Incessant Rambling

Although it is biblical, I’m thinking the whole “Free gift from God thing” isn’t really working as an evangelism strategy these days. Let me tell you why before you chop my head off.

Just take a look at the society around us. Everything is supposed to be free in our culture of entitlement. Another day, I’ll write about how we’ve done away with terms such as privilege, right, etc, but for now, let’s focus on entitlement.

From birth to death, the common theme people are learning these days is one of entitlement. There is a push to penalize the rich for their wealth. So what if they earned it? There are days I wish I wasn’t a white male, just so I could score a few extra points in whatever game I’m trying to win, be it a lucrative job, financial aid for education, politics, you name it. But this isn’t about affirmative action. It’s about life and death.

You see, there used to be a great argument that we could work our way into Heaven. I still hear it, but what does it even mean? If we don’t have to earn our own living and can subsist on our parents’ generosity, our minority-ness, welfare or whatever. then where does the principal of work even come from?

So if there is no concept of work, no concept of earning anything, much less a surefire way to Heaven, then how can a free gift be of any value? It isn’t to those that need it.

I just wanted to offer a quick plug for a recently completed project, REAL Shoes Experts. Ioan Chereji is a fellow church member and is a master shoe designer and maker. He truly is a master. I had several of his custom made shoes for a couple weeks while shooting some product shots for his website. They recently opened a new store where they not only sell custom shoes, but several well-known brands as well. So, if you’re in need of custom shoes due to foot problems or just want some beautiful shoes, check out these custom made shoes by REAL Shoes Experts.

There’s a stigma that goes with having a job that even remotely relates to technology - you immediately become the “computer guy.” Anyone with a question automatically assumes you’ll have the answer. Being a web developer, I have become the resident computer guy on more than one occasion, answering questions and fixing problems.

Having to answer questions isn’t the only perk of being the computer guy, though. You also have to talk shop. Maybe not surprisingly, I hate talking tech outside of 9-5. I don’t like to talk about what languages I program in and why, what I think about Web 2.0, or the evil that is Myspace. I should probably be better about this, but the worst is when I get stuck in a casual conversation with someone who “knows enough to be dangerous” and begins to opine on some topics that are frankly, way out of their league.

Why say all this? Because I have been talking the ear off of a good friend of mine lately regarding my latest expensive hobby, digital photography. I’ve always loved photography, but never took it seriously. When Asher was born, my amazing wife allowed me the luxury of purchasing my first digital SLR. I’ve since taken nearly 2500 photos (that’s in about 5 months since we got it a few days after he was born).

You see, this good friend is a professional wedding photographer. Now, I know that your uncle or brother’s friend or your second grade teacher’s grandson’s neighbor knows a guy who does wedding photography, but this dude is the real deal. He’s a master of lighting, a guru of photojournalism and frankly, a creative genius. I guarantee you he doesn’t need me sharing my thoughts on the latest gear, bugging him with questions or
asking favors to borrow gear.

So to pay him back for the time I spend talking his ear off, I thought I’d give him a plug and link him up here. So, if you have a wedding coming up and are looking for a photographer, stop searching. Stephen Seward is your man. Check out his wedding photography portfolio and his blog for info.

And if your needs aren’t wedding related, but say portraits or children, you can still call Stephen. Or, you can call Tarah Craft. Tarah does weddings too, but after you see her baby, children and family portrait work, you’ll want to have children just so she can take pictures of them. The third photo of her son in this post on her blog CRACKS. ME. THE. HECK. UP!

You’re probably a bit thrown off at such a title from a guy who talks a lot about church. However, for those of you not reading this via an RSS Reader, you’ll probably get the point. I’ve removed the prettiness from this site for a day in honor of CSS Naked Day. In the founder’s words:

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.

Sure, most of the latest stuff I’ve written here has either been church-related or personal stuff that no one really cares about. What about the meaningless stuff I do from 9-5 called work?

As a web developer, I try to keep a fairly flexible toolbox. It’s extremely important to stay current on available technologies, but at the same time, equally as important to pay attention to what works.

