I've really been enjoying the Matt Farina's blog lately. It is called Innovating Tomorrow. He just finished up a critical look at what church websites might need to become in the future. If you run a church website, it might really be worth your time to look through it. He summed the series up with

Check out this book coming out soon by a former Prof. of mine and a solid man who thinks critically and seriously about the church. He has been pastoring for many years and become widely respected for his views on the church and African American church. It is a short read that I look forward to getting my hands on.

Our site is back in it's proper shape. If you still see problems, please let me know. Thanks!

As you may have noticed. Our website is in rough shape. It "works", but the SQL errors abound and cause for an ugly rendering of the page. Even if you don't understand what tha means, jump out of your RSS reader and come take a look.

For those of you unfortunate enough to have had to struggle with Windows Vista, you may appreciate this more than the rest. I recently came to the epiphany that the security system in Windows Vista is much like Gun Control. Both take a certain amount of control out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Gun control mean that they can't carry guns; Vista doesn't allow them certain administrative access and control. Both provide this same control to people willing to subvert the government or the Operating System (Vista). It strikes me that in both situations, we create an environment where those in power are the ones we are trying to keep from holding power.

A proper operating system provides the owner with the tools and sane defaults to lock the machine down without removing access to the system. Further, it encourages greater understanding of the system which leads to a greater understanding for potential abuse of it. That's one of the many reasons I like running Ubuntu Linux with additional interest in Mac OS X and have no plans to run Windows Vista on my own computers.

Being in a phase of fund discovery where we are actively pursuing churches, I've had the opportunity to call many churches over the last few months and see many church websites. Most of the churches I've been contacting are small churches, many even have no regular staff outside the pastor. I've been in many churches of that size, even members of them and it is my preference to be a part of a smaller body of Christians where I feel like I can really get to know people.

Something that clearly suffers in many such small churches is the outward appearance. Sometimes this is the care of the grounds or the condition of the carpets in the sanctuary, but I've been communicating mostly through the phone, websites and email. Almost all the churches I've contacted have had websites. The quality of these sites vary, but many are clearly amateur. That only bothers me because I know that it wouldn't be really hard or all that expensive to get something more solid up and it would be worth the investment. Alongside that is all the pastors with yahoo, aol, hotmail or other free providers for their email. Many even own their own domain and are hosting a website on it, but they don't host their own email. I suppose this is a pet peeve of mine. I've been looking for opportunity to share services like Google Apps with these churches. The one church I've been able to do this with has put Google Apps to use and seems to have run with it. They've been using it for several months now.

What I've been more surprised with and have little understanding for is the churches who don't even have an answering machine, or have an answering machine with some generic default message which doesn't allow me to leave a message. In contrast, what a joy it is to have someone pick-up the phone after the first ring and cheerily greet me in a friendly and personal manner. Then when they know what I'm looking for, offer me various resources that indicate interest and knowledge of the church and are open to answering my questions. I'd say that even when the information I'm given is that they won't be taking us on for support, I prefer this response on the phone to waiting 5 rings and hearing "There's no one here to take your call now beeeeep click"

If you're a pastor or leader in your church, please call your church office every once in awhile, then go to the church website and try to see it all from a stranger's perspective. That first impression is hard to brush off.

Join The Journey is a facebook app made by a friend of mine named Erik Weibust. It is a facebook app that assists in reading through the Bible. Check it out if you're a facebook user to see if it might fit you. You can also find out more at their website.

I was recently shown an interesting perspective on some of the flags of the world. A Brazilian artist has used the flags of some countries as a way to graph an issue related to a country in a project called Meet The World. It is very interesting perspective to check out.

We've almost entirely moved out of the two locations we've called home the last couple weeks. I found out late last night that the previous land lords aren't interested in our Washer and Dryer so I'll be moving them out Wed. We cleaned and left the FIM Hospitality Suite behind just in time for the next guests, a board member and his wife coming for the board meeting tomorrow. It was a good opportunity for us to remember what the hospitality suite is like and maybe gain some more perspective on what might be nice to change. We really need to get a better TV antennae and a DVD player (with some DVDs) in there so that the TV is useful for something. I probably also need to check to see if it will accept the new digital signal that will come over the air waves.

We slept in the new place last night. Now begins the remainder of the unpacking; Elizabeth is a new challenge to the unpacking process. She is very able to "help" and skilled at removing items from boxes. She doesn't seem to get the point that the things in the boxes have a place they should go besides the floor, making the task of unpacking slower and more tedious.Pray for Rachel as she is spending her days working on that while I'm at FIM working. She's getting the raw end of that deal. (I love you Rachel!)

A very special thanks to all who helped make this move possible through helping pack, moving boxes, baby sitting and other things. I'd like to mention you all here. Jim & Carol, the FIM staff, Mom & Dad, Tyler, Cody and Mr. Shelly, Seth, Ruth, Miriam and Shelly. We could not have done it without you.

We're still planning the big move on Saturday, with the potential of some early activity to move the more fragile things or awkward things on Fri. We're pretty far along getting things put in boxes. The majority of the work left is in the kitchen area. We have the fun opportunity of hiring a few guys going on a mission trip to help them in their work towards a mission experience. I'm looking forward to the chance of getting to know them a bit more and sharing some of us wit them.

Anyway, if you're going to be helping out, maybe the weather up here might be helpful to you. Scroll down to see the Fri. and Sat. Forecasts. Looks like small chance of snow so far and bound to be cold so bundle up. :-)