Note: If you really pay attention, the title of this post might make sense, when you are done.

I love Twitter and I love when someone has enough insight to pick up on something I say on Twitter. Colin Bell (@crb11) noticed 2 tweets that I posted about 4 minutes apart and I didn’t intend them to play off of each other but, in retrospect, there is much irony in what I shared.  However, there is so much more than what meets the eye, I think, so I wanted to write a post and share some insight into where I’m at in life.  From Colin’s post:

Just found the following two tweets from JimWalton, four minutes apart.

Today, for the first time in a long time, totally forgot my phone, church was twitter free. An odd experience for sure.

Church this morning was by far the best experience we have had in several years. A new church, kind of. Felt like home, we will be back.

Everything I said was true:

• I forgot my phone
• Church was Twitter-free
• Church was the best it has been in over 4 years.
• It was a new church, kind of
• Felt like we were home
• We will be back to that church

While it was unusual to not have my phone at church and it did remove the temptation to Tweet during church, it also meant that I didn’t have my Bible, which is YouVersion.  That was a greater inconvenience, by far.

Church was the best it had been for us in years. That is not an exaggeration and I realize I am treading a thin line here, mainly because I am going to come clean on some things and there might be some people/friends that read this blog and wonder how I can say what I’m about to say.

We left our church home, one of the larger churches in the area, near the end of 2005, in the early stages of a power struggle and that church is still feeling the repercussions of those events today. That was a difficult time for my entire family and without going into too much detail, it was just best for us to distance ourselves from the situation.

Since that time, we have attended 2 different churches, one for about a year and we liked it for the amazing teaching, verse by verse and very deep. (Church A)  The music was great too, the pastor was in a heavy metal band before being saved and he can still jam on the guitar.  That was a great church to heal in and after awhile, we looked around and realized we knew virtually no one, so we quietly left.

We had some friends that went to a church nearly around the corner from our house so we decided to give that a try.  It was good and we quickly settled in. (Church B)  Before too long, we became involved and began serving.  We worked hard to make that our church home and a place where we could connect but honestly, in a way, it never felt completely right. We spent about 2 years at this church and I was heavily involved in leading the tech ministry.  I have no regrets about my involvement there but there was something missing, it didn’t feel like home.

This is where the fine line comes in. I have some close friends in that church and I value them.  These are friends that love their church, but I could never fully embrace it with them.

Once again, we leave another church.  Some have called us church hoppers and that’s not too far from the truth, I guess, but each step has been intentional and it’s really not as shallow as it seems, I think. I honestly believe God is growing us through this and is preparing us for where He is leading us.

We visited a church where we know many people, my whole family has friends there and honestly, our kids had been coming to this church on Wednesday nights for awhile anyway. (Church C) We all felt like this would be a good place and some friends even said we were invited to be part of their home group.

So, obviously(?), we didn’t stick around Church C and we ended up back at Church A again.  We still appreciated the teaching style and made an attempt to make it work for our family.  After about 6 months, we looked around and realized we have absolutely no connections (just like the first time around) in that church and we are so hungry to be connected to people in our church again.

Once again, we leave Church A, apparently our healing church, for the second time, with very little fanfare. I still am willing to take the blame for my waywardness. (Insert Kansas song here: Carry on my wayward son lyrics)

One night recently, I told my wife that I felt like we needed to give Church C another try, based on all the friends we have there and the chance we have to connect and some other reasons, but primarily connection.  She had been thinking the same thing, so God had clearly been working in both of us and preparing us to make this final move.

Yes, I did say final move.

We visited this past Sunday and it felt like we were home again. Even though the senior pastor is on a 6 week sabbatical and some friends we expected to see were not there, we still left there with a feeling we haven’t felt in several years, like we were freely worshipping God with our church family.

I understand that church should not be based on feelings alone and honestly, this has a lot more to do with knowing in my heart that this is right and Mary feels in her heart like it is right and my kids feel in their heart that it’s right.

