GroshLink

Does Faster and faster, title of Chapter 7,* summarize your experience of speed of on-line communication?  Have you at times gotten run over by the volume of the communication or by groups coordinated via good communication (some version of a flash mob)?  I loved Clay Shirky's illustrations of the fall of the German Democratic Republic (1989), protests in Belarus (2006), German communication in Blitzkrieg (1940), the suprise punch of the Falun Gong (1999), dealing with flight delays, changes in loan stipulations, and Egyptain political activists.  Wanting to know more about Solving Social Dilemmas, I charged into Chapter 8.

Of course, Clay Shirky doesn't actually claim social tools can solve social dilmmas, instead he offers various ways in which social tools can amplify our ability to address them.  As a follower of Christ, I differ with his Tit-for-Tat approach to the extraordinary and daily use of the Prisoners' Dilemma.  We are to always confess and share the truth as part of our loving relationship with God.  Such a way of life supercedes our love of neighbor and self.  But I found his remedy to the concerns expressed by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000), quite on the mark.  Meetup is a great illustration of how affinity and proximity make a great match, particularly for those on the outside, seeking social opportunities. Due to Theresa's connections with MOPS, I'm not surprised that the most popular current group is Stay at Home Moms (SAHM).  But I would guess that Facebook's surge among SAHM has been taking a big chunk out of this audience. Can anyone give me insight on this topic?

Clay Shirky raises three issues regarding the new freedoms of on-line connection/assembly:

1. loss of jobs to specialists who are displaced by mass amateurism
2. loss of governmental (and journalistic) ability to control media output
3. "Networked organizations are more resilient as a result of better commuication tools and more flexible soical structures, but this is as true of terrorist netwroks or criminal gangs as of Wikipedians or student protestors.  This third loss, where the harms are not merely transition, leads to a hard question:  What are we going to do about the neagive effects of freedom. ... It used to be hard to get people to assemble and easy for existing groups to fall apart.  Now asembling latent groups is simple, and the groups, once assemble, can be quite robust in the face of indifference or deven direct opposition from the larger society.  (In some cases, that very opposition can strengthen the group's cohesion, as with the Pro-Ana[rexic] girls.)  When it is hard to form groups, both potentially good and bad groups are prevented from forming; when in becomes simple to form groups, we get both the good and the bad ones.  This is going to force society to shift from simply preventing groups from forming to actively deciding which existing ones to try to oppose, a shift that parallels the publish-then-filter pattern generally. -- p.210-211.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6

My reference to the Body of Christ in Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5, may have been looking for more of what we find in Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.*  Let's explore what "new tools give life to new forms of action" which "in turn challenge existing institutions, by eroding the institutional monopoly on large-scale coordination" (p.109, from Chapter 6 Abstract, italics in original).

Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges is actually focused upon the church, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church.  In what manner?  Clay Shirky devotes significant attention to how on-line lay coordination (Voice of the Faithful, i.e., VOTF) in 2002 led to sexual scandal reforms/resignations which failed to occur even ten years previously when the issues were raised by the media in 1992. What enabled strong lay mobilization?  The ease of sharing information (versus expending the energy to collect/mail newspaper clippings and find out the the stories of others) along with the coordination of response through on-line resources and arranging public meetings.  

Later in the chapter, Clay Shirky also refers to the challenges of parish authority by the Episcopalian Church in Virigina when they brokeaway from the U.S. denomination, in protest to the ordination of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson, to go under the Nigerian Anglican Church. 

What powerful tool do we find now in regular use, email.  The ability to go viral. 

social tools don't create collective action -- they merely remove the obstacles to it.  Those obstacles have been so significant and pervasive, however, that as they are being removed, the world is becoming a different place.  This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple, easty-to-use tools like e-mail, mobile phones, and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their daily lives.  Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new behaviors. -- p.159-160.

Clay Shirky's stringing me along as I anticipate Chapter 7:  Faster and faster is going to provide intense illustrations regarding Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5

Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production.  Tell me more!  As many of you know, collaborative production rests in the soul of my understanding of being part of the Body of Christ. Let's dig in to find out what we can learn from Chapter 5 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Oranizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008):

Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is considerably harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound.  New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of nonfinancial motivations and by allowing for wildly differing levels of communication (p.109, Chapter Abstract, italics in original).

