Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

total gross : if the principals behind it were not so real

love the onion, and love the onion news broadcasts. this one is just gross, it is scary to think of though as the principals behind making this product are quite real. tip jody

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

music monday : wild wild

in a bit of a repeat, i am throwing out another talking heads video. this is a long-distance dedication to mike, one of my parents who loaned me a copy of "stop making sense" for my amusement. i don't think i thought about it then, but over the years i have seen the brilliance david byrne. this video shows some of that radical thinking, showing off that parody stuff you seen more of over the years. you might even see some familiar, yet younger, faces.

owning our brokeness : in my inbox today

in the context of our conversations of today. i found the final quotes of this video "what if this is your welcome committee" to be interesting. another thing i found striking, people are still hurting, you can see it in their faces. video sent from a friend to my inbox, thanks liz

the cynic in me said, boy there are a lot of tvs in that place

music monday : hook brings me back

gotta love the blues traveler.

music monday : camera one

i had a pretty good week catching up with josh joplin last week. his stuff was buried on the church computer in windows media player.. how it got there i don't know. must have been bored, but it made for some good moments. here is josh playing one of his more popular songs "camera one" in some cafe. the audio is good in this, versus some of the cell phone footage that's on youtube.

my high school girlfriends mom : what the heck?

my mom sent me this video. apparently, my old high school girlfriends mom (dianne, in the yellow) was on korean television. they are great, even though i wasn't dating their daughter they gave me money every now and then while i was in college cause they are just cool like that. i'm still reasonably close with the family, though we haven't talked in awhile i had no idea she was part of this. from what i can tell these are people who have developed some fan appreciation for korean dramas, not sure if its television or other medium. i don't speak korean.

in other korean connections. jessica has a killer new tatt.

memorial music monday : billys goodnight

for this memorial day i wanted to do a little remembering via blog. billy joel's goodnight saigon has always been a fav of mine. for the normal video to this song.

weezer video : viral at its best : not quite music monday

i love this new weezer video (part cause i love weezer) but it encompasses all those random viral videos that we have come to know and love. brilliant! tip chris brogan. so as chris suggests, how long till this itself goes viral? as for music one needs to watch the video twice so you can focus on the music and not focus on picking out what viral video you have or have not seen.

enter sand man : via chello

for you metal heads. this comes via resonate media radar. introducing apocalyptica just watch and listen.

i might also suggest listening to one or unforgiven

putting yourself out there : be prepared for consequences

there is no doubt that you have heard of the 16 year old girl who had pleaded a case of rape in a video and uploaded up to youtube. a part of her confession struck me. a part where she indicated that uploading a video to youtube was her last hope. this isn't just for teens there is also the wealthy new york socialite who is being divorced by her husband. she decided to throw him under the bus about sex life and more in a youtube video.

though i do not discount that these people have hurt. it is interesting to see how the crowds rally for or against your hurt. there is account now that 'crystal' the 16 year old girl consented to her sex. so now videos are popping up bashing her in very mean ways. mean enough and vulgar enough that i care not to link to them.

so i am wondering why the variant opinions.. i know people can be mean and rub salt in wounds. but generally people are caring and would tend to hurting people. so why? the only idea i can come up with is that putting videos out like such are, in-fact, acts of aggression. yes, people need to be outed for misdeeds and held accountable. but to air it in a youtube fashion may be perceived as aggression back, and that diminishes the empathy that one might normally have for a victim situation.

i understand that victims of all sorts of mistreatment want accountability & justice for actions taken against them. when that justice is not what they imagined is youtube really the last resort? one might want to rethink that & be prepared for the consequences.

am i way off?

tuesday randomness : link love

a run down on semi-interesting things

• young adult ministry ideas
• five social networking sites of the wealthy via revcamp
• evangelical manifesto and covert colonialism
• the things i am playing around with on my mac now
• some results and next steps to the umc young clergy project
• for writers in the nashville area
• i have this problem too, glad i'm getting answers
• teens are buying less? really?
• fraggle rock on broadway
• the rich drink better but not more beer.. which is better? hmm
• how to reduce your church meetings
• what the church can learn from wikipedia
• are we methodists liked because we are too easy?
• greatest criminal to ever live? via jordon
• old article about online religion
• young girls are bound to suffer from depression
• 7 pleasurable ways to improve your reading
• 12 traits of successful bloggers
• needing to design a sunday school room
• christian hospitality gone wrong
• questions that spark fresh ideas
• seth on new standards for meetings
• pray for our enemies
• gen x & millennials meet boomers
• the lost art of meditation for the youth worker
• a most helpful chart for navigating movies
• throw dave a bone
• who are your mentors?
• play your instrument better via online
• review of gene robinson's book
• 20 questions to ask when contemplating stopping blogging

