I had a friend compliment me about how much I read, blog, tweet and whatnot.

He’s a sucker.

You see, it is all pretty simple and – if I’m doing it right – my system of learning and exposing myself to ideas feels really natural and easy. That is where virtual community becomes a bit faker than real community. All I have to do to appear wise and bright and thoughtful and intelligent is write a couple of paragraphs every day? Find and retweet interesting links? Reword old ideas in new ways? Reference popular books, authors, or thinkers?

Yup, that’s about it.

Online, it is easy to consistently be awesome. In fact, it’s so easy that people who aren’t awesome blow our minds. We’r SO surprised to find a company or church with a lame website. When someone doesn’t understand what blogging or twitter is, we’re at a loss for words. It’s like they’re from a different planet.

Online Awesomeness is low-hanging fruit. It’s the fad diet of achievements. Anyone can do it.

What is a lot harder is to be awesome offline; to continually interact with real people and leave them impressed. It’s hard to learn a difficult skill when you don’t have the time or energy. It’s hard to be kind to jerks. It’s hard to give a rip about people on the other side of the world who will never pay you back for what you do. Those things take years and years and years to master and LOTS of people, companies, churches and societies fail at those. In fact, so many fail to be awesome offline that those who are remarkable (MLK, Mother Teresa, Jesus, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, etc.) blow our minds for years and years to come.

So here’s a challenge, if you like blogging and tweeting and facebooking. Great.

If you aren’t into it. Great.

Be awesome offline. Be remarkable in reality, not virtual reality.

Parents, the video below may make you feel old or like you don’t know what’s going on. Teenagers, the below video will shock you. You’ll realize that the “normal” of today is relatively new. I think this should help bring some clarity…..

[media id=1 width=480 height=360]

[via churchkreatives]

“I’d come to your church.”

These words took me by surprise. Yesterday, I was working @ TGIFridays and everything was pretty slow as not too many people have been coming in (thanks gas prices). So I was sitting around with 4 other servers and we were just talking about life. They asked me what my degree was about and I told them I was studying to become a pastor (i didn’t tell them that my degree was technically in Christian Educational Ministries because those words mean nothing to the people I work with).

Everyone was a bit taken back by my admission that I was looking to be a pastor. They all shared brief stories of other pastors they knew or churches they’d been too. One of the girls stopped and looked and me and said “I’d go to your church.”

Because I really doubted that she’d feel accepted in any church, I asked her why she’d chosen my church to attend. She told me that I was real and honest and not so corny.

Why is she not in any other church? 2 reasons:

1. She may not know any Christians that she sees as loving, authentic, or in-touch with the world.
2. None of the people she knows who are Christians have invited her.

Either way, it’s our fault. Christians, listen up, if we’d be a bit more loving, a lot more honest about how we’re not perfect, and we’d understand our culture, the game would be ours for the taking. Sure there are people who seem to hate God. But I would say there are far more who hang in the balance. There are far more who would really love a shot at connecting with God and experiencing the love that a Church ought to be pumping out.

ps. I doubt anyone who I work with reads this blog, but if you stumble on here from Facebook or something, know that I love you and I absolutely love being around all you guys. A lot of times, y’all are a lot more loving than churches anyways.

37signals – 37 Signals produces web applications that help people and businesses get things done. i use backpack.

splashup – Splashup.com is an online photo-editing application that allows you to access and edit photos from flickr, picasa, or facebook. Imagina a super simplified photoshop with the capability of being accessed online all the time.

The Cool Hunter – This site displays some of the coolest design coming out of the UK. I couldn’t stop exploring this site once i found it.

morguefile – Free pictures. The photographers only ask that you reference them when using the picture.

How to be More Interesting – a great article on how to be more creative and interesting.

15o Writing Resources – An article that highlights 150 online resources that can help you in any aspect of writing.

bubbl.us – great resources to help you connect ideas for writing or speaking. I’ve used this to help me organize papers and the results have been phenomenal.

Pandora Radio – Online radio that creates a music station for you based on artists and songs that you like. Radio at it absolute best. This site has super-sleek design and is easy to love. Add me as a friend using this link.

Spice Up Your Running Workout – 10 ways to keep a very ordinary exercise – running – very dynamic.

Ministry Heroes? – an article speaking of some people’s zealous following of a “ministry hero.”

52 top personal finance books – TheSimpleDollar.com gives a great list…

Improve any relationship – WeTheChange.com pumps out a list of 9 exercises to improve your relationships

TED – Technology. Entertainment. Design. This site is quickly becoming my favorite. The TED blog sends out a new video each day. These videos are talks from the worlds foremost authorities in various areas and they are limited to only 18 minutes for their talk. This forces some of the most brilliant minds in the world to give only their best stuff. The sharing of ideas is king on this site. Could change your life.

My first linkfest post

another one of my linkfest post