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August 30, 2007
Facebook.....and pretty busy times.
This is a very busy season for college ministry. Lots of schools are returning to session and so we have been gearing up. We sort of have a slow building wave. LMU, USC and a few other schools returned this week, and then at the end of September, UCLA will return with a bang, as they are the largest component of our ministry from a numbers and leadership standpoint. So the next few weeks are being spent building towards our big kickoff on September 26th.
We moved to a new building last night which we really love. As our group grows and we try to find new ways to foster community through activities and interaction at our worship nights, we are excited to move to our new space which is right next to our new coffee shop.
How am I staying on top of everything and communicating with new and old students. Facebook. I can't think of any other better way. I am more and more impressed with this social networking site every time I log on.
It's timely that the Newsweek article, The Facebook Effect appeared on the cover of its issue last week.
Timely because I'm using it like crazy. Timely because my workshop at BlogWorldExpo and GodBlogCon is titled, New Media Ministry to the Myspace- Facebook Generation: Employing New Media Technologies Effectively In Youth Ministries
So I have been spending my usual blogging time working on this workshop and preparing the essay that will accompany the brochures for the conference.
Facebook is just so smart and intuitive in my opinion. I think one of the smartest things they have done is to allow outside designers develop applications for Facebook.
Zuckerberg's next big move was to fill Facebook with all sorts of applications people could use without leaving the site--programs that took advantage of Facebook's vast social networks. "There are a ton of different ways that people can share information, and rather than trying to develop all those ourselves, we wanted to allow anyone worldwide to create any kind of application," says Zuckerberg. Thousands of developers, from big companies to kids in dorm rooms, instantly began creating applications that piggybacked on Facebook's infrastructure. The new applications could get instant viral distribution, since the News Feed blasts a report to friends every time someone installs a new app (in other words, free promotion). Developers could make money from Facebook-embedded apps by taking ads or selling things--without sharing a penny of the proceeds with Facebook.
Facebook, GodBlogCon, BlogWorldExpo
Posted by rhett at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2007
letting go
I'm fascinated by the story of the potter and the clay in Jeremiah 18. There are so many things that we can learn from that story. I've blogger before about being shaped by the Potter and about six months ago I blogged about the limits and potential in being shaped in a post, Vocation and Identity: Part 3--Limitations and Possibilities.
I don't want to reiterate what I have written before, but I just have a couple of observations:
1) Doesn't it seem that when we stop trying to "manufacture" or produce things in our life ourselves, that things actually begin to open up? Like when we stop pressing for that career, or that relationship, or that one desire, and actually let go of it, things actually turn our way...and not our way in the way that we had wanted it....but better.
There are several amazing things happening in my life right now, and it seems that they have only come about because I finally let go of them within the last year or so...I stopped trying to bring those things about myself or "manufacture" them.
2) Doesn't it seem that if God (the Potter) continually has His hand upon us, shaping us, then He will shape us into what seems fit? But we often, and I would say most often, resist His shaping by continually trying to do things our way.
Sometimes we have to let go of things in our life: dreams, relationships, goals, certain career achievements....fill in the blank here. When we finally let go, we stop resisting God's shaping of us, and allow Him to freely shape us into something better. Into who He created us to be.
That's all for now...here are a couple of killer quotes from those two previous posts:
"The skill of the divine potter is an infinite patience of improvisation. No sooner has one work gone awry than his fingers are pressing it into the form of another. There is never a moment for the clay, when the potter is not doing something with it. God is never standing back and watching us; his fingers are on us all the time," (Austin Farrer quoted in Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths, 482).
"Everything in the universe has a nature, which means limits as well as potentials, a truth well known by people who work daily with the things of the world. Making pottery, for example, involves more than telling the clay what to become. The clay presses back on the potter's hands, telling her what it can and cannot do--and if she fails to listen, the outcome will be both frail and ungainly. Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his failure will go beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril.
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. "Faking it" in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail.
Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.'" (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer, pp. 15-16)
Posted by rhett at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."--Thomas More
Home Chores, 1945, by Jacob Lawrence
I'm definitely in the process of learning this truth. As a lot of you know who are parents, nothing can bring you to your knees quicker, or make life more simplistic than having a newborn around the house. My little daughter unknowingly has simplified my life very quickly. And I'm learning a lot about myself just washing baby bottle after baby bottle, changing diaper after diaper, and rocking her to sleep in the middle of the night. Life has gotten very simple. She doesn't seem to care either if I blog or not.
It's also forced me to reduce what I do. Meaning, I no longer have the time or energy to do everything I want to do, which is both good, but humbling.
I just dropped my entry from the Long Beach Marathon because my body could not sustain the beating it was taking on two hours of sleep a night. So I will return to marathons hopefully in the Spring once I get my feet under me.
Currently, I'm just working on gearing up for our college ministry The Quest to return in full-force come the end of September.
I'm also working on my presentation for GodblogCon, which is part of BlogWorld & New Media Expo this November in Las Vegas.
Here is the title and description of the presentation I am currently working on:
New Media Ministry to the Myspace- Facebook Generation
Employing New Media Technologies Effectively In Youth Ministries
The demographic which would benefit most from a strong Christian presence in the New Media is America’s youth. Many youth ministries have tried and failed to reach the youth where they are at by setting up websites which end up being either unattractive or full of out-of-date content. Rhett Smith will share how New Media technologies provide youth pastors with powerful tools which enable them to reach the youth culture quickly and effectively with technology relevant to their day-to-day lives.
