Some Social Media Tension Could Be Lessened

During the last few months I’ve watched two very longtime relationships erode; people with whom we’ve enjoyed close fellowship since we moved to our small town over 30 years ago.

Not everyone sees everything the same way. I get that. And I enjoy good and healthy debate, provided the basic premises of debate are followed, one of which is logical argument. If the reasons given for a particular position are worthy of consideration — even if I disagree — I’m willing to entertain the conversation.

I’m also willing to listen to someone if they have a portfolio of concerns, but often someone is like a one-issue candidate; the guy running for mayor but really only cares about expanding the baseball diamond in the park, and when asked about road construction or taxes is simply unable to articulate the issues.

But sometimes that’s more subtle. The issues seem varied, but the common theme is preaching to their social media audience. I suppose there is the unlikely chance they might convert someone to their positions, but it’s rarely seen. Often they think the strength of their viewpoint is going to be measured by the volume of their online posts.

I really want to send this to my friend. But I still value the friendship more than anything. However, if I did, it would look like…

Dear ________;

I see you’re once again posting about the _____________ issue. I see it differently, but I also see the frequency of these posts to be concerning.

Your friends and relatives know where you stand. And you know they don’t necessarily agree with you on this subject. Personally, I would think a reminder maybe once every 2-3 months would be sufficient. Not every other day. Especially when a few of them are stretching to make a point.

On a personal level, I do wonder how many people or organizations you are subscribed to that provides you with the vast number of sources from which you gather the various content items. I think about the time this must involve, time that could be spend taking a walk in the fresh air, or doing something different. Your best friend on social media is the button that says, “Log Out,” and you might want to consider using it more often.

I also worry because this rather huge number of social media sources you follow is creating a giant echo chamber which prevents you from hearing from the other side. If we surround ourselves with people who agree with us on everything, we never experience growth.

Last week I had an insight that helped me to see this differently. I’m wondering how much of this is just done for the (predictable) reactions you get. Being deliberately provocative. Poking the bear. Raising peoples’ blood pressure. Being a troublemaker.

I’m reminded of the boy sitting at the back of the middle school classroom making fart noises because it makes the boys laugh and it makes the girls yell at him to knock it off. Either way he gets a reaction. He gets attention.

I am convinced you’re on the wrong side of history on this subject, but neither of us will be around to see the outcome. We can only estimate based on current trends and statistics. But I wouldn’t want to be known as the _____________ guy. Especially if my position could be construed as simply based on my personal preferences.

I’m not going to block you. Not yet. I still consider you a friend. It is amazing though how out of what I always thoughts were common roots we shared we have diverged along very different paths. We need to strengthen the things that remain instead of working toward division.

Your friend,

Paul.

 

One Year After: Beth Moore’s Tribute to Rachel Held Evans

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the death of Rachel Held Evans.

At least ten times now I’ve found things on Twitter threads which I feel are worthy of exposure to an audience who simply don’t use Twitter. Recent examples of people we’ve posted here include Wade Mullen, Tish Warren Harrison, Skye Jethani, John Mark Comer, Mark Clark, Sheila Wray Gregoire, etc.

Why didn’t the writers simply put the material on their own blog? I think they see that these are very different audiences. Twitter is a very distinct collection of people. But I’m sharing this for blog readers in this format out of sheer admiration for Rachel Held Evans, and Beth Moore’s perspective on the connection they had, which also is part of a larger Twitter or Facebook situation, but one I’m sure Thinking Out Loud readers can appreciate.

Longtime readers here will be surprised to see me giving this platform to Beth Moore. A year ago, I would say I was very pro-Rachel Held Evans and not-so-much-Beth Moore. It’s now a year later. I’ve seen Beth Moore completely differently over the past 12 months. I’ve changed. She’s changed.

To read the original tweets, click this link.

---

by Beth Moore

Want to tell you a story. I got a text from my daughter a year ago today. Two words: Rachel died. She was referring to Rachel Held Evans.

I went to the floor sobbing, “No no no no, Lord, please no.” We’d prayed so hard. Pleaded so hard. I never met Rachel. We had a unique relationship. I ask for your grace to tell the story, a story about life in this insane social media culture. I ask you to listen instead of lurch.

