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Why I Like Twitter

August 28, 2009 By 3 Comments

I heard about twitter a few years ago and thought about signing up but didn’t because I figured, “I already have Facebook and I spend enough time online and what’s up the 140 ch. limit?”. Then Facebook got too big with old college friends, church people ;-), ex-girlfriends and I found myself with 600 friends.  Around the same time, some of my “like-minded” friends got on twitter and in a different way, my online community was restored.

Fast forward to today.  I’m still on twitter, though it’s hard to keep up.  For me, the solution has been not to bother keeping up.  I allow myself to not know all the tweets.  I suspect that  many healthy minded people already do this, but that mentality is new for me ;-)

I like Twitter for a number of reasons:

1. Microblogging is quick and efficient.

2. Already mentioned welcomed alternative to facebook

3. 140 characters is a great idea.  Especially since a lot of my friends are preachers.

4. Welcomed diversion to read an article/blog/etc. that some of my friends are reading now.

5. Keeping my friends a little more honest. I have always wondered if some of my friends are really as busy as they claim.  Turns out that some of them aren’t.  I have also always wondered if my life sucks. In comparison, it turns out that it doesn’t.  I am like a friggin rock star compared to some of these tweets and last night I gave my kid a bath, read a book and watched Sportscenter  (monotony takes on a whole new meaning).

6. Like most normal men, I am not that good at keeping in touch.  I try to call people when I’m in the car but twitter helps in a number of ways.  Like when I haven’t heard from a friend in a while, I can check some tweets and realize that he’s on a mission trip or she’s giving birth or this person is on a technology fast.  In all these cases, I send a sarcastic text message wishing them well.

Seriously it does help me keep in touch.  For instance, I miss my friend Todd Hiestand.  When I moved out of the Philly burbs and moved to the NYC burbs, I knew that it might as well have been Syria and New Zealand because this fool was never going to call/email/facebook me again which scared me a little, because I told him some of my deepest, darkest secrets. Thankfully twitter has kept some semblance of a friendship and so far, he has not used my love for 80′s bands as a sermon illustration (yeah I used to think Posion’s “Something to Believe In” was the best thing ever).

While I didn’t really want any church people following me because George Castanza is right, “Worlds would collide”, so far the ones that follow are the ones that I would want.

Aside from Scot McKnight, Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, I haven’t bothered to follow celebrities.  I’ll turn on TMZ if I’m interested. In fact, I’ve tried to limit the number of people I follow and celebrities are currently among those filtered out.

I like that you can keep up with people you meet at conferences like Jake Bouma and Eric Ullestad.  I like that I met people like Matt Scott and Adam Wormann online and that I can keep in touch with the brilliance and wit of Daniel Kirk.  Want to stay ahead of the tech ministry curve – follow Adam Walker Cleaveland and Steve Knight.  They not only keep up with things but share.

And of course, who can get enough of Evan Curry, Thomas Turner and Tim Nye?  My intention is not to name-drop here but I don’t know how to talk about twitter without talking about people, that’s why so many like it.

In short, though it’s not an acceptable substitute for personal contact, I like that I can keep in touch, especially when circumstances prevent.  Twitter makes the world just a bit smaller.

Filed Under: Blogging, Reflective

My Review of Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess by Will Samson

August 28, 2009 By 2 Comments

Finally here’s my review of Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess by Will Samson

I started reading Enough while vacationing in Aruba.  Shut up, it was our first vacation in years ;-)  Of course, I knew the irony before I began reading it but fortunately, Shane Claiborne wrote in the foreword that this book is not a guilt trip.   Then I lost it for a few months and found it under the passenger seat in my Jaguar (ok, I drive a Mazda but lies sound better) and finally finished it while I was in the Bahamas.  (Shut up, I was on a mission trip … rebuilding an AIDS Camp ;-)

Seriously speaking, most who read books like Tom Sine’s New Conspirators and quote Wendell Berry the way wanna-be mega church pastors quote Bill Hybels  will know a great deal of the content.  However for those conservative evangelicals (like me) and find themselves frustrated in a post-Jabez world (or were raised in these homes/churches quoting Paul and the Fox News Channel), this book is helpful.

The introduction to the chapters are great like:

“One day Jesus was walking down Main Street on his way of town, and a rich and influential young lawyer came up to him and asked him; “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Give what you can to the synagogue.  Ten percent is a good rule of thumb, but whatever you don, don’t be a legalist about it.  And make sure you have enough left over to contribute to the economy.  You know ‘Give to Caesar ….’”  And the man went away very happy, because that was exactly what he was already doing (p.29).”

Will gives some excellent statistics regarding consumption like – “In 2003 nearly 50 percent of American household expenditures were for non-necessity” items.  Compare this to the 21 percent of non-necessity  spending in 1901 and 35 percent in 1960.  In 2004 American consumers spent $2.2 trillion on entertainment and $782 billion of that on televisions, radios, and sound equipment (p.33).”  Throughout the book he gives some practical suggestions like the encouragement to bike more, to plant a garden (not just to grow food but to experience the process of planting food), to spend money locally, etc.

As I was reading, I could not help but compare this to Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution.  Shane’s work is extremely inspiring, like a Braveheart-esque speech.  The problem for some is that it’s so radical that they would find themselves picking up a sword and learning Scottish so they could fight the Brits again then moving to co-op in Kensington.  While the Samsons also live in a similar intentional community, their story is more accessible and, I think, more “user-friendly” to  most suburbanites.  Married couples with children helps temper the comment, “Well Shane’s young, single, and makes his own clothes so it’s more realistic for him …”  (And for the record, Shane feels called to his way of life, I’ve never heard him say, “True Christians live like me …”

I like the option of handing out either book now.  It’s yet another topic that small groups would find very valuable because it is a fantastic introduction to the idea of excess, consumption and the Christian’s call to living lives of faithfulness and stewardship.  Will argues that living out the truth of the Eucharist, the sharing of the presence of Christ, is the key to overcoming our materialist lusts, our over-consumption and our general self-absorption.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Missional