Carie and I spent the last week in Indiana with my parents, celebrating Thanksgiving and really having some quality time with my family.  While I had a great time hanging with my family, I was only able to be online once during our 5 day tenure in Eastern Indy.  This meant no blogging and no connecting with my newest family.  Sure it’s easier for those not involved to scoff and say that in the old days, relationships were about people, but I’m not so sure that online community is devoid of being “about people.”

Since I’ve started blogging, facebooking, and tweeting (in that order, by the way) in 2007, I’ve enhanced several relationships that had fallen off the grid, met new people with whom I’ve formed community, and found more amazing resources for personal and professional growth that I ever would have if forced to do so using my own imagination.

So I guess you could say, “Yes, I had a great time with my family” and “Yes, I missed being here…

with you.”

I’m on vacation.  Carie and I travelled to Virginia for a week, and we’re having a great time embarking on adventure, Chick Fil-A, and lots of book reading. 

Yesterday was Sunday.  Always an awkward day in the life of a vacationing “non-denominational” pastor.  Typically I do my research, find a place I’d really like to attend, and go there.  I did that this time too, the only problem:  the only church I really wanted to go was one hour and ten minutes away.  So instead of attending a church in person, I decided to take advantage of a ministry we have at the FC called the Web Campus, and go to church online.  We started it last winter as a means to get through the horrific Sunday weather we had (ice storms, Nor’easters, etc…) and have been improving it over the last year.  This was my first opportunity to see it live on a Sunday.  (Typically I’m busy)

I arrived at church at 10:29 am on Sunday morning armed with my Macbook pro (13″), a pair of headphones, and a bottle of water.  The 5 minute countdown was playing and “FCHoldenBilly” was there to warmly greet me to the chat forum/internet video service.  7 others joined me for the occasion, said a small box in the video section.  In about a minute and a half, the countdown turned to the FC band going all soft on me with the worship song “All who are thirsty.”  I happened to be in a room full of people walking all over the place as I watched, and I didn’t think they wanted to hear me sing anyway (I left my hat back at the room).  I started chatting with the others in the cyber room.  At this point 11 were attending church.

We talked about the band, the internet, where each of us were.  In truth, it wasn’t a lot different than my live conversations before a service in Holden.  The people were nice, and they were certainly expectant.  Eventually, the executive pastor of Fellowship, Steve Blumer came on stage and welcomed the audience.  I’m not sure if he welcomed the internet audience, though I can always look back at the video and see, but he told of the things that are to come at the FC.  I took this opportunity to venture into another website I am privy to, to see what the order of service would be, while I listened to Steve wax eloquently about all things ladies retreat and future sermon series.  This was one of the two times the video froze on my laptop.  Both times I was viewing other pages, much like reading your bulletin while the minister is preaching, right?

The band came back on, still sounding great with some worship tunes, then closing up the setlist with one of my favorites, “We shine”.  I almost stood up at this song and sang along, but security being called on me didn’t sound so great, so I just hummed and mentioned to my fellow viewers (13 by this time) that this was indeed one of my favorites.  None of them agreed.  Huh.

Currently we’re going through a series in our church called “Why we love this place” and we’re focusing on our 7 core values.  After the last song, Steve came back up and introduced both the next video we had, and the speaker for the day.  The core value was relational evangelism, so it was appropriate to have with us two missionaries filling in the gaps for me this morning.  One I won’t mention because of the nature of his ministry, and the speaker was Walt Mutti, former missionary to Venezuela and current missionary to new England – to which I mentioned to the people in the chat room – we need it.

Both missionaries did a fabulous job, and Walt provided a lot of conversation in the chat room regarding sin, the need for Christ, and how to deal with stuff going on in our lives.  To be honest, it was one of the most wonderful services I’ve been to (that I didn’t have a heavy participation in) in a long time.  The spirit was amazing, and I told my wife afterwards, it really felt like I had been to church.  I mean, I started it.  I advertise for it all the time, but who knew. 

