miletwo::network

I love the guys at Church Marketing Sucks, but their recent nod to the concept of marketing Christianity using the terminology of other religions scares the bejeezus out of me. In a recent post focusing attention on the Dutch Catholic Church, they recognize a marketing attempt by the Dutch attempting to promote Lent as “the Christian Ramadan.”

The “Emerging Church” or “Emerging conversation” has been generating quite a buzz for the last few years, mostly because some of their ideals and beliefs are not entirely consistent with the bible. Mark Driscoll speaks in his most recent message from Question 2 in the “Religion Saves and Nine other Misconceptions” series titled: “Emerging Church” about his connection (or lack of) with the Emerging Church and how he came to be associated with them in the first place.

A while back I read through Andy Stanley’s book Communicating for a Change and found it to be a profound look at the process of communicating truth from the pulpit. As a teaching pastor at miletwo::church I met regularly with the rest of the pastoral board discussing the thought processes presented in this book and how we could apply it in our messages; the goal being more effective communication of truth in a world where competition for the minds and thoughts of church members is so fierce. This has caused me to realize that there are many truths from Communicating for a Change to be applied to a church web project. After all, communicating online and communicating from a pulpit are both still communicating (forgive the gross oversimplification for a bit).

I read today in Seth Godin’s blog about a new site by the folks at Squidoo who just built a promotional tool that lets you become the central expert on all things in your area. Mayor of your zip code is a way to start a discussion group/info page about what’s happening in your slice of the world. You become the single relevant source of information on your community. That said, if you only spend a few minutes on it and then move on, it’ll fail. But, if you were to budget a significant portion of your time or those in your organization on working on your page, what do you think would show up in Google searches? What sort of interactions would you start having with people thinking about your little part of the world?

We’re still counting down to April and the release of Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled.  I’m looking forward to seeing this flick, not because I think it’s going to radically change the general thinking of our atheistic society, but because it appears to be an actual thoughtful and relevant look at the real problem at hand… censorship.  In an excerpt from their site it says:

For decades now, Neo-Darwinism has maintained a stranglehold within public education, suppressing all other theories on the origins of life - especially those that hint of a “designer”.

As I take my daily visit through the sites of scholars and pundits it has become increasingly apparent to me that I am constantly finding myself in the position of knowing less and less about the word of God I claim to love. In a recent post by David Alan Black he discussed the importance of personal observation in the learning process by examining his own discovery of the Synoptic Problem. I had heard this discussed before but thought it to be a topic for biblical scholars and mega-thinkers, far beyond my own abilities. I’ve changed my mind.

You may have noticed if you’ve ever seen this site before (not likely… but possible) that I’ve completely revamped and put up a bit of content related to who I am, my family, what I’m reading, etc. Of particular note is the block of content on your left called “churchianity” and I thought I might explain myself before we all get our underpants in a bunch.