Kerner.net

Moving Kerner.net to WordPress

Kerner.net has been my blog home since I started posting regularly enough to keep archives back in 2003. The history of the site goes back to 1996, but in those days it was really just a repository of random links and file storage. The blog first started out on MovableType on a personal server within my datacenter (a perk of owning a software company) and focused primarily on food. Since that time the site has moved from a dedicated server to a virtual server to a shared hosting account and most recently to TypePad (basically all running MovableType). 

I've debated the switch away from MT for a long time, but never made the leap. I've finally decided to make the switch to WordPress (back on the shared hosting). Sarah's blog (www.beautyschooldropout.net) is still running on MT on the same account and will probably get moved to WP soon.

Each time I moved the site I made an effort to maintain the content from previous editions. Over the years a few images have been lost (and I haven't spent time digging through iPhoto to repost them), but other than that the content has stayed intact. All of the content migration to WordPress went smoothly and with a few creative rewrite rules most people/search engines won't notice broken links.

Not sure how many folks are still reading after my unplanned summer hiatus, but I thought I'd post my plans for the blog moving forward.

NT90: Right now at Schweitzer we're spending September, October and November reading the New Testament together. I'm keeping a journal through the project and will be posting some of my notes here.

Cooking: I'm planning to return to more of the content that launched the site - recipes, cooking experiments and other things food related.

Ministry Topics: I'll still post about the church, worship technology and communication. I'd never intended for it to be the focus of the site, but it's how I spend most of my time.

General Life/Family Stuff: This will probably be the largest category. I'll be posting whatever random things I think might be interesting or I want to share.

[If you're reading this paragraph you're still reading from TypePad, but as DNS migration happens this paragraph should go away. I'm pretty confident that feed readers and search links will continue to function.]

iPad Three Days In

Friday afternoon I picked up a 32gb, 3G iPad from the bookstore at Missouri State.  I was a bit shocked when my friend Landon told me they had them available.  Total elapsed time from awareness of them to having one in my hands was under two hours.

Earlier I'd commented about how the iPad wasn't really powerful enough to fill the void between a smartphone and a laptop. I still think that's a true statement, but in many cases the iPad is perfect. 

The iPad is great as a content consumption device. Web browsing, social network tools, and video are great. It has the absolute best digital calendar interface ive ever seen - as good as using a paper planner. Reading is a bit hard because of the glossy screen and backlight, but it's not unbearable. I'm going to get a matte screen protector to cut down on the glare which should help a lot. 

The iPad is also much more social than a laptop in group settings. It's easier to turn and show something to others, doesn't feel as isolating as a laptop and passes around quickly. There are a lot of great apps that make this an outstanding device. 

It isn't a perfect device though. The lack of Flash still bugs me (especially after seeing really compelling demos on Android). Not having real filesystem access hampers content creation - I'm using DropBox to get around this limit. I hate that there's no support for http uploads which is annoying. 

All the cons considered, I haven't used my MacBookPro at home since I got the iPad except to load it with apps/content. Everything I wanted to do for casual net activity has been done easily with the iPad. I used it in all of my meetings at work today, only using the laptop for rich content creation. I've even written this post on it via the TypePad web site (granted the rich text editor doesn't work). 

There are a lot of apps that I'm already finding to be essential. I have a lot of hope for how much I'll be using the iPad. I can't wait to use it to preach this weekend.   

Q Chicago #qideas

I'm wrapping up the last bit of work at the church before heading to the airport for a trip to Chicago. I'll be attending the Q conference. I went last year in Austin and thought it was one of the best, most thought provoking opportunities to explore the role of the church.

Q is the brainchild of Gabe Lyons (coauthor of UnChristian). Here's how they describe it:

Q was created as a place where church and cultural leaders could come together to collaborate and explore ideas about how the Gospel can be expressed within our cultural context. Our method of learning is simple: exposure, conversation and collaboration. We didn’t want to create just another conference, but instead, make an intentional effort to platform the best and the brightest ideas that are shaping our world and interact with them. 

The conference is framed around the themes of Culture, Future, Church, and Gospel. All of the topics look interesting, but I'm most excited to hear from Tim Keller, Sean Womack, Charles Lee and Richard Florida. It's going to be an interesting week.

Computers Without Files

There are some blogs in my RSS reader that I don't look at all that often but enjoy reading when I get the chance. One of those is Eric Sink. Eric and I have never met, but he was an influential boss/coworker for one of my business partners. Eric's always provided great wisdom into the software industry and tech in general. I came across two posts from him that really have me thinking.

In the first post he writes (actually a Twitter post):

We're heading toward two classes of computers: one for people like me, and one for people like my Mom.

In his next post he talks about the iPad as a continuation of this theme. Sink hits on what's been one of my main gripes about the iPad as a computing platform - I want file system access. After reading these two posts I started wondering whether or not I really need access to files.

I already don't do a lot of file organization. I generally use internal organization tools within apps - iPhoto, Lightroom, iTunes, etc. I use Bridge and metadata in a bunch of Adobe apps. I generally drop well named files into a folder and then use Spotlight to find them - I've got several folders with 7,000-10,0000 unorganized files in them. 

It got me to thinking. Could I use my computer exclusively with Spotlight and in-app media browsers? That's what I've done the past couple of days. The one exception has been file uploads to the web (something that still needs to be supported on the iPhone/iPad).

I did open Terminal a few times - I can't help it, I'm a geek. 

Sink asks some great questions. I'll add a few:

• How will we effectively add sufficient metadata to documents?
• Will we end up with multiple "clouds" of data? MobileME? Amazon S3? Dropbox? etc. Will device manufacturers lock users to their own cloud?
• How will local sharing work? Will the cloud be required to share something with somebody in the next office?
• Doing video production, how will HUGE items on connected devices function?

What do you think? Could you use a computer without files?

Three Weeks

IMG_1710
Originally uploaded by kerner

It's crazy to think that it's been three weeks since Josiah was born. Also a bit crazy to think this is the first thing I've posted about him on the blog. After three weeks as a new dad some things are becoming routine. I've come to the realization that I can swaddle anything.

Josiah's growing quite well, been to his first wedding and reception, and already been used as a sermon illustration (not by me).

I'm certainly getting more sleep than Sarah is at night, but overall we've got a really good baby. He'll usually sleep at least one three to four hour stretch at night.

Ultimate Charades Death Match

One of the great parts of my job is doing ministry with college students. Wednesday nights always feature some sort of crazy activity and tonight was no different. It's always a challenge to balance more sedate activities with more energetic options . We try to balance more active games with less active games over the stretch of a month. Tonight we decided to combine the two options. Ultimate Charades Death Match is what you get when dodgeball and charades combine into one wacky game.

I'd say that it was a great success. I'm now on a mission to determine how many more "normal" games can be made much more exciting by incorporating the ultimate death match format. I'm pretty sure some dodgeballs will make most any game more interesting.

Ultimate Charades Death Match Rules

What you'll need:

• Normal charades topics (movies, music, books, tv). We split them into difficult (two points) and easy (one point).
• Dodgeballs. Tonight we played with two, next time we'll go to at least four, probably six.

How to play: 

Split the players into teams. Set acting boundaries (we used the key of our gym basketball court). The actor may move freely within these boundaries (for dodging purposes). Set player boundaries (our teams were split around the three-point circle). The first "actor" from each team gets to Rock-Paper-Scissors to see which team acts first. The team that is acting/guessing plays charades in normal fashion. 

Scoring: The acting/guessing team scores points by correctly guessing the title. The stealing team gains points by using the dodgeballs to steal the round.The actor should continue acting/dodging until the round is over.