Yes, collaboration's harder than simply sharing.  Shirky focuses upon the history of and the continuing development of Wikipedia as a coordinating resource via the spontaneous division of a community of love (!).  He points out two (actually three) surprising lessons learned about collaborative web projects:

1.  the imbalance is the same shape across a huge number of different kinds of behaviors. ... The general form of a power law distribution appears in social settings when some set of items -- users, pictures, tags -- is ranked by frequency of occurrence.  You can rank a group of Flickr users by the number of pictures they submit.  You can rank a collection of pictures by the number of viewers.  You can rank tags by the number of pictures they are applied to.  All of these graphs will be in the rough shape of a power law distribution. ...

2.  the imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them.  Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions of users. ... Though the word "ecosystem" is overused as a way to make simple situations seem more complex, it is merited here, because large social systems cannot be understood as a simple aggregation of the behavior of some nonexistent "average" user. ... Any system described by a power law, where mean, median, and mode are so different, has several curious effects.  The first is that by definition, most participants are below average.  This sounds strange to many ears, as we are used to a world where average means middle, which is to say where average is the same as the median.  You can see this "below average" phenomenon at work in the economist's joke:  Bill Gates walks into a bar, and suddenly everyone inside becomes a millionaire, on average.  The corollary is that everyone else in the bar also acquires a below-average income.  The other surpirse of such systems it that as they get larger, the imbalance between the few and the many gets larger, not smaller.  As you get more weblogs, or more MySpace pages, or more YouTube videos, the gap between the material that gets the most attention and merely average attention wil grow, as wil the gap beween average and median (p.124-125, 127).

Comment:  You can see where this is going with regard to the readership of most blogs, of which Groshlink fits the category.  But the comparatively low readership of the various pages with which Theresa and I are involved in provides the opportunity for concentrated, deeper connections.  The larger our friendship circles (such as on Facebook) and the number of groups we find ourselves managing, the lower our personal interaction.  How does one choose proper size and work toward those ends with a project such as the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog?  Any proposals on an open project for InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry related to ESN?  Is it best for us to turn attention to pilot campuses or through the door open for campuses to tap into a national open project?  Clarity in direction and fluidity in structure is important for growth/development.  Turning to Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.  Maybe that's more of what I was referring to at the beginning of this post.

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4

Three books by Vital Smarts sat beside Here Comes Everybody. 

 

 

• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan, David Maxfield. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2007)
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2002)
• Crucial Confrontations:  Tools for resolving broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2004)

As they approached their due date, I took them to the library with the intention of skimming them, taking some notes, and returning them in one morning. How did I do?  What take aways do I have to pass along?

 (More)

Publish, Then Filter aptly titles Chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).  Shirky begins with some samples of amateur internet writing.  Does my writing spill forth with a popular American conversational tone?  I hope not, but it is true that my writing for Groshlink has friends, ministry partners, and family in mind.  In many ways, I'm writing and you're reading something closer to an on-line family/ministry journal than a media source broadcasting to the whole world (although posted for/available to all with access). 

As the number of my on-line connections with family, friends, networks, blogs, and communities of practice/discussion grow, Shirky's observation that the web falls short in connecting an individual with a large grouping of people comes too close to home.  Even though I desire it not to be the case, a difference exists between conversing and broadcasting (p.95).

"The Web makes interactivity technologically possible, but what technology giveth, social factors taketh away.  In the case of the famous, any potential interactivity is squashed, because fame isn't an attitude, and it isn't technological artifact.  Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention, more arrows pointing in than out.  Two things have to happen for someone to be famous, neither of them related to technology.  The first is scale:  he or she has to have some minimum amount of attention, an audience in the thousands or more. (This why the internet version of the Warhol quote -- "In the furture everyone will be famous to fifteen people" -- is appealing but wrong.)  Second, he or she has to be unable to reciprocate. ... Though the possibility of two-way links is profoundly good, it is not a cure-all.  On the Web interactivity has no technological limits, but it does still have strong cognitive limits:  no matter who you are, you can only read so many weblogs, can trade e-mail with only so many people, and so on.  Oprah has e-mail, but her address would become useless the minute it became public." ... Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems.  Once a medium gets past a certain size, fame is a forced move.  Early reports of the death of traditional media portrayed the Web as a kind of anti-TV -- two-way where TV is one-way, interactive where TV is passive, and (implicitly) good where TV is bad.  Now we know that the Web is not a perfect antidote to the problems of mass media, because some of those problems are human and are not amenable to technological fixes (p.91, 93-94).