In the same way that an international businessman (or man of mystery) might wish to be semi-fluent in multiple languages, the same holds true for those of us in technology. Each client or project requires its own unique set of tools. In the web world, these tools consist of server hardware, operating systems, web servers, database servers, server-side development languages, client-side development languages, web services, a variety of markup and transformational languages, CSS, graphic design, and a ginormous number of plugins, APIs and libraries. Add to that things like usability, accessibility, standards and the like, and you can see the difficulty.

Usually, a developer or a team may specialize in a set of tools. Additionally, that team may consist of a project manager, a handful of backend developers, a database administrator, a user interface designer, and a usability specialist. Granted, that team may be a little robust for a simple content-managed marketing site and better suited for a large-scale web-based application. The point is there is a great deal more that goes into this business than buying a template online, creating a Microsoft Word document & saving it as HTML or even using Dreamweaver.

Since the days of Geocities, Tripod, and other free website providers, there has been a perception that web design is easy. The market became (and remains) saturated with brothers, cousins, uncles, stay-at-home-moms, and friends-of-friends that can use Frontpage and download scripts to make a website functional. Then there are professional software engineers who have lived in the desktop world, but the market has demanded that they come to the dark side of web development. This usually involves using similar tools, but comes with those developers not understanding the differences between the web and the desktop. Then we have extremely talented designers who come from the world of advertising and try to use print philosophies on the web, only to then complain that the web is boring and not flexible enough to meet their needs.

I say this all because I just wrapped up a stretch where I was involved in three projects simultaneously, each using a completely different tool set. My head still hasn’t stopped spinning.  One is based completely on Microsoft technologies. Another I’m implementing using an open source content-management system using PHP & Mysql. And the third is a custom application developed using Ruby on Rails. Don’t worry if you don’t understand or care about any of those names or acronyms because I don’t either. Two of those three were custom designed by me, with the third having a second phase that will include a custom design.

Being self-employed has allowed me the luxury of being able to use several skills to execute projects. The ability to blend the creative and the technical keeps my overhead pretty low. However, I also know my limits. There are definitely things I can’t do. And, having been in this industry for a decade, I understand the constraints of the medium — what works and what doesn’t.

The moral of this story is simply that whatever business you’re in, there are certain barriers of entry.  My business happens to have very low barriers, creating a ridiculously cutthroat environment.  Choose your culture carefully.  Understand the medium in which you work.  Fill your toolbox with the right tools.  These may not be the easiest or even the best, but as long as they’re the right tools, you’re making your job that much more successful.  Know and understand the limits of that medium, but most importantly, know and understand your own limits.  Having a passion for what you do helps as well.  It keeps you interested in continually learning more and not relying on prefab techniques, but exploring new ways to accomplish old tasks.

This may not concern the two of you who read this blog, but it’s a worthy cause, so I thought I’d use my measly Google page rank of 4/10 and send some link love to a fellow designer and the other blogs picking up the story. Digg has it too, if you care.

Dan Cederholm is a designer of websites, logos, icons, etc. In December, he re-branded his site with a new logo. A few days ago, he found this blatant rip-off for sale on the LogoMaid website. According to their website, LogoMaid is

an amazing collection of 3600 pre-designed logos from! as low as $19!

Predesigned is right, folks. Now, I’ve been involved in some pretty lengthy discussions on branding, design, inspiration, copyright, intellectual property, etc. Where is the line drawn? It’s actually rather gray. However, this one is a pretty blatant rip by LogoMaid.

To add fuel to the fire, Paul Viluda of Vilords media and proprietor of LogoMaid, shares that the logo in question was designed for a client in “October, I believe” and unused, and subsequently being posted for sale on LogoMaid’s website. He therefore suggests that he is “strongly considering a lawsuit against simplebits not only because of the logo, but also the fact that you are harming our goodwill.” Goodwill aside, all metadata and timestamps surrounding anything remotely involving the LogoMaid logo come AFTER Dan’s re-brand post of December 4, 2006, not to mention his first preview of the logo on November 17, 2006. Oh, and did I mention that Mr. Viluda has created multiple Flickr accounts to attempt to back up his original Vilords user?

