Doing good vs. simply feeling good
TechCrunch featured a new site last week called Do The Right Thing, where users praise or pummel companies for their social concern. The idea is to call companies to higher standards by using the web for public censure or praise. Wal-Mart bashing is a favorite hobby on the site, as expected. Products from the (Red) initiative are praised, again as expected. (Unexpected: Do The Right Thing aims to be a for-profit business).
I can’t see this as a viable business, though I admit a lack of imagination. But it does aim to tap into our growing(?) desire to do good at a distance, to criticize or praise without even trying to grasp economic complexity, and to change the world at the least possible cost to ourselves. The (Red) initiative itself appeals to the same desire, which I addressed here (and I disavow the typos 
).
I’m always glad to see people trying new things to make the world better. Yet I fear that deceptively simple ideas will distract us from doing much harder, costlier things that can actually work.
New location and name
After working on it (on and off) all through January, I’m glad to be able to announce that today this blog has a new name, a new logo and a new address, all of which are “Waiting For Sunday”. Read the About page to find out more about the name. All the old content has been moved to the new web hosting service too. I’m still working out the bugs. Let me know if anything doesn’t work.
Stop in more often, and be sure to update any bookmarks.
Weights and measures
Weights and measures - Dennis Mullen - 1.28.7
Listen (stream) - MP3 (right-click to save)
Why numbers matter & what we’ll look for
Series: Vision: Where MHCC is heading in 2007 (part 4 of 4)
Comments welcome (see link below)
Sunday Seven: Interesting links from the past week
- The New Intolerance - Christianity Today article on fear-mongering atheism.
- 65 Percent of Americans Spend More Time with Their Computer than Their Spouse. But if they’d read our blogs…
- Hacking the Human Life Span - from Wired. Science and wishful thinking about living longer.
- Email, Holograms of the Dead to Haunt Your Inbox - From Crunchgear. Microsoft’s “Immortal Computing” Initiative and other plans to help you speak from beyond. A more business-like report on the same topic is here (via Gizmodo)
- The Invisible Enemy in Iraq - Wired. Super-bacteria developing in battlefield hospitals.
- Infuze - A site that’s new to me, about art, entertainment and faith. I immediately see several interviews I want to read.
- A new MHCC blogger I stumbled on this week.
Just what you want from me: Diet advice
Here’s an article of diet tips from Kyle Pott (his real name?) who lost 50 pounds in three months and has kept it off for more than a year. Like a lot of good advice, it’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but the thing that makes it attractive to me is the realistic approach. Potts dieted only five days a week and gave himself a break on the weekends. Or, if he had a social event during the week that called for a little indulgence, he made it up Saturday.
His ten tips may not allow you to drop 50 pounds by May 1 - he’s got to have some good metabolism - but his approach seems solid and workable, including his ideas for keeping it off.
Found this through Lifehacker.com
Your next computer interface - Jeff Han
Maybe you’ll never watch a ten minute video you find here, but I’m telling you, this one is interesting, worth at least skipping around to see the highlights.
In the video, Jeff Han demonstrates what may be the computer interface of the future. It’s a huge leap past typing on a keyboard or using a mouse. The idea is a touch screen in which you can use all of your fingers to expand, contract, and arrange photos and maps (reminiscent of Minority Report), and create art as if you were molding clay. Once you see it, you’ll know how to use it, which is why he calls it “the interface-free interface”. And if you need to type, you can even pop up a virtual keyboard.
This won’t replace Office or Wordpress anytime soon. But it is a bigger step forward then the one from DOS text to the Mac graphical user interface.
The next book I’ll quote too often: The Irresistible Revolution
Move over, Philip Yancey and Donald Miller. I’ve found a new book to mention ad nauseam, and it’s The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. As I mentioned a few days ago, Claiborne is a 31-year-old Christian who founded The Simple Way, a faith community in Philadelphia that practices a truly different (and intriguing) way for people to live together.
