Anthony was my guest for last month’s #missionalchat on Twitter*. Right after that wrapped up, Anthony sat down with me for a Skype videochat interview. It was on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 16), and Anthony spoke about his own personal family connection to Dr. King, as well as Dr. King’s larger legacy and influence on Anthony’s own missional activity through Mission House in Salisbury, North Carolina. Here’s that interview:

Read a detailed transcript of Anthony’s insights from the January 2012 #missionalchat over on the Emergent Village Voice blog.

*Tune into #missionalchat on Twitter on Monday, February 20 for a discussion with Chris Smith (@ERBks) about his new e-book The Virtue of Dialogue: Conversation As A Hopeful Practice of Church Communities.

The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced something called “A Joyful Path,” but it seems more geared toward churches than homeschool families. (We’re actually going to start using “A Joyful Path” with the kids in Open Hearts Gathering.)

Chris Smith pointed me to Peter Enns’ book Telling God’s Story (with teaching and student guides) and, from the same publisher, The Story of the World series. Chris uploaded his review of Enns’ book to the Englewood website.

Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, from Seattle, replied: “When we homeschooled, we brewed our own. Godly Play + Howard Zinn + Paulo Freire + Gloria Anzáldua + bell hooks + unschooling. Our daughter has been in public school for six months now, after four years of homeschooling. She had some struggle with some of the way the school did the academics. However, her teachers and fellow classmates know her as a compassionate, cooperative, justice-seeking student. She could speak with pride and authority about her Puerto Rican/Latino heritage, and, better yet, out of a group of 50+ kids (3rd, 4th and 5th graders) she was the only one who knew and could speak about Bob Marley and reggae music.”

One person suggested Waldorf Schools homeschool material.

Chris Hill, from Albuquerque, replied: “I use a standardized form of academic curriculum, and the progressive Christian part is when I have real discussions about spirituality, religion and Christianity (including the philosophical, theological, and historical) with my kids. Believe it or not, we have several discussions a day that pretty much naturally occur. I do most of the initiating, and my oldest brings things up from time to time. I offer my input, others’ input in terms of possibilities, and encourage my kids to think deeply, but not to fret. Life is more about growing into a fuller sense of Self than it is ‘getting it right.’”

Does any of this help you? Do you know of other resources that you’d suggest adding to this list? Please post in the comments!

Here’s my attempt at curating the content coming out of #EVTC:

Chris recently began hosting TLDR (The LockerGnome Daily Report), which streams live from his home office in Seattle and is then edited into short segments for broadcast on his YouTube channel. It’s an innovative use of live streaming and recorded Web video, and his ability to produce voluminous (and consistently good) content is impressive.

Recently, Chris posted this delicious morsel from TLDR, calling on his audience to help him craft the content for the daily show and making some salient points about how online content will be shaped now and in the future.

As someone who is very much interested in the intersection of TV and social media, Chris’ comments in this video are very intriguing to me: “This is a television show. … Watch it wherever, dude, I don’t care. You can watch it on a real TV set, a piece of hardware, or a smaller screen. It doesn’t matter. Television is, to me, anymore (sic) an ethereal concept.”

This seems to jive pretty well with the NPR report I heard recently about the recent changes to YouTube to ramp up millions of channels on YouTube to compete with traditional broadcast and cable TV.

Check out Chris’ thoughts on the future of TV and content curation: “Curation is the next level for publishing. You! You are the next level”:

Check out my recent thoughts on content curation.

Check out my YouTube channel, which I’m going to be giving some more love in 2012.

Now if I could just get my own damn TV to connect to the Internet so I could watch YouTube …

Is your TV connected to the Internet yet? Why or why not? Do you agree or disagree with Chris Pirillo? Or what’s your YouTube channel? Share in the comments!

Pete Cashmore from Mashable posted this interesting thought on Facebook Monday: “No industry will be spared from the changes that digital technology brings. This is like the Industrial Revolution condensed into a couple of decades.”

That’s a pretty sweeping proclamation from the world’s foremost experts and observers of the digital revolution. There’s a (very fast, compressed) revolution going on.

Then, Landon Whitsitt posted this fun little video of Seth Godin on his blog:

In the video, Godin declares, “The industry is dead!” to which Landon added, “regardless of what industry you’re a part of. That means the church, too.” Bam.

Point. Set. Match.

Sound scary? It is. And it isn’t. No industry will be spared. Viva la industry!

Adaptive Challenges
Well, on Wednesday, Seth Godin posted this on his blog:

“When the world changes … It’s painful, expensive, time-consuming, stressful and ultimately pointless to work overtime to preserve your dying business model. … Again and again the winners are individuals and organizations that spot opportunities in the next thing.”