I have learned a lot in this journey and it is far from over. I have no regrets, I feel that the Lord has opened some doors of opportunity for me just as He has closed some and He has used many people to teach me to be obedient to His calling.

I hope I don’t forget my phone next time because I really did miss having YouVersion at my fingertips.

Maybe I’ll even Twitter about it.

Maybe I won’t.

I have really been out of touch lately but I am trying to get back in the swing of things.

I wanted to get a thought out here and it’s not completely formed yet, so what you are getting is in it’s raw form.  

It seems like we all settle for complacency.  We go through the motions and don’t expect more than just enough to get by.  But I’m thinking lately that there has to be more than just settling for less than the best.  I’m guilty of it. You are too.  Most of us are probably holding ourselves back from the ultimate plan of what God has in store for us.  

You want to know the reason we live like this? 

Fear

Fear of letting go of our so called comfortable life

Fear of trusting God completely

Fear of losing control of our destiny

Fear of what people are going to think

Fear of people getting mad at us for doing exactly what God has called us to do

Fear of having to explain our decisions and justify our actions to people 

Proverbs 3:5 says 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

We all know that verse but do you know what it says after that?

 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Think about that. Ponder that. Pray over that.  God can change your perspective based on those few verses alone.

All that stuff I listed above is fear of stuff that we supposedly control but repeatedly, the Bible says to fear the Lord.  We need to fear the Lord more than we fear anything else.  Fear is a word that fascinates me and I need to expand on that in the near future.  

That’s all for now though.

What do you fear more than the Lord?

I have been out of touch lately and behind on announcing some big news.  As many of you know, right at the beginning of this year, I walked away from my blog, Church Tech Matters and started this one and also shortly after, I began to write at some other sites. (here and here) I had my reasons and even though I had a great run with that site, I felt like it was time for me to do something different.  I felt pretty good about the decision and felt like it was the right thing for me to do.

Within a month of announcing my decision, God began doing some amazing things.  Over the next few weeks, He brought together a team of enthusiastic, talented tech volunteers from around the world who are eager to have a voice to other tech volunteers.

The short version of the story is Church Tech Matters is alive and kicking again and fully supported by this team.  My role is to provide the platform, with built in traffic and years of Google indexing and to simply get out of the way.  These guys are awesome! They share a vision that I had a few years ago but didn’t know how to pull it off on my own.  That vision is to reach the small churches  that likely don’t have the technical expertise in house or if they are some willing volunteers, they may not be sure of all they should or could be doing.

There is nothing wrong with the megachurches, that have the budgets, although usually still limited, and the staff, although usually still limited, and there are some strong voices out there in the blogosphere that represent this subset of churches.  But honestly, there are far more small to mid-size churches that struggle to do even the simplest of tech tasks.  That is where my heart has been and I think I needed to step away from CTM and let go of it in order for God to create what He has created here.

CTM has been my baby for over 4 years and I know it was God that made it what it was, not me.  But I’m not sure I would have been open to allowing another writer or 2, let alone 8 or 10 other writers to jump on board, without having walked away and letting go of it.

Go here to read my intro post to this new effort and I invite you back to Church Tech Matters, which is now

“A site for tech volunteers, written by tech volunteers and those that lead them.”

Church, Technology, Volunteers

What do these 3 things have in common? In less than a week, I plan to share about a project that will impact all 3 of these areas.

The last week has been crazy busy for me.  There are things happening that I never anticipated would and I’m excited to be able to announce some things in the near future.  There is a group of us working on launching something that is possibly the biggest thing I have been a part of in this online, social-media world.

I think it will reach many people in new ways and help some people feel more connected to people in similar situations as them.  Another reason I am excited about it is that it ties in closely to 3 things that I am passionate about:

• Church
• Technology
• Volunteers

God has opened the door in some new ways and brought together a group of dedicated people to create something that is bigger than all of us, I think.  God is a big God and I pray that we allow him to use us for His Glory.