Stealing occurs when the stealing team manages to hit the actor with a dodgeball and correctly guess the title. If the actor dodges a throw the stealing team must retrieve the ball and can try again. The stealing team only gets one chance to guess and the guess must be made by the person who made the throw. If the stealing team guesses wrong the actor's team wins the round. 

The round ends when the actor's team has successfully guessed the title or the stealing team has made a guess and either stolen the points or failed to steal. There is no round time limit. The stealing team can make a judgment call to end the misery by guessing incorrectly and granting the actor's team the round. The actor's team can hit their own actor with a dodgeball to forfeit the round if the acting is too painful.

Play until all of the topics have been used or people grow weary of the game. We went through about 70 topics in 90 minutes.

Mac Netbook Adventures #hackintosh

 We've been needing a small laptop for use in the college ministry - a way to do data entry on campus and not be dependent on my laptop (which I use to preach) or having students bring their own computers. A netbook seemed like the perfect solution - small, long battery, etc. The only problem was that I really wanted a Mac.

I know several people who have hacked OS X onto a variety of systems so I started a bit of research. I discovered that the Dell Mini 10v is really easy to make into a Hackintosh. Last Thursday night I sat down with a 16gb USB drive, a LEGAL copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and NetbookBootMaker. I followed the Gizmodo guide for installation and everything went flawlessly. 

Here's the basic details:

• Dell Mini 10v - $318.75
• OS X Snow Leopard - $25.00
• USB Flash Drive - $0 already had it (you can get one for $20 at Amazon)
• a couple of hours

Total cost: $343.75 unless you need to buy a flash drive. Not too shabby for a nice little OS X laptop.

Performance has been really good for web browsing, simple word processing, etc. I will say that it doesn't play web video all that well (tested in Windows and it's equally bad). The battery life has been crazy. With active usage I'm seeing 8+ hours of battery and mixed use (surfing and letting it sit and play music) the battery lasted over 9 hours. I do want to upgrade the RAM to 2gb, but haven't gotten around to it. I'm also really spoiled by Apple trackpads - the 10v trackpad is horrible. I also wish the screen had a slightly higher resolution 1024x600 is a bit too few pixels (not a bigger screen, just more resolution).

I'm really bummed that Apple isn't offering a real netbook option. I've got an iPhone and I've got a MacBookPro. After spending the weekend using the HackBook exclusively I think Steve Jobs is wrong when he says that the iPad is the perfect device to fit between the smartphone and the laptop. The iPad fits really well into the bigger screen/eBook/video player/web surfing category, but it doesn't keep me from needing to carry my laptop around. I think there is a second gap that is filled by really small, inexpensive netbooks. I see a real need for the 10" netbook that costs under $500. The $300 netbook isn't quite good enough, there is clearly a step between the 10v and a MacBook that could be filled (slightly faster, improved graphics, more RAM). This is the PERFECT spot for an Apple netbook.

Here are some things I've done over the past several days that can't be done on an iPad:

• answer email using a real keyboard, mouse and mail client
• tweak a graphic using Fireworks
• screen share to another computer
• use BackToMyMac to share files from my MBP from a coffee shop
• quickly switch back and forth between a google spreadsheet, a PDF file, and my email
• use ProPresenter - it actually is decent for still background images and lyrics

Share your thoughts about netbooks.

Sacrifice

We've been talking a lot about sacrifice over the past couple of weeks here at Schweitzer as we explore what it is God would have us do to support the growth of the church in our current stewardship focus, Growing God's Church. I'm amazed by the level of sacrifice we're hearing from members of the church. Every weekend Bob has shared stories of people giving up cable, eating out, home improvements, savings and much more. We've heard about people postponing retirement, new cars, iPhones and moving. God has seriously gotten into people's hearts about this issue – several people have talked about making decisions to double their pledge.

Sarah and I have wrestled a lot with what we're contributing to the campaign. Our budget is tight and we're not quite sure how that will change once Josiah is born later this month. One decision that we've made is that I'll be mowing our yard for the next three years. For the past two years we've paid some neighborhood boys to mow the lawn which has been great. This covers a portion of our pledge for about half of the year, we still haven't identified what we'll sacrifice for the rest of it, but we have faith that God will provide as we continue to tithe and give above and beyond for the ministries of the church.

I really do think that God honoring sacrifice is less about the amount we give and more about the amount we have left over after we give. Every weekend we've shared testimony from people about sacrifice and this weekend we heard a great one from Billy & Regina Hower. This week Billy is even sacrificing a week away from work and his family to help our college ministry serve on their spring break mission trip. I love their openness, honesty and the challenge for all of us. Everything we have comes from God and we should just "give it up." 

"This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on." (Mark 12: 43-44)

Schweitzer Community Outreach Center

This past weekend we gathered people together to do the first project in the newly named Schweitzer Community Outreach Center. The building just to the west of the church that used to house luxury cars is already being used to make an impact in the community. Over the course of a couple of hours we packaged 400 hygiene kits for the homeless in Springfield, 150 health kits to be sent to Haiti, as well as hundreds of meals of beans and rice.

As we start a new stewardship emphasis over the next month, one aspect of Growing God's Church is expanded use of this facility for community outreach - housing disaster relief, food pantry, special projects like this and new offices for the staff. The project also includes expanded children's and youth space focusing on security and eliminating the church's debt. 

The video above was shot with our new Canon 7D and a 50mm 1.4 prime lens. The event footage was captured from 10-12 and the video was first shown in our Saturday night worship at 5pm. I'm very impressed with the workflow from the camera into Final Cut and prepped for final display. I'd guess that it took Zak almost three hours less time to produce this piece than similar shoots from our Focus FS-4. I've been having a lot of fun shooting both stills and videos with this camera/lens combo. Next step is a set of rails and a follow-focus. We may even add a matte box to the kit.

Haiti Click Track Video

We made a spur of the moment decision to put together a video to tie in the devastation in Haiti with worship this weekend. You can watch the video from youtube below (SUMC folks saw it tonight at 5 and will see it tomorrow at 9:45 and 11, sorry 8:20 - you'll get live musicians and no click).

This is by no means a high quality piece - it was put together in about 8 hours (including render time). The start and end are established to disguise the start of the video (it looks like a standard worship slide to open). It may not work well in your setting. Also there is one point where the video departs from the official lyrics - matching our band. There are three measures of the click prior to the start of the song - also the click tones are crazy annoying.

Obligatory Disclaimer: This piece comprised of footage and photos from the AP and some other photos from National Geographic and the LA Times. From a copyright perspective it's sketchy, but I think it probably falls under fair use given the purpose of the video. The scratch track is our band doing God of This City and is licensed for web streaming. View the Youtube video to hear it with the song.

Download the mp4 - MONO click track @ 80bpm - NO MUSIC

Compositing

John Nack made a post about this video and I thought I'd pass it on. I know that a lot of compositing goes into almost everything we see on TV or film, but it's really interesting to see both sides of the shot. Some of the shots are clearly put together, but others could just as easily have been shot traditionally. Green/blue screens provide a lot better control both of the shot and the budget though. We've got everything we need to do more compositing, but don't really take advantage of the creative possibilities. I'm thinking we might try to build an entire green room for something this year.

Christmas Worship Projection Sample

Saturday night I took a little bit of footage with the Flip cam during worship. Here's a sample from a few songs. The audio quality is really bad, the microphone on the flip really picks up the drums above everything else. It's also a bit shaky from being handheld. Next time we do this we'll need to setup a real camera with a feed from the board.