Rachel and I had been on opposite sides of several issues. Our familiarity to one another was limited to the controversial. My knowledge of her was based on whatever my part of the world retweeted or circulated about her. We got into it a few times and, let me just say, you didn’t want to get into it with Rachel. I say these words with a smile and tears in my eyes. I never had an opponent in my life I respected more.

In a faith world drowning in hypocrisy, I knew that girl was earnest to the bone. One of the really awful things about social media is that two people who disagree may respect certain rules of engagement and not go for the jugular, but their camps can often mob the other viciously.

I can’t tell you how many times I have watched people say things to others as if on my behalf and I’m thinking to myself, I would never in my life talk like that to her or him. Stop! It’s very disturbing. I don’t like it no matter what that person has done to me.

It was one of those times. Both of our camps were mob-bullying the other. I wanted to direct-message her to check on her but I didn’t know how to do it without following her on Twitter. So I did. She answered me almost immediately. It was brief. Talked about what impact constantly being hit has on the soul.

Then I was left with a most interesting conundrum. I had followed her on Twitter. Was I to unfollow her or keep following her? In those days I still cared that people could make certain assumptions from who you followed. I could not care less anymore but that’s a different story.

I thought, well that’s a fine kettle of fish. We just held out a bit of an olive branch to one another and now I am going to unfollow her and she is going to know it. Seemed unkind and hypocritical to me so I kept following and some of you are not going to believe what I discovered.

Rachel Held Evans was a real live person. She was not the embodiment of all her controversial retweets. She was a multilayered human. She talked about her children. Her man. Her life. She got the flu during that period and I prayed for her and wrote her name in my journal. “Rachel.”

I replied to this or that tweet about regular stuff. She did the same. We did not become best friends nor big direct-message buddies but I’d like to make the point that, for Rachel and me, we became something more important: Real people to one another. We were more than our stands. Rachel and I were, hands-down, the two most hated women in the Christian media world. By fellow Christians, of course and for different reasons. That was our unique connection. And two people have to occasionally see how the other is holding up under the strain. Make no mistake. IT IS A STRAIN.

I’d already been praying for her when she got that last flu. I saw her shout-out when she said, “If you’re the praying kind.” I replied what she already knew. I was praying kind. And now the tears flow. I prayed so hard. I printed out a picture of her and taped it up at Living Proof Ministries. Told my staff what they, of course, already knew, “She is not a social media account. She is a person. This is what she looks like. Here is the picture of her with her husband and children.”

I still have that picture on my phone. I sent her a direct message while she was in that coma. Told her something to the effect of, I will stand over you in prayer continually and then please come back and, well, what I meant was, drive me crazy.

She didn’t.

To all her real live loved ones: I have prayed for you so hard this year. I am so deeply sorry for your loss.

 

 

Welcome to Social Media: Content Creators Need Not Apply

When you think about it, social media platforms never need create a single article. Facebook wants you to create content for them to surround with advertising, and if it’s been awhile since you did, they will send you a reminder. Twitter has never published anything significant either, and dare I say that’s also true of WordPress.

When the social media thing — much less the internet itself — started growing exponentially a dozen or so years ago, I thought I was set. I was a writer. All these sites need content, right? I even looked into registering a business — Content Factory — only to discover several others had beat me to that particular name.

Today, the internet of 2020 tolerates typos, grammatical and syntax errors, and let’s not even think about spelling. Everyone is a writer (and everyone is now a photographer) with varying results.

Earlier today John Mark McMillan asked his Twitter followers if there were a better word than ‘content.’

I’d like to propose we all stop using the word “content”. When I think about making “content” I die a little. It sounds like filler, stuffing… air in a balloon. Does anyone have any better words we can use for the meaningful work we’ve all give our lives to?

(I’ve corrected his spelling of balloon; I didn’t need him proving my point.)

I wrote back,

I noticed this a few months ago when it comes to writing. We usually refer to having seen an
• article
• item
• piece
which is somewhat non-descriptive.

Others suggested

• pith
• art
• creations
• the goods
• offerings
• portfolio
• stories

As I type this, his tweet is just four hours old. Feel free to add your own descriptor. What’s a good word to describe the written output of people on social media?

