the tindog coffeehouse

Author Anne Rice has caused quite a controversy by stating on Facebook that she has “quit being a Christian”:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. …

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Her statements seem to indicate that she hasn’t specifically given up on her faith but rather on other Christians. And certainly I can understand that. I can understand the frustration of other Christians who don’t share my particular views or beliefs. Christians who are either completely close-minded about everything or completely unwilling to define any absolutes. Christians that use the pulpit to advance their political agendas. Christians who equate the Bible to a self-help book or a get-rich-quick scheme. Christians that are quick to talk about fire and brimstone but never mention love and grace. Christians who only talk about love and grace but never mention the consequences of sin.

But however frustrated I am, I have to remember that we’re all still human and we’re all still defective. Even as Christians — who should know better — we’re pretty stupid sometimes. Actually, most of the time. Which is exactly why we needed a Savior in the first place. If we were able to live up to God’s perfect standard, we would’ve done it already, on our own and without Jesus. But we aren’t, which is why God gave up His Son to pay the price for our ridiculously stupid mistakes.

Further, as frustrated as I sometimes get with my fellow believers, I have to realize that we’re all still part of the body of Christ. All of us. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 12:

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?

But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”

By “quitting Christianity”, Anne is not only hurting herself but is hurting the entire body of Christ. And that’s heartbreaking to see.

Previously:
The goal must be love
Church dot com

There’s been a lot of talk this week about Facebook’s new Open Graph platform and its “connections” feature and what all that means to users’ privacy, and I even considered writing up a blog post about it. But I just couldn’t. I tried, though. Twice. But I realized that honestly I just don’t care.

Is Facebook really “positioning itself to become deeply embedded in almost every single website”? Will your privacy truly be “crushed with impunity”? Has Facebook “removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information”?

Or is everyone overreacting?

Listen, I get it. Facebook doesn’t really care about your privacy; they’ve proven that much. But at the same time, what they’re doing isn’t that different than what Google, Twitter, and a host of other companies do. So if you’re really that upset that the photos you posted of your kids are now viewable to the entire Internet or that everyone now knows what college you went to or the fact you “like” Lady Gaga (which really, you should just keep to yourself), then maybe the best thing to do would be to remove said content from the site so it’s no longer an issue. Or don’t put it up there to begin with.

In the meantime, Facebook, like any other Internet-based company whose revenue depends solely on advertising, will be using every available opportunity to increase its bottom line and fulfill its “manifest destiny”.

Is that news? I guess. Do I care? Not in the least.

Previously:
Why I closed my Facebook account
How exactly is Facebook connect good for users?

The question is, can a church exist completely online? A lot of other Christian writers and bloggers have already addressed this pretty extensively, but the question keeps coming up.

The short answer is no, and here’s why:

First, as Northland’s Joel Hunter (who looks eerily like George W. Bush) pointed out, a church is more than just a building. The church is the people, and those people can meet anywhere: a traditional church building, a house, at Starbucks, or even online. But it’s about more than just meeting at the same place to hear a sermon or sing some songs; it’s about relationships. The church, at its heart, is a community of believers who learn together, worship together, pray for each other, and serve one another. And an online-only church can’t do that effectively.

I’m sure some would disagree with me, arguing that it is possible to build such a community online. But just because you communicate with someone via Twitter or Facebook or a blog or whatever, that doesn’t mean it’s a community in the truest sense of the word. As author Anne Jackson points out, that’s not a community, it’s a connection:

In some instances, these online conversations have translated into personal communication (by email, chats, or phone) and some have even turned into face-to-face meetings. The platforms of social media certainly give these personal interactions a “jump start” so to speak, because you do, in some regard, know bits and pieces of the other person’s life.

But this is where it gets muddy for me. Is it community?

Given my experience living in both worlds, it may be surprising to hear, but I am beginning to lean on the side of no – what happens online is not community. Before you send me an army of frowning emoticons, please hear me out:

I believe what happens online is connection – not community.

People can be vulnerable and honest online. And at times these online connections can be more life-giving than many of our offline relationships, but they are not the same.

Can you have a church comprised solely of online connections? Absolutely not!