Christmas Music Celebration

This weekend we celebrated Christmas in music. There was an amazing diversity in worship as our traditional services featured the annual choir cantata with an orchestra and the modern services featured our praise band, the story of Christmas told through Isaiah in video, lighting and architectural projection.

I'm incredibly impressed with how well all of the teams worked to accomplish such a great weekend of worship. The transition between our 8:20 traditional service (the top photo) and the modern service at 9:45 was seamless. The orchestra/choir  moved quickly and were very helpful in making things run smoothly. Once the band set up and we powered up the lights/projectors, and were ready for worship. The experience in our two modern services was very different (lower photo from Saturday night). The transition back for the cantata at 11:00 was just as smooth.

More info about the modern worship:
We've done lights and projection in our sanctuary for special services in the past (Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, etc) but never a setup this elaborate for the weekend. You can see in the photos a truss on each side of the platform holding three LED par cans, a projector, and an LED moving wash fixture; at the back of the room we mounted a second set of moving heads. This is the closest setup to what we do at Green Room on the MSU campus we've ever had in the main sanctuary.

The total visual setup involved 10 LED light fixtures, five projectors, three Macs, ProPresenter, a TripleHead2Go, and our Chamsys MagicQ light rig. All of the imagery on the walls/screens came from either Awake Images or Shift Worship. Most of it was still, but we did throw in one snowy loop background with no front light for one of the songs.

All of this was possible because of an amazing group of people, most of whom choose to serve on the tech/worship teams. Zak posted info about the modern worship music (the Isaiah videos should be posted soon too).

Writing For Five Generations

I've spent most of the morning working on a sermon for the weekend after Christmas. I've come to a realization that should be absolutely obvious, but presents a challenge for those of us in a multigenerational church.

Sermon writing and preaching is a fairly comfortable endeavor for me - I've had the opportunity preach more than 30 times this past year. I primarily preach at The Green Room - a worship service Schweitzer offers on the Missouri State campus. Worship on the college campus generally means a congregation that is mostly 18-24 years old. A handful of times a year I preach for all of the weekend services.

Here's the challenge: illustrations, stories, and strategies that work with a single generation audience generally fall flat when applied to a multigenerational group. One perfect example is that I'm really wanting to talk about a specific characteristic of popular culture, hip hop, that I'm very aware will not work for most people over the age of 40. I think this situation is most visible when it comes to humor. 

It's a difficulty the church has in every area of communication, not just preaching, and it's an ongoing challenge. How do you address the differences in communication preferences in your life?

Visual Worship - PSU Edition

Visual Worship 1
Originally uploaded by kerner

Sunday night we had a minimalist setup at The Green Room for worship. Part of the setup served as an object lesson, we didn't pay the PSU to set chairs and everything else had to fit in my car and be stuff I could put together on my own. We didn't bring any PA and the only people serving were the band and a slide operator. The acoustic set was amazing and we're going to have to do more unplugged worship, although really minimal PA is needed in the ballroom.

Rather than hauling lights, truss, and the huge screen (which I can't set up by myself) we opted for an architectural projection setup. We took two projectors and used the projector in the PSU for a center screen. It took me about 30 minutes to line up the two wall projectors, another 20 minutes to create a good mask for the center screen, and then some time to stitch together the images. For imagery we used the triptych image sets from Awake Images.

We've done this type of projection at the Sunshine campus, but never at MSU. We've also never lined up the edges of multiple projectors or masked out regions. I've got to say the effect is amazing. I was also shocked at how easily it all went together using ProPresenter and a TripleHead2Go. I invested less than 90 minutes from unpacking to worship ready images on the walls.

Advent Conspiracy 2009

Once upon a time Christmas was about more than endless shopping and wish lists. Christmas was about joy, peace, hope, and love. Most of us could all do with a little bit less stuff crap stress debt hassle in our lives. What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

State of the House

The state of the house 11-8-09
Originally uploaded by kerner

Sarah put together a nice mosaic of the current state of our house. The cabinets are mostly complete, we should have countertops, a kitchen sink and trim installed this week. The contractor this morning told me that ideally they'll be hooking up our fridge and oven today. Hopefully we're getting close to being able to relocate out of the bedrooms into the rest of the house. The whole project is still several weeks away from being complete, but it finally feels like we're getting to the last detail work.

#cultivate09 and #story09 initial thoughts

This week I attended to brand new conferences, Cultivate and Story. I can only say the teams in charge of both events did an exceptional job. I was especially happy with Cultivate because it was a format I'd never seen before. It was driven almost completely by conversation - presenters shared for a brief amount of time and the rest of the session was driven my questions and comments from the attendees. I'd say it was a huge success.

I took several pages of notes from both events. Rather than post my notes I decided that I'd take some time next week and process what all of it means. That's probably a more useful exercise and certainly more interesting to read than my random notes.

If you happen to want to know what happened at the events this week, my friend Tim Schraeder (from Park) took and posted some outstanding notes. You can also follow the key points by searching through twitter for the hashtags #cultivate09 and then #story09.

My initial takeaway from both events is that through the modern era the Church has generally increased in communicating the what of faith while sharing the why of faith less effectively. As people have become more overwhelmed with marketing messages and quick access to information our ability as leaders in the church to translate information into story, helping to express the why, is more critical than ever. It brings us to a decision: do we tell the story of faith and why it matters in compelling ways or do we just bury people in more useless junk?

It's a boy!

Ultrasound Pictures
Originally uploaded by kerner

As many of you know, although I'm sure quite a few people don't know yet, Sarah and I are expecting our first child in late March. We had the ultrasound this morning and everything is going very well. Our baby boy looks healthy and about 8oz at 18ish weeks.

We haven't finalized name choices yet, but we do have it narrowed down to a few options.

Outward Focused Ministry

I spent yesterday with a small group of youth leaders, pastors, and Bishop Schnase (the Bishop of the Missouri Annual Conference) discussing the conference role in helping youth ministry. I wasn't quite sure why I was invited as I have very little involvement in youth ministry (other than I used to be a youth leader). One thing I do know is that if the Bishop invites you to something, it's probably best to attend.

The big question of the day was what the Annual Conference can do to help local congregations have outward focused youth ministry. It was a great conversation and I'm looking forward to seeing what might come of the various ideas that got kicked around.

The bigger question in my mind though is what can be done to help all churches be more outward focused. The driving principle is that we fulfill our mission as a church when we interact with people past the edges of our community of faith. This applies to my primary areas of ministry - college & arts. It's one of the reasons I continue to lead the local Adobe User Group even though I'm not working in the marketplace. It's a big reason I spend a lot of time using the student union as my office.

The question can really be shifted to any level and any ministry, and is something we should explore thoroughly. Denominational structures looking at how they support churches, pastors looking at how they support leaders, leaders looking at how they support church members, and church members supporting each other. All asking the question: what can we do to help others (and ourselves) be more outwardly focused?

What are your ideas? What could you do in your current role to help other people engage in ministry focused on those outside of your community of faith?

What's In A Leader?

We had an amazing leadership retreat last weekend, and as part of the opening session Zak Lampert produced an outstanding video about the qualities of a leader.

Remodel Shopping ugh

We've started the process of shopping for all of the things that go into a kitchen remodel. I'm shocked at how many decisions there are. Sinks, faucets, countertops, cabinet hardware and the list just goes on and on. Once you pick a style there are materials, edges and even more choices.

We've made some progress though. We selected a contractor, have made decisions about the cabinet layout and most likely a new front door. It seems like every time we make a decision there are more to make.

After a stretch of decisionless shopping a visit to Andy's for an Orange Freeze is comforting the big box headache.