shane claiborne : way of life

shane claiborne on urban ministry. tip dale

mayer funny : a single tv show

i had seen this randomly on vh1 but forgotten about it. tip to jared for mining it out and reminding me of the laugh. the bear suit and fan group stuff is brilliant! not to mention a bunch of it is taped in nashville clip 1 & clip 2

music monday : yusuf cat

when i think of the music that was a big part of my life in those later teenagers years cat stevens would have to be somewhere at the top. to this day, i still sit listen, feel.. he was already yusuf islam when i started listening to his music, so i it is just how i've known him. so today, we do a little then and now of two favs.

peace train then, and now with a twist

father and son now & then

shift happens : moving into the unknown

i've run across this video a few times, last time was at the shift conference. i shared this as an add on to my presentation at the youth ministry institute retreat this weekend. i also showed this and a the last 10 minutes of this. the idea is that youth are heading into mass of unknown.. how are we helping to prepare them for this?

street preaching : the pope in a gay marriage

matt threw this at me in an email.. interesting

music monday : shut your eyes

Liberia President Sirleaf addresses united methodists : general conference video

yesterday the president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who is the first african woman president, who just happens to be a united methodist came all the way from africa to address the church body. what a powerful moment. i pieced together some of the snippet videos that were made available from the address. she's amazing!

in other thoughts, bill brought this up as well. we know that president Bush is also a united methodist. wonder why he can't come to his home state to talk to his church body? not that we call him a leader of the church. but it would be nice if he actually talked with his faith expression. come around to today, from what i was told, the pres sent a letter.. not the same value, but i suppose it is something.

john wesley : speaking on war

found this little gem on jeffodist's youtube channel. apparently the methodist church of gb is putting out some material on dvd learning series. this is someone enacting some john wesley action on the topic of war. first thoughts.. gee, i'm not sure i would have stood around and listened to john, but then again, in the 1700's that might have been the best gig around.

music monday : world apart

jars of clay is probably my one sustaining contemporary christian music group. i remember getting some preview album of theirs in 95 and have appreciated their exploration since. haven't always cared for all their stuff, but most of them i do. this is one of my favs.. though, being a live version it's a bit longer than the album version. still it is excellent

world malaria day : save a child today

today is world malaria day. i highlight a video from the nothing but nets initiative. take time to educate yourself and give to save a life today. our family has

update: rev j has some fun new videos on nothing but nets.

carry on singing

okay, so i didn't think i needed a tear jerker today but i keep watching and weeping. in spite of our troubles may we all, "carry on singing." thanks patti

what is always fun is to look at the comments. this one had me cracking up.

great blessed angel, to all the small little devils out there bulling an angel, like this, up yours!

road trip with the new christians

this is a really cool video of tony jones spending time with trucker frank. checking out the changing landscape from seeing town dynamics, talking community, and the message.. a lot is packed in here

tuesday randomness : just about everything under the sun

todays links come via.. well, everywhere and cover just about everything

• the various corporate type blogs via mitch or other general type blogs via church 2.0
• fundamentalism & culture tip tony
• mark driscoll tolerance rant
• take notice of twitter earth
• be a ruthless blogger! argh!
• emerging church survey, take it now!
• church video ideas has a lot of free ideas for you and me
• speaking of mark driscoll, a Jesus for real men
• introducing, the failblog, quite funny
• speaking of faith video; claiborne & colson
• end the war, against the lost generation in the church.. or out of the church
• when your youth leaders start an affair
• the indispensable church
• did i miss something? i think i did
• a bishop's top 10 for transformation as outcomes from our general conference
• save the date: south by deep southeast conference thingy
• with your cell phone try playing with: poll everywhere & utterz

more cell phone a special link from one of my 7th grade girls. check out phonezoo.com for free ringtones and other soundbytes. set up an account and it gets sent to your phone. best part, "free"

monday music : some talking head

i love the talking heads.

