intersections

In defense of my Kindle

I received my replacement Kindle yesterday. All the inconveniences with this new bit of technologies have reduced my unbridled enthusiasm. First, it ran out of batteries while I was waiting for my return flight home last week, which meant I couldn't finish the novel I was reading (frustrating!). Then, almost as soon as I got home, the screen malfunctioned and I had to get a replacement, which took nearly a week. Okay, so the thing is not perfect.

In the meantime, a few friends have asked why I like it, the uses I have for it and the extent to which it rules over my life. But the final blow came when my friend C. Wess Daniels Tweeted a link to a scathing social critique of the Kindle which ended with the irenic sentence, "The Kindle is the devil." Now, I love Adbusters and it pains me to have any disagreement with their author's analysis, privately harboring feelings that these folks are Ludites. So, after calming down, I think I can hazzard an explanation for my continuing, though tempered, affection for my Kindle.

First, you should read the Adbusters critique entitled, Melt Your Kindle. It's brief. But, in case you won't read it, for whatever reason, allow me to excerpt the main points:

Introduction to Missional Leadership

Many of you who read my blog have asked me, either by email, phone or in person, about missional church. What is it? How can we sort through the fluff and get down to the issues that really matter? Like any new word or concept, it quickly gets co-opted to mean, "the new name for whatever we're doing that we're really excited about."

So, if you're wondering about missional theology and leadership, you have an amazing opportunity to learn from one of the best teachers I know in this field. Allelon is hosting a new webinar with Alan Roxburgh called "Introduction to Missional Leadership." The first of this 5-part series will happen on Monday, January 5 at 9:00 AM PT or January 6 at 12:00 PM PT (you chose one). Best of all, this webinar is free. You can learn more and register for this Allelon Webinar here.

If you are a pastor or lay church leader and you've been reading my blog off and on for a while and wondering how you can better understand what it would mean for you to be a misisonal leader, you really shouldn't miss this. I will be attending this webinar myself. I am finishing my final project for my D.Min. in Missional Leadership (Fuller Theological Seminary) and Alan Roxburgh has been one of two primary mentors (along with Mark Lau Branson) so I know Alan well and I know this material. But, I also know that I can learn from the interaction with others as we grapple with what it means to lead local communities of faith into authentic missionary encounters with our neighbors where God has placed us.

So, please join me on January 5 at 9 AM or on Jan 6 at NOON for this first of five webinars on Missional Leadership.

Hollywood Adventist Church has a new website!

(click to enlarge, or better yet, just go to the actual website)

Today the Hollywood Adventist Church is unveiling it's brand new website. This is a day I've been waiting a long time for. About one year ago a small group of people gathered in my office to discuss how we would structure a new website for our congregation that focused on the things that make us unique and had distinct functionality that would strengthen our ministry. I'm sure it's not perfect, and I know I'm biased, but it's the best church website I've ever seen. I hope you take a few minutes and browse the site. Here are a few of my favorite features.

• The structure: God, Time, People, City, Arts.
• The web 2.0 features: Google Calendar automatically feeds directly into our site, Flickr images in the Hollywood SDA Pool do the same, our current Twitter status shows at the bottom of the right column automatically, and WordPress automatically generates a Tweet when we make a new post.
• The embedded videos: one of these is always featured on the right column. This is a way for our media ministry to continually feature what they're doing.
• Our Community Partners: Under the City tab, we have a list of the organizations we work with in the city and around the state and country. We also have a list of recommended local eateries and hangouts that our membership enjoys. This is both a way to bless our local businesses with a little advertising and share with our visitors in Hollywood some quality local haunts that probably won't be in their tour book!

I want to express my gratitude to two people who made this happen. The first is Scott Arany, a graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary, one of our leadership team members and a new member of our church staff. Scott's design sense combined with his theological acumen, make this site sing. But it could not do what it does without technical skill of my friend Todd Hiestand (343design), who programmed and coded the entire site so that it actually works! I highly recommend both of these men if you are looking for help with your website. Todd also does design, and because the whole site it built in WordPress, it's amazingly simple to update and maintain.

Can art change the world?

This is a question I've been wrestling with for the past three weeks. As I mentioned before, I'm speaking this Saturday at the SONscreen Film Festival. So, I've been reading and researching as much as I can about this question. I've been asking, WDJT? (What does Jesus think? - sorry, I couldn't resist).

If you come to SONscreen on Sabbath you'll hear the full scoop - and I'll probably post my message online when it's done - but here's the short version.

I think some art can change the world. In the specific case of storytelling - some stories can change the world. The mere act of hearing someone's story can affect change, plant new possibilities, create a new imagination. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. In my research this week, while cruising around the TED website (looking at Al Gore's new presentation) I ran across Pangea Day - a worldwide film festival on May 10, 2008. This is the creation of Jehane Noujaim, the writer and director of the documentary, Control Room, and the winner of the 2006 TED Prize. You can hear her talk about her vision for Pangea Day here.

Anyway, this is an incredible convergence of things for me, and I'll definitely be using this as an example of the way that film - the craft of visual storytelling - can affect change in our world. But people must engage, and I guess that's the point. Film can connect people and those relationships can change the world.

Keep reading to view the Pangea Day trailer.

My Delicious Library

For just less than a year I've been using Delicious Library to catalogue my books and it's really wonderful. If you use a Mac and love books, this is definitely the software for you. Recently, thanks to my friend Johnny Ramirez, I was introduced to a small (free) program that will make a webpage out of your Delicious Library catalogue. It's called DeliciWeb and you can download it here. It takes a while if you have a lot of books in your library, but it does make your library available for others to look at online.

You can connect to my library by clicking here. There are some 560 book in there, so it will take a bit to load. There's a link to request to borrow a book which sends an email to the owner of the library. It's not perfect. As best I can tell it's listing my books in random order in spite of the fact that I've check the "sort by author's name" checkbox in the Preferences. If anyone has any tips I'm all ears!

Mac OS X Leopard - I've got problems...

Okay, so I just upgraded my Mac PowerBook G4 to Leopard. It's very cool in many ways. My favorite upgrades are in Mail. "Data detectors" are really awesome. Mail automatically detects dates, addresses, phone numbers, etc and with a couple of clicks you can add people to your Address Book and dates to iCal.

However, I have some very annoying problems. Anyone who cares to chime in, I could use some help with these things (and yes, I downloaded the most recent patch, so I'm running 10.5.1).

1. My computer no longer detects my external hard drive.

2. I had to reinstall all my printers and now the print options are different on my copy machine/printer at work.

3. Mail is having a real hard time with SMTP servers. At work I can barely send email. Every email has a problem and after trying several times a few of them will sometimes go through. I don't have the same problem at home. I haven't changed any of the settings.

4. iCal is running REALLY SLOW. When I try to do anything I get the dreaded pinwheel. It sometimes takes 15-20 seconds between every action.

5. On top of everything else, I have less than 1 GB left on my 80 GB hard drive. Any ideas how to reduce the stuff on my hard drive. I've figured out the easy stuff, like moving data files to an external drive, but it makes a minimal impact. There's got to be something else eating up all my space.

6. And while I'm at it, does anyone else notice that Firefox totally consumes the CPU. Does that happen with other browsers?

Bottom line, my machine is completely maxed out. I've got to free up some resources. I'm already running the max memory (2 GB) so there's not a lot more upgrading I can do.