Question:  Not just fame, but responsibility eats up time.  What do you think?  Is it old school to be a home-maker such as Theresa, network across campuses/involvement with the Emerging Scholars Network such I do, or lead a team of over a half-dozen staff such as myself while interacting with the larger structure of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3

Do you agree with the title of Chapter 3, Everyone is a Media Outlet?  The chapter abstract reads

Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression, and thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media.  The result is the mass amateurization of efforts previously required for media professionals - Clay Shirky. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008, p.55, original in italics.

Yes, I'm a media outlet, a representative of mass amateurization of efforts previously required for media professionals.  My high school newspaper staff experience has not been built upon with any accredited training/certification to become a skilled professional journalist.  A provocative benefit is that I'm neither confined by a narrow definition regarding news/media/journalism, potentially leaving me confused/blindsided by the rise of new forms of communication, nor sold on the defense of the profession caught in the midst of a societal exploration of new web platforms of gathering and communicating information ;-)  Groshlink, U-ConnectPGH, Emerging Scholars Blog, Facebook pages, and various other venues demonstrate my desire to find ways to get the word out* and walk alongside, while potentially being in the process of displacing, standard forms of media.**

A few quotes for your reflection: 

• Two things are true about the remaking of the European intellectual landscape during the Protestant Reformation:  first, it was not caused by the invention of moveable type, and second, it was possible only after the invention of movable type, which aided the rapid dissemination of Martin Luther's complaints about the Catholic Church (the 95 Theses) and the spread of Bibles printed in local languages, among its other effect. ... social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don't involve an orderly transition from point A to point B.  Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B.  In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable.  In the 1400s scribes existed side by side with publishes but no longer performed an irreplaceable service.  Despite the replacement of their core function, however, the scribes' sense of themselves as essential remained undiminished (p.67-8).
• "Now that there is no limit to those who can commit acts of journalism, how should we alter journalistic privilege to fit that new reality?" ... Who is a professional photographer? ... What once was a chasm has not become a mere slope. ... An individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a non-profit of one, and self-publishing is now the normal case. (p.74)

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2

How does the handiwork of the Notre Dame Band compare to what the engineers pull off in OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version - Official? 

PS.  It's hard to confess but I think that I like the Marching Band performance one better ;-)

Pray for God the Father's gift of travel to/from, leading/direction of, presence at, the Word through our speaker (a physician), growing Christ-likeness, and the fruit of the Spirit at this weekend's PSU-Hershey Christian Medical Society's Spring Retreat.  A little over 30 are confirmed, including grad students, medical students, nurses, physicians, and kids ;-)

Reminds Theresa of the fun which we had with Odyssey of the Mind in high school.  Those were the memories, she particular remembers how much I talked in the car on the way back from Altoona ;-)  Now that's not much of a surprise, but I had even more to say back in the day -- believe that one?

HT: friend in 'da Burgh. 

Teens, Cell Phones and Texting: Text Messaging Becomes Centerpiece Communication (Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 4/20/2010). Has texting grown as a form of communication for you? It definately has for me. A great way to answer questions and handle tasks when I don't have WiFi or a good way to take/give a cell phone call.

I confess Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008) was hard to put down.  But was there anything of value in Chapter 2:  Sharing Anchors Community?  Glad you asked ;-)  The chapter begins with the assertion:

Groups of people are complex, in ways that make those groups hard to form and hard to sustain; much of the shape of traditional institutions is a response to those difficulties.  New social tools relieve some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of group-forming, like using simple sharing to anchor the creation of new groups. -- p.25, original in italics.

1.  The Birthday Paradox.  Chemistry is not just applied physics.  Sociology is not just applied psychology.  The danger of adding employees to a late project (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month).  The Nature of the Firm (Ronald Coase, 1937).

2.  On-line photo (Flickr) and info (blogging) sharing in unique situations ('95 Underground bombings, '04 tsunami, '06 Thai Military Coup). [Comment:  The lack of illustrations using Facebook stems from the book's release in 2008, before the widespread use of Facebook.  Waiting to see if Facebook will receive some mention later in the book.]