 

Social Media: What It’s Doing to Us

Some of you may have seen this on Facebook.

That’s rather ironic; since it does not paint the social media platform favorably.

The timing on this is interesting, since I was planning to write about this topic anyway. I’m not opposed to technology, nor do I resent the application of social networking. Rather, I was going to write something like, “I just want to go back in time and use the internet as it was in 2003.” That’s right; 15 years ought to do it.

Anyway, see what you think. Someone put some thought into this, but it hasn’t had many views and no public comments as of yesterday. (Perhaps this isn’t the original post.)

Google Now Provides the Information instead of Referring

Like many of you, I couldn’t help but notice that increasingly, Google was giving me the answers I was looking for right on their results page, without my needing to make a second click. Appreciating the convenience I didn’t really pay much attention to this, until publishing and media watcher Tim Underwood linked to a piece at Mashable titled, Google is Eating the Open Internet.

The rather opened my eyes to the present situation: Instead of being a site which refers you to people who have the answers, Google is now seen as provider of those answers.

But the affect on the websites from which the information is culled — the creatives and researchers who do the actual work — is devastating. Example:

…Brian Warner, founder and CEO of CelebrityWorthNet.com, understands perhaps more than anybody the power of Google’s wall-building.

Warner started to notice the content from his site appearing directly on search results pages in 2012. Two years later, he got an email from Google asking to scrape all of his data, which he turned down. Another two years after that, Google did it anyway, and the impact was catastrophic.

“It was extremely painful, it was extremely devastating,” Warner said. “We got to a point where our traffic was down 85 percent from a year or two earlier.”

Search for the net worth of any celebrity at random today—let’s say, James Earl Jones—and you’ll get the number ($45 million) and a short biographical blurb pulled from CelebrityNetWorth.com with credit and a link…

And later, the broader application:

…There’s also a steady stream of more subtle indications of Google’s inward pull appearing every day—features like on-site hotel booking, restaurant menus, spa appointment tools, and dropdown recipes to name just a few.

These tweaks might sound minor, but Google’s position as the web’s central nervous system means they can have a big impact on smaller businesses that orbit it.

In the long run, though, there seems to be a pretty glaring hole in this plan. That is, as Google likes to reassure wary publishers, it’s not in the content business.

The company ultimately relies on reference sites like Wikipedia, IMDB, Fandango, and the CIA World Fact Book to compile and update the information it uses.

If Google continues to choke these sites out, what incentive will there be for new ones to come along? …   (emphasis added)

   Then early this morning I caught up with my Saturday print edition of The Toronto Star and columnist Heather Mallick was saying the exact same things about Facebook in a piece titled, Like it or not, Facebook Owns You. For her it gets personal:

…We donate to the Guardian to keep it free for everyone, but remember that we do this because former editor Alan Rusbridger made the numbers clear. In 2016, Facebook “sucked up $27 million (U.S.) of the newspaper’s projected ad revenue that year.”

Facebook was the interlocutor, the middleman who slipped between readers and journalists and siphoned off the money. When I step onto the thing for even a moment, I make money for Zuckerberg. I work for him, not the Toronto Star.

I wouldn’t mind being followed for weeks by ads for the hand vacuum (designed in England, made in Malaysia, which is why I despise Dyson) I ordered five minutes ago from an online retailer with no discernible connection to Facebook.

But I do mind that my salary was effectively lower this year because Facebook knew this, its targeting having destroyed the print and online ads on which the Star itself relied.

I take a dim view. With less money, I’ll buy fewer things advertised on Facebook, but it doesn’t care. It’s in the business of attention, not retailing. Its hands are clean.

Of course they’re not. They’re loaded with lucre, and they’re taunting people individually and en masse, damaging quality of life and eating freedom. You are owned…

For my Christian readership at this page, this is important. Obtaining the “answers” or “results” one is looking for without clicking through to see the full context of the page from which the mighty search engine derived them could be devastating, especially as the field of material offered grows to include things of religious or theological interest. At best, all of our online sites are somewhat subjective, including this one.

But I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.