Stay tuned because the announcement and unveiling is coming soon!

If you would like to help create some buzz, please let me know.  We would especially appreciate help in publicizing this unveiling after the fact but buzz is a great thing too.  Please let me know.

On January 28, 2009, my Blackberry was finally in my hands.  It was supposed to arrive a day earlier but the icy weather delayed it.

I have had my Treo about 6 months and it is a great device, I am extremely happy with it.  In that time, I have gotten used to it and am pretty familiar with it’s features.  The Blackberry, on the otherhand, is completely new to me so I have a lot of learning to do.

After a few days, I have had a chance to get some apps set up and begin playing around.  Some things I like are the trackball, the easy navigation, BES and the many apps available for it. 

Some things that haven’t struck me quite right are the trackball, the slowness of the response time, especially on the internet, and BIS.

The Treo, on the Sprint data network is definitely faster than the Blackberry on the U.S. Cellular data network.  I haven’t looked at the processor speed for each device so I don’t know how they compare.

The main reason I have the Blackberry is for work e-mail and in that regard, it rocks!  The push e-mail is great and I’ll be able to be notified if a server loses connection or a system goes down.

I did set up BIS for my own personal e-mail and it is disappointing, seems to be a POP3 kind of protocol, as opposed to IMAP.  On the Treo, I get my e-mail and it is constantly sync’d up, so once I read an e-mail anywhere, it’s read everywhere. 

So, BIS is getting ready to come off.  Maybe I need to dig into it deeper and tweak some settings.

Overall, the Blackberry is a nice device and it’s really all that I expected it to be.  It’s allowing me to be much more connected to work by having e-mail, tasks, appointment reminders and my calendar always with me.

The Blackberry’s keyboard is slightly larger but I think it steals some space from the screen.  One irritation that I’ll have to put up with until I truly get down to a single device is the keyboard is enough different and I’m having to learn a second set of alt keys.

I have a 4gb micro SD card that I’m getting ready to install, then I’ll probably reinstall all the apps I have installed on the device.

I’m not desperately in love with it at first glance but I’m sure it will grow on me.  It’s a huge asset for my job and I’m thankful for that.  It’s far from perfect, but it does add a lot of value.

This serves as my initial review and comparison of the Blackberry Curve vs. the Treo 800w, which is biased due to my strong affection and attachment to my Treo.  Stay tuned for more.

Disclaimer: These pics were taken by me, not my pro photographer wife, although I think I’ve still got it!

Five to six years ago, I had this idea, a concept of outreach within the church.  Honestly, I think God gets the credit on this one, He has better ideas than I do and should get the credit.

If you are an IT guy/girl in your church, or even a media person, you are probably viewed as the go to guy/girl for 3/4 of the church to come to when their computers are not working right.  At some point, it made sense to have a workshop where a bunch of us geeky type folks get together and offer our services to fix, clean up or install new hardware.

A great ministry to your church members but also a great opportunity for members to bring in their unchurched friends and let them see us serving them in a way where we expect nothing in return.  Essentially, they could see Jesus through us.  I believe there are many people who will not step foot in church on Sunday morning but if you tell them your church will fix their computer for no charge, they will be there.  This gives the opportunity to build relationships with these unchurched people and that is how you win people to Christ, through relationship.

As a result, the PC Workshop was born.

It took a few years for this to become reality, but it finally did.  First, at a pastor friend’s church, then at my own.  In fact, that was the first project I did at my last church and that is honestly how the Tech Ministrycame about.  Being new to the church, I didn’t really know anyone but I wanted to pull this off, so I wrote up the announcement and in it I said the PC Workshop is being brought to you by the Tech Ministry.  At the moment I wrote that, the Tech Ministry consisted of me and……..me!

