Last week we had a fascinating discussion that led to a few rabbit trails and intense debating via the comment section of Martyholman.com.  After I posted the blog in question, the guest blogger and I had a great and equally fervent conversation via instant messenger about the topic and worked some things out that needed to be cleared up.

One of the things our guest blogger was a bit annoyed about was the amount of people who took my side of the debate.  This didn’t surprise him however, nor did it surprise me.

You see, people side with who they connect with and are influenced by the most.  If someone pours into their life, and they connect with them, then why should anyone listen to the guy or gal who has done nothing for them, even to the point of ignoring good advice.

About a year ago, my friend Jeff responded to a hilarious blog post by Stuff Christians like.  The author had written a piece that made everyone laugh connecting some of the famous pastors of our day and age with super hero characters.  One of those connections was linking TD Jakes with the Incredible Hulk.

Jeff responded with a light and loving rebuke of this hilarity by finding it interesting that the author would use the only African American pastor in the bunch with the only not white super hero mentioned.  Jeff made it clear that he was not calling the author a racist, but simply said he found it interesting.

You would have thought Jeff was the antichrist as tons of people responded to jeffs thoughts with harsh rebuke after harsh rebuke, including the author himself.

A few things were at work here:  Stuff Christians like has a point, and its rarely to be serious.  It is always a funny blog, and I would encourage you to check it out.  Jeff decided to “hijack” the blog with a comment changing the original purpose of the said post, and the people who read the blog didn’t like that very much.  If you know Jeff, you know he’s a great guy, but not even he could change the purpose of this blog.

Also, this was (if not the first), one of the first times Jeff had commented on this blog, so no one who reads this blog (relatively speaking) has a relationship with Jeff or knows what a great guy he is.

This was the case with last week’s “Hate makes waste”.  The guest blogger changed the whole point of my blog, inferring that it was all about me propogating my philosophy (as if  this is not the case with every blog) rather than it being about conversation.  Now, beautifully and ironically, a lot of conversation came from his thoughts.

Then, many of the people he was addressing through my blog didn’t have a clue who he was, and the ones that did, with only a few exceptions, didn’t consider him any kind of expert in being able to critique me.  (which, by the way, is accurate – he is not)

In the end, the only good thing that came out of it from my end is the conversation we were able to have apart from the blog, and the amount of people who understand what it is my blog is attempting to accomplish.  It is not for the purpose of propogating philosophy, though I wonder if it is possible to write without your influence leaking out of your work?  Even our guest bloggers writings and chatter “shrugged of Atlas” – a philosophy bent on propogating the value of rational selfishness.

I say all this to reiterate the purpose of my blog – to create conversation for the purpose of growing – preferably in love.  And to ask you whose thoughts you are trying to propogate as you comment on my blog?

Basically, who is influencing you right now?

I need some help.  Carie and I are on a mini vacation this week, because she has off from school, and I’m taking a few days to hang out with her.  We’re looking for some creative things to do around the Central Massachusetts area.  We decided not to go anywhere because we’re going away from a few weeks later on, so this just leaves the options of hanging out at the house (which we’ll no doubt be doing to some extent) or seeing the area a bit more.  But I’d like to do some creative things in the latter category.

So what do you got for me?  Any suggestions for things to do?

Ideas please.

Darren Bell: Guest Blogger

Okay so yesterday I wrote this post about a comment someone had written about this post.  I already had it in my mind to use this comment as the spearhead for conversation, and then many of you went out and wanted to see it.  Not surprising.

The reason I was angry at this comment was not because they disagreed with my post.  This person (Darren) rarely agrees with my posts, and I rarely ever edit or delete comments outside of swearing and mean-spiritedness.  But I thought that this comment was aimed more at me personally then at the post I had written, though he attempts at patching it up by saying “Marty’s the man”.  Apparently Darren believes that the purpose for my posts and preaching is to infiltrate the world with my philosophy (because no one else ever does that when they write), rather than trying to start up conversations.