3.  Smaller organizations can run in a more ad hoc fashion.  But larger organizations demand the flow chart, developed by railroads in mid-19th century, which layers information and decision making. As a matter of fact, "not only does managing resources take resources, but management challenges grow faster than organizational size" (p.41). [Comment: I enjoy pioneering and seeing a small community/organization birthed.  The management of a larger community/organization can be difficult and demands checks to be sure it aligns with its purpose/vision which come more easily/naturally in a small, 'home grown' community/organization where everyone knows what everyone else is doing.]

4.  "An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them" (p.43).

5  "Social tools [e.g., Flickr] provide a third alternative:  action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit margin" (p.47). .... the ease of assembling, experimentation, and sharing with collaborative groups (p.48-49).  Hierarchy of information sharing, cooperating in collaborative production, collective action (p.49-54). [Question: How about parachurch ministries in which staff members raise their own support?]

Onto Chapter 3:  Everyone is a Media Outlet. 

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1

Even if you don't regularly follow the Emerging Scholars Network Blog, you might find one of these articles of interest ...

• What is your relationship to reading and writing? ~Tom
• Christians and Conflict in the Academy ~Mike
• Week in Review: Faith, Reason, and YouTube Edition ~Mike & Tom
• Tom Sine asks about Easter ~Tom
• Anonymity as the Way? ~Tom
• Finding Community at Christian Academic Conferences ~Mike
• Week in Review: Friends of Computers and Animals Edition ~Mike & Tom
• Trusting in the Lord in a Secular Workplace or Job Security in Academia ~Tom
• How Did You Celebrate Easter? ~Mike
• Recognizing the Messiah ~Tom
• Week in Review: Behold the Man Edition ~Mike & Tom
• A Beautiful Summation of the Gospel ~Tom
• What should undergrads know about grad school? ~Mike

 

I enjoy soaking in and wrestling with material in a book.  If a book is not worth soaking in, it's hard for me to pick up and skim.  But after renewing Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008) twice and reminding myself that I should read over it in prep for an upcoming workshop on Social Media,* I bit the bullet.  

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), draws the reader into Chapter 1:  It Takes a Village to Find a Phone via a complex story of the creation of and response of an activistic virtual community to a lost/stolen cell phone.  Below are some quotes I spent time considering and pass along for you.

• Sociability is one of our core capabilities [as human beings] -- p.14.
• Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of constituent groups. The aggregate relationships lead to networks of astonishing complexity. ... and the ability to accomplish amazing feats (p.14-16).
• New technology enables new kinds of group-forming. ... When we change the way we communicate, we change society (p.17). ... forming groups has gotten a lot easier.  To put it in economic terms, the costs incurred by creating a new group or joining an existing one have fallen in recent years, and not just by a little bit.  They have collapsed.  ("Cost" here is used in the economist's sense of anything expended -- money, but also time, effort, or attention.) (p.18).
• Without a plausible promise, all the technology in the world would be nothing more than all the technology in the world (p.18).
• The difference between an ad hoc group and a company like Microsoft is management. ... If you want to organize the work of even dozens of individuals, you have to manage them (p.19). ... We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations (p.20-21). ... the difficulties that kept self-assembled groups from working together are shrinking, meaning that the number and kinds of things groups can get done without financial motivation or managerial oversight are growing.  The current change, in one sentence, is this:  most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done (p.22).

Question: Are you exploring new ways of gathering together and getting things done on-line OR is that a too idealistic?  Where technology is prevalent, does there exist a generational divide between those who embrace communities formed/supported through the new technology and those who do not?

*Query: Social Media, Community Development, Campus Ministry

Passed along to me by my friend Miller.  Looks great!  Wish this would have been in motion when I was in the 'da Burgh. 

WCD is a one year program in pittsburgh... live missionally in community, work part time, study, minister in multi-cultural East End ..scott sunquist, of pittsburgh seminary, is the director..

The World Christian Discipleship Program is designed for young university graduates who are interested in discerning and preparing for Christian vocation, regardless of occupation (church planter, lawyer, teacher, pastor, etc.). The program is non-traditional so students should be prepared to live a simple life, live in community, serve the East End communities, and live according to a  religious rule.

The WCD program is located in the East End of Pittsburgh, a multi-cultural area. Participants in the program live in the homes of local church members, work in local businesses, and share in the lives and  experiences of people in East Pittsburgh. The “classroom” is the community: its businesses, homes, parks and schools. Disciples meet in homes for meals, worship, discussion and community building.