 

Facebook Pulling Back Feeds of Status Updates for Businesses, Churches

From home-based hobby sales, to cottage industries, to small business, to corporations having 500,000 likes, Facebook is scaling back the practice of putting posts into the feeds of readers, and the policy change has impact for non-profits and churches as well.

Many small businesses currently operate as a ‘page’ adjunct to an individual’s personal Facebook profile. Just as you ‘friend’ the person, you ‘like’ the business. Years ago, Facebook started restricting what you see from individuals and business alike.  The logic went, ‘if you have 300 friends and they post twice a day, you’d have 600 updates to read daily.’

But small businesses noticed that much of what they posted wasn’t getting to anyone, with averages of 16% being normal. If someone took the effort to visit the page, they could see everything, but most people who ‘check Facebook’ read only what the algorithm assigns to their feed.

Instead they were being told to ‘boost’ each post with a payment ranging — for small business — between $5 and $33. Many times the posts weren’t even selling anything, but updating readers on local events in an effort to build community.

Then last month, the Wall Street Journal reported things would change more severely:

The change will make it more difficult for entrepreneurs… to reach fans of their Facebook pages with marketing posts that aren’t paid advertising.

Businesses that post free marketing pitches or reuse content from existing ads will suffer “a significant decrease in distribution,” Facebook warned in a post earlier this month announcing the coming change…

…More than 80% of small companies using social media to promote their businesses list Facebook as their top marketing tool, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter, according to a recent survey of 2,292 small businesses by Webs, a digital services division of Vistaprint. The top three reasons owners cited for creating a Facebook page were customer acquisition, building a network of followers and increasing brand awareness, according to the survey.

Dan Levy, Facebook’s vice president of small business, says that Facebook’s paid-advertising options have become more effective recently and that companies should view Facebook as a tool to “help them grow their businesses, not a niche social solution to getting more reach or to make a post go viral.”

He says he has “a lot of empathy” for business owners who “are feeling this evolution” in the reduction of what he describes as organic reach. But, he says, organic reach is only one of several reasons companies benefit from having a presence on Facebook. Last month, there were more than one billion visits to Facebook pages directly. “Having a presence where you can be discovered still has a ton of value,” he says…

This is a small part of the entire article, click here to read at WSJ.

But it gets worse, as churches and non-profits will also be affected.  One writer suggests the strategy over the next few months should be to get those Facebook friends to respond to something that provides their email address (and in countries where applicable, express consent for placing them on on a list.)

Over the past 18 months, one of the biggest challenges with Facebook marketing is not knowing exactly what changes are on the horizon and how it will impact organic reach. We believe that eventually organic reach on larger nonprofit Facebook pages will reach close to 0%, so marketing on Facebook will significantly change.

Read more at NonBoardBoard

One website, while overtly trying to sell a print report, offers some clues:

The ability to build communities of fans, and then maintain contact and encourage engagement using content published to fans’ News Feeds was a critical aspect of Facebook’s early appeal to marketers. The opportunity of achieving engagement at scale motivated many brands and corporates to invest millions in developing communities and providing for care and feeding via always-on content…

This isn’t an academic exercise. Facebook Zero is a reality now facing every brand and business with a presence on the platform. Action is required, and specific decisions will need to be made with regard to content planning, paid support for social media activities, audience targeting and much more.

Read more at Ogilvy.com

But social media of one kind or another is so essential. In a recent 48-minute podcast at the aptly-named Church Marketing Sucks, the director of Social Media for Saddleback Church offered a number suggestions as well as stressing the importance of social media for churches.

Listen to the podcast here.

The same website also offered suggestions for using social media at Christmas. While most of these arrive too late for this year, you could file them away for 2015, but with Facebook Zero coming soon, the information may seem antiquated a year from now, or even sooner.

Want to switch your emphasis over to Instagram. I wouldn’t. Remember, in 2012, Facebook paid $1 Billion to acquire the photo site. What’s happening on FB will certainly follow on Instagram.

Twitter, anyone?

This Facebook page image serves as a reminder that what Facebook decides here has worldwide impact on Churches and Christian charities. That’s 2,868 people the organization is engaging with in the UK that it now has to find other means to reach.

Wednesday Link List

This long de-commissioned church photo appeared back in October at the Twitter feed of AbandonedPics.

