1. The Wall Street Journal ran a story on a small study done on Facebook and marriages. And when I say marriages, I mean marriages that fail. The story was instantly adopted by several Christian leaders who I respect as the prime example why we must be careful when engaging in online media. While I would agree that we should give thought to our online engagement with media, I think we’re passing judgment off of ourselves by blaming Facebook for divorces. It’s a lot easier to blame Facebook than to stare into our sin and realize we failed.
“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book “Facebook and Your Marriage” with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.”
Even when extra-marital affairs develop with no help from Facebook, experts say the site provides a deceptively comfortable forum for people to let off steam about their lives and inadvertently arouse the suspicions of spouses. “The difference with Facebook is it feels safe, innocent and private.”
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2. Being fairly engaged with all things social media and with an upcoming book release there’s always a desire within me to get attention without doing the hard work of earning it. Few people want to put in the time it takes to truly care enough about people to have them care about what you have to share with the world. Chris Brogan has some strong encouragement toward this:
People pay attention to me for the following reasons:
- I write useful things you can use for your own purposes.
- I share mostly positive opinions about what might help in the future. (Sorry this post isn’t as positive.)
- I seek to do something more than talk about what everyone else is talking about.
- I intend for small and large businesses to use this information for their own needs.
- I write like I care about you (because I do).
Nowhere in there do I say that I earn attention by begging. Nowhere in there do I say I earn attention by pestering people beyond a few quick posts to the outposts. It’s all the basics: write useful stuff. Share useful stuff. Care about the people you hope to reach. Repeat.
It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers.
Earn it.
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3. Especially in church I sense a very blurred line between what a volunteer is and what a leader is. Evangelicals, especially in America, are obsessed with leadership. Partly for good reason, because leaders are often the catalyst to start something monumental. But churches seemingly want everyone to become a leader and by having this mindset I think we’ve misunderstood what leadership is. Thanks to Mike Breen for this post:
Are our development programs about releasing leaders to the missional frontier? Or, more likely, are they about recruiting volunteers to keep the machine of the church running? To be sure, we should attend to the organization of the church, for it is a significant thing when the scattered church gathers. But as the Church stares precipitous decline in the face—as we look to re-embrace the missio Dei—we must learn again the art that Jesus exhibited: the task of multiplying missional leaders and releasing them into the cracks and crevices of society where there is little-to-no Gospel presence.
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PS. I wrote a guest post for Ron Edmondson last week and also had a post featured on ChurchLeaders.com. And I also updated my book’s description for online vendors. Let me know what you think.
Have a good weekend friends.
