• Thriller: Disturbing and Cool at the same time

  • Pfttlwbwbwbwbwb… and things that change the game

    It’s been one of those weeks. And I still have mountains of stuff to do for this weekend.

    Yesterday I talked about goals and benchmarks. It was funny because I worked hard on a benchmark thing that will make the new RomeoChurch.com mucho better than the existing church website. Unfortunately, that benchmark took more than 8 hours when I had hoped it would take less than 1 hour.

    Web 2.0
    As I’ve mentioned before here… Web 2.0 is changing the way the internet works. From an end user perspective you see what you want to see which often leads to that weird feeling of seeing a Coke in a Pepsi machine at the mall. Those two things don’t go together do they? Web 2.0 has really started to change "who owns what" and "what does it mean to ‘own’ something that exists digitally?" Getting to see the the internet the way that you want to see it simply changes the game. And any time the game changes… users tend to benefit. For example… DSL and Cable internet changed the ISP game. While there are still loads of people on dial-up, many more now pay very little for unlimited, wireless, high speed internet. That changed the game and created a whole new market. Web 2.0 is doing the same thing. Now that content doesn’t "live" on a site forever because it can go anywhere… this has changed the game.

    What that means for web developers (Which I don’t really claim to be but get a bird’s eye view of a lot) is that people collaborate now when they wouldn’t have before. Just yesterday I was working on this "benchmark" for RomeoChurch.com and I ran into a wall. I couldn’t get the thing to work! I scratched my head. I tried it a bunch of different ways. I even had to talk a walk around the building to clear my head and pray for an idea. Just then, literally in that moment, a person from YMX contacted me about a website problem he had with his youth group site. I said, "Sure send me a link." When my AIM screen flashed my jaw dropped as I could see he was working with the same exact code he was working on! And he was having the same problem and had been banging his head against the wall for 2 days.

    So, we did what anyone living in a Web 2.0 world would do. We contacted the guy who published the code to ask for help. Within an hour both of us were smiling as our websites were now doing something we had long hoped for.

    In a Web 1.0 world, that collaboration wouldn’t have happened. Certainly not for free. But Web 2.0 changed the game. Now you see loads of novice developers having access to experts as we all share ideas.

    Which leads to the question the church has to deal with… "How will the church adapt to a Web 2.0 environment?" How will the church be the authority when we can’t even control content anymore? Is there biblical justification for collaboration? And what about churches who refuse to collaborate?

    Anyone have answers? Let’s here ’em.

  • When Goals Wake You Up

    SuccessA lot of people make goals and set benchmarks. I am the same way. No matter what area of my life, I hear a little birdie telling me "You need to get ____ done by _____ to know that you are accomplishing ____ goal." I’m not sure where it originated but I that little birdie doesn’t come naturally… I’ve learned to listen to the little birdie. I am where I am at today because I listened to the birdie and got stuff done.

    A good goal will wake you up in the morning. It’ll make you stay up late at night. And it’ll be within your reach.

    A bad goal leads to fatalism as you realize that not only can you achieve your goal, but you were stupid to even try. It won’t keep you up late are wake you up in the morning because deep inside you feel like your goal is unattainable.

    I’ve made both kinds of goals in my life… I’ve given up on good goals to strive for bad ones and I’d like to think that as I become a better, smarter leader… I am refining my ability to distinguish. But I think choosing a good goal over a bad one will be something that I struggle with for the rest of my life!

    Ambition
    I have goals for all the major parts of my life.     My marriage, my job, my business, my home, my own development. Along the same lines, I have benchmarks… little celebration moments… that go along the way as well.

    My observation is that most people say the have goals… and they probably do. But they either have goals that are actually dreams or they have goals set with no benchmarks for achieving their goals so they give up. And this lack of benchmarking leads to failure.

    My focus in accomplishing goals is never to work to finish the goal. I think in focusing on the big goal too much, you act like a dreamer, instead I just focus on reaching the next benchmark.

    When you are focusing on getting from benchmark to benchmark instead of focusing on the big goal… you accomplish that goal faster plus you are still looking to work hard on future goals when you cross the finish line.

    Gettowork
    Too vague? Think of it like this, a goal can be a dream…     "I want to be more effective in reaching students in my community." A benchmark is a measurable success… "I will start 4-5 house small groups in September 2007." The goal isn’t to start house small groups but I’m going to celebrate that as a benchmark towards accomplishing my goal. Celebrate the benchmarks and you’ll accomplish your goals.

