insider info
I don’t like to slow down, but I’ ve had to for a stomach flu or food poisoning. I’m feeling a bit better now, enough to blog and make mention of 3 things:
LightsTogether.com is a new Christian social networking web app in the works, with some notable backers and funders supporting it. There’s more than a dozen of these Christian MySpace alternatives. They’re keeping a tight lid on things right now, as they continue working on the software, and run WebEx demos for church leaders to walk them through the features, and invite private beta sign-ups. The only thing in the open now is the sign-up box at LightsTogether.com - you could maybe get in on a demo before the launch anticipated for April 2007.
Visited with Lindy Lowry, the editor of Outreach Magazine, when I was in San Diego a few weeks ago. This embargoed raw photo of the current cover with Dan Kimball was shot in a hallway where they pin-up all the magazine’s pages for preview, review, and feedback. Cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at a magazine’s content in process; other photos were not released and promptly deleted. Kimball’s feature article, I Like Jesus… Not the Church, is an excerpt from his new book.
I’m not unaware of the hub-bub with the racially-offensive skit material recently published by the Skit Guys, and commend Soong-Chan Rah for being an advocate and voice to call them to corrective actions. My involvement has been to work the back channels to build relationships so that this kind of thing will not happen again. Without relationships, we’ll have endless cycles of shouting matches and misunderstandings, and nobody wants that. [update] Youth Specialties’ President has issued a public apology and corrective actions
Publisher CEO blogs voraciously
A while back I emailed Publisher Thomas Nelson’s CEO, Michael Hyatt, about his blogging, curious if he really did it himself, since I’ve discovered that some (many? all?) top executives often have their staff write the copy on their public communications. He replied back within a day:
Yes, I do all the writing — 100% — myself. I don’t think blogging can be done by a ghost. The writer’s “voice” is too important.
I was amazed by his wise practical content and his blogging frequency, which is now up to a daily pace. Here is a CEO who understands how blogging can be used for effective communication:
As the CEO, I think that communication is one of my primary responsibilities. My job is to cast vision, shape our culture, and mentor those under me. Blogging is simply a means to an end.
However, I like blogging because it gives me direct, unfiltered access to my colleagues. It also provides a way for me to hear directly from all of our employees. It essentially “flattens” the organization and puts us all on an equal footing.
The truth is that I spend no more than about forty-five minutes a day writing. Maybe this sounds impossible, but I assure you it’s not. You have to remember that I have written four books. I wrote each of them while maintaining a regular day job. Over the years, I have learned to write fast.
And, I do it on my own time. Usually, I write late at night or early in the morning. I usually don’t write every day. I tend to write several posts at a time and then “bank” them for posting later.
Read the full text of his post about how he blogs and why. Now if only other executives can get it too.
While we’re on this subject, you might be curious about my blogging frequency and rhythm, as this often becomes a discussion item when I meet people who read my blog in real life (if only I could get them to comment!) I aim to write a blog post 3 times a week, with no undue pressure on having to do a set number. And in all, it takes me about an hour per week to blog. Note, this does not include the time it’d take me to read other blogs. So being an active blogger does not have to be so time-consuming; we all only have 24 hours a day.
gathering for cultural impact
I’m planning to be at the Q boutique event in Atlanta, April 25-27. You can call it a conference, but it’s more of a gathering, more about who’s going to be there plus the opportunity for relationship building than the content they’d dispense.
Here’s how I’d describe Q: the event revolves around 22 big ideas from Christian leaders seeking to (or already are) impacting mainstream culture nationally and internationally. Each will have less than 20 minutes to speak their peace — what they’re anticipating for the future, not what they’ve already published. Listen to Gabe Lyons talk about Q and Fermi Project here:
[mp3]http://www.fermiproject.com/audio/fermi_idea.mp3[/mp3]
Early registration ends this Wednesday 2/28: $625 per person. (Then it goes up to $725 on March 1st.) Yes, it’s steep, but this kind of pricing is common in the business industry, and when we’re talking Kingdom business, the price will be self-selecting of who would go and who wouldn’t.
churchrelevance.com has the list of speakers as does Tim Schrader with links to the speaker’s organizations/ initiatives. Names I recognize are: Rob Bell, Chris Seay, Clint Kemp, Andy Crouch, Andy Stanley, Mike Foster. Josh “ThewayIthink” Scott describes Q being the brain-child of Gabe Lyons (and I sense it’s got a lot of input from Andy Crouch and others too):
… Gabe Lyons [of Relevate and Catalyst] as an effort to re-brand Christianity on a national and international level. It’s a joint effort by leading voices in the church to create seismic change in how the church views its role in shaping mainstream culture.
The idea is shape culture, not to take over government and social policies. The kind of questions that would be the kind that Q would talk about are:
- What are the major social and environmental issues coming over the next 10 years and how can the church take a leading role?
- What are our responsibilities to confront injustice to humanity locally and internationally?
- How does globalization affect the culture and the local church?
- What role does news and media play in shaping the future generation’s views of life, humanity and religion?
- How can we change the negative perceptions of Christianity in our culture?