There’s something here for people at every age and every stage, including links to stories of interest to lay people and clergy, liturgists and charismatics. Or at least that’s the theory. 

The link list is now owned and operated by PARSE the blog of Leadership Journal, a division of Christianity Today.  Anything you click below will take you first to them, then you can click the item again.

• The Gideons are no longer welcome at an Alabama Air Force base.
• While being confronted about his infidelity, a Connecticut pastor dropped dead in the pulpit.
• So will resurrected bodies have gender and corresponding gender roles to what we have now? An organization promoting the Biblical view of such things may have overstepped scripture in saying yes.
• 13-Step Program: How to make a mess of scripture interpretation.
• The problem with church metrics: When the focus is all about parking spots and seating.
• Pastor Must-Read: Six ways to avoid finding yourself in an embarrassing ministry situation.
• If you studied classical philosophy or Catholic theology, or perhaps you just like donuts, here’s a refresher to enjoy with coffee.
• Giving it up for Lent: A Baptist writer thinks we should give up criticizing people who do or do not observe the 40-day tradition.
• Analyzing the “nones” finds many of them to be unaffiliated believers, not atheistic.  (“Nones” never works verbally; people think you mean “nuns.”)
• How to spiritualize a preference: Don’t like Daylight Saving Time? Turn your dislike into a sermon.
• On the one-year anniversary of their son Matthew’s death, Kay Warren says not to tell grieving people it’s time to move on.
• Infographic: The social media, music, books, conferences and controversies that shaped the Young, Restless and Reformed movement, aka The New Calvinism.
• Mark Driscoll has withdrawn his claim as a New York Times bestselling author in the wake of both criticism of his actions and exposure of the process that afforded that status.
• Whether you’re a pastor or author or neither, if you’ve gained a platform on social media, you can monetize it without selling your soul. (33 minute podcast with Michael Hyatt)
• With the relaunch of the TV show Cosmos, Phil Vischer asks why religion and science can’t just get along.
• Essay of the Week (1): Shana Niequist talks about her one-year older sister. You know her as Willow.
• Essay of the Week (2): Do Roman Catholics worship relics? The artifacts are important, but this writer thinks worship is the wrong word.
• Essay of the Week (3): In two U.S. states smoking pot is no longer illegal. Does that mean Christians are free to light up?
• Intermission: A 3-minute film based on an article by Pete Wilson.
• Orthodox Church leaders will meet for a rare summit in 2016; the last such meeting was 1,200 years ago.
• A New Mexico student pastor gets an “I am your father” message on Facebook which turns out to be true. (Actually, it was a little less Star-Warsy.)
• Marriage Checklist: Twelve reminders to keeping your spouse as your best friend.
• Need a little redemption after a long day at work? A Florida church offers drive-thru prayer in the church parking lot.
• Some see it as an extension of the church’s regulatory obligations, but here is an argument in favor of church membership…
• …Unless of course your church has these praise dancers. (Video clip not safe for church office, or possibly anywhere else.)
• The Pope’s first year: A video highlights reel…
• …and Shane Claiborne reflects on the pontiff’s first 365 days on the job.
• If you call your ministry Eternal Perspectives, it’s only a matter of time before you write about growing old…
• …at the same site, Randy Alcorn’s daughter Angela offers wisdom in using Facebook that applies to church leaders and everyone else.
• Book your flights; according to this rundown, Christian conference season is in high gear.
• Christianity and Culture: A review of Popcultured by Steve Turner.
• Video of the Week: The Fundamentalist classic, Be A Missionary.
• Seriously, Video of the Week: From Paul Baloche’s about-to-be released album recorded live in Toronto, He is Risen.
• Finally, an Easter gift for the person who has (almost) everything. For only $299, a full size replica of the Shroud of Turin.

All I know about this comic below is that I found it on the floor of my office, apparently photocopied from a 2002 book of Christian cartoons by Doug Hall. (Does anyone know the book title?) The sentiment expressed here is still alive and well a dozen years later.

Out of the Abundance of the Heart the Facebook Page Speaks

I remember once hearing a preacher say, “Nowhere in the Bible does it say to close your eyes while praying, but there are over a hundred references to gluttony.”

