want to be big, build a Facebook app that your audience will love. Then, when you have their trust (and personal information) launch your own site. It’s about users, not money.”
I don’t know if Facebook groups will be hot among high schoolers. But I do know that the same principles I’ve used to engage people online for more than 10 years will always work, no matter what the technology.
Principles are timeless while technology is is an ever-morphing magma of response.
Yesterday, I spent some time thinking about the calling of Abraham and Moses. (Genesis 15; Exodus 3) I was comparing the discomfort those men went through as a result of their calling to a community and the relative ease with which I question my calling to the community I live in and the work God has clearly called me to do at YS.
Why am I so quick to question while they spent decades grinding out their calling?
I’m glad I spent time with Moses and Abraham yesterday. I somehow associate “being called” with “being easy.” It reminded me that being called somewhere brings great pleasure, but also involves sticking it out through times of doubt, turmoil, angst, and pressure.
A few week’s ago I ruffled some feathers with a post called, Youth Workers: Don’t Punk Out. I’ve known too many people called to a task but have given up for a different task. They will wrestle with the guilt the rest of their lives. They will work out justifications that make it sound like they weren’t “running to Ninevah” but in their hearts they know they are just trying to save face when they need to repent.
God may bless them in other capacities but the guilt of their mistake will always haunt them.
When I think of Moses and Abraham I think about their contemporaries. Certainly, God called other men and women living at the same time to do things. But their stories didn’t get recorded in history. Why? Did they cower? Did they hide from their calling? Certainly, they didn’t outshine Moses or Abraham.
The thing about being called to a task in life is that you know you are called. Hence the phrase calling. Calling implies that their was an invitation and a RSVP to that invitation. It was sent and it was received. You know you’ve been called because you answered the phone! God asked you if you’d do it and you willingly (and maybe with much trembling) said “Yes, Lord I hear you. I will do that.”
I’m a dreamer. I like to dream big dreams for myself. But I really like to dream big dreams for the students in our ministry. So when Kathy gave me the opportunity to paint a big picture and ask big questions as we start off this Fall in our high school ministry, I jumped at it!
When I look at the transfiguration in Mark 9, I am left asking… How do I get to the mountaintop with Jesus? I want to be there! What do I have to do to be there and see what God sees?
And what is it about God and mountaintops?
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That’s just about the only word that can describe my heart right now. The last week at NYWC left me completely spent both physically and mentally– but I sit here now with my spirit soaring.
Feet aching, eyes leaky, and thankful.
Back in December I had this silly belief that YS’s best days were still ahead.
It came out of my mouth all the time. It came out of my mouth because it was what my heart was telling me.
Obviously, the people at YouthWorks who had just hired me to stay with Youth Specialties loved it when I said that… But for those who have been around YS for a while– that thought was almost offensive. People just politely smiled when I said it. You see, our history and the things in the past have been so great, that to even set the expectation that things could be better than the past seemed like I wasn’t honoring our past.
That’s just not true. My feeling was that the best way to honor what we’d done over the past 40 years was try to work hard to resonate with what we’ve always done well while taking everything else to a whole new level. I felt like it would be dishonoring to play it safe in 2010 and it would honor the past best if we looked at every tiny detail as an opportunity to innovate.
Fortunately for me, Tic and everyone else felt the same way. And we set off on this crazy idea of not just getting through our first year with new ownership, but using this as a reset point.
Even though in 2009 we had laid our heart out and finished feeling trampled, damaged, and hurt… we would learn what we could from that and lay our heart down again. Maybe we were masochistic? But we just had this crazy desire to keep trying.
9 months later– all that was left was to see if all of that crazy idealism could become a reality. Walking into last week I kept telling people, “I’ve got this feeling God has an amazing story to tell and I can’t wait to see what it is.”
All weekend long people asked me how the weekend was going. Then they proceeded to tell me all sorts of nice things about the weekend. All I could do was smile. Everything just felt right. The venue, the set-up, the affirmations flowing from the pours of the staff, the way the stage looked… everything.
You won’t get this grin off of my face for a few more days.