    And I mean celebrate… there is nothing worse than seeing someone not celebrate a benchmark in their life. They brush it off as no big deal… why? Because they are too focused on their goal to enjoy the benchmarks! You see it in sports and you see it in high school students when a success just isn’t good enough. Take a few moments to enjoy the benchmarks and it’ll energize you to keep going. Skipping that step will just contribute to another year sliding by stuck in the same place you were a year ago. Don’t do that.

    Got goals for 2007-2008? If so, what are some of your benchmarks?

    p.s. The photos come from Despair.com.

  • Get up and dance!

    Wherever you are when you see this, you must get up and dance. Living room, dorm, kitchen, coffee shop, office, whatever… do the funky chicken!

  • Mike Yaconelli’s 65th Birthday

    I’m sure at least half of the people who will read this won’t get why I’m posting this. I caught this over at Think Christian and I thought it was a tribute worth looking at again. Mike was the founder of Youth Specialties and a guy who made a lot of people think differently about youth ministry.

    I never met him personally but heard him speak a couple of times. Here is a tribute video that was put together shortly after his death in 2003. The last words of his last National Youth Worker Convention are a fitting closing to the video.

  • Embracing our life’s mission

    Slide2
    As promised, here are the talk notes and presentation from Sunday morning.

    Text version at RomeoChurch.com
    Podcast at RomeoChurch.com
    Notes in pdf
    Presentation in pdf

  • A New Rating System

    A couple weeks back I reinstalled everything on my computer. This meant I installed a new operating system, new versions of tons of stuff… and it also meant I reorganized all my data.

    In the course of this process, I had to move where my music folder was stored. Actually, I didn’t have to do that… but to clean things up I now have all of my music in a single folder. Long story short, when I reinstalled iTunes, I was basically starting over.

    The hard part of this is that I had all 3000 songs rated. Now, I have to start over!

    The fun part is that I’m rediscovering a lot of music. The bad part is, 3000 songs is a lot of stuff to rate. For now I am cheating and rating whole albums at a time. But over the next few weeks I’ll be rating everything 1-5 again individually. Stuff that is 4-5 stars automatically goes on the ipod, stuff that is below doesn’t.

  • More interesting graphics about the church

    So yesterday, I used some cool graphics for my message. And as promised, tomorrow I will be putting the text from the message online. In the meantime, here are the graphics from yesterday as well as a couple new ones I came across today.

    God_and_americaBiblebeltMichigan_god_big1_2



    I used all of these for the message yesterday. I’m actually not certain where I got the God and America map originally. But I made the Michigan one on my own, it’s simply a blown up version of the original but I had to use a new county map and color it to map it big enough for the screen.

    Here are two I wish I had before the message though I’m not sure how it would have fit in to use. I found these over at Think Christian.
    Atlas_of_religions
    Map_of_christianity

  • Update from earlier

    Update from earlier

    Earlier I said I was tired. I’m feeling much better. We had a great little event today with Light Force. I think some of the best events we do right now are free and this is no exception. Want to spend an afternoon hanging out and building relationships? Just tell people to meet you at the beach! Bring your own lunch and a ball… you have instant and free fun.

    In other news… I’m a little miffed at a breach in blog etiquette. We all know that in a Web 2.0 environment that collaboration is the name of the game. And so it is no surprise to see something that you said or you wrote about popping up somewhere else. But the unwritten law of blogging is that you simply give credit with a link back. (Sometimes you see the phrase “HT to ____” which simply means, hat tip. Another way to do this is to say, “I saw this over at ____.”) Long story short, I wrote about something last week and someone “of a bigger name” wrote about the same thing on his blog today, read by many more people than will ever come to my blog, and failed to provide the proper HT or link back. How do I know that the person knew they got their post idea from me? I sent it to him! (Which is another rude thing. To take something that was my idea and not even give me the courtesy of responding to my email? Hmph…won’t do that again.) It doesn’t bother me one bit when it’s someone who simply doesn’t know better. But when someone is a recognized blogger, it’s being rude intentionally and a practice of superiority. To the contrary, Mark Oestricher is one of the most polite bloggers I know. All ministry types would do well to act as graciously with their blogs as he is. OK, I’ll stop ranting about it. I am over it…

    That said, I’m starting to think about “Adam’s Blog Etiquette” to go alongside my “Rules for blogging.”  I’m never interested in tearing people down… but instead I want to help the people I know use the internet more effectively… maybe even redemptively. Maybe I’ll even finally write a long thought about article about ministry snobs?

  • Ever just feel tired?

    That’s how I feel right now. I came home from church yesterday and slept all afternoon. I went to bed at my normal time last night, slept in a little, and still feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.