So what’s with the vast number of people who seem to feel that Facebook exists largely for broadcasting to the world the details of our latest meal? My wife and I know people — who shall remain nameless — who seem to feel that social media exists for this very purpose. Yes, they do post a few pictures of the kids, but they get lost in the vast galleries of food pics.

When we go to the supper table, I always make sure someone has remembered the ice cubes for drinks and a couple of salad dressings. But the camera? With the exception of a six-legged chicken, I don’t believe the camera and dinner have ever coincided.

Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. W. is an awesome cook. She buys things at the Asian grocery store and then goes online to try to figure out what they are and what to do with them. Last night’s meal was a middle-Eastern treat. We enjoy food from around the world because she’s willing to take on a challenge one night and then take on another one the next.

What I’m saying here is, if anybody has the right to post food pictures on Facebook it’s her. But we don’t. It would be boasting. It would be glorifying or idolizing food consumption. It would be trying to make our rather mundane lives look more exciting than they are. It would be a slap in the face to people who dine on Hamburger Helper and mashed potatoes night after night, much like dogs prefer a steady diet of Kibble.

Facebook is about sharing your life, and nightly food pictures suggest to me that instead of sharing your life, you need to get one.

If a person’s worth does not consist in the abundance of their possessions, neither does one’s value consist of the meal they had the day before.

Wednesday Link List

Another collection of things my web history says I visited this week:

• The Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit simulcast happens for Canada September 29th to 30th with the rebroadcast of  speakers from the U.S. event plus Canadians Tim Schroeder and Reginald Bibby. 
• Clergy, or people doing the work of clergy, are entitled to IRS tax breaks in the United States including a generous housing allowance. But this doesn’t get applied in denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention that don’t offer ordination or equivalent credentialing.  So as applied by Baptists the housing allowance becomes a sexist issue.
  
• And speaking of tax issues, is this another case of the head of a charity being overpaid? I refer to the case of lawyer Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.
  
• New blog of the week — except it’s over a year old — is More Christ by K.W. Leslie where you’ll find some serious devotional articles, but, inexplicably, also a Jesus Junk page where you can purchase the t-shirt at right.
  
• With the school year in full swing, Jon Acuff asks, When should you let your kids use Facebook?  130+ comments and counting.
  
• Like most of you, I always keep a Salvation Army Captain or two on speed dial, and mine also happens to blog at Il Capitano Inquisitore. This week, he’s dealing with the contrast between the S.A.’s statement on gay and lesbian issues, and what it doesn’t say about when those same ‘welcomed’ people want to step into a leadership role. He tells me the comments pale in comparison to the off-the-blog mail…
  
• Juanita Bynum updates Pentecostal and Charismatic distinctive theology by introducing typing in tongues on her Facebook page.  To which I say: fsdgklhs ddtowyet scprnap.
• “…The man told me in the letter that he had seethed in a quiet fury and then picked up his Bible and walked out…”  Russell D. Moore tackles the thorny issue of “closed communion” or “fencing the communion table” in a piece at Touchstone appropriately titled, Table Manners.
• Meanwhile, back at his own blog, Moore looks at the internet debates between people of different denominational and doctrinal (D&D) stripes as not much different than the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) club debates of his high school.  “The Dungeons and Dragons clubs came to mind because those guys, at least in my junior high school, seemed to be obsessed with something that seemed to have no relevance at all to their lives, or to anyone else’s. But D&D became their identity.” Read more, or rather, read Moore.
• Glen Scrivener has written a poem that takes three minutes to read and contains 106 phrases that the King James Bible introduced into the language. He calls it a King James-themed something or other. (It may turn up here in full on a slow day, but you can read it now!) It’s also a video which you can watch here, or literally watch it here in the comments section.
  
• Shawn Stutz offers his rant about Bible Gateway’s ‘sanctified’ version of Farmville.
  
• Are you ready for “The Great Atomic Power?”  That’s the theme of a bluegrass/country song by the Louvin Brothers.  But as Darrell at SFL informed me, Ira Louvin’s story is a little checkered.
  
• This one stretches all the way back to late July, but I guess this really hot breaking Christian news story took a little longer to reach us here.
  
