Just when I thought I couldn't get any more PoMo... along comes the "Which Online Personality Test Are You?" online personality quiz.
I'm The 'Which Online Personality Test Are You?' Test!
Oh irony of ironies! I just can't get enough postmodernism, so of course I'm this same test I've just taken. Ho-ho!
:: Andrew 09:47 + ::
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![[If I were an online test, I would be The 'Which Online Personality Test Are You?' Test]](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paulspeller/onlinetest/mine.gif "Click to find out which test you are")
:: Friday, August 02, 2002 ::
Invest in beer? Russ Reeves, proprietor of Tolle, Blogge, notes that $1,000 invested in canned beer a year ago would have yielded a better return than a $1,000 investment in Nortel stock (assuming you recycled the cans). But does he consider some of the hidden costs for a $1,000 beer binge? (Aspirin for hangovers, etc.)
A new look at Jesus. That's the point of rejesus, a site that hopes to re-introduce the King of kings to cyberculture. "Rejesus has a single focus -- it goes to the very heart of Christian life and faith -- the person of Jesus Christ himself." So write the people behind it all. "Its aim is to connect with people who have little previous knowledge of Jesus or the Christian faith and to encourage a step or two of faith."
There's plenty to do and see at rejesus. I especially love this gallery of Lizzie Everard photos, and the poems of Steve Turner. Here's an excerpt from one, "If Jesus Were Born Today":
If Jesus was born today
it would be in a downtown motel
marked by a helicopter's flashing bulb.
A traffic warden, working late,
would be the first upon the scene.
Later, at the expense of a TV network,
an eminent sociologist,
the host of a chat show
and a controversial author
would arrive with their good wishes
-- the whole occasion to be filmed as part of the
'Is This The Son Of God?' one hour special.
Thanks to Richard Hall for this nugget.
The mobile digital. In Smart Mobs, cyberculture maven Howard Rheingold talks about what will happen when the rag-tag mass of "[w]ireless community networks, webloggers, buyers and sellers on eBay" come together to form mobile smart mobs that will roam the earth. "Communication and computing technologies capable of amplifying human cooperation already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks. Already, governments have fallen, subcultures have blossomed, new industries have been born and older industries have launched counterattacks." Rheingold points out the threats and opportunities of this phenomenon. "Smart mob devices, industries, norms, and social consequences are in their earliest stages of development, but they are evolving rapidly. Current political and social conflicts over how smart mob technologies will be designed and regulated pose questions about the way we will all live for decades to come." Link via WarLog.
The church and the churchless. A couple of good links from Jordon Cooper: A summary of George Barna's State of the Church 2002 (the church in the USA, that is); and A Churchless Faith, an article by Alan Jamieson on why people leave the church and what happens to their faith once they do. Anyone in any sort of ministry should read this article -- and probably should read Jamieson's book of the same title. I actually first learned about Jamieson's work from Rachel Cunliffe.
This is my first-ever AKMA link. AKMA notes that a blogless friend and his pals "have discovered the joys of electronic translation games." They're keying song lyrics in English into an online translation tool, translating them into German, and then back to English. Here's what happens when you do that to lyrics, such as the first lines of U2's "When I Look at the World":
The original:
When you look at the world
What is it that you see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees
Becomes, when put through the Babelfish wringer:
If you regard the world, which it is that you see people to find all kinds things which get it to their knees
Taken another level (from English-to-German-to-English and then to French and back to English again), it becomes:
If you consider the world, that it is that you see people to find all the things of kinds which obtain it with their knees
I don't know what the point of that exercise was, but it gave me an excuse to link to AKMA. And isn't that enough? (Dean Peters would probably disagree. But he'll do anything for a link.)
And now, a legitimate link for Dean Peters. Dean's blog, this blog, Stephen Shields' Faithmaps blog and Holy Weblog! were featured on Youthchurch.com. Hope it doesn't go to our heads.
:: Andrew 08:58 + ::
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Four posts in a single day! It must be Friday, and Andrew must be slacking. Yes, yes, and yes, but I just had to ask my readers: How on earth did I get third billing on this Google search?
:: Andrew 13:48 + ::
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Productivity is through the roof! Whew! This is my third blog entry today -- the most blogging I've done in quite a while. I even managed to write a newsletter today for the first time in six weeks. Sometimes I amaze myself. But the reason I logged back on is to wish a happy three-year anniversary to a delightful little blog, Pop Culture Junk Mail. Congratulations, Gael.
:: Andrew 13:33 + ::
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Open proposal: a usability study. Tim Bednar of e-church has come up with a great idea for assembling a usability testing team for Christian websites. I've already volunteered one of my sites, e-vangelism.com, to be tested. Anyone else interested in participating? Read Tim's proposal, then let him know.