So, let’s let the conversation begin.

“All your posts are subjective, but you pawn it off as these universal truths that are broadly applicable to anyone and everyone.

The things you experience and perspectives you collect in your own life, guess who they are valuable to? Only to you. Maybe to the people right around you, just so they can understand how someone they care about thinks. And MAYBE after thinking about them a long time, after considering the more fundamental forces underlying them, after seeing how other people have experienced the same things and how they dealt with them (and not just New England Christians and ‘Type-A’ personality people) then you can make a post about your own impressions and what you have found to be true about people.

I only know what is true about me, but I know their are other people like me out there. This post is very judgemental, and probabaly hypocritical towards  you for things I also do. But whatever, your blog pisses me off because of the things you believe about people.

For a church that screams for being open minded and trying to reach out and making people feel welcome, what I see you doing most often is breaking people down and catoragizing them into groups that you can understand and putting labels all over them. Not the people that you interact with every week in small groups with, but the people ‘out there’ and the ones you are trying to reach. These over here are the “New Englenders” and they all act the same way and have the same mindset towards God; these over here are the “Web 2.0″ people, and with the right strategy we can reach out to them; these people are the “Holden Crew” and they are a little stuck up and I want to get them to like poor people more.

Maybe I’m speaking too broadly, but if you tried to put a label on me and had a specific strategy for how to ‘reach out’ to a person with my label I would never in a million years come to Fellowship. People usually do have slants and leanings, but the second you peg someone one way, they love to show you all the other ways you failed to characterize them, and that they can’t be put in a box. Again I’ll say it, Marty is the man. But I perceive many of the things you do not as trying to reach out, but trying to assimilate.

I do not hold to the truth that with just the right strategy, with just the next amount of knowledge about how a person thinks we can be effective through planning and strategising to work in a persons life effectively. Lonnie and you always said ‘we are what we are’ and people can take it or leave it. You already know that that is how I see relationships, as Ven Diagrams where people have a relationship in the areas that they share interests or are able to find common ground or a common world view. I see a person’s relationship with a church the same way. But more often then not I feel that your preaching and your blog are all about defending the mission of Fellowship instead of carrying it out. Trying to convince people that community is important rather then ebracing people that already believe community is important. Cause not all Christians want a church that focuses on community, some people get the most out of the systematic theology that a Bible Church offers. Or the dancing of a ‘sprit filled church’.

How many of the people at Fellowship believe community is important? How do you extend Gods kingdom by telling them how it is more important? Is community the ends or the means? If it is the means then don’t hold it up as the goal. Let it just be the soil.”

Conversate please.

Last week I was interviewed by the Holden Landmark for an article they did on our Good Friday online service.  Here’s the link.

Whadaya think?

I love when someone decides they hate your blog post, then  writes a comment about it, and shares with you how judgmental you’re being because you shared an opinion on your own web site that they neither had to visit nor did I expect them to.    It’s such a modern way to handle things.

And so very post modern of me to love it.

I’ve placed some new blogs up on my blogroll to your right.  Here are 4 blogs you might want to read (or not):

1.  Clay Davis – I’ve hesitated to put his site on my blogroll because of its name is so overtly political, and then I realized that my best friend for much of my life is no different than all my Obama loving friends I have on this blogroll, except, well…overt.

2.  David Lee – Some interesting and emotional thoughts by this man who’s impacted my life more than he knows.  You’ll find his musings fascinating…as well as many of his stories.

3.  Coach Bogey – This guys plays basketball with me in a 30 and over league (I’m petitioning to not allow him to cross to thext division quite yet).  He’s been a coach for years at our local high school and though he’s just started to blog, I already love his stuff, and his insights into my own life.

