Marty is sitting on the beach, thinking about all the people who have wronged him in his lifetime and then sharing with everyone else how horrible thse people are via my status messages.

I love it when people use their twitters or the status in their Facebook messages to make a passive aggresive statement that something or someone needs to change.   It’s like, “I’m going to let you know what you are doing that makes me so mad, I can’t even stand it, but I’m not going to actually tell you.  What I’m going to say is :

_____________ hates it when people talk about me behind my back.  They are stupid.

or

______________ doesn’t like people meddling into his life.  Stay out, and I’ll stay out of your life.

Thankfully no one that I know of has written these referring to me, but I have seen them, and everytime I do, I think…

“Man, that person’s got issues.”

My big idea for today, as promised from yesterday, is this:

I’ve been doing some research on accountability here and there, reading some books and observing human behavior and that sort of thing, and I thought of this online idea that I am going to test on myself.  This idea is in the area of eating and drinking.

You see, I eat a lot. I drink a lot of soda.  You might even say I’m addicted.  Thankfully I exercise enough and God has gifted me with some decent metabolism to fight the amount of food and drink that I intake.  That being said however, there is no doubt that I eat and drink too much.  Scripture says to “not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  Instead, be filled with the spirit,” and also asks the question, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?…Your body is not your own.”

I am convinced that I can do better with my eating and drinking habits, and have already been working on them.  So I’d like your help too.  You don’t have to do much – just be there.

I am going to start twittering each and everything I eat and drink.  Of course my twitter is connected to my facebook, so this will go on my facebook status as well.  All I need to know is that people are aware of what I’m eating and drinking.

You might say, “Well you can always lie or not put it down or even forget.”  This of course is true, but I won’t lie about it.  As a Christ follower and as a pastor, people tend to frown on this sort of thing, and I would be ashamed to lie.  The truth is, I could forget, but then one of you could always ask me “if I skipped my lunch or am I just empty-headed today?”

So that’s that. Please help me as I embark on my eating and drinking journey by holding me accountable, and enjoy the ride with me.

And by the way, today I’ve had two life saver mints.

I wanted to share with you about this crazy phenomonon that’s taking place for me on Facebook.

About 6 months ago I started this new group called “I went to TCA of Fremont, Ohio.” TCA is a small Christian church/School (actual title=Temple Christian Acadamy) in Northwest Ohio where my dad used to pastor from 1975(the year I was born) to 1993 (the year I graduated).  Facebook didn’t recognize it as a school and I really wanted to connect with people from my past.  Being an avid fan of history, I recognize that “those who don’t learn from history are indeed condemned to repeat it.”

So after about 5 months, this Facebook group grew very slowly.  There were about 10 people in the group, basically hanging out and saying things like “Go TCA” and “The rules sucked” – not exactly the kind of connecting I envisioned.  I had basically written off the group as a failed experiment in relational connectivity.

Then for some reason about a month ago, I connected with some old classmates from elementary school, and I noticed that one of them were friends with another person from TCA, to which I befriended and invited them all to my failed experiment.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, “Tipping Point” tells that an idea takes off when three kinds of people get involved, and it appeared this idea had finally brought these three kinds of people:

Connectors
Mavens – (databank, information processors)
Salesman

So anyways, our group has cruised over the last month, reuniting old friends, looking at old pictures, and sharing old memories, in a way that has been so refreshing and positive for me looking back to the world I used to live in.  My dad even made his way to the group, after an hour of teaching him how..  Crazy!

I’ve been wondering the value of Facebook, and now I know.

Fred Savage or not?

Memories.

Currently I’m thinking about them as I started this new Facebook group that specifically focuses on the small Christian school I attended my entire school life (with the exception of college of course).

There’s this new topic in the group that is amazing.  Its simply a reminder of some of the things that happened at the school both to individuals and to the school as a whole.  It fills my mind with times, good and bad, of a day when life was simple, hair was big, and the internet did not exist.  And the interesting thing is that it is because I went through these times that I am who I am today.  The decisions I made then helped shape me to be who I’ve become.

Fortunately though, I do not have to live here any longer.  Here in the past.  I am now at a place where my decisions will still affect my future, but with a few more years of experience, I’m a bit more intentional.  I know where I want to go, and I know what it will take to get there.  So though I’m glad to be able to look back fondly at my growing up years…

I’m thrilled I am where I am.