At the “Re-Mind and Re-New” conference in Tulsa this week, I had the privilege of hearing missiologist Craig Van Gelder talk about three key practices to developing a missional imagination: 1) dwelling in Scripture; 2) re-entering the neighborhood (as a learner, not a do-gooder); and 3) working at adaptive challenges.

It’s that third point that I want to tie into this conversation about the devastation of existing industries. The world is changing. The world has changed. Trying to fix things the way they are now is not necessarily worth much effort. That’s why we are changing the conversation from “revitalization” (getting back to the way things were) to “missional transformation” (becoming something completely different).

Instead our time may be better spent working at adaptive challenges. Van Gelder proposes this question: What issues are we currently facing for which we do not have an answer but we must address if we’re to have a future? The proper response is to become a learner, which actually frees us up to experiment and not be afraid to fail. “Adaptive challenges mean that we don’t have an answer. You know it’s not an adaptive challenge if you have an answer.”

Adaptive challenges. No set answers. Creating the future. The next thing.*

*Not in a commodified, consumeristic way, though. The goal isn’t relevance. The goal is faithfulness, being faithful to the Gospel in our time and our place.

So is Twitter really “the future of media”?

I have to wonder how long Twitter can continue to capitalize on the 160-character limit of standard text messages, created by communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand. With all the advances in technology, aren’t we ready to abandon such archaic limits on how much data can be sent in a text message?

Well, the reality is there are over 5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide. But the actual number of smartphones — capable of handling larger amounts of data — is still only a fraction of this number. I wrote about this explosion of global mobile phone use in my chapter for the Wikiklesia book, which at the time (2007) boasted these stats:

59% of mobile phone users are in developing countries, making cellphones the first telecommunications technology in history to have more users there than in the developed world.

Africa is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world; growing almost twice as fast as any other region. While only 200,000 households in Kenya have electricity, there are already 7 million mobile phone users.

As long as mobile phones that are not smartphones dominate the world market — and as long as the GSM keeps the SMS standard the same — Twitter will be the platform for extending and broadcasting these short messages onto the Web, social media, and beyond. (Sorry, Plurk!) And that is definitely an important part of the future of media, if not the whole kit and kaboodle.

Back in December, the conversation was around the terms “incarnational” vs. “missional” for the type of ministry we’re talking about in the emerging church. I had the privilege of doing that first experimental #missionalchat with Kathy Escobar, co-pastor of The Refuge and author of Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus.

Afterward, Kathy was kind enough to join me for a short Skype videochat interview, to continue the conversation from our online Twitter chat and to talk more about the themes in her book and the kind of ministry she is committed to modeling for others. One of my favorite quotes from Kathy in this interview is this: “To me, downward mobility is not really about money. It’s about this attitude of the heart.”

Here’s my interview with Kathy Escobar (the lighting wasn’t great on Kathy’s end, but the conversation was enlightening!):

I’m going to be doing another #missionalchat tonight at 9pm ET with Anthony Smith, a.k.a. Postmodernegro. There’s no one I can think of who most embodies the ongoing spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his prophetic speech and pastoral ministry, than Anthony.

Anthony, Rod Garvin, and I did a podcast together several years ago entitled “Practicing Pentecost” for the Wired Parish network. Anthony’s writing has developed a faithful audience on his own blog, as well as through his contributions to several Emergent books, including An Emergent Manifesto of Hope and The Justice Project.

Anthony and his wife Toni are lead organizers of the Mission House community in Salisbury, NC, and I’m grateful to Anthony for his ongoing role on the Leadership Team for TransFORM Network.

I’m excited to focus our #missionalchat tonight on what the missional church must learn from the teaching and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Please join us on Twitter tonight from 9-10pm!

Have thoughts to share on Dr. King and the missional church? Have questions for Anthony Smith (@postmodernegro)? Please tweet using hashtag #missionalchat!

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice

My kids have read far more of the best-selling young adult fiction books than I’ve read (or even seen the movie adaptations of) the best-selling adult non-fiction and fiction books. The Wimpy Kid and Hunger Games books are both popular in the Knight household, that’s for sure.