:: Andrew 08:38 + ::
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:: Thursday, August 01, 2002 ::
Degrees of blog separation. Here's an experiment in the connectedness of the blogosphere. It's a variation on that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon party game. Pick a blog at random (perhaps from Blogger's "fresh blogs" column, and for your sake it should have plenty of hyperlinks [not one of those linkless, self-indulgent journals]) and see how many random blog links you can go through before you return to your own blog. I decided to try the grand experiment myself this morning. Into the labyrinth I go...
I begin my quest with Dappled Things, which I found on Blogger. Perhaps fortuitously or ominously, Dappled Things contains links aplenty on the subject of Catholicism (which seems to be a favorite topic among bloggers of all stripes), and a blogroll chock full of Catholic bloggers. A good sign, but perhaps a bit too easy. I recognize several of them, so I choose one I do not, but one whose name I like: Doctor Weevil.
Dr. Weevil has a huge blogroll. (And his blog owns 56.25 percent of him. Take the quiz.) Scrolling down the list of unfamiliar blogs, I spot one that rings a bell: Mark Byron. Bingo! And click...
Right there on Mark Byron's neatly alphabetized blogroll, nestled between Bene Diction and Chris Burgwald, is yours truly. Mission accomplished.
Let's recap:
From Dappled Things to Doctor Weevil: one degree of separation.
From Doctor Weevil to Mark Byron: a second degree of separation.
From Mark Byron to bloggedy blog: a third degree of separation.
Sing with me: It's a small blogosphere after all...
Why not try this little experiment for yourself? Let me know the results.
By the way, Mark Byron's edifier-du-jour for today is worth a read. And...
18.75 % My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?
:: Andrew 08:22 + ::
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:: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 ::
In memory: Rick Ferguson. Rick Ferguson, the father of blogger Brett Ferguson, died recently in an auto accident during the Ferguson family's return from vacation. Rick Ferguson was the pastor of Riverside Baptist Church in Denver, Colorado. Posted on Brett's weblog is this report from Baptist Press. Many other bloggers have shared their prayers and thoughts with Brett. Perhaps you'd like to do the same. You may share your condolences by e-mailing fergusonfamily@riversidebaptist.com, or by leaving a note on Brett's blog.
:: Andrew 08:39 + ::
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The Boss is back. Bruce Springsteen graces the cover of this week's Time. I read the story, Reborn in the USA, today over lunch at my favorite Chinese buffet. The article is a send-up for Springsteen's new album, The Rising (with the E Street Band). The album is Springsteen's artistic response to 9/11, and Time's Josh Tyrangiel calls it "the first significant piece of pop art to respond to the events of that day. Many of the songs are written from the perspectives of working people whose lives and fates intersected with those hijacked planes. The songs are sad, but the sadness is almost always matched with optimism, promises of redemption and calls to spiritual arms. There is more rising on The Rising than in a month of church."
Springsteen is the original roots rocker, and the greatest American street poet since Bob Dylan. He's apparently returned to his roots in this latest effort, singing about the everyday Joes transformed into heroes on 9/11. As he reports in his Time interview, Springsteen was deeply touched by the effects of 9/11. He read the New York Times obits of those killed in the Twin Towers collapse and discovered many fans, and many stories for this latest work.
More Springsteen coverage:
Springsteen's "Rising" strikes right post-9/11 note, a 3 1/2-star review by Edna Gundersen of USA Today. "A shrewd marriage of message and muscle," Gundersen calls it. "Impressionistic rather than literal, Springsteen's commentary sidesteps specifics and instead seeps into universal tales of love and community, evoking haunting images of that dreadful day. ... Yet the album ... never forgets its role as entertainment."
Review: Springsteen relevant in 'Rising', from Entertainment Weekly. "Springsteen can't resist laying it on thick. Words like faith and strength crop up several times, which only remind you how little he employed them before. He didn't have to; his music and delivery conveyed the beliefs behind those words effortlessly."
Come on Up for the Rising by Kevin Cherry for The National Review. "What Springsteen has done ... is capture the two near-opposite feelings of most Americans in the days and weeks after September 11: on the one hand, a deep grief for the lives lost; on the other, a belief that we will 'rise up.' All of the songs are tinged with despair, but there is something else — something far less than optimism or hope, but more akin to, well, faith: faith that we can join together and struggle through difficult times, that we can 'rise up.'"
:: Andrew 15:30 + ::
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:: Monday, July 29, 2002 ::
Content with our content? Today's posting on Heal Your Church Web Site has gotten me thinking again about the issue of "content" on Christian sites. Wouldn't it be a terrific idea to get a few non-Christians, or unchurched people, to conduct an on-the-fly usability analysis of our sites -- especially our content -- before we start dumping our Christian cliches all over the place? Really, who are we targeting with these websites? Other Christians? Then fine. Go ahead and call your church seeker-sensitive, or Bible-believing, or trans- or multi- or interdenominational. Go ahead and talk about your doctrines of atonement or justification by faith. Go ahead and post your statements of beliefs. But don't expect too many people from outside of our tribe to understand what the heck we're talking about.