As if that weren’t enough, it didn’t take long for a few sleuthing users to find other suggested rips. Not surprisingly, the first is only a screenshot, as the logo has been removed from LogoMaid’s catalog (after being moved around from unique to non-unique categories). The short list (some more blatant than others):

• Original:
  
  LogoMaid’s copy:
  
• Original:
  
  LogoMaid’s copy:
  
• Original:
  
  LogoMaid’s copy:
  
• Original:
  
  LogoMaid’s copy:
  

I find it fun to go through times like I am currently. I’ve been pretty frustrated with a lot of things, and stressed with the amount of things in which I am involved. So, when I get on a soapbox like I have been lately with evangelism, it’s gratifying to have it affirmed by the things around me.

Not more than 24 hours after this post, I happened upon a link to Issue 4, 2006 of the WCA News. The particular issue happens to be focused heavily on evangelism and affirmed everything that has been floating in my head lately. I’ll pull out some highlights, but please take some time to read the issue in your spare time.

The first article, titled “Evangelism in 3-D” highlights Willow’s 3-D philosophy: Develop Friendships, Discover Stories and Discern Next Steps. Here’s a quip about the root problem of evangelism today:

People hate evangelism. Christians shy away from it. They’re afraid of it, discouraged by it and feel guilty when they fail to drag a seeker across the line of faith. If Christians dread evangelism, non-Christians despise it. They feel pressured, preached at, cornered, judged, condemned and reduced to spiritual projects. “Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten what evangelism is really about and we’ve reduced the process to simply inviting people to a weekend service,� says Willow Creek’s Director of Neighborhood Evangelism, Garry Poole. This is a problem.

This is a serious problem, folks. The statement “…they fail to drag a seeker across the line of faith” sums it up too plainly. This isn’t a task at which we can fail.

The same article also offers some responses to the question “what is your knee-jerk reaction to the word evangelism?” You can read for yourself to see some pretty scary responses. Poole also had this to say:

“We needed to shift from ‘doing community in the church’ to ‘doing church in the community,’�

And this:

Developing friendships is showing an authentic interest in their interests. “Don’t try to be interesting, just be interested.�

And this:

And whatever you do, don’t view your neighbor as a project. No one wants to be reduced to a spiritual project just so you can check them off your list.

How many times do we write a name down on a card and… yeah. Poole said this, too:

Christians often view evangelism as getting the seeker to listen to us while we share a verbal witness — give our testimony in the hopes they will better understand the gospel… We’re omitting a critical part of the process — the other person’s story. Non-Christians are eager to tell their stories.

Amen, brother. I am in the midst of another amazing book titled The Revolutionary Communicator. The first principle in that book is that communication is about listening. People just want someone to listen and be authentic.

There is a great deal more to learn from that article, but let’s move on to one by Bill Hybels, the Senior Pastor at Willow. In Just Walk Across the Room (also the title of his new book), Bill describes a relationship he had with his son’s childhood soccer coach, Brian. It is a relationship that was Spirit-led and took years to yield a new believer, surprising no one more than Bill himself. He nurtured the relationship on Brian’s terms, serving him, listening to him and just being a friend. Relationships and serving others goes a very long way to expanding the Kingdom.

And finally, an article titled Connections: The Bridge to Grace, also highlights the importance of relationships with an interesting story. The author’s wife was in the middle of an evangelism course and had an assignment to have evanglistic conversations each week (what is an “evangelistic” conversation, anyway?). He describes a conversation where her close friend opened up and shared some things that completely redefined their relationship…

A soul connection was made. For the first time in many years, this friend saw Jesus and the church in a different light — a very positive light!

Interestingly, though…

…she flunked with an “F”… because she failed to present the plan of salvation… and that was the assignment.

