kinnon.tv

Why I Love Facebook

Or not.

I don't do FB much right now. Not enough hours in the day or desire to further the data riches of Zuckerman et al. But the above truly cracked me up. I'm sure most of the diggerati have already seen it, though. Forgive me for wasting your time. (How arrogant of me to assume any diggerati actually stop by here, eh!)

Evil Facebook, Facebook, 25 Things

Missionaries of the One True Western Religion™ - Consumerism

My friend, Mark Petersen, who hasn't been blogging as often of late, made me aware of his most recent post.

He warned me that I might blow a gasket.

I will.

Right after I finish banging the keyboard with this post whilst muttering things that will get my mouth washed out with soap if Imbi hears me.

Go read Mark's post on Canadians whose big hearts have them sharing the One True Western Religion™, to the rest of the World. God help us all.

UPDATE: My response to Mark's post on his blog was overheated and in terms of me citing the Napoleon Dynamite epithet there, inappropriate. I've apologized there, let me do the same here and suggest that it would have been helpful for my words to have been more measured. There was too much heat and not enough light in the original blog post above. My reasons for that can be found in the comment section of this post.

Let me quote my friend, Glenn Hatcher from those comments. Glenn is Training Co-ordinator for Globe International, a missions agency with projects around the world.

Just a quick word in this hailstorm...

A shopping trip will not restore a sense of worth and dignity. Just won't. Clothes wear out and expectations for the next dignity-restoration session set in, because these kids are human.

We have to revamp our whole short-term missions mentality where it's not about us feeling good about "giving dignity," but is about us sacrificing our lives for others while accepting their worth and value. Probably takes longer than 2 weeks. Probably costs more than a short-term mission trip.

Dignity is restored through identification and identification is a costly way of living. We who have much cannot restore dignity to those who have little by giving tokens from our wealth.

Actually it's kinda demeaning when you think it through. And creates a dependency that is dehumanizing.

And it's complicated as heck because we've inherited a screwy philosophy of missions that is more about "me" than about "them" or the Kingdom.

consumer church, Consumer-Driven Church, Mark Petersen

Another Summitting Leader Conference

I am not a huge fan of Willow Creek's concept of church leadership, which must be a shock to many of the folk who regularly read me. Please note that this post is not an attack on Bill Hybels. I bet he's truly a swell guy. I just think what he models and promotes as ecclesiastical leadership has been profoundly detrimental to the church.

A Chicago suburb-living friend emailed me the link to (CUE brass band and announcer with big voice) "THE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT 2009!" He knows me too well; knowing full well it would provoke a response from me. It has.

Willow says this on their Events page,

Anchored in a commitment to excellence and innovation, WCA events offer training, inspiration, and networking opportunities to church leaders from around the world.

Truthfully, Willow Creek is anchored in modern business leadership methods and modern marketing techniques. Though apparently the poster is now down from outside his office, this statement from it accurately describes the WC ethos,

“What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?” [From the book, Shopping for God.]

One might have thought that the results from Willow's own REVEAL study would have chastened them - moving them away from promoting events with rather awkward taglines like, "...where business, leadership and ministry meet," and "...forums for results-oriented leaders."

(As an aside, please note: Chicagoans, Scot McKnight and Dave Fitch get into an interesting discussion in late 2007 on the REVEAL study, which you may find interesting - It's an audio download. I have great respect for Scot, but find his support for Willow incongruent with his very good books. Perhaps that's just me. )

In spite of obvious issues with the "results" of what WC has been selling all these years, they are still promoting the business leader/marketing strategy for church leaders. One, I daresay, that leads to the kind of legitimate questions Jared Wilson asks in this post.

My friend, Jonathan Brink, commented on Out of Ur's REVEAL mea culpa last year (scroll down to the 5th comment),

(Hybels) says, "That survey rocked my world." He calls it "The wake up call of my adult life."

Hawkins even said in his own video, He says, “Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.”

It's kind of hard to believe that it's business as usual, when they've provided a lot of information to suggest the alternate.

Willow isn't just a church. They teach people how to do what they do. And when the teacher says, "We got it wrong." It has a little bit bigger affect (than) Bill seemed to be willing to admit. [YouTube link added]

Church leaders still rush to sit at the feet of Hybels et al. They want to be like Bill - leading a Giga-church that can put on the kind of spectacles that Willow is noted for - spectacles that will bring in the crowds. (This approach infects the Western Church World.)

They listen to business leaders like Patrick Lencioni and Marcus Buckingham (both gifted writers in a business context) coming to believe that their role as "Sr. Pastor" is that of a CEO. They commit to "Big Hairy Audacious Goals" (wanting to move from Good to Great - or even mediocre to good) and get busy getting the "right people on the bus and the wrong people off". And this is what we end up with, as I quote in my post, Just How Damned is the Church, a focus on edifaces,

...borrowing by churches became more common in the 1990s, reaching $28 billion* nationwide in 2006, including mortgages, construction loans and church bonds...[NYT - a story on Church Foreclosures]

Crippled by an "Edifice Complex", Church leaders are sucked into believing that Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams was a word from God, "if you build it, they will come." If these "CEO-Pasters" can just learn the right business and marketing techniques, they can grow their church - for God, of course. But these systems chew people up and spit them out. I speak from experience.