Over and over again Tic told us he wanted everything to be done in such a way where people who program for a living could just relax and know our team had everything handled. Hearing nice things tells us that people were shutting off their programming minds and just enjoying themselves. Phew.
For us, the evaluation process is just beginning. But based on what we heard and saw on site– I feel really good about San Diego. (We are all perfectionist, so of course we’ll tear it all apart and fix all sorts of minutia before Nashville.)
The level of difficulty was exceptionally high. We had to navigate a new relationship with YouthWorks while at the same time trying to create an amazing Youth Specialties event at a time when youth workers desperately needed it. And some how it all came together. I know it’s not good to talk about pride in the Christian world… but I’m very proud of what we did this weekend together.
I’m not trying to say this was the best NYWC ever. Nor am I saying that this was YS’s shining moment in history. But I am saying that this weekend was a step towards better days to come.
Call me crazy. Call me stupid. Call me whatever name you want. But each day I have to wake up and believe that our best days are in front of us.
The youth ministry world is wrestling through the ramifications of what Christian Smith coined as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
What is MTD?
After interviewing 3,000 teenagers, the authors found that many young people believed in several moral statutes not exclusive to any of the major world religions:
- A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
Since the original study came out about five years ago, youth workers have been scratching their heads, more research has been done, many books/articles have been written, and essentially we are all just trying to figure out both how we got to this point and how we can rebuild our ministries in ways that combat this.
As a simplest– I have often wondered if MTD in our students may be related to MTD in their youth pastor? In other words, are we even willing to consider that our own relationship with Jesus (or lack thereof) may be leading students to follow our lead into MTD?
Let us look at ourselves with sober judgment and search our hearts; making adjustments and repentance a necessary part of that self-appraisal.
As I minister to students it is always my heart that they pick up my faith.
My fear is that in too many cases they are picking up a faith that is vastly different than the faith we want them to pick up.
Let’s face it, success is about being opportunistic.
Here’s my simple outlook on opportunities. I’m thankful that I’ve made more right steps than wrong ones so far. But having the right outlook on the various ideas I’m presented with makes a huge difference.
Makes me wonder about how we make complex things about theology or life in the church interesting to non-theologians and non-churchgoers.
Drink the kool aid – verb, slang term – 1. the action of wholeheartedly buying into the vision of a religious organization, even to a fault. 2. a crude reference to the tragedy of People’s Temple massacre as lead by Jim Jones.
Last night, Kristen and I watched Undercover Boss, and we giggled that people were really proud to work for Choice Hotels. Now, I actually like their hotels because I like to travel on the cheap. But it was hard to imagine making that company my life’s work. It’s one thing to drink the kool aid for a hotel chain. But it’s another to drink it for a church.
Let’s face it. Every good organization has some kool aid drinking going on. Those people have their own language, their own culture, and their own traditions. People inside the organization don’t even see it. But visitors come in as outsiders and walk around wide-eyed, not getting it.
People drunk on kool aid can be peculiar to be around… but there’s fewer things finer in the world than being happily under the influence of kool aid! I used to get weirded out by this phenomenon… but now I see it a lot differently. I actually think it is kind of beautiful.
As I talk to folks who work at churches and other Christian organizations I see two distinct types of people:
For those drunk on kool aid:
For those skeptics afraid to drink deep of kool aid’s fount:
In short: Stay thirsty, my friends.
Some differences in the pre-game stuff worked out between game 1 & game 2. (Minor) The group of students who welcomed Monty the Aztec with his spear went over to the student section then made their way to the 50 yard line. Also, they changed the timing of when the alumni came out to stab the field.
It doesn’t show here because San Diego people arrive late. But the stadium ended up 2/3rds full. 45,000 people watched them light up Utah State 41-7. If it weren’t for a muffed punt in the 3rd quarter it would have been their second straight home shutout.
Highlights of the game:
Non-game highlight of the week:
45,000+ plus people came to the stadium for the 35th annual Sky Show. The fireworks were great and all… but the highlight was the 75 fireball that finished it off… and the fact that it lit the field on fire while the crowd roared on!