I had a very interesting experience recently on Facebook. Facebook has this feature where I can find people who are friends with two or more of my friends. The thinking is that if there is someone who knows a collection of my friends, then probably I know that person too. This theory falls short when it comes to family members, but as far as friends, it has been very helpful in finding them from different kinds of connections.

So a few months ago, a person was recommended to me (by Facebook) who connected with two friends of mine. ow the interesting thing about this connection, once removed, was that these two people that were connected to this person were fron two very very different eras of my life and two ery different geographical locations.

The two friends this guy was connected to were Jennifer Yost and Zac Normandin.

This may not seem very interesting to you, but allow me to explain. I grew up with Jennifer in Fremont, Ohio (pop. 16,000) Our parents worked together and the Yosts went to our church.
Jennifer was a few years younger than me, but we always got along and were friends. She was closer to my sister Amie than me however. We basically knew each other from 1985 – 1993. From what I can gather, Jennifer now lives somewhere in the midwest between Detroit and Chicago.

Fast forward 10 years. I had moved to Massachusetts and was working at the church I’m currently at, and then I took a job part time teaching at a Christian school up here. Zac Normandin was one of my students. He now lives in Manchester, New Hampshire with his wife.

So the person who connects them lives in Tampa, Florida and when I asked him via Facebook message how he knows them both, he simply said that a mutual friend connectd them all. Fascinating.
All this to say that the world is getting smaller, and I love every minute of it.

In honor of this, let’s play a game. I’m going to pick 10 people randomly on my facebook account, and I’d like to see how many of them you know.

Alicia Walton Parsons
Rachel O Connor
Edward paek
Steven MacArthur
Mark Salyer
Chris Destratis
Karla Bell Totten
Dee Dee Huey
Amy Lula
Steve Francis

Ready…Go!

This week two friends of mine from high school who are married now visited Carie and I for a few days here in Massachusetts.  Which leads me to a question.  I would still be in touch with these friends if it were not for Facebook and Myspace, but I’m connecting to a lot of other friends on these and other web 2.0 experiences from my past.  It’s a complicate one.  Here goes:

What friend of yours from your past are you most excited about connecting with again, that you have begun a reconnection with via the internet?  And why?

Part1, part 2, or part 3

Hey, guess what I’m doing right now. Come on, guess, just this once…

I’m creating content, the number 4 way that is changing the world and my world right in front of our eyes.  The freedom and ability of all of us to do what we can do when we like to do it at a low cost (if any).  So I blog because I like to write.  WordPress or blogspot or typepad give us the “freedom” and the platform to blog and to start a conversation about life or religion or politics or any number of topics that we may associate ourselves with.  Facebook and Myspace give us the freedom to start a web site about ourselves that can interact with other web sites that talk about our friends.  And with google, I can have the weather, a map, all the blogs I read, my to-do list, my news, my calendar, my podcasts from Fellowship Church, and any free itunes downloads I can have access too all on the same page.  And it’s all “created by me.”  (Everything but the codes)

And this is just the social aspects of it.  New academics can join the Wikipedia community and write (or rewrite) essays for the encyclopedia version of things that we want to know about like William Wallace and The War of 1812.  New reporters can make a name for themselves without having to interview inside of any newspaper establishment.  Computer programmers who want to go beyond the scope of their jobs can do so on their own time solving problems in “open source” software communities.  Bible teachers can now wax eloquent with their own studies in places like You Version.  Retired?  Thats a thing of the past if you want to keep going.  I read a story recently about a retired scientist who had retired from a company and then got involved with solving “open source” problems offered on the web by the scientific community.  He solved problems to the tune of $25,000 a pop.

And this is in our hands.  We now have more tools to do what we love and to create content.  Sure we might have to still stay up late and write or solve or search or draw, but the point is this – we can create content and be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and do it with things we love to do.  Now the only question is…

What do you love to do?

Special thanks to those of you who have helped “create” this discussion on where our world is going. 

It happened in October 2007.  Two things actually that rocked my world.  I might be a late bloomer, but I finally got why Myspace and facebook was so compelling, and why RSS feeds were going to change the world, and why the connectivity of the new web was literally transforming as we know it.
Then I had a conversation with this guy who confirmed a lot of the questions that I had with his thoughts of what was happening and walaa…

Then I read this book called “Wikinomics” that explained it to me step by step.