Granted, this was an assignment for a graded class, but sadly, I feel like this is exactly how we view our role in evangelism — an assignment that gets graded.

While tracts, strategies and events are brilliant tools perfect for certain situations, evangelism is about “walking across the room” and building relationships. The Bible tells us to be prepared to answer questions, but not to shout those answers to those who are not listening.

I didn’t plan on writing this, but I felt the need. Who knows if there will be more. Stay tuned.

A recent Bible Study led to a discussion on asking for signs from God. How do we know it’s a sign from God? What do we say to those who need to “see to believe?” It turned into a discussion about “the lost” and “the non-believers” and how we as Christians prove God’s existence to “them”.

Only recently have I felt our church making an effort to tear down that invisible wall around our group of believers and really make our community more than an afterthought. Evangelism tends to be something we make about “us and them” and appears in events like we’re doing this weekend which, while effective, is just an event.

We as Christians continue on with our defensive bubble, asking those around us to come in and hear what we have to say, or with this idea that we have something to prove. We make Christianity more about religion than about relationships.

Christianity is not exclusive. It isn’t something we do. It is something we are. I believe the self-inflicted bubble has contributed more to the angst against believers than anything else. Where is the humility in being set apart? We take that so literally that we seclude ourselves. Or, in a thinly veiled attempt at evangelism, we try to convince this “them” that we have something “they” should want.
It is not our job to prove anything. It is our job to serve those in need. It is our job to serve those not in need. The Holy Spirit does the tugging.

Please, do not take this to mean that I’m against sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ or that I’m encouraging a strictly passive approach to sharing (or not sharing) the Gospel. I believe wholeheartedly in the Great Commission. I just feel like we tend to look at it more as a job or an obligation than a heartfelt desire to expand the Kingdom. We put such emphasis on telling people about Jesus, that we completely skip over the first step of building a relationship and meeting the needs of people.

If we truly want to make a difference, there is no convincing to be done. There is only serving.

I’m typically pretty indifferent when it comes to politics. Honestly, I just don’t care. It really feels like it’s a self-sufficient machine. A robot operating only to rule the world. Voting only seems to matter so that we end up with the least evil person in the seat. Even then, the result doesn’t feel like it actually means anything.

So why do I feel like I should chime in about Hillary’s announcement? One sentence:

I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.

She spends the first half of her announcement talking about the mistakes of our current president. She spends one paragraph talking about questions facing our country. She spends a majority of the rest tooting her own horn. Then, in this one sentence, she starts her entire campaign out saying, “it’s Us against Them.” That’s why I hate politics.

Sure, my political views tend to lean towards the Republican side. Does that mean I automatically disagree with the Dems? I disagree with many of the platforms typically supported by them, but not because they’re Democrats. Does that mean I automatically agree with the GOP? Nope, it doesn’t mean that either.
I’m tired of this two-sided struggle. It ping-pongs back and forth needlessly. Bipartisanship is a farce unlikely to ever end. It’s not that we need another party, or we need people to cross party lines at all. Frankly, I feel like we need to get rid of the party structure all together. What a joke.

Is there anything we can do? Vote better people in? Speak out? Sadly, no. Sure, that’s pretty cynical, but at this point, I’m pretty confident it’s a lost cause.

Just as I was getting pretty frustrated with the new year and losing the wind in my sails, along comes a healthy dose of reality. This morning I received confirmation on two new projects and may have another come in shortly. That’s good news, obviously. However, in reading Getting Things Done, I’ve started making a list and trying to get organized. The difficult part is getting past the initial list phase and isolating my “next actions.” My list happens to be rather overwhelming. Here is is, in short form, along with ‘07 goals for each item (in no particular order):

My family

Currently: I’m working a lot. I spend a ton of time locked in my office whether I’m working or not. It’s hard to separate my professional and personal lives when working from home. I feel myself becoming independent again and just generally disconnected.

Goal: Most of this is personal, so I won’t bore you with the details. I mainly want to make family a priority again and reconnect.