What I Read in 2011
I did read some really good books in 2011 (not all published in 2011), and here’s a rundown of the ones I would definitely recommend (in no particular order):

Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus by Kathy Escobar – more here

Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love by Mark Scandrette – more here

Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All by Landon Whitsitt – more here

Journey in the Wilderness: New Life for Mainline Churches by Gil Rendle – more here

The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement by Tony Jones – more here

Toward a Hopeful Future: Why the Emergent Church Is Good News for Mainline Congregations by Phil Snider and Emily Bowen

A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian McLaren

Poke The Box by Seth Godin

My Top Pick of 2011
But my pick for best book of 2011 would have to be …

Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

Subtitled “A memoir … of sorts,” Ian’s second book (Chasing Francis was his first) is the powerful true story of his own childhood, growing up in the northeast with a mostly absentee father — who just happened to work for the CIA. True story. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s just an amazing read. But I’m not doing justice to how great this book is, so go read the review by David Zimmerman, who sums it up with this: “We join Cron in his search for a safe home, a caring father, redemption from a deeply scarred past, even though his story is entirely unique; it is in fact through his unique story that his readers are graced with a fundamental truth of the universe: love always stoops, and faith always jumps.”

Yeah. That’s good.

For something a little serious, check out this clip of Ian doing a reading at megachurch Willow Creek Community Church. Or for a good laugh, watch Ian doing a reading from the book at an Evening of Stories at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville:

Shaun’s new project is called HopeMob, and the idea is simple: Connect people in need (who have limited social networks for reaching out) with generous strangers who are already networked and ready to be mobilized to meet those needs. It’s like a flash mob for philanthropy.

Mobilizing the Masses
Over the past few years, we’ve seen all kinds of wonderful stories about people finding help from masses of strangers online when their stories went viral. Remember Ted Williams, the man with the golden voice who was homeless and begging on a street corner, because he lost his career and everything to his addiction to crack cocaine? His video spread like wildfire across the Web, which led him to opportunities to work again and, most importantly, get into rehab where he appears to be doing well one year later!

These things really do happen, but up until now they’ve been random, uncoordinated, unpredictable. There’s still a real element of unpredictability with HopeMob, but there’s also a sense of coordination and focus and, with those things in place, greater possibility. HopeMob will connect masses of people ready to be mobilized to do social good, which means quicker response times and larger impact leveraged from even greater participation.

Sparked by Stories
There’s also going to be a fun social gaming aspect to the HopeMob website, which is what led Mashable to make its Reddit comparison. Stories will be shared, and HopeMobbers (HopeMobsters?) will be able to vote the stories up or down in the “cause queue,” by using what will be called “story points.” You’ll get 50 story points for joining HopeMob, more if you donate generously to the Kickstarter campaign right now to help get HopeMob off the ground.

I’m proud to say I’m a part of it (along with hundreds of others from all over the country and around the world) — and I’ve pledged to help financially support the project, as well. Shaun’s vision is that 100% of the money donated through HopeMob will go to the projects we take on together, a la Charity Water’s 100% commitment.

Shaun has raised over $5 million for other causes in the past. So far HopeMob has raised over $25,000 toward the goal of $125,000 in startup funds. He believes HopeMob has the potential to impact many more lives than the work he’s done with his previous projects. His passion and vision is infectious, and I can’t help but believe the best is yet to come from Shaun and from all of us as we work together to make a difference in this world, one story and one HopeMob at a time.

Call me a Hope junkie, here are just a few other Hope-y organizations I’m proud to be affiliated with:
Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation (where I work full-time)
Children’s HopeChest (fantastic orphan care and anti-trafficking organization)
HOPE for AIDS (international HIV and AIDS projects of SIM)

At the same time, there’s been a similar shaking going on in Christianity, and I’ve noticed a similar evolution of language for what to call this too — from “alternative church” to “alternative worship” to “ancient-future worship” to “emerging church” to “missional church” and now “missional community formation.”

I predict the conversation about tech lingo will continue to parallel — and deeply inform — the conversation about Christianity and church (how we organize ourselves into religious/faith communities), just as the revolution sparked by the evolution of the Internet is re-making other sectors of society, such as education, journalism, and publishing.

Religious Professionals = Social Media Gurus?
One example of how this is playing out that I find really fascinating is that many of the thought leaders and practitioners of the emerging missional church movement are now operating as social media consultants. I include myself in this category to some degree, but also friends such as Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt (who collaborate on Social Phonics), Kimberly Knight (no relation, except in Spirit!), Adam Walker Cleaveland, and Bruce Reyes-Chow, just to name a few.

Even my Emergent friends who don’t “do this for a living” are still very tech-savvy and heavy users of social media, and so the two topics naturally overlap in many ways.

Here’s a quick look back over the series on the language of participatory church: curation, context, frictionless sharing, and ROI.

As you look over what’s been talked about, what do you see that’s missing? What other social media terms have emerging church parallels? What additional topics could (and should) be explored in this language series?