they like jesus but not the church : some poison

so all this various things have been swirling around me more the last few weeks about those who are without church. or as i know church to be, that of a spiritual community. why folks walk away and never come back. plus, hanging with dan kimball last weekend didn't help either. as i pondered i realized this isn't such a new thing.. i remembered this gem from my boy brett.

music monday : u2 babies

today's video comes via my older brother david's blog. he rooted out a bunch of old classic u2 videos. this isn't the best quality video, but it sure if funny to see the guys so very

shift conference : mark yaconelli

they just posted a highlight video of mark yaconelli talk from earlier this afternoon.

monday music : stay jackson

there are some voices and songs that i connect with and i rarely figure out why. jackson browne is one of those artists and "the load out / stay" is one of those songs. maybe it was the idea that i was a good singer when i sang along with his songs. maybe the depths of his songwriting i never understood, but there was still a resonating with the soul. i think the connection with this song is the appreciation for the people behind the scenes of a performance..

connect : david's testimony

at our church, we have found ourselves living out this seven year vision & discernment as one purpose "becoming apprentices of Jesus Christ." we have three loves, God neighbor and self. wrapped up in five practices of, worship connect grow serve share. all that to say, we are doing video testimonies on how we live our these practices. so with my digital camera, my battery ran out on my camcorder, and a few hours of late night work. this is our video for 'connect' sunday.

the music is by carl thomas gladstone and comes from his "the wesley project: volume 1" which is adaptations of wesleyan hymns. so there are parts of the music that might sound really familiar.

christian educators fellowship : look for me

so it is pretty much official. i will be teaching two workshops (social networking & another tbd) and doing a few other ongoing cool things at the christian educators fellowship conference at albuquerque new mexico in october.

cool, thing, current plans are that erin will be coming with me. i never make it out west, so this is a treat and i look forward to seeing some new folks and new scenes. so make your plans to look for me. &:~D

jonathon & a bunch of other local friends will be there doing stuff.

they have a running blog as part of their site.

for april fools : best office prank : hope to keep your job

from the folks who brought you the game, "hide and go poop" we have a new prank for those who live in the world of corporate usa. not sure how this would work for me at the church. but it would be fun to confuse a whole congregation.

monday music : getting the led out some

one of my favs of led zepplin

a virtual church : an old method : same results

  my district superintendent whom i respect a lot has mentioned on more than one occasion that he wanted me to input on this 'virtual church' project. i didn't know much about it till yesterday. hap, a pastor whom i also respect greatly in our conference sent out this proposal VirtualChurchfinally. i hate to critique or question in a final draft (note, the format of the final draft is due to me importing to google docs and not tweaking when converting to pdf, my fault, i'm lazy) but if you want me in on the project and ask for my input or energy to help get going.. i am going to be honest. so i went into writing this epic response. with all the other happenings, i am betting my bishop & ds are rolling their eyes as they read another email from me.

hi all,

thanks for including me in the special project. hap, thanks for all the work that you have done. i have a couple of questions and suggestions so if you don't mind entertaining me. apologies if this changes it from a final proposal.

i saw that we are anticipating a filming of bishop wills small group facilitator presentation this coming weekend. does this mean we are having any meetings before or after to discuss success, next steps, etc.? i ask this, as i am somewhat confused with where we exactly are in this process. i know i've been around this conversation, ie. i've heard the exploration of "virtual church," but until hap's proposal document yesterday, i had little clue as to what it was all about. so i'd be interested to know when a next collaboration event is.

some thoughts, take them for what you find.

when i first heard of the "virtual church" i was expecting something like the church of fools experiment by the british methodist church some four years ago. i know there was some discussion of bringing that back with more current technology, saint pixels was the name i heard of. jay voorhees would know more about that and i believe a lay member of blakemore umc (name escapes me) as they were both part of the church of fools project. the site is still active, i happen to visit it two or three times a year just to kick around in it.

i was encouraged to know this wasn't our route. though i don't think this is a bad idea, i do not think it isn't our endeavor. i like the idea of creating resources to help plug people in and direct them into the local church, but my quick question to that is.. isn't that what umcom or the united methodist publishing house is for?