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the Church as the body of Christ, with each member having different spiritual gifts and different roles. Just as each part of a physical body has to do its job in order for the body as a whole to operate successfully, each member of the Church body has a responsibility to do their part. How is that possible if the extent of our church experience is watching a live stream of a worship service over the Internet?

Simply put: going to church and being a church are two totally different things. Sure, you can go to church online if you want. But that’s not the same as being an integral member of the church body.

You can go to a worship service every Sunday, come in, sit down, sing a few songs, listen to the sermon, then leave without ever talking to another person. Yes, you went to church. Yes, you worshiped alongside other believers. Yes, you heard a message. But you didn’t participate as a member of the body.

That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with what Northland, Lifechurch.tv, or other churches are doing. Certainly, there are a lot of benefits to using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to help reach out to people all other the world. That’s a good thing, it just doesn’t need to be the only thing.

Previously:
Who are you following?
A little social network housecleaning
Proof that in social networking, smaller is better

Apparently I’m on to something.

About a week and a half ago, I killed off my old Twitter account and moved to a brand new one, thus losing all my old tweets along with all my followers. It wasn’t originally my intention to do so, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of starting over fresh.

Now comes a couple of reports that back up the idea that when it comes to social networking, smaller numbers are in fact better.

First, a professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford, Robin Dunbar, has concluded that regardless of how many Facebook friends we might have, we can only effectively manage about 150 friendships.

He found that people tended to self-organise in groups of around 150 because social cohesion begins to deteriorate as groups become larger. …

“The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” said Dunbar.

This explains why I also don’t tend to follow more than 170-180 people on Twitter. Inevitably, when I add more people than that, I always tend to drop a few others as the “noise” increases.

Clive Thompson of Wired seems to agree. He points out that in social networks, once a group grows too large, conversation and interaction stop. What starts out as a small one-to-one or one-to-few circle of connections becomes a large one-to-many broadcast, thus losing any sense of intimacy or connectedness. Thus, rather than strive for bigger and bigger numbers, he argues, we should be working to maintain smaller, more connected social circles. He concludes, “There’s value in obscurity.”

Fortunately, obscurity is one thing I’ve mastered.

Previously:
How to instantly lose all your Twitter followers
How to play the game of ‘Blog-Facebook-Twitter’

Yes, I know I’m a week late in saying it, but Happy New Year. Now can I start out the year with a little honesty? I mean, we’re friends, right?  Here goes…

I’m a failure.

At least according to the world. I’m not rich, I’m not famous. Heck, I’m not even “Internet famous”. And I probably won’t ever be. I don’t have thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, and chances are, no one is even reading this blog post. I have a steady but mostly unfulfilling job that consumes the best hours, days, and years of my life but nothing that even closely resembles a social life outside of that.

Donald Miller talks in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years about viewing life in terms of telling a story, with a narrative arc that includes overcoming obstacles in order to get what you (the protagonist) want. He writes on his blog:

A story involves a person that wants something and is willing to overcome conflict to get it. If you plan a story this year, instead of just simple goals, your life will be more exciting, more meaningful and more memorable. And you are much more likely to stick to your goals. For instance, rather than saying I want to finish getting into shape this year, I’ve written down that I want to climb Mt. Hood with a couple friends. I have a vision of standing on top of the mountain in May, taking pictures and all that. Now my goal has a narrative context. That’s just a simple story, and I’ve planned some stories that are far more difficult but I only use that as an example. If my goal were to lose twenty pounds, I doubt I’d stick with it. But when you have friends flying up from Texas to summit the mountain with you, you’d better believe you are going to be hitting the stairs. I have to, because it I don’t, my story will be a tragedy. Again, stories give goals context.

That’s great advice. But it depresses the hell out of me.

(We’re still being honest, right?)

Why is it depressing? Because it’s a lot harder to say than to do. Because I feel helpless and worthless and trapped and alone. And that sucks.

I know I’m not supposed to admit that. I’m supposed to “engage my audience”, “cultivate my online community”, “build my personal brand”. I’m supposed to read more and blog more and network more and do all the stuff that will drive traffic and generate bigger numbers. Because I’m told by the people on the Internet that that will make me a better person.

