Twitter? What Happened?
Just to clarify:
We had planned on doing an “experiment” in church this past Sunday, and all was well, until our filtering/display interface for Twitter hit a snag.
Apparenetly, Twitter went under some maintenance and took a heavy hit last week with the Iran Election drama. In the process of their maintance, they updated their API, and that caused a lot of developers to experience bugs. Twitpocalypse.
I understand that our church was one of the first to discover this problem with ParaTweet, and as a result, they are being very generous to our church by doubling our license time.
So, to all who signed up on Twitter this past week in hopes to use it in church, please accept my sincerest apologies. Thank you for trying this with us. We will use it. Maybe this Sunday? Maybe next? The situation was truly out of our hands, regrettfully. I wish it was in our court so I could be the solution.
I don’t like it when we can’t follow up on our word. When we say we’re going to do something, we do it. Our word and integrity is very important to us.
Until next time,
if you don’t have twitter yet, take the leap off of Facebook.
Drew
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If you don’t have a free Twitter account yet, go to Twitter.com and sign up for free.
Watch this 2 min video on what Twitter is.
You can update your Twitter status many different ways. If you’re at your desktop, you can update through a desktop application. If you have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or BlackBerry, you can update through a smart phone application. If you don’t have a smart phone, you can update via SMS. I explain exactly how to ‘tweet’ via SMS in the video below.
What Does This Have To Do With Church?
I’m glad you asked. Our culture is increasingly interactive. We’ve always learned in interactive ways. And now, popular culture has gone interactive. American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and most reality shows have embraced interactivity with the audience. The internet is changing into a social portal that is interactive and dynamic, not just static. The most popular internet sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube are interactive.
With generations growing up and learning this way, we feel like the church can also teach the most important things in life, in an interactive way.
How many times have you had a question in the middle of a sermon, but you couldn’t raise your hand to get clarification? If you’re like me, a lot. Through Twitter, we can change that. We can be interactive.
How Will It Work?
At a designated time in the service, you will be asked a question, or given the chance to ask a question. Through Twitter, you can respond, and your response will appear on the projector screen. This will allow the pastor and church to interact with each other in a unique, timely, and efficient manner.
Watch and Learn
Watch this video to learn how to set up an account, how to SMS into Twitter (if you don’t have an application on your phone), and why we’re experimenting with this.
Checklist
- Set Up Twitter account
- Acquire application for phone or link mobile number under the Devices tab
- Begin ‘tweeting’ to be familiar with the process
- Follow other people on Twitter
Who To Follow?
For starters:
John Van Pay: @johnvanpay
James Rios: @bjrios
Drew Witt: @drewwitt
Seth Henderson: @sethhenderson
Juan Ginez: @Juanginez
Veronica Gonzales: @coinlady
Looking For Twitter Applications?
For Mac
Twitterific (iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific)
Tweet Deck (tweetdeck.com)
For iPhone
Twitterific (iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific)
For BlackBerry
TwitterBerry (orangatame.com/products/twitterberry)
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I hate that painting of Jesus. You know, the one where He’s limp, passive, and nice looking. He’s just not like that when I read the Gospels.
Then there’s the modern day “Christian”. The nice guy. The quiet guy. The whatever guy.
In the passage below, Paul describes the Christian life with active and forceful words such as run, pursue, fight, and hold tightly.
It would seem like the Christian life is intentional, moving, progressive, and growing. This kinda ties into my last post.
I don’t understand the lazy “follower of Christ”, if they even are, who just sit around waiting for things to happen.
They like to run in place spiritually, relationally, and culturally. And maybe that’s one reason why the world mocks us on Family Guy and the Simpsons. Here. Here. We don’t really intentionally lead the people that are around us into knowing who God is.
We just talk a lot of noise and show them what He’s not. Good luck with that one.
1 Timothy 6:11-12 (New Living Translation)
But you, Timothy, are a man of God; so run from all these evil things. Pursue righteousness and a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.
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If you owned a business, would you keep an employee who doesn’t get any work done? No. If you were a gardener, would you keep a plant that didn’t produce a harvest? No. If you were an investor, would you keep an account that wasn’t growing and producing? No.