We'll see how this goes. Currently working a lot on the topic of Facebook since it is the tool that we currently use the most and that I find to be the most effective in reaching out, communicating, planning, etc.
I have plenty more I should be working on and doing, but I'm learning to reduce my life to more simple pursuits, and if I can't do that myself, my daughter is going to see to that.
I really liked that quote by Thomas More above, and that started me thinking about the simplicity of daily life and chores. Here is a great image of that.
GodBlogCon, Blogworld & New Media Expo
Posted by rhett at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2007
Pastoral burnout...some statistics
Scot McKnight has a great post titled Burnout for Pastors, which are statistics he has reproduced from Pastors at Greater Risk, H B London, Jr., and Neil B Wiseman, Regal Books, © 2003
Though pastoral ministry is not the only vocation where burnout is present and where many of these statistics can be reproduced....I do think though that pastoral ministry is unique because of the expectations from the congregation, the community, etc. I have worked both in and out of the church and burnout is definitely a danger, and it is especially a danger since many will not seek help because of a feeling of failure, or not living up to the "requirements" and "expectations" of the those they pastor, etc.
Posted by rhett at 01:11 PM | Comments (1)
August 13, 2007
Formula for blogging success....and do I, or should I really care.
I've been thinking about a lot of things recently. And one of the things I've been thinking about is blogging and how my blogging has changed.
If you look at this site www.rhettsmith.com it will say that I posted my first blog on Dec. 17th. That is true, but I actually started experimenting with blogging on our college website in the summer of 2004. So I've been going at it for about three years. And it comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I post a lot and sometimes I almost post nothing for days at a time.
One of the things that I have noticed that has changed drastically (at least I think so) is my tone. In the earlier days I was more prone to try and stir up controversy, which was super easy to do.
The formula for blogging success (i.e. internet traffic, comments posted, etc) is to post anything negative about John Piper or John MacArthur....it doesn't even have to be negative...just that you disagree with them. And then post anything pro Emergent and the emerging church.
That is instant success in the blogging world. Try it. It works.
But what most of you don't know is that the last two years have been an amazing "inner-personal" journey for me. In the summer of 2005 I began seeing a therapist every week. That's a lot of sessions. Today was my last day after two years of going every week. I will return again some day, but for now I am on hiatus.
There were many reasons why I went to see a therapist: 1) seeking personal growth; 2) working through past issues/personal baggage; 3) if I'm going to be a therapist which I am planning to do after finishing my MFT, I better have done some personal work and figured out what it's like to sit across from a therapist. I consider it almost malpractice if I hadn't.; 4) after being in ministry for so many years, one needs to do some work; 5) figuring out that our identity is not in what we do, but in who we are. Etc., etc. I could list millions of reasons.
But after two years as I reflect back on my journey and I look at my blogging I can trace many trends. And one of the major trends that I noticed was that I became more secure in who I was. Blogging (and I don't think I'm alone here) is a way for many people to make an identity for themselves, be in the mix, see who comments about them, check on their traffic, etc. All of this feeds a crazy addiction (that most people won't get...but those of you who blog do) that somehow makes you feel that your blog and you are one and the same. How your blog is doing, somehow gives value to how you are doing. Are you important? Are people reading you? Is traffic up or down? Are people linking my site?
Sounds super crazy I know.
But finally, I think I've come pretty close to being in a place where blogging is where it should be in my life. I do it because I enjoy it primarily. Not because I feel compelled to do so under pressure. Or worry that traffic will drop if I don't post everyday.
And I can credit all of this to my journey in therapy. I've learned more about myself in the last two years than I did in the first 30. And I still have a long ways to go. But I also think I'm beginning to become more and more comfortable in my own skin and in who God created me to be, rather than in some image or personality I draft up in my blog.
So in the end, I've let go of that 1, 2, 3 formula for blogging success. Because it really doesn't matter. In the end, we are just people posting thoughts online in our free-time. (for the most part :-)
Posted by rhett at 03:45 PM | Comments (2)
August 09, 2007
A new blog added to my reading list
A blog that is new to me and that I have really enjoyed reading is that of Rich Halvorson whom I know through Veritas.
Posted by rhett at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2007
Very True...
"If you do not Sabbath, God will impose a Sabbath upon you."
Mark Driscoll in his post, Death by Ministry, Part 11
Isn't that the truth!
Being a new father is beginning to show me how whacked some of my priorities have been in my life. Sometimes I wonder if a child is also God's blessing in our lives to help us realign how we live and to really show us what is important. If I can't get a Sabbath in, having a newborn at home definitely slows you down....
Currently learning a lot
Posted by rhett at 11:18 PM | Comments (2)
August 06, 2007
Dazed and Confused
"Artist rendition of Rhett's bloodshot eye after having no sleep in weeks with a newborn in the house"
I'm so exhausted. Any really naive thoughts I had about trying to get a newborn on some schedule have been shattered. Any thoughts I had about trying to maintain some sort of normalcy have been shattered as well.
So until I get more than an hour of sleep a night and am able to function and not simply sleepwalk through the day....then I will probably post a blog.
My wife and I hope that is sooner than later.
I would love any thoughts from dads on what the first 6 weeks to 3 months are like with a newborn.
Thoughts? Things that worked? Didn't work?
All I know is that our daughter loved being swaddled the first two and half weeks and now she is all of sudden Houdini, slipping her arms out in the night, grunting all the way. Crazy.
Posted by rhett at 08:42 AM | Comments (3)