Texting and Worship

Last night we made our first foray into texting during worship. We had a panel discussion answering questions that focused on how faith impacts life as a college student. I thought the questions were very good and the panel did an excellent job dealing with them. We did have a few issues in the moderation process, which is something we'll have to improve in the future. There were several questions that we didn't get to because they didn't show up in the moderation tool until after the panel was completed.

We used the services of Jarbyco to setup the the text-to-screen and moderation interfaces. They did a great job and made handling text messages really easy. A team in the back was able to filter questions and get them posted to the screens. I was able to read all the approved questions off my iPhone. The huge screen behind the panel scrolled through questions as they were being answered.

I'm looking into whether or not doing this on a regular basis is going to work. I try to keep the message time during worship on campus to about 18 minutes. I'm pondering trimming messages to 15 minutes and then spending three minutes answering questions every week. The Jarbyco tool will also let us do polls, voting, and send outbound text reminders/updates.

Last year we did a panel about romantic relationships where we had students step up to a mic to ask questions. I feel like the quality of the questions were much better this fall given the anonymity provided by texting (just the question showed up on screen). Working with college students I've become incredibly aware of how important texting is to effective ministry. I'm very excited to see how the use of this technology will unfold and how it will help us to be better communicators of the Gospel.

40 Days of Prayer for College Ministry

NOTE: I'd written this a couple of weeks ago, right before the 40 days started, but it didn't get posted. It's a bit dated, but I logged into write a new post today and saw that this was unpublished, enjoy.

Starting August 17th my friends Creighton Alexander and Ashlee Alley and the team at College Union are calling all of us in the United Methodist church to 40 days of prayer for our college-aged ministries. I would challenge every Christian to be in prayer for students and college ministries as a new school year begins. Each day of the 40 days has a different author who will be writing a prayer for us to share. The focus of these prayers will be:

Evangelism—sharing the Gospel of Jesus on our nations campuses

Discipleship—nurturing the spiritual lives of university students

Provision—building financial resources, personnel, local church involvement

Campus Pastors—supporting family, leadership, vision, personal integrity

Students—raising up the next generation of Christian leaders

I encourage you to join in, visit College Union, and pray along with us for students and ministry leaders all over the world. College ministry is incredibly important and I can't think of a better way to prepare for the year and start a new school year than with prayer.

Theology of Technology Conversations

I'm spending this week in Kentucky at the Asbury campus in a class about the web in ministry. The primary purpose of the class is to familiarize students with the Internet and the web with each of us in the class completing some sort of a final web project. For my project I'm not building a web site, instead I'm working on the SUMC media player - a Flash RIA using the Flex framework, the YouTube API, and skinned through Catalyst.

While understanding and using the technology is an important aspect of the class I'm really enjoying the conversation that is frames the larger issue. Lots of McLuhan, social constructs, relational issues, how we tell the Story, and how Truth is represented in various media. It's a conversation that a lot of people never have and I'm really happy that the seminary is facilitating the conversation.

As church leaders, really as Christians, it's important that we understand the shift that's happening around us. The migration to digital information is as significant as the shift to mass printed text and from an oral tradition to a written tradition. How do we reflect this shift as individuals and as the church?

Unexpected Kitchen Remodel

Moldy Floors
Originally uploaded by kerner

We were planning to replace the flooring on the main level of our house with hardwood last week. This is what we discovered during demolition. Not a happy sight. A slow water leak, estimated to have started before we bought the house, has caused substantial damage to the subfloor and allowed for quite a bit of mold to grow. ICK!

Replacing the flooring has grown into replacing the subfloor. Since we're already in this far we decided that if there's ever a time to remodel the entire kitchen now is the time. Right now we're getting bids from contractors on tearing out some walls and moving the kitchen to the area where our dining room is now. The result will be one room that's 13x30'.

We've sketched out some ideas, looked at appliances, it's going to come down to the construction bids whether or not the project is happening. Hopefully we'll know more later this week.

We Choose The Moon

I'm a huge space buff, and really lament the state of manned space exploration these days, but rest assured, this post isn't really a rant about how we've given up our desire to explore. Forty years ago we accomplished the single greatest exploratory and technological achievement in history, by stepping foot on the moon.

I've been fascinated by the We Choose The Moon web site since it launched. AOL and the JFK Library have done an exceptional job using current tools to retell the Apollo 11 mission for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. You can listen to the live radio stream and follow the status of the mission in real-time, 40 years later. The site is full of pictures and video from the mission. There's even a timer to let you know when the next stage is starting and when the landing occur. I've installed the AIR version on my desktop.

My favorite feature of the site is the coordinated Twitter feeds. I can't sit with the site open all day and just listen, but I've got a column in Tweetdeck for AP11_CAPCOM, AP11_SPACECRAFT, and AP11_EAGLE. The tweets are synchronized so they flow like a conversation. This is such a great use of Twitter. A lot of the comm messages are short bursts which fit into the Twitter timeline really nicely. 

Here's a sample from yesterday:

• AP11_CAPCOM: Hello Apollo 11. Houston. We have scrubbed the midcourse 1. Over.
• AP11_SPACECRAFT: Roger. Understand you have scrubbed midcourse 1.
• AP11_SPACEFRAF: Hey Charlie. Houston, Apollo 11.
• AP11_CAPCOM: Go ahead, 11. Over.
• AP11_SPACECRAFT: Hey maybe you better call Lou and tell him we might be a little late for dinner.

For those of you who were alive when Apollo 11 landed, where were you?

Smoked Salmon Spread

Smoked Salmon Spread is my favorite smoker appetizer. It's both incredibly easy to make and amazingly delicious. It's something I try to make just about any time I fire up the smoker with guests coming over, and dinner with Yvi and Scott last week was no exception. I'd make it every time I fire up the smoker, but it's not a very healthy snack option.

The key is that there are really only two ingredients: an individual portion of salmon and a brick of cream cheese. You do need get a rub you like on the salmon before smoking it. Last week I used Penzey'z Northwoods Seasoning, salt, pepper, and quite a lot of brown sugar. Take the rubbed salmon piece, toss it on the smoker, let it smoke until well done. Last week it was on about 90 minutes at 225° F. Put the salmon and cream cheese in the bowl of a food processor and mix until well combined. Spread on stuff: crackers, chips, bagels, toast, most everything is better with smoked salmon.

The salmon spread is always a hit. Yesterday Sarah went and got bagels from Panera and I finished the last of it with an asiago bagel. Getting rid of the smoked salmon cream cheese was a mistake that Panera (St Louis Bread Co) made a few years back. Getting to indulge with homemade spread is a tasty treat.

Writer's Block: Writing vs Talking

  37signals has a post today that deals with a topic that I think is really important for those of us who speak regularly as part of our jobs. Especially if we have to write manuscripts of a sermon or a presentation. While they discuss writer's block as typer's block relating to a conversation that generates ideas, I think this really applies to sermon writing as well. I use an adaptation of this technique whenever I hit the wall writing (something I've been struggling with this week in particular).

I usually start writing with an outline and let it sit in my head for a couple of days before I try to get to a manuscript. The process of moving from outline to manuscript sometimes flows really easily, just typing the whole thing right out. I always try to start there and see what I can get on paper. When that doesn't work, or when I leave ginormous holes in a message I move to the talking approach.

I pace a lot when I'm writing/thinking creatively. I also talk out loud, which makes this exercise something that has to be done privately. Although it wouldn't work without actually speaking. Sometimes I'll pace around with a piece of paper and just jot down notes and phrases while I ramble through my outline. Sometimes I'll wander around my desk or a table with the laptop recording the audio of my talking. This week I've been using the Voice Memos app on my iPhone as a recorder and been really happy. It lets me wander anywhere, but not have to write things down. I especially like being able to use a headset, start recording, and drop the phone in my pocket.

