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Thought-provoking article on Church Marketing Sucks about the correlation between participation and anticipation. Loved this quote:

Is it just me, or does it seem like the people who get the biggest thrill are the ones planning, producing or performing the experiences? What would it look like to get more people involved in the planning, producing or performing roles? How could the majority of people be a part of anticipating, instead of just the minority?

I’ve personally experienced and seen this–church programming or worship teams getting a bigger kick out of the process of being involved than anyone else.

I think this can be both deceptive and encouraging. Deceptive because if there’s a small minority of us planning and dreaming, we may have a skewed view of the engagement level of others. But encouraging because there’s small steps we can take each day in our churches to help people be involved in their own learning process.

Saw this recent article about the ways in which book stores like Barnes and Noble are reconfiguring their stores to keep up with the increased demand for digitally published books. They’re experimenting with new ways to let their readers try out their e-book readers.

I wonder what will happen when everybody has a device that displays text and images as well as a book does. What will the the demand for printed books be then, and what will that mean for a place like the book store? Like Mark’s thoughts about the library, I’m not sure book stores will go away, I just don’t know if we’ll be able to call them book stores any more.

There is some great artwork being created on the iPad. I wonder how digital art will change as a result of inputing information directly with your hands on a screen, rather than using a mouse or tablet. By eliminating the gap that exists mentally when controlling the cursor with a separate device maybe the art will feel more fluent or organic because the process more closely resembles brush to canvas or pencil to paper? Undoubtedly the way we interact with technology changes the way we think and create.

Today’s the day you can start pre-ordering the new iPhone. If you haven’t seen it, it’s not too shabby.

All of the iPhone’s recent buzz got me thinking about how much has changed in technology over the past 18-24 months, and how much it affects us on a daily basis. While there’s been some amazing advancements in technology during my lifetime, I wonder if we’ll look back on the past 2 years as something truly extraordinary.

Extraordinary and so life-changing because with social media now everywhere, and smart phones like the iPhone allowing us to do so much to connect with each other, our lives now revolve around a crazy number of people and one small device. Could we have even imagined a few short years ago that we would grow so dependent on knowing where our friends are, or what they are doing, reading and thinking at any given moment? And could we have imagined that we’d expect all that power to fit in our pocket?

What has this shift in expectations done to what we come to expect from one another?

Some new friends I met last week from the the 8BIT Network invited to me to do a guest post on the the ChurchCreate blog. We had just had a fantastic conversation about the way media is used in the church gatherings, and about how the sum total of really small choices makes a difference in how connected a group of people feels when they’re gathered.

Please read the article and check out the rest of 8BIT’s other sites. I’m planning on posting some follow-up thoughts here on iblogo sometime in the next few days.

One last thing … Thanks to all of the new readers of iblogo that stopped by the site for the first time during the the Orange Conference. If you haven’t already, consider following us on Twitter. It was great to meet so many of you and we’re looking forward to the conversations we’ll be having here over the next few weeks!

(video above from Adam McLane/YS)

There’s a great group of folks in Haiti right now, joining the many there seeking to bring hope, healing and relief. Following their tweets, Facebook status updates and blogs is truly heartbreaking and inspiring all at once.

YMATH Facebook page
YMATH Twitter list

If you’re still trying to get caught up on LOST before tonight’s episode, this won’t help. Here’s a great video from Newsweek, with staff members who have never seen the show LOST attempting to explain what’s happening.

[WARNING: although they have no idea what they're talking about, the clips from the show do contain spoilers.]

This Wednesday at 1pm CST, we’re trying something. We’re going to host our first ever ustream meetup for MERGE, the student event we’re hosting this June.

We realize that plenty of folks are using ustream for all kinds of content delivery. We want to see how it works to gather a group of people to talk about MERGE, answer questions, and help connect leaders who are bringing groups.

If you’re a youth worker wanting to know more about what we do at MERGE, join us on Wednesday. If you’ve been to MERGE in the past, we’d also love to have you join us to share some of your experience with others.

And if you’re somebody who’d like to be with us in our first foray into this area of social media, we’d like that too!

See you Wednesday…

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down him
So let it be
So let it be