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

I just finished reading the Steve Jobs biography, and it didn’t quite end the way I expected it to. But as the author, Walter Isaacson explained, it only made sense that the last chapter would be largely written in Jobs’s own voice. That’s the way he was. The quote above is from that penultimate section of the book.

I believe what’s coming (not yet written on the page) is a major backlash against Apple as a corporation. Following the monumental campaign to stop SOPA and PIPA (as well as other recent victories, such as the Keystone Pipeline), I believe one of the next major popular movements will be to reform Apple as a company and the abuses to human rights it has allowed (and is allowing) to go on in its factories in China.

Public awareness is reaching a tipping point thanks to recent news stories highlighting the ongoing environment created by Steve Jobs during his tenure as Apple’s CEO.*

And, the fact is, many of us who use Apple products are also people who care deeply about the environment — and Apple’s record on that is not spotless. We also care deeply about human rights, and this is where we’ll stand up to the company that we cherish because of the “amazing” products it produces that we use every day. We’ll keep buying those products, but we’ll demand change from Apple. We’ll demand that they do better, because they can do better. They can certainly afford to do better. So they must do better.

Start by signing this petition to tell Apple CEO Tim Cook to do more to protect workers in Chinese factories.

(*It’s interesting to note that Cook is challenging the veracity of these stories, but it only makes one wonder if Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field” is simply still in effect.)

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

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?

Bruce Reyes-Chow recently proposed this on Facebook (slightly edited by me): “In social media, as in church, worth should not be solely measured by the number of followers, friends or members but by the quality of the relationships that are built through each.”

Reggie McNeal has been talking for a while about “changing the scorecard” for how church ministry “success” is measured — moving from the old traditional BBB model (Butts in the pews, Buildings, and Budgets) to a missional model that prioritizes discipleship and relationship.

Measurability (Or Lack Thereof)
The challenge to Bruce’s proposition, of course, is the difficulty in which to actually measure “the quality of relationships.” McNeal has helpfully suggested three missional shifts in how we measure “success” for our religious/faith communities:

1) from internal focus to external focus — how much time/energy/resources are spent on maintaining the structure? and how much is actually used for “blessing” the broader community? making the world a better place?

2) from program development to people development — this is where we talk about “discipleship” and ask, how well are we “making disciples” of Jesus? (instead of the McDonald’s question: how many billions served?)

3) from church-based to Kingdom-based leadership — what are the leaders of our religious/faith communities focused on: maintaining the current religious system (which there’s a lot of built-in incentive to do)? or embodying/enacting God’s dream for the world?

I think there’s much more work that needs to be done on McNeal’s missional shift item 2: people development. The old language of “discipleship” and “disciple-making” has been well documented (especially by the evangelical movement), but the truth is that there’s a real need for the notion of “disciple” to be re-imagined and re-thought for a new era. Per McNeal’s own argument, “disciple” has become more synonymous with “consumer of religious goods and services” than it has with “follower of Jesus.”

But then how to do measure how much someone is a “disciple”? Or, if you’re thinking in exclusive terms, how many people are “true disciples”? Alex Absalom, of 3DM, is working with a megachurch in Ohio to help move them toward a missional communities model. He shares their measurement for ROI in this video: “How many people do we have in discipling relationships with us?” or, in other words, “How many people do we have actively wanting to follow Jesus?”

I think these are helpful questions, but a cynic might say, “You’re still counting butts (‘in discipling relationships with us’)!” That’s not enough of a shift. In his book Practicing the Way of Jesus, Mark Scandrette talks a lot about “experiments” in life-change and gives (in the supremely helpful second half of the book) suggestions for how to evaluate the success of these experiments: “A good experiment is specific, measurable and realistic, and includes asking when, where, and how often it will be performed. It’s important to have a place where you track and record your daily progress, like a spreadsheet.”

It may sound cold and analytical, but Scandrette’s 40-day “Experiments in Truth” (and others like it), which are usually done in community, as part of a group for accountability and support, have shown proven results.

Don’t Believe?
This is where I have to invoke social media marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk once again. (Seriously, go watch his keynote here — again — now, for the first time!) Gary V. has taken to routinely mocking those who ask him, “What is the ROI of social media?” His response: “That’s basically like asking, ‘What’s the ROI of the Internet?’ When you hear someone saying, ‘I don’t believe in social media.’ That’s like someone saying, ‘I don’t believe in the Internet.’ … And if you bet against the Internet in 2012, you’re going to lose.”

I have my disagreements with Gary on his assertion that social media is completely synonymous with the Internet, but playing off his thoughts in this video, I’d suggest that asking “How do you measure ‘discipleship’?” is like asking “How do you measure spirituality?” or “How do you measure Christ-likeness?” There’s no definitive way to measure it, but we all know it when we see it. A true believer is a true believer, and a Christ-like soul is a Christ-like soul.

And Gary’s point about ROI is also key to this discussion. To wit: If you bet against the missional shift in 2012, you’re going to lose.

Is it really best if we just say, “There is no measurement”? Or are there measurements for “discipleship” that are worth keeping/recovering/re-imagining? What can our religious/faith communities learn from the shift from ROI to #RonR (return on relationship)?

Introduced in September 2011 by Facebook to its 800 million users worldwide, the idea of frictionless sharing is to make sharing — what you’re reading, watching (TV, movies, or online videos), or listening to (via Spotify, for example) — automatic and effortless. Facebook wants to be the king of social sharing, because it’s a smart business decision — as user growth slows, sharing will continue to increase (at least doubling every year, according to Zuckerberg’s Law), especially if Facebook continues to make it easier and easier for its existing users to do so.

One of the interesting byproducts of this new innovation is that old news stories are becoming fresh fodder for online readers. As the Poynter Institute’s Jeff Sonderman astutely points out, “Sometimes a good story is just a good story, as long as it is new to you.”

I’m tempted to say something clever/deep here about the Gospel being the “old, old story,” but I’ll refrain. (If you want to share something in the comments, go for it!)

Instead, I’ll just suggest that it would also be a smart decision for our religious/faith communities to promote “frictionless sharing,” encouraging participation from the whole community — in storytelling, in worship, in decision-making, etc.

What do you think about frictionless sharing and religious/faith communities? What needs to happen to reduce/remove the friction? What others areas of church/community life could benefit from some friction reduction?