blog one another

I'm being followed on Twitter!

Photo by fmgbain (license), adapted by Jon Reid

This is part 5 of a series on Twitter Practical How-to's.

It happens sooner or later: Twitter notifies you that someone "is now following you on Twitter," but you have no idea who they are. Your first followers were the friends you told, and maybe a handful of services you followed which automatically followed you back. But eventually, you are followed by a complete stranger. Who are they? What do they want? Are you being stalked?

It can feel especially odd if you are used to the enclosed walls of Facebook, where friendship is always mutual. But remember, Twitter is not simply Facebook status updates, without Facebook. By default, everything you tweet is public, and anyone can follow you. (If this bothers you, go to your Twitter Settings and select "Protect my updates". But think twice before you do so, because you will be missing out on the opportunity to meet interesting people you don't know.)

So how did they find you? Here are a few different ways:

Missions, Misunderstood

Photo by tinkernoonoo (license), adapted by Jon Reid

One of my favorite new blogs I read regularly is Missions, Misunderstood by "Ernest Goodman," a pseudonym for a former missionary. A recent post titled Expectations began,

It usually goes something like this:

“Yay, we’re going to be missionaries! We love the nations! God’s glory! Passion! Finish the task”

Then, “It’s okay to be uncomfortable. Different isn’t necessarily bad. We can do this.”

Finally, “I’m just not cut out for missions. The missionaries here aren’t cut out for missions. I’m never leaving home again.”

Those lines in particular really resonated with me. I left the following comment, but decided to share it here as well:

Loving Your Gay Neighbor

Spencer Burke interviews Andrew Marin about what he's learned about ministry, and about Jesus, in the center of Chicago's gay community. This is terrific stuff from TheOOZE.TV.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Social Acceptance: A Missional Metric

Photo by Darren Hester (license )

"What does your church measure, and why?" That's how my latest blog post starts. But you won't find it here! Instead, go on over to ChurchETHOS, a blog by my friend Nathan Creitz. There you will find Social Acceptance: A Missional Metric.

While you're there, check out the rest of Nathan's blog. Like me, Nathan questions things about church, out of love for the Church. Besides, he has a really cool logo. Reset!

Laughing With

Here's a fascinating new song called "Laughing With" by Regina Spektor. Apparently she performed this on Letterman last Friday.

A taste of the lyrics: "No one laughs at God in a hospital" … "But God can be funny"
(h/t: Mike Todd)

Ambassador's Alliance Radio vs. Jon Reid

Well, another radio show critiqued my 14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends. Ambassador's Alliance Radio is by Tony Miano of Last Words Radio, except that this is an Internet radio show (as opposed to broadcast through the air.) Tony must really like my article, because he keeps using it.

The show is two hours long (podcast available here), with the first hour devoted to critiquing my post. Actually, they spend a lot of time getting things set up and introducing the guest who joins in the critique. They don't get started with me until 15 minutes in.

I don't intend to do a point-by-point rebuttal of their criticism. You can listen and come to your own conclusions. But overall, the thing that kept striking me was their focus on "what happens when you die" and the dualism that naturally results from making the gospel about life after death rather than about the kingdom of God being here, now. Also, their gospel seems extremely hell-centric. Isn't that backwards?

Puzzle 1989-2009

Today, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died. But my tears were for Puzzle, our twenty-year-old cat.

Puzzle died peacefully in his bed this afternoon. I am sad, but glad that he was not in any apparent distress. He just gradually slowed down. I would like to go like that when it's my turn.

We got Puzzle when we were missionaries in Japan, twenty years ago. He was from our favorite place in the whole world, Lake Nojiri, where Kay & I met. He joins his adopted brother Tigger beyond the veil. Hey guys, further up and further in. Oh wait, you're cats, you don't take instructions. Never mind, you'll figure it out.

Twenty years. Peace, old friend. You deserve it.

So Beautiful book review

What if there were a single design that explained the meaning of life — the universe — everything? What if it pulled together the nature of God with the mission of humanity? What if it were so simple that, when sliced and labeled, many will brush it off saying, "That's obvious. So what?" That was my initial reaction when I saw that the front cover of Leonard Sweet's new book So Beautiful has the words, "Missional — Relational — Incarnational: Divine Design for Life and the Church." Because those concepts are already important to me, I was inclined to respond, "That's cool," shrug, and dismiss it as something I already "get."

Friends, do not dismiss this book.

I pressed beyond my initial dismissal because the author, Leonard Sweet, had already impacted my life before. When I made the transition out of modernistic Christianity, it was a very scary and painful time; I was afraid I was losing my faith. Three things saved me:

• SoulTsunami by Leonard Sweet helped me understand my new context.
• A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren helped me find faith again.
• The Soliton Sessions showed me I was not alone, and created a space for me to encounter Jesus all over again.

So Len Sweet helped me get reoriented when I needed it. His latest book again catches me at just the right time. When I read SoulTsunami, I characterized Len as a Christian futurist. But in So Beautiful, I see that he is a preacher, a wordsmith.

Twitter WAS a Cocktail Party: Why @Replies Mattered

Photo by SanFranAnnie (license), adapted by Jon Reid

Fresh on the heels of Twitter Is A Cocktail Party comes my second TwiTip guest post, Twitter WAS A Cocktail Party. Has Twitter seemed unusually quiet to you this past month? It's because you no longer see what one person says to another. This is a big deal because @replies were the main thing that created Twitter's virtual cocktail party effect.

In my article, I explain the old (and easily misunderstood) @replies option, what Twitter changed, and how you can work around the change for selected tweets. Following the metaphor to its bitter end, it's like the host of the party turned up the music so loud that it's possible to have conversations, but difficult to overhear any. But if you think your conversation might benefit others, you can shout. See my article.

More Twitter tips here on blog one another:

• Why Twitter?
• Before You Sign Up for Twitter
• Twitter Practical How-to's

And just for fun (or is it serious?), Saint Francis on Twitter.

It's off to work I go

Hi-ho, hi-ho: I head back to work this morning for the first time in six months!

This all happened so quickly that it's still a blur. On Monday, a praying friend asked if I had any news about jobs. I replied, "All quiet on the job front." And now it is Thursday, and I have to get ready for my first day on the job.

This is a 4-6 month contract, so I am still looking for a full-time job (with good benefits to support a family). But this buys me valuable time, which was running out. And because I get no benefits, we get to keep COBRA, which continues the excellent coverage I had in my last job. And thanks to the federal stimulus package, our payments have been reduced a whopping 65%, which has been credited retroactively, so now we have a positive balance to draw on for a few months and low payments after that!

I tell you, we have a weird Just-In-Time God.

The company I will be working for is Data Robotics, makers of a cool Mac/Win product which looks like a great product for anyone who needs to store a lot of important data (and that data keeps increasing). I think of it as "RAID for Dummies, heck it's even better than RAID." If that sounds confusing, it makes much more sense in the demo video.

Hi-ho!