Let me end this post with a quote from the man who taught Hybels and was part of Willow Creeks founding team, Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian,

“The bane of the church is that it becomes worldly. Instead of imparting the Word and becoming an agent of change, it adopts the values of the world and integrates them into its structures and life.

“The biggest problem is the definition of its leadership structures. There are very clear directives in the New Testament for how the church is to be constituted, on the basis of community, which implies congregational participation, consensual decision-making, accountability of leaders to the congregation. Leadership should not be directive but developmental.”

Consumer-Driven Church, edifice complex, Willow Creek

TSK Thanks the Academy?

There is something mildly ironic in doing a fundraising request for production equipment on the eve of the 2009 Academy Awards. Awards where Slumdog Millionaire stands a decent change of winning Best Picture. High-end digital cameras and DSLR's were used in the creation of that film.

This is a request to support (via Chipin) the purchase of production gear for Andrew Jones, the Tall Skinny Kiwi. Andrew and family are about to move into a mobile home.

Now. You Americans and we Canadians immediately think of ugly rectangular boxes, set up in "trailer parks." Not that kind of mobile home. This one is a box. A big box. But on the back of a 20 year old, partial-veggie-oil-running, diesel truck. The Jones' family call it, Maggie.

Maggie, the Truck is the Jones' family, "Great Commission Go Anywhere Pilgrimage" which they will use to travel to "about 20 countries from Turkey to Ukraine to Portugal".

One of the things missing from this missional adventure is a way to properly record it. Andrew and family will be visiting missional communities throughout the EU. Communities with stories to tell. Stories that we need to see and hear.

At Missional Tribe and here @ k.tv, we are raising funds to equip the Jones' family with a great small AVCHD camera, monopod, shotgun mic, handheld mic and mini camera audio mixer. Andrew already has the editing facility on his Mac laptop. Drop me a note if you'd like a little more detailed info.

The Chipin widget is in the upper left column of this blog. It will soon be on the front page @ Missional Tribe. Please consider supporting the work that Andrew is doing - and supporting the missional communities ability to see that work in action.

And. Who knows. Perhaps Andrew or one of his family members will be thanking the Academy in years to come for the films we will help them create.

Cross-posted @ Missional Tribe.

Tall Skinny Kiwi, Andrew Jones, fund-raising, Chipin

This Blog's a 4 Year Old - Explains a lot, eh!

Four years ago right around now, the blog was birthed. My world was a rather different place then. I was a senior leader in what was billed as the fastest growing church in some significant part of the planet.

We'd moved as a family from our beloved Toronto to be a part of this supposedly collegial team that was going to have real impact. We thought the impact would be for the Kingdom. Instead, it was for a kingdom - and we apparently served at the pleasure of the royal family.

This blog was meant to show said royalty that social media had merit. Six weeks after the blog's birth the "king" cried, "off with his head." I had deigned to request answers to some appropriate questions - at least appropriate by any sane measure.

In fairness, perhaps, it was more, "having dared question the king, you are no longer welcome in this place. And, by the way, we'll be practising a scorched earth policy when it comes to your good name." Of course, the latter was not said in so many words... though it was practised.

The blog went from a way to prove the merits of social media to a place where I worked out a little of my angst around the segment of Christendom where I'd hung my hat for far too many years. Because I'd offended "a king", others who were themselves confused about their own "kingships" but had been friends of mine for years, abandoned me and my family. No returned calls. No email responses. I had become persona non grata in that purportedly Christian world.

As an aside, I now find it rather amusing that these supposed leaders who will go to Kings and Chronicles to justify their leadership style - manage to ignore the fact that the lion's share of those leaders lead the people of Judah and Israel astray. Hmmm. Perhaps it's not that amusing, after all.

In it's early days, while talking a lot about leadership, I also wrote about technology - an area in which I have some modicum of interest. But as the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years, I realized my primary focus was the church - where it was now and where I saw it headed, in my role as a child of Issachar, of course. :-)

And that is the space that these once achievable ends now occupies. I've had the pleasure of developing great relationships with a lot of different bloggers and even the opportunity to impact one or two. This blog has allowed me to get to know people I never would have met IRL - and I'm profoundly thankful for it. Many of them have played a great role in helping me through my church detox process (The Missional Tribe Instigators, Michael Spencer, Erika Haub, Robbymac, Darryl Dash, Dave Fitch, Andrew Jones, Jordon Cooper, Ed Stetzer, Ed Brenegar and many, many others.)