Two shout outs I need to give up:  Billy, who is our Web Campus director.  He has worked hard to develop this ministry, and from what I’ve been told, it hasn’t always been this smooth, but his hard work has paid off.  And Al, who led the music during the service.  It was fabulous!

What about you?  Would you attend an internet service?

My technology (and consequently, my blog) has gone Mac.  Thanks to all of you who had a hand in this from Fellowship Church and other friends.

The question is:

Will I ever go back?

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?

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?

To all my computer savvy friends,

$329
7-10 inch screen
As portable as they come
I’m already  about 90% web based.
Runs on Linux or XP.

Now someone tell me why I shouldn’t.

Communication breakdown!

With the outbreak of technology we’ve had in the last 10-15 years or so, communication has never been so easy, and so confusing, as it is right now.  I remember watching my dad minister in the 80′s and early 90′s in Ohio, and he had two options:  meet with the person or make or receive a landline call.  This was probably a lot better for focus unless he was at home and his children were busy running around the house yelling at one another.  Now we have a landline phone (anybody know what this is?), a cell phone, Instant messaging, texting, Facebook wall, Facebook  messages, Facebook chat (and Facebook pirate or vampire invitation), Skype, and video messaging coming at us very fast.

So here are some questions that have been stirring in my head.  I’ve answered them myself, and feel free to share your answers with me as well:

*When it comes to your close friends, how much (and how) do you communicate with them?

I have a whole pile of close friends, both here and away, and my answer looks like this.  My friends here I talk to on the phone about once a week, and my friends abroad I talk to about once a month.  I also tend to text a good bit to friends both here and away.  I don’t use email a lot (since the development of Facebook) because if I’m going to go into detail, I’d rather do it by voice either by phone or in person.

*As far as emailing invitations to events, how much is too much?

I wish I knew the answer to this.  Any help here?

*How much do you enjoy communicating live with people vs. communicating electronically?

Personally I love technology, but I love to hang with people more.  Playing games, shooting the breeze, talking life, love, and other mysteries is where I’m at, though I certainly understand why a lot of people enjoy communicating electronically.  It’s a lot easier to be authentic, and you can shut it down when you want it to stop.
This post might help you think about where you’re at communication-wise.

*Has the onslaught of technology helped our communication to become more authentic?

Yes.

*Has the onslaught of technology helped our communication build more community?

No.  It’s helped spark some community, but I wouldn’t say more community.

*If you could have one tool of communication, and only one, which one would it be?

Definitely a cell phone for me.  I think a laptop would be too easy to hide behind.  Plus people would find out that I’m not the All-state QB I said I was from my online persona.  Though sometimes I do like the idea of church online.

*As far as communication, what do you have to practice more of in your life?

Definitely I’d like to have more community between Carie, myself, and other friends in regular intervals throughout the week.  I don’t just want to sit back in the evenings anymore and feel bad for myself because I live in a cold tundra.

Your turn.  How do you communicate?

I’ve used a PC since college, where I used a Mac for 1 out of 4 years.  I don’t really identify  with a specific character, but let me ask you, computer wise:

Are you a PC or a Mac?

We have driven more than 1200 miles, stopped for a 2 hours in Greenville, and now attended the New Thing Networks pre-lab.  eally we were too tired to enjoy it, but if I had been more awake…  I even met Vince Antonucci, author of “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” and met a blogging friend for the first time, TIm Chambers.
Billy drove 800 miles.
I drove 400.
Steve stayed up with us most of the time.
Steve Bramlett did not.

And now we’re in our hotel room, at noon on Tuesday, and ready to sleep.
On FCTV, via Fellowshipholden.com, at 5:45pm, we’ll broadcast our first live thoughts.

Please check out what’s happening!

At one time the big rage was AOL. Then Hotmail.  Then Yahoo. Then Gmail.  To get an idea of what most people like to use, please let me know what your favorite email domain name is.  Not what you use for junk mail, tell me the real deal.  Are there any new sites I haven’t heard of yet that are “off the hook”?

Mine:  Gmail