Instead, after taking a 3-month break from Facebook, I quietly reactivated my profile and promptly unfriended half my friends. And I actually made a conscious decision to blog less, not more.

It’s not that I don’t want friends; I do, absolutely. Everyone wants to be liked and appreciated and respected and lauded for their achievements. But as much as I like love it when people take the time to read my posts and even take the time to leave a comment, this blog was never meant to attract an audience; it was meant for me, as an outlet. If others stumble on it or want to follow along, that’s great.

So by any quantifiable measuring stick, I’m a failure. I’d like to say I have all these grand goals ahead of me for the year, but I’m not making any promises. I will, however, continue to try to be the best husband, father, and Christian I can, even if that doesn’t really mean anything to most people in this day and age.

And, well, there you go. If you’re still reading, I’m sorry if I’ve totally bummed you out. But I think it needed to be said.

Previously:
A little social network housecleaning
A different checklist

I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I know what I want if you know what I mean
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine

– Derek Webb, “The Spirit Vs. The Kickdrum”

A lot happens between Chapters 5 and 6 of the Gospel of John. By the time we get to John 6:1, Jesus has attracted a huge following. At least 5000, and that was likely just counting adult males. Including women and children, that number could’ve been 10 or 15,000.

Jesus took the time to feed them all, and He didn’t just give them each a small ration of fish and bread. They had so much food, they couldn’t eat all of it, leaving twelve basketfuls of leftovers.

But that wasn’t enough for them.

John 6:15 says they wanted to force Him to be their king, so He had no choice but to get away. Eventually, they caught up with him, though, hungry and demanding more food. Here they were in the presence of the Son of God, and all they could think about was themselves.

Sound familiar?

So who are you following? And who’s following you? How many Twitter followers do you have? How many friends on Facebook? How many people are subscribing to your blog? And why are they following you? Why are you following them? And while we’re at it, why do you go to the church you go to?

These relationships you surround yourself with, these various communities and social networks, are they there just to serve your own needs, build up your own ego, make you somehow feel all warm and fuzzy?

Because that’s not what Jesus is about.

Yes, Jesus met His followers’ immediate needs by hosting an impromptu fish-fry. But that’s not why He was there. He was there to sacrifice Himself, die so that we could have something a lot better.

The crowd didn’t want that, though. They only cared about what they could get from Him, not about what He had to offer.

Too often, I’m guilty of the same thing. I go to church only to get something, not to be an integral part of the body of Christ. I get excited when I have new Twitter followers or new blog readers. I’m happy when it’s all about me, me, me. As if I’m anyone important.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be active online or that it’s wrong to promote your blog or whatever. But I have to remind myself of what’s really important. It’s not about some numbers on a web page or how many brownie points I get for having perfect church attendance. It’s about developing a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe and showing His love to a world that desperately needs it.

Previously:
In the beginning…
A little social network housecleaning

Over the weekend, I closed my Facebook account. Technically, it’s “deactivated”, meaning I can log back in and reactivate it later if I choose. I’m not sure I want to, though.

It wasn’t a rash decision; it was something I had considered numerous times before. And honestly, even as I clicked the button to deactivate it, I had mixed feelings about doing so. But I did it anyway.

Why? I think I finally just ran out of patience with it. Every single thing I did on the site, whether I changed my profile picture, posted a photo, or updated my status, resulted in some kind of response from someone, and the responses weren’t always welcome. Just this weekend my “friends” told me I looked like a serial killer, offered me unwanted (and not very accurate) medical advice, and tried to coax me into a political fight. Between that and the never-ending barrage of Facebook quizzes and other nonsense, I had simply had enough. (And I’m not the only one.)

I want to like Facebook, I really do. I believe there’s a lot of value in it as a tool to be able to keep up with friends and family members. But there has to be a boundary, some kind of line at which sharing becomes over-sharing, some point when it becomes best just to keep your opinions to yourself. And within the “safe” and “trusted” walls of Facebook, it seems like people don’t care about such boundaries. You’re their “friend”, aren’t you? Therefore, they’re free to let you know you remind them of John Wayne Gacy. Because that’s what friends are for.

I’m not saying, of course, that people shouldn’t speak their mind online; please do, even if I don’t agree with you. But even online, if you can’t say something nice (or even interesting), it’s often wise to not say anything at all.