I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve known some people in church for 20 years, and they’re still the same since the day I met them. They’re at the same place today that they were at two decades ago. No growth. No fruit. Spinning tires. No traction.
They’re literally going nowhere on their walk with God.
How is it that the church seems to be the one place on Earth where it’s acceptable to not bear fruit? To not grow? Wasn’t it Jesus who cursed the fig tree for being a living thing and not producing? He talked a lot about bearing fruit for the glory of God.
I’m not a scientist or biologist, but I’m fairly certain that if something is living, it is growing and reproducing. When something isn’t growing or reproducing, it’s dying or dead.
The sticker weeds in my backyard seem to be more regenerate than a lot of my “brothers in Christ”.
Galatians 5:22-23 (New Living Translation)
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
The fruit of the Spirit are the by-products of a Christ centered life. You don’t get them, and then get Christ. It’s the other way around.
When people call themselves Christians, but don’t have this fruit, I get really nervous – for them. Scripture would teach us that they don’t actually have Christ! Here and here. They may like the idea of Christ, but that’s different from giving your life to Him.
Some people would call this post legalism, but they would be incorrect. Legalism is actually trying to get the fruit, without Christ, by your own merit.
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Tags: bearing fruit, fruit of the spirit
I’m Not
You are never as great as you think you are, so don’t become prideful. And you are never as bad as you think you are, so don’t become crippled by insecurity. Simply give your best and be thankful that God has given you the opportunity to be a part of His great plan.
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Everybody is annoyed by the “know-it-all”. This person has a dogmatic opinion about everything. Oh, they KNOW how the world spins surely, and even worse, they have a running mouth! The know-it-all is usually against anything new, resents discipline, and refuses to be a learner.
Soloman, the wisest man who ever lived (next to Jesus of course), calls this person an idiot. Actually, he says “fool”, but I’m putting it in todays context 
Proverbs 1:7
Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Note to self: don’t be a know-it-all. I must be open to the advice of the people in my life who see things at a different perspective than me. My way isn’t the way.
Sometimes we forget that God knows it all, and we don’t.
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Tags: wisdom
Jesus & The Dumb Religious
I was talking to a friend this morning about how Jesus often reacted to the religious.
He was very sarcastic and seemed to pick fights a lot.
My description is “the Lord is a warrior”. He’s so terrifying and manly.
Most think of Jesus to be limp, passive, and nice.
Here’s what my friend said. It made me roll on the ground laughing.
“We all saw His example of how to handle the religious establishment. Go into a rage, jack up all their stuff, destroy their tables, and tell them they’re gonna burn. Now there’s a God I can get behind.”
I don’t care who you are, that’s funny (unless you’re religious).
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Giving
I was going through some old yellow legal pads of mine and found some notes I took from a sermon a friend of mine, Rick Mitchell, preached back in 2005. I actually remember that night very well. Here where some of the thoughts:
God provides us with seed
- tithe is not your seed
- 90% is your seed
- not every seed is the same size, but every seed has the same potential: reproduction
- plant it or eat it
Seeds must be sown faithfully
- 2 sowed it, 1 hid it
- there’s sowers, then there’s throwers
- faithfulness produces a harvest
Sowing opens the door to abundance
- what you have is puny compared to the abundance God has for you
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Tags: Giving
Heros
These two characters were spotted on Sunday.
Being a portable church, we lost a DVI-DVI cable that is a must for our projector to work on Sunday. We discovered we were missing it about 8:00am. We searched for a while. No cable. He ran away or something.
Caleb went to Target at 8:30 to see if they had one. As he left, I felt in my gut that Target would side with the kigdom of hell and not have one. So I took Josh up on his offer to drive home (a considerable distance a way) to get one that he had.
Josh made it back at 8:59, and right as the band hit THEIR FIRST NOTE, the projector turned on.
Now we could have had church without a projector, certainly. It was way cooler to see these two guys solve a problem and make it happen. I love them deeply.
And I leave you with a scary grid of their mugs.
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