Evermind Media Group, LLC

Currently: Luckily, I just had another influx of good projects. For some reason, steady work is not easy to find. For that reason, I find myself being easily distracted on personal projects or non-money-making activities. That’s not good when you’re self-employed and the only breadwinner in your family.

Goal: Obviously, I want to make money. That will take a steady stream of clients that I can have fun working with. In order for that to happen, I need to work harder to network and market myself. I’m working on getting the website finished, and my first product/service to be released hopefully in Q2 of this year, so here’s to hoping that goes well. There are also plans to continually expand my services further into the ministry arena. Those may get put off until next year.

First Baptist Church Ellisville

Currently: I’m still serving as volunteer tech director. With the addition of another audio engineer, I have been able to step back to only mixing every other week and am able to sit with my family to worship. We’re working to expand our video production capabilities as I type this.

Goal: As mentioned above, we’re working to expand our video production capabilities. This includes the addition of professional cameras and related gear as well as producing quality video content for service enhancement and outreach. There is also a serious need for more volunteer help. I’d like to see us at least double our team to support some more creative efforts as well as beef up our operation teams to facilitate our worship services.

Fellowship of Technical Ministries

Currently: Sadly, we’re in a holding pattern for this ministry. Twelve months ago, I was fired up about being part of the leadership team. Today I’m frustrated. Only two other people from that original group have shown up at meetings. I’m sure some of it is due to my lack of planning quality meetings, but I can’t bring in guests for a crowd of zero.

Goal: I really am passionate about this ministry. I hope that we can get it started off on the right foot this year. The organization’s founder is back in town next month, so hopefully we can light the fire again and gain the much needed support once again.

Project Wunderllama

Currently: This is the product/service I mentioned earlier. I’m working on it as time is available (which isn’t often).

Goal: I’d like to get it released sometime in Q2. I think the big picture of this service could really revolutionize technical ministries in general. The goal is to essentially provide tools to equip those involved in technical ministries with tools and knowledge to help them better do their jobs.

Unofficially Titled Worship Project

Currently: I’ve been asked to help produce a worship event coming up in May. We’ve met once and have another meeting this weekend. This is something I’m more excited about than anything in recent months. I’ve been trying to pull something similar off for a while. The team seems to be really passionate about making this a reality and extending it into a longterm ministry.

Goal: For the year? Just to pull it off well. For the future? Turn it into a stable longterm ministry that may one day go on the road.

General Stuff

Currently: My hobbies are being ignored. There isn’t really time for “general stuff” right now

Goal: Hopefully, as a result of putting GTD into practice, I’ll have more time for family and my general interests. I finally got the rest of my dad’s tools from his shop. I need to finish building my garage shop and start putting the tools to good use. I honestly feel like I’m honoring him when I use them. There are a few remodeling projects to be done around the house, like a new office so we can reclaim another guest bedroom so people don’t have to sleep in our dining room.

If our finances ever get back to normal (or even better than normal), we desperately need new cars. Working from home, I don’t have to drive the Death Mobile (’94 cutlass cierra) as much, but it’s the priority. Our ‘02 Passat is fine, but the warranty is almost up and is rather expensive to maintain. We want a Highlander and a Camry. It’d be nice to see that happen soon.

I heard recently that Gold’s Gym has bought a building right around the corner. I plan to be the first to sign up.

I want to express myself via art more.

Without getting too lame, I don’t feel like I have much of a social life. Most of my friends are related to my wife or live several hundred miles away. Being involved in my role at church, I don’t have the opportunity to socialize via an ABF (church-speak for Sunday School). Working from home, I don’t meet very many new people, much less any that I’d want to hang out with.

There are a great deal more, including some things I can’t really discuss publicly yet. We’ll just see where we are in 11.5 months.

Conclusion

Generally, I just need to get organized via GTD and better manage my priorities.  I didn’t discuss much about how what motivates me leans more to the pro-bono side than the money-making side, but hopefully that will change one way or another.  Have any advice?