The perceptions that most non-Christians have about Christianity and its adherents are overwhelmingly negative. Q presenter David Kinnaman will share insights from his new book, unCHRISTIAN: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity - and Why it Matters, releasing October 2007. I think it’s this book that has survey results 16-29 year old non-Christians about their reaction to 3 words: Christian, Born Again, and Evangelical. The list of the top 12 reactions broke down this way: 9 negative, 2 neutral, 1 positive. Does it matter what non-Christians think of Christians? Yes, according to Jesus: “… let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
(Some) Bloggers are among the influentials, but so far there’s only 12 mentions in the blogosphere about Q, per Google Blog Search (at the time of this writing.) Hmmm…
book reaction: Soul Cravings
Instead of writing up the more formally sounding book review, I’m going to start blogging my book reactions. I get to peruse many books but rarely finish reading them, b/c I’m not the voluminous reader that Mark Driscoll has been known to be (he read a book a day, for over a year, I’ve heard), and I don’t want to be summarizing a book’s content; the publishers and marketing agents do a fine job at that.
Soul Cravings
is the latest book by Erwin Raphael McManus, pastor of Mosaic LA. Erwin’s perhaps the most effusively passionate creativity artiste kind of a guy around, very much wired for the Los Angeles epicenter. I’ve heard him surprisingly downplaying his enormous gift as a verbal communicator on many occasions, disarmingly and persuasively saying, “I’m just like you.” Ah, the master communicator at work — finding common ground. That’s true to some degree, but not so true, and that I find unfair, or incomplete to say the least. I want to shout back, “You are so NOT like me, I can’t communicate like you!”
That’s the kind of provocatively emotional level that Erwin excels at engaging audiences with, in his speaking and in his books. Soul Cravings has no page numbers. Instead, Soul Cravings has 20-some numbered entries on 3 themes: intimacy, destiny, and meaning. Having heard of Erwin’s core message over the years, this is akin to his reinventive replay of “belong, become, believe” or “love, faith, hope”, though rearranging the order of this interplay on this go around. I love the book for its artistic meanderings around the emotional heart and soul of humankind. I think if I read him right, the underlying notion of this exploration is that our soul’s cravings point to the invisible attributes of God just as much if not more than the creation’s natural beauty (cf. Romans 1:20).
Erwin makes a few self-disclosures in Soul Cravings, and I’ll make one here of myself. I’m aware of my own cravings in life. I find my insatiable craving for intimacy so hungry and lacking that my other supposedly innate desires for destiny or meaning don’t exist. It sure feels like I don’t care about destiny or meaning. So, maybe it’s this: not all 3 cravings are equally compelling for everyone. They’re all there beneath the surface, in the recesses of our soul, and one of them drives us, motivates us, to do what it is that we do, more than the other 2. For me, that’s my quest for intimacy. Of the 3, this is the most elusive one b/c it depends on others.
[disclaimer] I received the comp book from DeChant-Hughes & Associates, a Chicago-based firm specializing in books on religion and spirituality. In the email to me, they said that, “We are always happy to keep bloggers aware of new books if you’d like to be added to our mailing list.” I’m not sure how many bloggers they want to keep happy, so leave a comment below and let’s see if you can get in on their program of comp books for bloggers.
why a multiethnic church
Pastor Mark DeYmaz of Mosaic Church (Central Arkansas) and Mosaix Global Network spoke at Denver Seminary’s Chapel earlier this week. You can listen below:
Monday 2/19: Biblical Mandate for the Multi-ethnic Church
[mp3]http://www.denverseminary.edu/resources/worship/spring07/chapel021907.mp3[/mp3]
Tuesday 2/20: Seven Core Commitments for a Multi-ethnic Church
[mp3]http://www.denverseminary.edu/resources/worship/spring07/chapel022007.mp3[/mp3]
Or, you can download the MP3 audios from their Chapel Media page.
Sadly, this whole issue’s still an uphill battle. This true story from Exit Interviews: Why blacks are leaving evangelical ministries shows the glaring relational gap:
One strange encounter typified the underlying racial tension Davis faced. … I got a call from a prominent white Christian leader, asking me to go to lunch with him. As we’re sitting down to eat, all of a sudden this guy starts crying. … “I just came back from an annual conference on the other side of the country,” the man told me. “A bunch of us got together to discuss reconciliation and cross-cultural ministry. Usually, when black leaders come into the meeting, we make them feel right at home and let them be part of the decision-making process. But to be honest with you, Darrell, the decisions are made before your leaders ever get there. … “How can I get over this?” the leader asked me, sobbing. “How can we be friends?” … He was taken aback. He said, “You want me to come to your house?”
“Yes,” I said. “If you want me to sit here and clear your conscience for all the crap you did, I can’t do that. Friendship is not cheap. It takes time and commitment.” I gave him my home phone number and told him to give me a call.
I never heard from him again.
Maybe 
one way to address it is megachurch diversity, as “more than half of the megachurches say they are intentionally working to attract different ethnic groups”, cf. Trendsetting US megachurches take up challenge of desegregating Sunday worship. Can’t wait for the new book Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America’s Largest Churches by Dave Travis and Scott Thumma. (Pre-order from amazon.com.) [disclosure: I work for Leadership Network.]
Location matters. The Rev. David Anderson, founding pastor of Bridgeview Community Church in Columbia, Maryland, which has about 2,000 members, conducts what he calls the “Wal-Mart test” by driving to malls or Wal-Marts within a 20-mile (30-kilometer) radius of his church to see who is shopping.
“If the Wal-Mart is diverse,” he says, “then your church can be diverse.”
Anderson’s megachurch is unique in that he started it specifically to be multicultural. He estimates that Bridgeview, more than a decade old, is now 55 percent African-American and about one-quarter white, with Asians, Hispanics and others making up the rest.
The name of David Anderson’s church is BRIDGEWAY, not Bridgeview. I’ve worshiped there several times, love the fun atmosphere they’ve fostered over the past decade.