And now, I’d like to share  4 thoughts over the next 3 or 4 days that I’ve learned about the way life is moving in the future.  These thoughts are mainly for me, and Of course you can ignore them, but it won’t change the fact that they are happening, with or without us, like a train that cannot be stopped, save for a run-in with Hancock.

My thoughts are as follows:
1.  Go Public
2.  Open Sourcing
3.  Get rid of your junk
4.  Create content

Going public is the first thing I’m learning.  Going public is not so much about narcissism, as it is about being an open book.  My new refusal to hide everything about myself because “I deserve privacy.”  There is a price for this of course, specifically in my profession of clerical duties, but I think this is vitally important.  Personally I’ve always felt this way.  Some call this immaturity, because “pastors shouldn’t act that way”, but I prefer to call it “being real.”  Sometimes me being real is good, and sometimes I make mistakes, but I believe the end result is health.

Consider this proverb:  “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.”

This is one of the reasons I blog and twitter - not because I want people to hang on every word I have to say, but because I literally want to share the things that are on my heart and mind.  Open, not hidden.  Sharing, and not stifling.

So I continue to work at going public, sharing who I am and what I believe all the while attempting to grow the fruits of the spirit Paul speaks of in the book of Galatians.  What about you?

By the way, two things I still believe in:  Confidentiality & Tact

This post was written with the Watercooler Wednesday in mind

So I have this idea, I want to do this as practice for writing, and I wanted to see what people who read my blog from time to time might think of the idea, or better yet, suggestions for improving the idea.  Here it is:

I want to write an autobiography based on the timeline of my facebook friends.  So it wouldn’t be a real autobiography, but one actually more focused on those 337 people that have connected with me on facebook.  (I probably have had a real relationship with 300 of them).  Along the way, I would be the constant (Lost fans represent!)amidst the massive amounts of different ages, areas of the country, and social circles represented in the story.

I would obviously want it to be true and yet interesting enough so that its not just about my relationship with each of them, some of which would be colorful, some of which would be,”We met each other at school in the dorm room, and I wrote him up because his room was really dirty” (Sorry I went to Pensacola Christian College).

I would break it down into timeline type chapters, even though I can’t find the social timeline that Facebook used to have, and those would look something like this:
Birth – 17 years old (Ohio)
18-21 – Pensacola Christian College (Florida)
             Neighborhood Bible Time (9 states)
             Arizona
22 -      Taught at a Christian School (Atlanta Ga)
23 - present (now almost 10 years later) - Radio Dj
             Pastor at a church  (Massachusetts)
Current update – Big time blogging friendships beginning to form.

So this is what I’ve been pondering and I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the project. 

Would it help my writing or just be a nuisance?

This post was written for Randy Elrod’s Watercooler Wednesday.

I was on Facebook last week and found that I had a friend request from an old friend in college.  His name is Derek. I hadn’t seen him or heard from him since the spring of 1994, the end of my freshman year, when he decided to leave PCC (I can’t think of why) to return to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Derek,Brandon, and Klassen, the Canadian were good friends in their sophmore and junior years at college,and Ridgeway (sorry, no facebook yet) and I came in as freshman.  We all hung out together, and typically the older three made fun of Ridgeway and I.  Despite their chiding, we all got along pretty well, and we all enjoyed one another’s company.

Some of our friendships lasted for years – Ridgeway and I continue to talk regularly to this day – and some of our friendships lasted for a bit after school.  I actually lived with Brandon for a year or so after college, then I did something stupid to quickly end our close friendship. (possibly for another blog)  Then there was Klassen, the Canadian, who left school in the middle of that year, and we emailed every once in a while from then until now, and Derek, who emailed me this week, via facebook, for the first time since 1994.

Crazy!

So apparently Derek has great timing because he gives us all god reason to email and talk and connect for a while when he gives us an invitation to join him on espn.com’s tournament challenge for March Madness.  We all did, and so now we’ve all connected again.  This was one of the things we did that first year we were all together in March of ’94, except the internet hadn’t quite caught on yet (though I still don’t know if it has at PCC) and we did it via the USA Today.

Currently I’m tied for first place along with Ridgeway, the irony being that we were the “loser freshman” back then.  But the most important thing is the reconnection I’ve made once again with my old friends. A bit more weight. A bit more gray hair. But a lot more experiences to share.

Until next time…