Ultimately the recordings have to get transcribed into the manuscript. Usually I'll have run through sections of the sermon several times and can pick the treatments I like best to transcribe. Oftentimes the transcription happens several days after the initial recording session so I've had more time to let ideas process.

I've found that the quality of my writing has gone up dramatically since I started recording my talking to myself. It may make me look a bit crazy, and it certainly limits where I can do this stage of the writing, but I think the tradeoffs are worth it.

What tricks do you have to overcome writer's block?

Vacation Email Strategy

Last fall I adopted a zero tolerance policy for my inbox being out of control. Some weeks I would end the week with several hundred messages that needed to be dealt with in some fashion. While I'm in the office it's been relatively easy to keep up. While my inbox has thousands of messages, they're there purely as an archive. Unread messages are dealt with rapidly. As I read each message it either gets left in the inbox to archive, responded to immediately, filed into a folder for later reference, or deleted if I don't need it. This has worked amazingly well when I'm checking email several times a day. Generally email doesn't pile up in a way that is overwhelming. When I'm out of the office on the the other hand...

I was away from the office for a week over spring break on a mission trip and the internet connectivity was sparse at best. When I returned it took an unhealthy amount of time to filter through all of the messages. I'm pretty sure it took me more time to deal with it than it took to receive it all. I determined that I needed a new strategy.

All of my email is in gmail accounts and I use the IMAP support, which makes remote access really easy. I've got the ability to manage it from my laptop, iPhone, or the web. My new strategy is to just read email whenever I get the chance, even when I'm not in the office. Generally that means reading email on the phone. Here's my new conference/vacation email strategy:

• Read mail when possible.
• Process immediately by:
  • Only replying to absolutely urgent email (most can wait a week or two).
  • Saving a draft of an empty reply. Basically I hit the reply button, then save the draft. The goal is just to have drafts started, not to actually have any content.
  • Reading and either saving into an appropriate folder or leaving in the inbox.
  • Saving into a "Needs Attention" folder if it can't be quickly registered.
  • Deleting if it doesn't matter.
• Try to have the unread count in the inbox as low as possible when I return.

I tested the new strategy at Q in April and it worked fairly well, it kept me in the loop without being overly involved and it dramatically reduced the reentry time the following week. It worked so well that I decided it might be a good strategy during vacation as well. I know I probably should 100% disconnect when I'm on vacation, but it's just not something I do well. Part of it is directly related to the volume of email I seem to get and how overwhelming having a huge unread message count is for me.

So this past week in Colorado I tested the theory. Over the course of the week I filed about 25 messages into the "Needs Attention" folder, started and saved drafts for another 30 or so messages, filed a bunch into folders, left many in the inbox, and deleted hundreds. When I returned to the office on Wednesday the only messages that needed attention were those that showed up overnight and my filed messages. By noon all of the email had been closed out and I was able to go about my day. My guess is that the same process using the let it all pile up model would have taken me all day Wednesday to process and several more days to close everything.

I'm really happy with how everything worked out. I flipped through a few emails at a time on my phone or on the laptop whenever I had a spare moment. It never really made me feel like I wasn't on vacation - all of the real work happened after I got back to work. It certainly was nice when I got back to only have a handful of email that needed attention.

How do you handle the pile of email while you're away from the office?

Mountain Biking - Givolo & Creekside Trails

We went biking yesterday afternoon, but never managed to find the trail we were looking to ride. This morning we had a different experience though. Biked from the condo out to Fraser then connected with the Givolo trail, followed it out to Northwest Passage and Creekside. Northwest Passage was through an area that has been clearcut due to the mountain pine beetles. Even though Sarah wasn't so sure about trekking from a blue path to a blue/black we hit Creekside anyway. A bit of mud, some nice rocky terrain, not a lot of climbing. Rode back home on the Fraser River Trail.

After Firepin not working well without cell coverage I decided to try out Trailguru. It worked beautifully. You can see the track of our trip below. It even connects with Google Earth. The afternoon rain has started, but we're planning to hike around at WP Resort and ride the alpine slide after lunch.

Welcome to Wilderness

Welcome to Wilderness
Originally uploaded by kerner

We did our first hike of the trip yesterday, making an attempt to go up Byers Peak. As you can see in the photo, there's still quite a bit of snow on the ground. I'm amused by the sign which says, "Welcome to Wilderness" buried in the snow. We ended up going about four miles, then turning around because of the snow and threat of rain. Not too bad for the first day, an eight mile hike to get acclimated. Today we're going to try to reach Cascade Falls on the Crater Lake trail.

One Prayer Starts Tonight

During the summer we're going to be experimenting with a variety of different Wednesday night opportunities. Starting tonight we're kicking off the month-long One Prayer series. One Prayer is a gathering of more than a thousand churches across the world coming together to worship, serve and grow. Last year our college ministry participated in One Prayer and I'm excited that we're expanding to include the entire church this year.

We're using the One Prayer teaching for a Wednesday night worship experience. It's going to be a great time for people of all ages to get together and learn more about who God is. In addition to music and outstanding teaching, we'll have group discussion time at our tables. If you've ever participated in Alpha it will be a similar conversational experience. There is a light dinner available at 5:30 or you can come for worship starting at 6:30. One Prayer is open to people of all ages, and there are children's ministry activities available through 5th grade.

John 17:20-23  -  My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Summer Reading 2009

Now that my classes are finished for the spring I've got a bit more time to do some reading for both professional development and fun/relaxation. Several of these books have been on my shelf for months. Several of them I've started, but never finished because other things were a higher priority. I read Story when I was an undergrad, but thought a refresher might be good. I had meetings late yesterday night, so I took part of the afternoon to get started on the summer reading plan. Right now I don't have any fiction on the list and I need to add some. Got any suggestions?

Right now my summer reading list includes:

• Killing Cockroaches, Tony Morgan
• Church Unique, Will Mancini
• Flickering Pixels, Shane Hipps
• Intuitive Leadership, Tim Keel
• ReJesus, Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
• Tribes, Seth Godin
• Story, Robert McKee
• In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
• My Stoke of Insight, Jill Taylor
• The Unlikely Disciple, Kevin Roose

Newest Staff Member - Zak Lampert

I'm really excited that Zak Lampert is going to be joining the arts team at Schweitzer in a full-time position as the Media Coordinator & Modern Worship Leader. I've known Zak since he was in high school and he's an amazing young man. He was the first PA who worked in the media office when I was hired and it's been a blast working with him all of these years. Two years ago Zak left working in the media department to become our Modern Worship Leader. He also finished a mass media degree at Missouri State. Zak has a great heart and has grown amazingly as both an artist and a leader since we first met.

Zak will continue in his role leading all of the modern worship teams as well as serve as the primary contact for media production of the church. It's awesome to be able to hire somebody into this role that already gets the DNA of the church and has relationships with people in both the media and modern worship ministries. I'm looking forward to all of the creative possibilities this staffing decision will open up for the church.

Clarity in Communication

It's unbelievable how important clarity is in communication. Too often churches communicate to the insiders in their congregations without any thought about how it impacts guests or infrequent attendees. This morning in our ministry staff meeting we discussed plans for how we're reworking Wednesday nights in the fall. This impacts almost every ministry in the church in some way. As part of that conversation we realized how many ministries have names that really don't mean anything.