I believed there were people around me with an interest in helping and maybe even a little skill, so I started getting the word out.  Believe it or not, people came forward and it was a great time.  People wanted to be part of this Tech Ministry and they wondered what exactly a Tech Ministry was all about.  Over time, we defined what it was for our church.

We did 5 or 6 PC Workshops over a year and a half and as people asked any of us to fix their computer, we were able to say on this date is the next PC Workshop, come on by.  I viewed this time not only as a time to fix but a time to educate because I would rather teach you how to maintain your computer instead of  just repeatedly fix it for you all the time.

One of the goals a leader should have is that the work that was started will continue after he is gone.  This is true for me and I worked hard to build up the leadership under me to be able to carry on with or without me.

With that being said, I am happy to announce a PC Workshop tonight at Fairview Christian Church in Carthage and it has been put together by my successor, Daniel (@dmeyer302).  I told him awhile back if he did it, I would be there to help and I’m very excited about it because I have no responsibility tonight.  I’m simply a helper and it will be fun to be back with some old friends.  Daniel has recruited some new people to help out as well.

So, come on by and hang out with us! Come in the south doors and the conference room is on the left, just down the hall, it will be obvious once you get in the door, I’m sure.

I have done quite a bit in the realm of using technology in church, both in my own church and others.  God has really given me a heart for this and even though I have walked away from my blog that focused on that, I still have a heart and a passion for it.

In all that I have done, the one thing that I keep coming back to is writing.  God has really given me a voice in writing and sharing what I know, what I have done and what I see others doing.  For a long time, I didn’t see myself as a writer and never had ambitions of writing, yet writing is my foundation and it’s really what got my foot in the door of the church IT community.

For some reason, it has taken me a long time to accept this role but it seems that a significant portion of my role in this church IT world is to write, and in doing so, teach and encourage others and push all of us to do more where we are with the resources we have available, all for God’s glory.

This past week has been interesting and exciting.  Within a 24 hour period, I was invited by 2 different websites to write for them, which is very cool.  So, over the last few days, I have been getting organized so I can begin this new phase in my writing on the right foot.

At this point, my intention is to have original writing on every site I write for and will definitely link to the posts from here.  As soon as the first post is up at each site, I will share details.

This is an interesting time, it seems.  Many people I know have blogs and for whatever reason, have stopped writing.  Sounds similar to what I did.  Over the years, I have had spells where I didn’t write anything for a week or 2 or 3 but I always bounced back.  This last time for me was more like months of no writing.

I averaged about 1 post per month and that one post was pretty weak, in my opinion.  In my case, I walked from my well established, well read blog and started this one.  My wife told me before I did this that I would lose most or all of my readers but I really didn’t know what would happen.

At it’s peak, last spring, CTM was averaging 650+ subscribers and by year-end, I was down to around 550 which is still decent.  This blog has around 85 subscribers and that’s pretty good for being less than a month old. 

So, in a similar way to what I have done, shifted gears, changed focus or whatever you want to call it, I see many others itching to do the same thing.  I’m happy with the initial results I have seen with my transition but there is certainly no formula for success as each situation is different.

I think CTM definitely went stale, I can say that.  I would also say I became bored with it and for a long time, couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t think about writing, it was all a heavy weight.  As I started coming out of that funk, I felt that I needed to do more and that led me to starting fresh at this new site.  The main cost was maybe losing 80% of the subscriber base that I had but honestly, half of those people probably didn’t read my blog anyway.

If you are considering changing your focus or walking away from the blog you have to start something new, I would encourage you to consider what you want to focus on.  CTM was a focused blog and it did better than I ever imagined it would.  Now I’m here and my focus is leadership, volunteers and even a little church tech.

So, figure out your focus, and ever go as far as defining your niche.  Who do you want to reach?  Spend time praying about this and thinking it through.  What is this voice that God has given you?  How does He want you to use it?

There is hope for a stale, stagnant blog but you first have to find your voice and get serious about what you want to say.