4.  Ed Rodriguez Jr. – This guy is the real deal.  He was a fellow NBT evangelist and floorleader at PCC in 1996-1997, and has been an amazing friend ever since!  You’re going to love his Biblical outlook on life, and his authenticity in the process.

p.s.  I’m listening to a sweet song by Bleach called “heartbeat” and I might put it on repeat.

I used to think creativity came from chaos.  You know, that if I lived my life as “chill” as possible, and stayed away from order or organization, I would be free to be as creative as possible.  Now I’m not so sure.

I’ve come to believe that the maximum amount of good creativity comes from a “flexible” organization.  That is, as I am organized and as I am flexible, I am then in the best position to produce the  greatest amount of creativity.  i.e. when my office is disheveled into a massive amount of paper and old advertisements from vendors aI’ll never buy from, I don’t feel very creative, I feel stuck and yuck!

So slowly I’m learning that I get more from being organized in the different areas in my life.  This is not easy for someone who loves to exist “free”,  and who loves chaos.  But you know what comes from chaos?

More chaos.

I haven’t posted in a while. Last week was crazy busy, and I wanted to share some of that busyness with you!

Servolution baby!

Listen, for a while I was really excited about Skype!  It was going to revolutionize the whole communication thing throught the internet phone and video conversations, but who wants to be cut off every 2 seconds right?  not me.

Then I went to Tokbox.com.  I’d like all my friends to try it out and begin communicating with me online as soon as possible.  I know this sounds like a commercial, but if you have a web cam and a microphone, you have got to check this site out.  I have talked to several of my friends at the same time visually without any kind of problem (please use headphones to stop the echo), and there are a lot of other cool features too, like easy video mail, connects to all the major instant messaging services, and my favorite, the YouTube connector.

The other day, Billy, Jay, and I were talking on Tokbox and the conversation moved to talking about the band “Five for Fighting” and we were trying to remember their first hit on the radio, and one of them said, “It was called ‘Superman’ or something like that”  I then youtubed “Superman by Five for Fighting“, the video came up, and I was able to paste the URL into my TokBox conversation with them, and together we watched the video we had just talked about.  It was a moment.  Possibly even one shining moment.

Another possible future sweetness we’ll have using Tokbox is the ability to have life groups online for our web campus at FC. I’m not sure how many people can use it at a time, but I would love to stretch its limits.  Look me up under the name MartyHolman.  So what do you think?

Wanna talk?

Last night I played basketball after life group.  My team had a game, and so I decided I would play in it.  I have tons of thoughts going through my head right now about the value of teamwork that I’m learning from this team, my life group, and my church in general, but I’ll save that for a later date.

We were bringing the ball down for the last time, the game was locked up, and we had successfully beaten our rival team (the Green shirts).  The buzzer sounded, and just then I turned around to see our senior statesman on the team being thrown down for no apparent reason by a green shirt boy wonder 25 years his junior.  Senior statesman, a man I greatly respect, was pretty mad when he scraped himself off the ground.  I was mad too, actually, as Green shirt boy wonder stared Senior Statesman down and mouthed the words “What’s his problem?”

“Well,” I thought to myself with immediate disdain for Green shirt wonder boy, “for no apparent reason you have just thrown a man 25 years your senior about 5 feet and down to the ground (and continuing in my thoughts I added), stupid Green shirt wonder boy.”

It is in these moments I wonder what to do.  Because I want to get up in his face and ask him why he didn’t shove me that far, to which of course he would say,  “I will” and the fun would be had by all.  Or I could let it play out, and just sit by and rejoice that we won the game.  But I really want to help our Senior Statesman out, plus I know I also have the back of Policeman Hercules on our team.  Also I don’t want to be like Alpha males Marine or Car Salesman. Yet the headline, “Pastor in Holden goes to jail for a public fighting display,” doesn’t sound so appealing either.

So it played out how it played out and I’m sitting here at my computer sharing with you the story of my evening, and I wonder, with all the honesty you can muster…

Just exactly how you would have let it play out?