Disciples work 15-20 hours per week in local businesses. They are to see themselves as a  missional presence in the East End. In addition they will be volunteering with local ministries (homeless, housing, etc.) and be assigned to a local church plant or a church in redevelopment. A one year commitment is expected.

PS.  It's great to see Scott Sunquist, W. Don McClure Associate Professor of World Mission and Evangelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and B.J. Woodworth, lead pastor of Open Door (PCUSA church plant in Pittsburgh's East End), bringing together the World Christian Discipleship Program.  Please forward to those with possible interest.  Note:  Application due by June 1.   

Below's another challenging quote from the final chapter of Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010),* the context is a discussion of sharing true confession of sin/prayer requests ...

If I stop writing tomorrow this is the lesson which I'll cling to the most, When you go first, you give everyone in your church or your community or your small group or blog, the gift of going second.  It's so much harder to be first.  No-one knows what's off limits yet and you're setting the boundaries with your words.  You're throwing yourself on the honesty grenade and taking whatever fall out that comes with.  Going second is so much easier and the ease only grows exponentially as people continue to share, but it has to be started somewhere.  Someone has to go first and I think it has to be us.  Let's give the gift of going second. -- Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010).

Father, grant me the grace to follow the lead of your Son Christ Jesus and the direction of your Spirit and Word as part of the Body of Christ spanning history in all the contexts to which you have called me to serve.

*Earlier Stuff Christians Like excerpt posted at Who is carrying all that with you?, http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/04/17/who-is-carrying-all-that-with-you.

Pray for the U.S. Supreme Court justices to render a wise decision that does not limit campus ministry as they deliberate the case of the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which will be heard today (4/19).  InterVarsity has an extensive article on the case and how it potentially impacts our ministry at Campus Ministry Threatened.

The Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Christian Legal Society v. Martinez will clarify conflicting decisions between two federal circuit courts about whether the U.S. Constitution “allows a state law school to deny recognition to a religious student organization because the group requires its officers and voting members to agree with its core religious viewpoints.” The American Bar Association website indicates that nearly 100 parties have filed briefs in support of the CLS position, including 14 state attorneys general. InterVarsity joined a brief with 15 other individuals and organizations which have, as the brief states, “encountered resistance, at various public school campuses, to organizational recognition or equal benefits based upon their supposed violation, by insistence upon religious standards, of official non-discrimination policies.” -- Campus Ministry Threatened (InterVarsity News, 4/13/2010).

Note:  NPR's coverage posted at Supreme Court To Hear All-Comers Policy Case (4/19/2010) and Court To Hear Arguments On Campus Christian Group (Associated Press, 4/19/2010).

OSU Price of Life begins today with Parade of Tears (4/18th, 3pm)

Event Description: In an effort to raise money to combat the growing evil of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, all are invited to an historic march along the Underground Railroad route at the Ohio State University. This event will feature special musical guest artists and a brief presentation from David Batstone from the Not for Sale Campaign. During this historic event, participants will be able to visibly demonstrate their objection to the exploitation of children through a variety of protest symbols, including being bound and gagged, chained, and silently marching to stand with those whose voice has been silenced through modern day slavery

The Human Wrong initiative to stop child slavery from World Vision Advocacy on Vimeo.

 

On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." -- Matthew 9:11-13

If you haven't already heard it, listen to WJTL's interview of Jon Acuff, author Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010).  Thanks to Christian Audio's free month of April posting, I've been listening to the book over the course of the past several weeks.

Some initial thoughts on Stuff Christians Like, more will be coming ;-)