My ego was stroked earlier this year when Church Relevance rated this blog in the top 60 "church blogs" in the world. Of course, I immediately began blogging much less often. And that lower rate of blogging will continue until the beginning of May, as I am producing a huge project for a large and wonderful technology client. I will blog when I can.

Thank you for choosing to read this humble corner of the interwebs. Let me leave you with a little video that shows some of the silly banners that have graced this blog. The early ones were reminders of how much I love East Africa. (The images were all taken by my wife, Imbi Medri-Kinnon - other than the Christmas tree from iStockphoto.) The image that graces the blog today was taken by Imbi on a street in London last spring. The ad on the side of the double decker bus was pure happenstance. That's why I love it.

The music clip is from Ian Thomas' band, The Boomers. The song is called "You Got to Know." Think of me singing it to the IC. Or not. And make a point of buying one or two of the Boomers albums - so I don't get hassled for the clip, eh!

From achievable ends to kinnon.tv from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

blog anniversary

The Power of Twitter

I've been on Twitter for a while now. I think it was Darryl Dash who called it the "new front porch" based on a conversation he'd had with Jordon Cooper. It's a great analogy.

I picture myself walking down the street past my friend Ed's house. Ed calls out to me and I ask him what's been happening in his life. He tells me briefly about his travels and how it's good to be home. I share a little of my own story and then continue my walk. A few hours later Ed wanders by my place while I'm out on the porch and says, "Hey, did you hear about..." and begins to tell me about something he found interesting. I tell him that I'll check it out. And off he goes.

Ed is a neighbourhood friend who keeps me in touch with what he's up to, his travels, how he's coping as a husband and father and the cool things he's come across. I try to do some of the same with him.

But let's say I walk by Fred's house. Fred's says, "Hey, Bill did you see my book? Dya' wanna buy my book? Ernie just reviewed my book. Me. Me. Me. Me."

Ever freakin' time I go by. It's about nothing but Fred. I'd quickly find the best ways to avoid Fred.

In January, Doc Searls wrote an important post on signal vs noise regarding Dave Winer's new approach to Twitter. In Screw Popularity. Just Make Yourself Useful, he says this,

"Friends" and "followers" aren't what matter. If you want substance, you need useful inputs. Not volume. Not style. Not popularity. Those have their places, just not in your face when you're looking for useful and interesting stuff.

That's what I want out of Twitter. Not just to be the waist in an hourglass where a pile of god-knows-what flows from Following to Followers.

And later,

The result of Dave's work is a pared-down Twitter stream, reduced to people who Dave knows have substantive things to say. They're not just naming their socks or reporting that the light just changed. They carry news. They provide links. They make themselves useful.

Perhaps this makes Twitter a little more utilitarian than you might like, but it's one heck of a lot better than non-stop self-promotion. If what you are doing and how you are living life is interesting and informative, tweet on. But if you're just trying to sell me something...including yourself, I'll be defollowing your tweets. As I said on Twitter yesterday,

Twitter can be a place of insight in 140 characters - or a place where certain people market themselves 24/7. I am so tired of selfpromos.

Let me end by saying that some of my favourite Twits are Darryl Dash, Jordon Cooper, Ed Stetzer (as in Ed above), Bob Hyatt, Joe Thorn, Steve McCoy, Glenn Hatcher, the iMonk, Ed Brenegar, my Missional 'gator buddies and just recently my friend, Gary Lindblad. And of course the incomparable Doc Searls and Kathy Sierra.

make yourself useful, Twitter, useful tweets

Once Again: Facebook is Evil

Mashable links to a Consumerist article that talks about what, at first blush, seems a slight change to Facebook's TOS agreement. (Terms of Service Agreement.) The gist of Facebook's new TOS:

All your base are belong to us!

Facebook's new TOS according to the Consumerist and Mashable states,

...all of the content you’ve ever uploaded on Facebook can be used, modified or even sublicensed by Facebook in every possible way - even if you quit the service.

From FB's Terms of Use page:

You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

So, all you soon-to-be-famous people who are busy publishing all of those great stories, shots and videos of yourself now, Facebook looks forward to selling them to the highest bidder when you hit the bigtime. Let me know how it works out for you.

UPDATE: Steve Knight has started a Facebook Group: "Facebook - Change Your TOS Back Now!"

Evil Facebook, Facebook

Well...

May you be blessed as if by St. Valentine himself, this Hallmark-supporting day.

Pot. Meet Kettle

I almost laughed out loud when I read this.

...his words often lack the charitable nuance we might well hope for.

A little self-awareness might be helpful, young man. (And yes, I have intentionally not linked.)

Apparent Arminian misunderestimations of Calvinism, Calvinist Charity Call

Best Response to 25 Things About Me

1. I get bored really easily
- Linus Torvalds   [via HN]

Linus Torvalds, Humor, Wish I'd Thought of That