I’m sure at some point I’ll probably reactivate my account, but if I do, changes will be made to how I use the site. But at least for now, silence is golden.

Previously:
Why I joined Facebook and LinkedIn
How to play the game of ‘Blog-Facebook-Twitter’
A little social network housecleaning

(Click to enlarge.)

It’s weird how social networks like Facebook and Twitter can mess with your mind. You sign up for a Facebook account because, quite frankly, everyone else is doing it. Then along comes Twitter because, well, why not. It’s all innocent fun at first, but at some point it becomes less about the quality of the connections being made through the sites and more about the quantity. How many Facebook friends do I have? How many people are following me on Twitter? How many hits is my blog getting, and how can I generate more comments?

Who cares?

I’m rarely on Facebook anymore. I thought it was because of all the ridiculous surveys and other nonsense that clutter up the news feed, but I’ve come to realize it’s actually because most of the “noise” is coming from a handful of Facebook friends that I’m really not that interested in. It’s not that they’re bad people, it’s just that I don’t really interact with them any more, and inevitably these are also the same people that update their Facebook status 20 times a day and feel the need to comment on everything. So I made a decision yesterday to unfriend several of them.

Ironically, at the same time I was cutting my digital ties on Facebook, I was losing 9 followers on Twitter. Most of them were people or organizations that I had no association with anyway, but one was a person I communicated with fairly regularly.

Immediately, I began trying to figure out what I had said to drive this person away. Had I offended them in some way? What had I done wrong? The pangs of rejection hit me hard for a few minutes. And then I realized the irony.

I had just let 8 or 9 people go on one social network as 9 people were letting me go on another. When I unfriended my Facebook friends, it wasn’t personal at all — none of them had hurt me or offended me in any way. I just wasn’t finding value in their Facebook updates. In all likelihood, the people who stopped following me on Twitter felt the same way about my tweets: for whatever reason I wasn’t adding value to their lives.

Author Anne Jackson recently wrote on her blog about following “conversations” on Twitter rather than following people:

Overall, unless you have a real strategy behind Twittering, by following a ton of people, you’re not networking. You’re only following a lot of noise. Sure, you may occasionally find a nugget to chew on, but a lot of other well-deserving Tweets will fall through the cracks and be buried in the chaos of the masses. …

If you truly want Twitter to be an effective social networking tool, strategize *somehow* (it doesn’t have to look like mine) or clean house.  If you want it to be a flood of noise, keep hitting the Follow button and let the Tweets roll on by.

As social media takes on a greater role in our lives, we need to stop thinking in terms of quantity. Simply having more Twitter followers or blog readers or whatever doesn’t mean you’re a better person. Your self worth shouldn’t be determined by Google Analytics. In fact, “more” can be worse because it dilutes the value of the connections you really care about.

I hope that if you’re reading this, you do find some value in it. I hope that if you follow me on Twitter or if we’re Facebook friends, that I’m not just producing a lot of noise in your life. But if I am, then by all means let me go. I won’t take it personally.

Previously:
How to play the game of ‘Blog-Facebook-Twitter’

Since joining Twitter last November, I’ve gradually blogged less and less, not because I wasn’t interested in blogging, but because there are times it’s just quicker and easier to fire off a quick tweet and be done with it. But then a lot of times I feel guilty, as if I have some sort of obligation to meet a blogging quota. (I don’t, do I?)

Then, of course, there’s the Facebook versus Twitter dilemma. When I want to announce something amazingly profound to the citizens of the Interwebs, like how I could really go for a ham sandwich right about now, do I post that nugget of eternal wisdom on Facebook or tweet it?

Of course some people do both. There’s the Twitter Facebook app that ports your tweets automatically to Facebook (in the form of your Facebook status). And the next version of TweetDeck will allow users to post their updates to Twitter, Facebook, or both. I don’t really like this approach, personally, simply because not everything I say on Twitter is necessarily appropriate for Facebook, and vice versa. Plus, at times it borders on spamming your friends, and Facebook users are already being spammed enough as it is.

So to help navigate these perilous waters of social networking, I’ve devised a simple “Blog-Facebook-Twitter” decision matrix in the same vein as Rock-Paper-Scissors.