1. Comment on Acuff's promo, "Do you think we Christians are weird? Me too. This book is for you." Yes, followers of Christ are weird and much to be pitied, if Christ has not be raised from the dead (I Corinthians 15:12-19).  But, I didn't grow up in and have only touched on the outskirts of the Evangelical subculture at which Acuff directs his satire, as such it probably wasn't as funny/liberating for me as I imagine it may have been for others.  I know it was not Acuff's intention, but it seems to me that it's hard for some of his material to not come across as mocking the faith/practices of some in these traditions.  I'd be interested in thoughts from other readers/listeners. Note:  You can browse the paper copy at http://browseinside.zondervan.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780310319948.
2. Out of the whole book, I resonated most with Chapter 10, which follows Stuff Christians Like's Wednesday practice of turning to "more serious."  In particular, I appreciated the challenge to listen to the concerns of others. ... To ask, "Who is carrying 'all that' with you?"  This is the ultimate question of the Gospel because "everyone has an 'all that' that they're carrying." Yes, many times the answer is "no one," because it's hard to share our burdens (real, deep inner spiritual life) with others. 
3. Acuff challenges himself and the friend/follower of Christ Jesus not just to listen and not just to give a "drive-by Jesus," but to carry our friend's "all that" with them as they come to know our friend Jesus.  Unless one gives up/offers one's burdens, fears, anxieties, sin, and brokenness to God, life is overwhelming on the individual, familial, societal, and cosmic scale. We offer "all that" (and more) to the Son as as we enter relationship with the Father by the gift of the Word, Spirit, and Body of Christ.  This is an act of submission of our whole being and the transformation of our whole being to love God leading to proper love of neighbor, self, and creation. Later in the final chapter, Acuff summarizes the Gospel as "Be sick. Be loved." [That is, be who you are as you come to God to receive His love].

Last week I visited Evangelical Theological Seminary, Myerstown, PA.  As many of you know, Spiritual Formation continues to be my primary interest in exploring seminary studies for equipping in the call to serve as a husband, father, member of InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry team, neighbor. ...  Evangelical offers a Master of Arts in Religion in Spiritual Formation. I think that I may have found a match and it will have been worth the wait. Praise God!  

Pray for discernment regarding timing and the provision of finances before taking next steps.  At present, my best guess is a few classes here and there before enrollment in Fall 2011.  A big factor in the timeline is how well Eden transitions into Kindergarden this fall.  Pray for Eden's continued growth, development, and smooth transitions in the educational process.

Enjoying Phil Keaggy's artistry in The Wind and the Wheat.  Trying not so much to think about or watch the incredible talent, but instead seeking to rest in and give glory to God for the gift of the new day when I have the opportunity to take Theresa out on a breakfast date, gather for prayer at PSU-Hershey, and learning about Amish CEO's.

A meditation on being Under the Grace as I begin a busy day in a coffee house, on the phone, at PSU-Harrisburg, and Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ ... May you also find it a blessing.

The other night before our evening prayer, I watched God's Wonderful Surprise and then sang The Creed -- John Michael Talbot and Creed - Rich Mullins* with the twins.  They wanted another song so I pulled Michael Card & John Michael Talbot - One Faith.  

*Will Ellen pick up a hammered dulcimer after watching Creed - Rich Mullins? She sounded inspired, but had second thoughts when she considered how much of my office the guitar and violin already take up. But if she's interested, I am. Anyone know a teacher?

When Rich Mullin's started introducing "Elijah" on Rich Mullins: Here in America DVD, I heard from the back, "That's your favorite Mullins song."  Yes it is.  On the DVD he gives an excellent introduction in which he wonders why people listen to him (and other artists) and points the audience back to the Word of God. Wish that introducation was included in this YouTube post :(

The other day while getting ready in the morning, Eden asked me to recount the story of Joash and then Snow White. While reading The Hide-and-Seek-Prince* this week, I've emphasized the call of God upon Joash and the responsibility which he received at 7 years of age. Note: In our culture, there is an ironic encouraging of children to their full potential while discouraging their ability to make decisions, strike out on their own, get it done, and take leadership.  Eden really enjoys the drama of the story. 

After hearing my brief recounting of Snow White, Eden pointed out God took care of Snow White.  Amen!  Then she asked, Did Snow White know God?  What would you say?  I responded that it was my prayer that someone such as us went to their castle to share God, His Life, and His Story, just as I go to campus. Furthermore, it's our responsibility to share God, His Life, and His Story each and every day with all whom we meet.  A conversation to be picked up, a life to be lived, and a Snow White Part II to be imagined/written by Eden in the coming months ... in the mean time how do you discuss God in relationship to the traditional tales of our culture? 

PS. Brian Godawa’s Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story & Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009) has some great insights on storytelling. Material from this book coming, to wet your appetite visit my ESN blog post Recognizing the Messiah.

*By Mary Manz Simon. Illustrated by Dennis Jones. Concordia Publishing House, 1994. Based upon II Kings 11:1-12:16.

What an encouragement to take some time out to watch, reflect, sing along with Rich Mullins: Here in America DVD.  What gifts he shared with the people of God. ...

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