The Irresistible Revolution is 358 pages of easy reading covering Claiborne’s ideas on community, poverty, war, social justice, wealth, the consumer culture, nationalism and the Christian faith. What’s new here? Nothing. And everything.
Nothing, in the sense that Claiborne’s thoughts and habits come from a long stream flowing back through Rich Mullins, Tony Campolo, Martin Luther King, the Catholic Worker Movement, Anabaptist traditions, monasticism, all the way back to Jesus of Nazareth. Everything, in that Claiborne lives in today’s world and confronts the problems we should be facing (though in general, we’re not) - including the Iraq war. Claiborne went to Baghdad early in 2003 to minister to and with the local Christians, and was there during “shock and awe”.
In a book loaded with great content, two things about Claiborne make him impressive to me:
First, he doesn’t just protest, he gives positive alternatives (and lives them). He writes: “Whether in church or in circles of social dissent, there are plenty of people who define themselves by what they are not, whose identity revolves around what they are against rather than what they are for…Most people are aware that something is wrong. The real question is, What are the alternatives?” (p. 309) The Irresistible Revolution is filled with alternatives - some are nutty, many are quite compelling.
Second, although Claiborne offers a strong critique of the megachurch movement, he also shows deep and love and respect for the ultimate megachurch, Willow Creek Community Church, and its pastor Bill Hybels. When Willow kicked off a multi-million dollar building campaign several years ago, Claiborne expressed grief that so much money would be spent on buildings when millions live in terrible poverty. Claiborne and Hybels wrote back and forth over this, but (according to Claiborne) without defensiveness and with “deep respect and gentleness”. Willow went ahead with the project, for which Claiborne expresses sadness “that we had settled for another building when God might have had so much else in mind”. But then he adds a paragraph praising Willow for its “remarkable strides toward justice and reconciliation”, its substantial financial gifts toward relief for people around the world, and its continuing emphasis that “90 percent discipleship is 10 percent short”. Claiborne completely won me over with that single paragraph. (All quotes from p. 328)
The biggest takeaway from The Irresistible Revolution and from Claiborne’s life is that it is the layers of separation - between rich and poor, white and black, Christians and non-Christians, and Americans and the rest of the world - that perpetuate injustice and poverty. Claiborne shows with his life that he has the guts to tear down those walls. As did Jesus.
As shall we.
Marketing to the church: Rocky Balboa
This is a dated topic, but I write it now because yesterday someone gave me the poster you see here from the Rocky Balboa media push for churches. I’m grateful to the person who put it on my desk, and I plan to put it up. But the campaign itself, to promote Rocky Balboa to churches, seems odd.
I saw the movie, and commented on it here. It was good. Of course, I felt like I had seen it before, since it was the same movie as as the previous ones. But there wasn’t anything especially Christian about it, and the “good fight” Paul speaks of (quoted on the poster) certainly wasn’t a sixty-year-old man vs. the heavyweight champ.
Sylvester Stallone learned from Mel Gibson the value of connecting with pastors, although Stallone’s marketing push wasn’t nearly as far-reaching as Gibson’s, nor was it as successful. (BTW, when is some Hollywood director going to invite ME to a pre-screening?)
NPR covered the church marketing strategy here, and Christianity Today Movies abetted the project to some degree too.
I have no problem with Bible-based discussions on movies. I just see this as another warning to be careful. It IS flattering to be noticed by Hollywood. But it would be easy to be used.
P. S. - Just today, Christianity Today posted an article about movies and church marketing citing the dangers.
Priorities - the heart of this church
Priorities - the heart of this church - Dennis Mullen - 1.21.7
Listen (stream) - MP3 (right-click to save)
Series: Vision: Where MHCC is heading in 2007 (part 3 of 4)
Comments welcome (see link below)
A vanity post: Tony Campolo
I heard Tony Campolo, the well-known speaker, author, and radical Christian, speak at a conference a few years ago. His topic was gay marriage, and he ended his talk with an appeal to support children through Compassion International. As you can hear in this two-minute audio clip (which I’ve used at MHCC before), I felt he was speaking directly to me.