• Does what you want to say require more than 140 characters or involve block quotes of any kind? If so, then Blog beats Twitter.
• Do you have the overwhelming desire to use the “@” symbol when referring to someone or tag everything with a “#” hashtag? If so, then Twitter beats Facebook.
• Do you want to make sure that everyone you have ever met in your entire life sees your announcement and that it will be commented on by the kid that beat you up in First Grade that you are now inexplicably Facebook friends with? If so, then Facebook beats Blog.

I hope that helps. And be sure to follow me on Twitter. You know, just in case I get any more cravings for lunchmeat.

Facebook is rolling out its Facebook Connect program, partnering with sites such as Digg, Hulu, and StumbleUpon to give Facebook users an easier way to log into those sites. Now, instead of having a Facebook logon, Digg logon, Hulu logon, etc., you can simply use your Facebook information to log in.

The service is similar to the OpenID standard, but with one big caveat: anything you do on the partner sites can and will be tracked by Facebook and can even be published to your news feed.

And that’s a good thing? According to some tech blogs, yes.

From Wired:

Such a system is sure to be welcomed by the web’s most social users, many of whom are sick of having to create a unique profile on every site where they want to participate. With Facebook Connect, you carry one set of keys that unlocks dozens of doors, and the stuff you do out there on the web gets fed back into the place you call home.

And from CNET (a partner in the service):

Users just want easy access to sites they like, and they want to trust that the sites they use won’t steal their identity or use it in ways that are damaging to them.

That’s why it’s good to offer users more than one way to access a Web service. It’s great if users can get into CNET services the old-fashioned way, with a CNET ID and password. But if we make it easy for Facebook users to come inside, that’s great, too. How about OpenID? Sure, why not?

So it’s all about convenience for the user? Hardly. As CNET goes on to concede:

The downside, of course, is that we no longer “own” these users. If Facebook wants to turn off CNET, they can do it. Facebook also now gets monetizable information about the Facebook-registered CNET users. Not necessarily what the users do on CNET, but what they do elsewhere–valuable behavior data. The convenience of using Facebook log-ins has a price for both CNET and users: Facebook knows a lot more about you now.

Again, I’m not sure if that’s such a good thing. I would rather have multiple user names and passwords than know that Facebook is recording everything I do.

Besides, I thought that was Google’s job.

Michael Dell cares about you. OK, maybe not. But he does care about his company’s online reputation, so much so that he’s going all “Web 2.0″ to try and fix it.

The company has been logging on, reaching out to potential customers, and trying – sometimes awkwardly – to listen to them. And it’s using social media to do so. That’s right, Web 2.0 isn’t just for college sophomores anymore. Apparently you can use it to patch up a $37 billion PC business too. …

It has a squad of 42 employees who spend their workdays engaging with the communities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. What is this Team Web 2.0 learning? One important nugget: that potential customers spend 99% of their time on the web doing research and just 1% actually buying. So the company has tried to dial down the hard sell and become – or at least appear to become – more helpful.

OK, Mike. You wanna be my friend? You want to “at least appear” to be more helpful? Then here’s a suggestion: hire qualified tech support staff at the Enterprise level. When I, as a network admin, call in to get a replacement part for a dead Latitude that’s still under warranty, just send me the part–the right part, please–without treating me like a 5-year-old. And don’t route my call to four different queues, all of which end up in Bangalore.

Is that too much to ask?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Dell (the company or the products–or the man for that matter), but I’ve seen the quality of their support decline rapidly over the last several years. When I worked at Microsoft, we dealt with Enterprise-level support engineers at Dell all the time, and they could always be counted on to deliver top-notch service. Nowadays, though, it’s sometimes painful calling in for support. Even after I’ve done the requisite troubleshooting on my end, they still sometimes refuse to admit that their hardware could be faulty.

And it’s not just me. The Unisys techs I talk to–the ones that Dell sends out to perform on-site service–admit they’re just as frustrated.

Write something about Dell online, and chances are the company will know about it in an hour or so. Dis the company in a blog or a Facebook group, and someone from a crack response team may even chime in, if only to let everyone know that Dell cares.

Really? OK, I look forward to it.