We have Sonshine Kids, Sprouts, Tweens, Joyful Noise Choir, Promise Choir, Melody Choir in our Children's ministry. Stephanie made the comment that she's had kids in these ministries for 16 years and has no idea what age goes with each name. Buildings have names that don't mean anything. There are rooms that have names based on colors and rooms that have numbers. We refer to places using language that is significant to us as insiders, but outsiders end up being confused. One of our older classes is named Homebuilders (from when the group was starting families 30 years ago). We have acronyms that have cool meanings, but if you don't know that STEW means Schweitzer Together Every Wednesday or what happens at that event, the likelihood you'll try it out is slim.

We're starting a process of making sure names have meaning. It starts primarily with new ministries. It's incorporated into how we describe events and locations. Making sure there is clarity in communication minimizes confusion, reduces questions and helps everybody be more effective.

Questions that are worth asking:

• What does this name/acronym mean to somebody who doesn't know the history?
• Does this language decrease or increase the chance of somebody getting confused?
• How would renaming this ministry, room, group, etc. impact the group? What about others?
• Can the name accurately describe the ministry? activity? location?

Improving clarity impacts more than just names, but that's an immediate focus. Direct, clear communication in bulletins, newsletters, announcements, and pretty much everywhere else increases the chance that what you have to say will actually be heard. More importantly, clarity in communication makes it possible for people to act rather than ask questions or give up in confusion.

Guest Blogger: Kem Meyer - Less Clutter, Less Noise Blog Tour

Kem Meyer, communication director  from Granger Community Church is doing a blog tour for her book, Less Clutter, Less Noise. It's a great read and will seriously impact the way you think about communication in the church or any setting. I've got a copy to give away to one lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post. Most churches are small, and I was really curious to hear Kem's perspective on communication outside of a large church.

My question for Kem:

In a smaller church setting, where most of the communication material is from volunteers, what can be done to coach all of those volunteers to reduce clutter?

Kem's Response:

Coaching principles are the same whether you’re in a large church, small church, working with staff or volunteers. There’s no sliding scale or different approach, although a lot of people think or wish there were.

Besides sharing articles, links and BOOKS (ahem) with the things you’re reading and learning, the next best thing is to create space for conversations. It is in those conversations where the vision-casting and coaching takes place.

If we’re not leaving time on our calendar—the white space—for impromptu conversations with the people we work with (paid or unpaid), then we can’t expect to see organizational and relational change anytime soon. You see, momentum advances over time through a series of conversations; it is not a one-happy-chat or email event. Bummer. It’d be so much easier if it was. Am I right? If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking this to yourself “I can’t afford the time for that.”

But, the reality is, we can’t afford not to. Every conversation we invest in on the front end makes the next project go smoother. At the end of the day, it’s all in our perspective, isn’t it?

My pastor, Mark Beeson, talked to a group of church leaders last year about what we need to promote forward movement, progress and next steps as an organization. Interestingly, everything he shared starts with an individual’s personal habits, not his or her accomplishments. He reminded us that we can’t get what we “could” have until we let go of what we “do” have. We all need to work on our:
•  Attitude—without this, you will hurt yourself.
•  Relationships—without these, others will hurt you.
•  Persistence—without this, problems will defeat you.
•  Priorities—without these, the insignificant will hamper you.
•  Credibility—without this, no one will follow you.

So, that gave me a little bit more perspective and courage to put down some of my workload to create the whitespace for coaching and relational investments. Although it felt like I was losing ground at first, it didn’t take long for me to see the difference. I went from adding individual value to multiplying team value. Conversations. White space. That’s your secret weapon.

Donated Hardware Rocks

Yesterday I got to drive down to Monett to pick up some server hardware that was donated to the church. None of it is brand-spanking new, but it's going to make for a pretty nice setup. We were given a 42U rack cabinet, and four IBM x346 servers. The servers don't have any drives or a RAID card (just the onboard SCSI), but they're all dual processor (one with dual cores), have 16gb of RAM, and are nicely equipped with fibre channel cards.

We need to come up with some sort of a storage solution for all of these servers. We also need to determine exactly what we'll be doing with them. I know that two are going to be used to handle our internet hosting needs, one may be used purely as a development system, and I have no idea what we'll do with the fourth system. What I do know is that this hardware really needs to be virtualized to meet the full potential. We'll be starting down the path of learning the ins and outs of EXSi soon.

My first goal is to buy a drive caddy and a cheap ultra320 drive and see if the those will work off the onboard controller. Part of the plan is to see if EXSi really needs a drive in the system (usb key boot).
We'll probably be building some sort of large NAS or SAN to hold the data from these systems and nearline video.

If anybody's got tips for how to configure or use this hardware leave comments.

Nearly a day of content every minute on YouTube

I just read this interesting article over at TechCrunch about the amount of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute. In January it was 15 hours/minute, now it's 20 hours/minute. It will soon cross the one day mark. At 20 hours of video it's nearly 50 days of content uploaded every hour and 3.2 years of content every day. If you ever wondered if video on the web was feasible here's the answer. It would take you 23 years to watch all of the content uploaded to YouTube in a single week.

I'm amazed at the amount of manpower that goes into getting this much video uploaded. Even if you discount the content that is never edited or is illegally posted, it's still a lot of work. The bandwidth, storage, and processing power to make the content available online is also staggering.

At Schweitzer we're going to be launching a media player this summer and we've decided to leverage the YouTube platform rather than build our own. We'll put together a wrapper that does search, categories, and a variety of features to make it user friendly, but the playback is all going to be handled by YouTube. It's hands down the largest video distribution platform available.

Five Spring Lessons

I've learned a lot this spring. Not all of the lessons have been fun, but they're all important. I thought I'd share a bit what's been going on in my life.

Lesson One: I don't have time to take two classes. Last spring I did fine with two classes, but as the courses get more difficult and my pastoral role gets more demanding taking two seminary classes at once is more than I can handle. This semester it caused me to not sleep as much as I'd like, not see my wife as much as I'd like, not plan and write as much as I'd like. Take away: no more than one Asbury class each semester.

Lesson Two: I love meeting people that I've connected with online. I've always maintained relationships online, but this spring I got the opportunity to make some cool new friends that I later met in person. If you've been reading this blog or following me on twitter and we've never met, see the next lesson.

Lesson Three: Prioritization matters. I've booked some speaking/training engagements in the later part of the year and I really want to control how much time I'm away from home. The schedule filling up means that I need to make a short list of events I really want to attend this year. After a great week at Q I've made a list. Right now I'm planning to be at:

• Cultivate (October 27) - Where culture, innovation and communication meet. I'm excited to see where this conversation based event leads me.
• Dirt (November 10-11) - Creative conference looking to break the mold of creative conferences for the church.
• I'll also be in Wilmore, KY for the week of August 10 for a class at Asbury.

    Events that are on the list, but still not 100% on the calendar:

• MinistryCOM (September 10-11 ) - Probably not going to make it to MinistryCOM this year, but I might still squeeze it into the schedule.
• Innovate 2009 (September 24-25) - I've loved going to Innovate for the past several years. I've got another event on the 25th and 26th which means I'm probably not going to Innovate this year.
• Story (October 28-29) - Ben Arment's latest project looks really interesting. How do we tell the greatest story ever?
• MAX (October 4-7 ) - I think I've only missed one of these (counting back to the 1997 Macromedia UCON). I love the designer/developer community/content at this event and it's great creative inspiration from the marketplace. It's a bit spendy though.

Lesson Four: I feel better when I eat right and exercise. This is absolutely a no-brainer, but I've found that the busier I get the first thing that goes is exercise followed by good eating habits. I'm slightly embarrassed by the number of days this spring my lunch has been a bag of chips or some cookies.