Regardless of how high tech your church is and how big of a budget your church has, your church needs to be using Twitter as one of it’s main communication channels.  What is Twitter?

Twitter’s tag line is “What are you doing?” This question is answered, literally, by millions of users throughout the day, every day.  From the benign to the intriguing, people will, it seems, share endlessly about their lives.  You’ll hear some deeply personal thoughts, strong political opinions and just about every other topic if you start to follow a bunch of folks.

The above quote is from an e-book written by my friend, Anthony Coppedge (@anthonycoppedge) titled  The Reason Your Church Must Twitter.  This e-book is a step by step guide of how your church could and should use Twitter to effectively communicate within specific ministries as well as broadcast messages church-wide.

It doesn’t matter if you are a highly technical geek or if you barely know how to turn your computer on, this e-book is for you.  It breaks all aspects of Twitter down to a manageable and understandable level and walks you through how to set your account up and get yourself situated to effectively use Twitter.  Even if you use Twitter every day already, this book shares concepts that you likely have not considered.

Every church is different and so there is no cut and dry right or wrong way for your church to use Twitter but you certainly have many options.  The Reason Your Church Must Twitter gives you all of those options.  There is application for youth ministry, children’s ministry, young adult and more seasoned adult ministry as well.

The beauty is that you can reach your people on their computer and/or on their cell phones, via SMS text messaging, which is a huge thing.  Phone calls are tedious, email is often not read and fairly labor intensive for a church and in the end, ultimately, communication is key.

The information in this e-book is great and very necessary but when it comes right down to it, how will you implement a Twitter strategy in your church?  Does it take more than information and knowledge? You better believe it does and Anthony covers how to decide on a Twitter strategy in the final chapter of the book.

More than once, I have seen a church be convinced to try something technology related without having a real strategy and in the end, it flops and the technology is blamed.  In reality, technology, whether it’s web related or a piece of equipment, is a tool and it’s only effective if it’s used correctly.  Anthony offers great insight into ways to practically begin using Twitter in your church and make Twitter a valuable resource.

The e-book is only $5, and honestly, it’s worth so much more.

If you have been reading my blog(s) for any amount of time, you understand my heart for volunteers in the church.  Anthony shares this heart for volunteers and it shows through his offer, check this out:

We’ve kept the price very low ($5 – five bucks) to make it affordable for everyone. All we’re asking is that if you’re using this E-Book for your ministry, please make sure you’ve bought it.

We fully license churches to buy a copy for a staff member and share it with their volunteers for free. For example, if your church has three staff that could benefit from the book, then please pay the ridiculously affordable $15 and give out copies like free candy to your volunteers!

Pretty simple. Pay for this e-book for each staff member that you want to have it, then just go nuts on your volunteers and let them have the benefit of this e-book for no charge.

If you have read this far and you still feel lost, that’s ok.  The e-book The Reason Your Church Must Twitter will clear everything up and more.  It will be released on January 16, 2 days from now.  I’ll post a link to the website in the near future, it’s still being fine-tuned for this big launch.

I work with a ministry called Life of Hope, a ministry to street children in Guatemala.  We recently discussed plans for redesigning the website and there is a lot of potential here.  The big idea here is to simplify, big time.  I’ll be removing some links to data that is older and reduce the menu down to a handful of items.

One thing that I mentioned is the possibility of using video, both on the website and within the ministry.  It might be good to have a greeting from the director on the main page embedded in the site, then also embed some video to show activities from the streets of Guatemala and the work that the ministry is doing.  In today’s world, it’s easy to shoot video and stick it on the web and that gives a direct look into the life of the ministry.

Plus there are ministry partners in Guatemala and these people could be equipped and trained to use a webcam and connect via TokBox or Mogulus or some other site like that.  This ministry is adding another staff person in the near future and he will be located probably 20 miles away and we discussed how they could use streaming technology to talk and see each other on a regular basis.

It’s all exciting stuff!  I’m looking forward to finding new ways to use video streaming.