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Saturday, March 22, 2003 |
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As I connected to cbfonline to look up the location of Smith/Helyws publishers, (Atlanta area, I discovered), I saw this news item.
Click the above link to read the entire statement from CBF Cordinator:
"The overwhelming sense many people have about this war is sadness and confusion. Why is there not the leadership to build consensus among nations to remove Saddam Hussein from power? Why cannot the world community find the collective wisdom and will to disarm Saddam Hussein without war? Because there seems to be no clear answer to these questions, we are left with a global crisis of violence and destruction."
11:46:10 AM 
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Yesterday, the first day of spring, also marked the end of the fourth month of unemployment. I am hoping to get a Web project that will provide some temporary income, but also hope that I can use the project to add to my portfolio and develop some functioanlity that I can re-use in the development of Church Webs, including one I have been maintaining for a couple of years, and is in dire need of a makeover/redesign. I sent in another couple of resumes to jobs sent to me by my Monster.com job agent email notification. One was in Washington, DC, the other in Columbus, OH. Washington DC remains a focus in my sense of call nto the future as I ponder models of Church community in such groups as Church of the Saviour and Sojourners. Nearby, in Richmond, Virginia, the CBF organization has a seminary
11:39:30 AM
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As the CBS NCAA basketball coverage comes on TV, I am in a very different place than in the March Madness days of the last 10 years. I did not fill out a bracket, and have watched far less coverage (save for the Kentucky game, although I was on the computer the whole time, looking at resources for planning and estimating for a Web project--- mostly regarding pricing for various e-commerce services and tools). The traditional SEC tournament trip went on as planned, except that this year I was a "freeloader" in that my parents footed the whole bill. The game tickets, hotel room, and plane tickets were all bought last fall, prior to my job loss. We didn't cancel anything, thinking that perhaps I'd be re-situated by then.
Up until the last couple of days before we went, I was holding out hope that the St. Louis job would be offered, and that I would get good news from the second prostate biopsy that I underwent on March 10. As I related earlier, I got the letter from their HR department on the day of my biopsy, when I returned home to "recuperate". It was a rather difficult blow, but ever since then I have managed to keep encouraging myself with the hope that this will help me to see and believe that my destiny and call lies in pursuing more specifically a way to help the Church tell it''s story on the Web. That doesn't mean I don't find myself imagining "what might have been" if I had gotten the St. Louis job. It could have been too technically demanding for all I know. My skill set, while reasonably competent in technical matters, is most valuable because of my combination of those technical Web skills with my theological background and where that particular combination might lead me.
The biopsy results did come back and showed no cancer yet again, and so that fear was put to rest and allowed me to do some recuperation by being able to do SOME amount of "forgetting" where I am and enjoy the annual SEC tournament, with the added adventure of flying to New Orleans.
11:26:54 AM
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If I can make a go of an upcoming Web project, and renew some efforts to add new features to a Church Web for which I have found little time to go beyond mere "updates", there may be a "synergy" that can happen by applying some of the "code" used for one business Web project to enhance the features of the Church Web that is in need of a redesign and upgrade of features. User/member customizations are important to building Church INTRAnets, where members are given tools to extend their involvement in the ongoing dialogue around what it means to be "Church" at this moment in our corporate journey.
10:24:32 AM
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I have been thinking about the Doctorate of Ministry (aka DMin) program that started me on this "Church and the Web" vocational journey. I had completed all the steps save the final project back in the Spring of 1997, just prior to my moving to Nashville to work fulltime. I regret having abandoned that program, but I was consumed in rapidly acquiring every Web development skill I could in order to "keep up" and stay abreast of needed Web development skills. Perhaps it's not a dead issue. Many of those original convictions expressed in those papers written between 1993 and 1997 are still valid, but in need of update as new Web technologies have come and gone. The options for providing community tools and "places" as a ministry of the Church, have grown dramatically. Would there be a DMin program that could help me complete or "re-engage" with those directions? (The papers I had thus far submitted can be seen here)
10:19:01 AM
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This morning, as I am doing a search on Google for anything David Siegel might have said, written, done since the publishing of Futurize Your Enterprise, which was the first book I read which forwarded the idea that was made famous by The Cluetrain Manifesto: that "markets are conversations", and that we "capture customers" as people and not eyeballs or consumers, and that we do so by "engaging them" with things in which they have passionate interest.
I have always thought that this was the direction in which the Church needs to invest in order to leverage the Web for ministry. It is an area in which the Church has , in my view, failed miserably. I have seen it in Churches where I have been involved, (though not 100% so-- but on the order or 99%), and I have seen it in denominational agaencies charged with helping the Church fulfill its mission.
This is not a "forget the Church" call. This is a "wake up" call. There are doubtless many out there in the Church who are also captured by this vision of utilizing the Web to enable Churches and Church organizations to tell their stories, and provide COMMUNITY, yes, ONLINE COMMUNITY which functions as a servant dimension to COMMUNITY of any kind, which INCLUDES and ENCOURAGES face to face community. I often hate to focus on comparisons of different aspects of community such as "face to face" and "online", because each of these are multifaceted, and can function as mutually beneficial for each other. More in Growing Community Everywhere
10:04:41 AM
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