Lesson Five: Relationships matter more than tasks. This is one that is a real challenge for me. I'm incredibly type A and very task driven. The more stressed I get the more likely I am to let relational/emotional intelligence issues slide. I'm really thankful for a group of friends and coworkers that both understand how my personality works and are willing to tell me when I'm being a jerk.

Bonus Lesson: There's nothing quite like being able to work from a patio in 75° weather. I'm glad that it's an option some days.

What have you learned this spring?

Q 2009 - Initial Thoughts

I've been in Austin this week for Q, a conference that brings together leaders to discuss how the church, culture, future and Gospel all relate. The event brings together people from numerous spheres of influence, slightly more than half were primarily connected to the church. Over the course of three days we heard 18 minute presentations on topics ranging from the narrative of Scripture to nuclear  disarmament to neuroscience. Interspersed with the presentations were a lot of opportunities for conversation. This is one of the first conferences I've been to where absolutely every session sparked something for me. It was also great to catch up with friends I haven't seen in awhile and meet a lot of new people.

Alan Hirsch gave a great opening presentation and I had the opportunity to have several follow up conversations with him about a missional approach to church, technology, ethnography in a digital world, and how age-specific ministry fits with a both/and attractional/missional ministry model.

Probably most important takeaway from this session was that discipleship is much more important than conversion. Hirsch uses the example of the disciples in Scripture, who by modern "baptized by the spirit" standards weren't converted until Pentecost, yet were still disciples. It's about the direction of your life and learning to follow Jesus than getting people to a statement of faith. The church should be more about helping people grow than about trying to convert them. People who are being truly being discipled (as described in Scripture) will come to faith because their lives are moving in the direction of God.

Some other thoughts:

• The church has gotten really good at extracting people from culture but is not very good at keeping people in cultural relationships once they become Christian.
• Holiness has been defined negatively (by what we don't do) rather than the way Jesus exhibited holiness redemptively.
• Christianity should be about redeeming the world, not fleeing from the world. How can we ensure that discipleship isn't an isolationist activity.
• Current church models will realistically only connect with 30-40% of the population. What models need to be developed to reach the other 60-70% of people?

I'll write some more about other sessions, but now I have to get on the plane.

NetNewsWire Makes Reading Blogs Fun Again

I've been a long supporter of reading blogs in some sort of aggregator. For a long time I used Bloglines to collect, organize, and read feeds. My main goal for using it had been to have access from any computer in a format that I liked. I tried out a lot of different web-based feed readers, but Bloglines worked best for me.

Until recently. The UI for Bloglines on the iPhone never lived up to my expectations so I set out to find a better solution. I decided that I needed to have a native app, rather than a web-based interface. My main goal for the search was to have a good user experience across devices. I wanted to be able to sync read/unread feeds from anywhere. NetNewsWire was the perfect solution.

I used NetNewsWire several years ago and was pleased with it as a desktop aggregator, but back then it was a desktop-only solution. I really needed a way to keep current at any computer which meant that I needed a web-based reader. In my happiness with Bloglines I never noticed that NetNewsWire got bought by NewsGator and along the line and integrated into their family of tools. The best part is that this integration allows for syncing of feeds, read/unread status among all of the tools. NetNewsWire on my mac syncs with my  iPhone and stays current with the web-based NewsGator (it would also work with Windows-based FeedDemon).

It's really great to have access to everything I want in a RSS Reader anywhere I've got phone service. It's even better that when I switch between reading on my computer and reading on my phone everything is synchronized. Reading blog posts is fun again. I can catch up anywhere and not have to worry about wading through posts again at my computer.

Easter 2009

Finally feeling somewhat recovered from the insanity that is Holy Week and Easter around here. I stupidly added up how much I've been here and last Wednesday to today involved more than 80 hours. Yikes! Thursday - Sunday involved five different worship experiences at six different times. Over the course of the weekend we had several firsts. It was our first use of moving heads in worship. It was our first use of a click-track to sync the band with a video. It was the first time we did our college worship on the main campus instead of at MSU. It was the first time we pushed a secular song into worship outside of the college setting (You Found Me by The Fray). I'm most excited about the video we put together to go behind You Found Me. I'll post some details about the process, the outcome, and the actual media. I've got to say that Easter was great across the board and lots of people on many teams did outstanding work to make it go smoothly.

Rebuilding New Orleans - Spring Break Mission Trip

I spent last week with a group from the Schweitzer college ministry doing hurricane recovery work in the New Orleans area. We worked with Northshore Disaster Recovery to do the work along with students from several other schools in Missouri. We worked with nearly 100 college students rebuilding houses destroyed by Katrina. Our group worked on putting up vinyl siding, sanding/mudding dry wall, and working on the two porches of the house. Other work sites poured footings for new houses and worked on drywall installation in another.

It's amazing how much destruction still remains in the New Orleans area. Where we were in Slidell it was mainly rebuilding taking place, but further south demolition is still taking place from a storm that occurred nearly four years ago. All around New Orleans people are still living in FEMA trailers.

We drove through the Ninth Ward on Thursday and the area has basically gone wild again with grass, trees, and other plants growing out of foundations. The occasional house in need of demolition is all that remains in neighborhoods that once had houses closely packed together. The inspection marks painted on the sides of buildings remain even in nicer areas where attempts have been made to powerwash them off the homes.

Our experience was outstanding working with Northshore and we're discussing the possibility of taking another trip in the next year to work with them again. Schweitzer has a very active disaster relief ministry that fits nicely with organizations like Northshore, focusing on hands-on work and learning the stories of those impacted by the hurricane.

Eric Cartman & Cultural Attitudes

Last night at The Green Room we continued our series about prayer talking about how we find rest in Christ and how when we find that rest we take on the attitude of Christ as described by Paul in Philippians 2. This is in contrast to the attitudes of our culture.

I had a lot of fun in expressing the values of the culture in contrast to the humbleness of Christ through Eric Cartman from South Park. We showed clips from each of these three cultural realities that are funny when portrayed by nine year old Cartman, but not so funny when we recognize them in ourselves and the people around us.

Whatever I'll do what I want: Plain and simple, as a society, we want to do it our way. There's a desire to live a life without consequences and ignoring those around us.

Respect my authoritay: We also have an attitude of entitlement. Going beyond just doing what we want, we try to force our will on those around us.

Screw you guys, I'm going home: When we don't get our way, we check out. We like to disconnect and take our toys and go home. How often does disagreement in our lives push us into isolation.

Contrast these attitudes to the words of Paul:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
 but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
 And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!
                            - Philippians 2: 5-8

Talking about Dating

At The Green Room we're wrapping up a series about dating this weekend. It's been a great couple of weeks talking about relationships. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts from the past two weeks of messages about having healthy relationships. The first week we covered knowing yourself and knowing God. This past weekend we talked about tips for healthy dating.

• You've got to know who you you are, where you come from, and what you're looking for in a dating relationship.
• You've got to focus on primarily a relationship with God to have healthy dating relationships.
• Two complete people make healthy relationships - neither one should be counting on the other for completion.
• Boundaries are important. Make some boundary decisions before you have to make a snap judgment.
• It's important that you can be yourself with whomever you date.
• Dating should be fun, if you can't relax it's probably not right.

I'm most excited about this coming weekend. Rather than having a talk we've invited four married couples to answer questions about relationships. The couples have been married 3 years, 12 years, 29 years, and 40+ years. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to learn something from all of them this weekend.

Connect 2009

I spent last weekend at a retreat for college students from across Missouri. I've got to say it was a great event. Our speakers, Bill Stephens and Janie Stuart did a workshop for campus ministers on Friday before the event, and we had music from Don Chaffer.