By relying on our jargon, are we alienating people whom we might want to reach with our message?
This has been a bone of mine for some time. Jason Steffens recently rechristened the site formerly known as News for Christians as Antioch Road in hopes of reaching beyond the Christian ghetto. "[T]he title 'News for Christians' implies that I am only writing for people who are Christians," Steffens wrote in his explanation of the name change. "What I mean to be doing, though, is writing for anyone who wants to read this. I just happen to write from a conservative Christian perspective." An admirable goal. But how many non-Christians will have a clue as to the new title, Antioch Road? Time will tell, I suppose.
As for the title of this site, you can't really tell from the title whether it's a Christian blog or not. Some people may not like that, but it was a deliberate move on my part to come up with a blog title that has no Christian overtones in hopes of drawing readers of all faiths, or of no faith at all. While most of the readers come here from Christian sites, I do get a fair number of non-Christian visitors. I continue to get hits from people searching for Christina Silvas nude because of a post I made about the stripper mom way back on May 27. For a couple of days there, I was getting thousands of hits. I doubt many of those visitors were devout Christians. Yet some of them stuck around for a bit and mulled around the content. I don't know whether a more overtly Christian title would have kept those seekers of nude photos from clicking onto my site or not. My hope is that while these were here, the Holy Spirit worked on them a little bit. The Holy Spirit -- not I -- is the One Who draws people to God. The best I can do is try to stay out of the way.
When Words Get in the Way. An excellent article from On Mission about communicating the message of Jesus in today's language. This article, and the sidebar Unlearning the Lingo, should be required reading for any Christian blogger or webmaster.
On the subject of messages, I recently received my copy of Eugene Peterson's Bible paraphrase, The Message. I've been reading from the Psalms in The Message and find them awkward and unpoetic, even moreso than the Contemporary English Version's Psalms (see this post). But Peterson did a fantastic job translating/paraphrasing the New Testament, especially Paul's epistles, the essence of which I think he captures beautifully. (I've had the New Testament version of The Message for years now, and read it often.) Besides, it's Bono's favorite version of scripture, so it can't be all bad, can it.
:: Andrew 09:50 + ::
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I shall call him Mini Metablog I'm no Martin Roth, nor am I a respected Canadian journalist who pseudonymously blogs as Bene Diction. But I can metablog on occasion. Especially when I'm short on ideas of my own. So here for your reading and hyperclicking pleasure is a mini metablog, one-eighth the size of a real metablog and proportional in every way.
Blogathon 2002 is over, and Dead Yet Living made it through the 24-hour madness, still dead yet living (although the site's blogging system is dead). Great job, Rich Clark and the rest of the DYL gang. My pledge to The Todd M. Beamer Foundation is on its way.
I've been wondering why one blogger named his site Fatblueman. And now I know.
Old news for most of you, but Bene Diction has made the transition from Martin Roth Online and is now blogging solo.
Punk Monkey's thoughts on leadership and the church are well worth reading. I agree with his assessment: leadership in the church should be different from worldly leadership, and our focus should be on discipleship, not leadership. Read his thoughts here and here.
And now for something that's actually timely: blogs4god is up and running. Formerly Martin Roth's "Semi-definitive List of Christian Blogs," this site modestly proclaims itself as a "cutting edge, groundbreaking portal" with "exciting navigational features, optimal feedback capability and an extensive search engine." If Dean Peters is still looking for someone to write a pithy slogan for his site, he should get with the blogs4god folks.
In my offline reading, I enjoyed a couple of articles from the recent issue of Christianity Today:
I shouldn't say I really enjoyed the cover story about Christian pollster/marketing expert George Barna, because it was very disturbing. Barna has a pessimistic outlook for the future of the church, and what's even more disturbing is that he and I share that outlook. Barna is looking to today's youth as the salvation for the church as we know it. In that regard, I'm probably even more pessimistic than he. (Seventeen years in youth ministry will do that to you.) The article is a fairly superficial treatment of Barna and his impact on the church and Christian leadership (ack, there's that word again). But it's tough to capsulize the work of such a savvy researcher and prolific writer in 5,000 words. Barna's 1999 book The Second Coming of the Church is one of the best studies of the issues facing the church in the USA today.
The flip side of the Barna story was CT's interview (not yet online) with Colleen Carroll, author of an upcoming book The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Carroll interviewed hundreds of young adults and comes away with a hopeful view for the future. The pessimist in me still sides more with Barna. But as I said, that's what 17 years of youth ministry will do to a person.
:: Andrew 08:14 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