• This week’s cartoon — in keeping with our green t-shirt theme — is from No Apologies Allowed, which describes itself as “Weekly apologetics cartoons and quotes for the faithful, the faithless, and the full-of-its.” The blog consists recently of responses to atheists and Mormons.

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday link kangaroo

A kangaroo walks into a bar.

“Wow!” the bartender says; “We don’t get many kangaroos in here.”

“Yeah,” says the Kangaroo, “And at these prices, you’re not going to get many more.”

…I know it’s pathetic, but that’s always been one of my favorite jokes, and the link list seemed the best place for it.

• Our lead link this week: David Santisteven on How To Fail as a Worship Leader In Ten Easy Steps. (Step 5: Leave theology to the preachers.)
  
• And here’s a bonus ten for people interested in worship: Ten Ideas to Incorporate the Scriptures into a Worship Service.
  
• They won’t respond to communication from outsiders, but a surprising number of Amish Teens are now on Facebook, getting online through their cellphones.
• Sarah Pulliam Bailey brings an 7-page look at the reshaping of Focus on the Family; and a 2-page sidebar as to what James Dobson is up to.
  
• Dana at Upwrite asks all the hard questions about the TOMS shoes fad.  (If I’d known you could get that word length writing about shoes, I would have done it long ago!)
  
• Let’s go two in a row from Upwrite: Can you be a hybrid Christian? Can you combine ideas from other faiths with Christian belief?
  

Click the image above to see 226 more pictures from North Carolina's Wild Goose Festival in June by photographer Courtney Perry

• If you missed the Wild Goose Festival, photographer Courtney Perry has 227 pictures; you can even purchase copies.
  
• John Starke nails it on How to Write a Great Book Review (Or How Not to Write a Bad One).
  
• Speaking of which, Benji Zimmerman does a great review of Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle’s Erasing Hell the response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. (Easier to read with a Javascript Black/White swap app.)
  
• And Chan himself sits down with Mark Galli at CT for what appears to be an interview but is really more of a dialog.
  
• Stephen Brewster was one of many syncrobloggers who joined together in June to talk about blocks to creativity.  He links to some of the other writers, too.
  
• Frank Turk digs into the can of worms being opened by New York’s new marriage law.
  
• Craig Groeshel, the guy with the .tv web domains, is now suggesting individuals and families take a few nights off each week to unplug.
  
• A few days late for the 4th, but for our American friends, Louis Giglio reflects on the Declaration of Independence with Chris Tomlin on camera and some cheap shots at England’s Matt Redman.  (HT: Worship Blog)
  
• Matt Rawlings brings his twice yearly top five books list, and his top 62 “geek” books list.
  
• Also on books, Jon, our academic book-watcher on the left coast wants you to know about Christians at the Border: Immigration, The Church and the Bible.  Basically this is a Guatemalan professor of Old Testament studies discussing social policy.  Here’s the publisher’s 411, and a 9-pg .pdf preview.
  
• Adam Young, aka Owl City, has a new video, packed with footage from the Back to the Future movies.  Check out Deer in the Headlights.
  
• But we can take the animal video linking thing further with this Charlie the Hamster audio file. (HT: Stuff Fundies Like.)
  
• Anne Jackson, transparent as ever, has reactivated her blog which has been dormant since March.  You can read her posts from June 17th and June 24th.
• No link here, but my son Chris put this on his Facebook page:
  .
  The Parable of the Dry Stick
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  I was out for a hike a while ago and there was a stick on the path.  I gave it a kick, and all the bark broke off and scattered, leaving only the bare, white wood.
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  God then said:  “The world is full of people who will completely change, who are just waiting to be prompted, quietly hoping someone will disrupt their daily ennui.”
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   If you know one of those people, give them a proverbial kick.  Tell them their life can amount to something.  Invite them to join the adventure of discovering God.

Separated at Birth (and by a few generations) — Lyn Cryderman, author of Glory Land, republished as No Swimming on Sunday and Colton Burpo of Heaven is for Real fame.  The Cryderman book is a bit of a hard-to-find collector’s item but an excellent document capturing growing up in America in the Free Methodist denomination.  “I gotta home in Glory land that outshines the sun…Way beyond the blue”