I'm usually pretty skeptical of MO Conference training events, but was very pleased with this one. Bill and Janie offered a lot of good insight from their ministries (respectively The Annex in Boulder, Co and The Inn in Seattle, WA). I'm excited to see what might happen with the new college ministry efforts through the UMC here in Missouri. New ministries similar to The Green Room here at Missouri State launched at campuses in KC and in Cape Girardeau this Sunday as well. That makes three new model ministries in the state.

I thought that the event effectively challenged both adult leaders and students in the importance of reaching to the edges of campus rather than looking inward. I've believed for several years that the college campus is one of the biggest mission fields available to churches near a college campus. I loved the story of a church-based college ministry in a small community that has 100 students involved on an 800 student campus. That's an amazing outreach.

Here are my key takeaways and responses:

• Fewer student leaders that meet a higher standard of leadership are more effective in building a kingdom focused ministry than more leaders with low expectations. Response: We're starting an application/interview process for student leaders with very clear expectations and high standards.
• Adult leadership helps the church feel broader ownership in the college ministry. Response: In the fall we'll have people not in college within the church that are leading our small group Bible studies. They'll be single gender, single year in school groups of 5-8 students.
• Administrative and relational support staff is important in making lasting connections to students. Response: We're going to be offering two student internships in the fall.
• Rapidly connecting students at the start of the year is critical. Response: We're going to plan a killer freshmen retreat the weekend after classes start.

25 Random Things About Me

Rules: Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you it's because I want to know more about you.

1. Like many others I wasn't going to write this post, but enough people tagged me, then a few people harassed me directly, so now I'm doing it. 

2. I've almost always had a dachshund. Except when I was in college and they wouldn't let me have one in the dorm. Our dog Lucy is 8 and is a total brat. The way a dachshund should be.

3. I love BBQ. It's a bit of an addiction. The state of BBQ in Springfield was so bad that I had to get a smoker so I could make my own (I am from Kansas City).

4. I love to travel. Right now my favorite place to go is Santa Fe, NM. The food is good, the weather is good, and it's an easy 14 hour drive.

5. I'm a total food snob, but it's all about taste and quality.

6. I really enjoy street food. A lot of people are scared to buy food from street vendors. Not me.

7. I graduated from college in 3.5 years (although there were summers involved).

8. My first job was at Sears selling kids clothes. It's the only job I've had that I haven't basically designed for myself.

9. I'm a bit overly entreprenurial. I started my first company when I was 18 and have consulted with, founded, or worked for 8 startups.

10. I like to bake. If I went to culinary school it would be to become a pastry chef.

11. Language facinates me. I've studied French, German, Spanish, and Latin. I'm going to study Greek and Hebrew in the near future. I can still read French and Latin fairly proficiently, am comfortable speaking French as a tourist, and can muddle through with Spanish.

12. I broke my back rock climbing when I was 18. I have an L1-L3 spinal fusion as well as some crazy rods and screws that will set off overly sensitive airport metal detectors.

13. My wife Sarah is my favorite person in the world.

14. I once did a lot of technology writing and even more editing. That experience makes me very hesitant when people ask me when I'm going to write a book. Not sure I want to deal with it again, even in a different topic area.

15. I have no idea how to make artisanal cheese, but I really want to make some.

16. I type roughly 90 words per minute with excellent accuracy.

17. My favorite color is green.

18. My job is also my hobby which can present a problem. When I decide that I'm going to get away from work I often do the same sort of stuff in my own time.

19. I enjoy baking bread. For almost a year I baked baguettes every day rather than buying bread. I really want to figure out how to make a quality bread bowl though.

20. I've seen hundreds of movies, have a great appreciation for both art films and pop movies, but have great difficulty picking my favorite movie.

21. I've quit the process to become a pastor twice in frustration about the system. This time it's going much more smoothly.

22. When I was in college I was briefly majored in: journalism, biology, and physics. I eventually graduated with a communication degree with emphasis areas in human computer interaction and social research (there was also a lot of rhetoric and media production in there).

23. As much as I want to be able to draw I'm lucky if my stick people look like stick people.

24. I love to backpack even though it means I'm totally disconnected from technology. Maybe it's because it makes me totally disconnected from technology. I don't really have the time to do it as much as I would like.

25. On a Myers-Briggs personality test I am an I/ENTJ. I evenly split the I/E scores and score 0 feeling points on the T/F scale. People tell me it's an anomaly, and if I take it again it won't come out that way, so far every time I've done an official assessment the results are the same.

I'm tagging absolutely nobody. If you want to write 25 random things great. If not, no pressure/guilt from me to do it.

MacGruber/Pepsuber Advertising

This past weekend as we were watching SNL I actually rewound the DVR to watch a commercial. Later in the episode we kept watching commercials just to see if there were more installments. Turns out there were. These ads are the best product integration as Jack Donaghy would put it. They're so tightly matched with the sketch from SNL that we wanted to watch the commercials. 

MacGruber is a parody character of MacGver and the sketches always end with his being blown to bits. In the ads the delay is always caused by Pepsi. These ads are even better with the inclusion of Richard Dean Anderson. They played again during the Super Bowl. You may say sell out, I say outstanding.

Communication Shifts Part 4: Stopping & Starting & Changing

So after much evaluation and conversation we decided that we needed to make some changes to the way we communicate. This involved making some tough calls about what would stay, what would go away, and what would change.

Stopping:

The biggest change in our communication was the stopping of our weekly newsletter. The newsletter had been our primary communication channel for events and news. Our evaluation told us that many people weren't reading the newsletter. Even those that were reading it missed a lot of information.

We're also stopping a number of our email lists. Particularly those that are not managed by a centralized database. Small lists will stick around (e.g. ministry leaders emailing a group of volunteers), but lists of a couple hundred people managed out of Outlook or Excel are ending. Ideally this communication will be directed to blogs. If email is still required it will be moved to a centrally managed list system.

Our PDF links to the newsletter are also going away. There are two big reasons for this shift. 1) there isn't a newsletter and 2) we'd rather people read the news right in their email client.

Starting:

We sent out our first eNewsletter on January 1. The structure of the note is very simple. It includes event information for our four main ministry divisions (children, youth, college, & adults) as well as opportunities to serve. It's basically a grid of 10 bullets. See our current eNews. With our third eNews out we've got about a 45% open rate and roughly 20% of readers are clicking on something to go to the web site.

Several of our ministry leaders have had blogs, but we haven't had any central listing of them. We're offering two types of blogs to our ministries that are officially supported (meaning we'll help answer questions). We host an installation of Movable Type on a church server that can be used for blogs that speak for the church (ministries). We're also officially supporting Wordpress.com and TypePad blogs for personal blogging. People can set up a blog anywhere else and still get linked, but the likelihood we can provide support is minimal.

We've also got a couple of Twitter accounts set up for specific ministry purposes. How we're using these hasn't really been determined, but we're figuring that out over the next couple of weeks.

Hopefully we're going to be starting video announcements in the near future as well. We'll start initially using them on the Missouri State campus and if they go well move them to the Sunshine campus.

Changing:

Our weekend bulletin is expanded. It now includes a full spread of news/event info as opposed to just one column. We made the decision that it is much more effective to put information into people's hands while they're here on the weekend. The minimized space also reduces repeition and keeps communication focused on our four core groups (kids, youth, college, & adults). We do include info for arts ministries as needed (usually music).We're mailing copies of the bulletin to people that request it or that we know are homebound. Ultimately we've cut our mailing and printing by thousands of pieces/week.

The web site has also been significantly changed. I'll write more about those changes, the tools we used, and the logic behind the changes. I'll even include before/after shots. The web site is becoming our main communication tool. Traffic for January is already double the traffic for December and it's only halfway through the month.