a response i might hear from that is, 'well they don't do things specific for our particular context' which i'd say is fair. however, they do have resources that we probably should have some access to without spending around the 11-17-20,000 dollars that is budgeted out knowing the actual cost when things break or are needing an extra piece of equipment. a response i might hear from that is, 'well they don't loan out items or will not allow to travel' which is fair. but when the scope of this operation (as i am seeing it take) with work hours and the need to spread it out due to the fact we do not have a paid staff (only bill) to make this all happen, the need to loan out and then control equipment will be so great, a natural reaction would be to buckle down on controls and then it becomes more hassle then benefit. this might not be the case, but in processing it, is my natural state to troubleshoot.

i have an ultimate question of... have we asked churches what they need in these realms of technology? when i have taught tech workshops or talked with young people. the general rule is it isn't because of anything technological savy that has gotten them back to church. it is that old school personal invitation and long term relationship. it might happen over the net, but it is within social networking.

now, resourcing the church leader and/or reaching young adults in a community is different & i have some more expanding thoughts.

in the case of phase 2. there are many programs out there that will allow people to conference live and with images & video feeds already. a few weeks ago i had a 6 person conference conversation with social media expert joseph jaffee from south africa online, with camera feeds so we could all interact and see each other and converse in real time. only trick was some folks has to put on headsets to avoid microphone feedback. that software is called oovoo and is free (though that particular one is still in beta version). skype has been used for years. i use it with my family and can connect via computer webcams with great quality and no expense, well, a 70 dollar christmas gift for my mom.. i plan on using one of these softwares to do summer intern interviews from candidates across from knoxville to arizona. &:~D

those are just two options i use that are free. no cost and highly functioning.

i'd be interested to see how the wiki will be used. i am well aware of the function and benefits of a wiki, but i've never felt it was something a church should engage in. there is just too much control need to maintain an image of the church. but that might be handled a few clicks of the administrator, but then, it ceases to be a true wiki. you can say this is just for the team, but then all ideas then only come out through the team thus limiting the depth of idea, support, and need within a parish or the conference.

phase 3. i have thought we should be doing more web-empowered church propping for quite a few years now. i think the whole tennessee conference website should shift that way and a consolidation of the conference blogs would be easier to navigate. not to mention cleaning up that busyness that the site contains. a resource site doesn't need to be super fancy only accessible. clear pages, many & clear links, a fabulous search engine for the resources. probably need to have rss feeds ability which, last time i talked to mark (he's a buddy of mine) the wec software blog component didn't function better with readers (your young adult tech person who knows this is a resource they want to plug in will have this feed in their reader) as a wordpress software. this is remedied and might already be done, i can check with mark tomorrow. i know that i have done a podcast for youthworkermovement and the folks at lake junaluska that tech support the site were able to set up the podcast with a feed that gets to itunes.

i would also suggest that you "go where the people are".. blip.tv is nice the channel idea is cool, but youtube, myspace video, facebook video, google video, even godtube, all those are where people are hanging out (google video only because of the ease of the search engine). the best part about these things.. they are free & this message gets out to more people. a few weeks back to show our staff, i set up channels for our church http://www.godtube.com/hfumc & http://www.youtube.com/hfumc . nothing major, just got a dvd of two services, ripped 'em trimmed them, converted to downsize file size and uploaded them. i also uploaded a whole service onto google video (a 1 gig file).

this takes your content and spreads it, but in doing so you/we no longer are able to be gatekeepers to know who is using or not. which is a control issue. but in the scheme of thing, i never heard Christ say, 'take control of my church so that folks get the message right.'

to embrace spreading all that stuff out there is counter to a traditional method of communicating. case in point, there was some great sat night live archive clips a few years ago on youtube that the nbc lawyers were fighting to get offline, they never knew that it was their own marketers that were uploading everything. the marketers knew the audience and how to get more brand loyalty & build back that audience. i don't like marketing talk, but to discount the communication contained in branding is silly. and it is silly to not embrace the temple where the masses gather.

this is also to say, does anyone know the time it takes to do video? putting those videos onto youtube & godtube took probably two days.. the steps were simple, but rendering takes forever. not to mention the time invested in filming & editing that was done prior to our distributed dvd. larry nelson, of umcom, heads up our film team which takes three guys, two minimum (that is larry walking from one camera to another making stops at the feed console) to do sound and operate cameras. the man hours alone will take wear.

in the proposal piece, we have an article by marty cauley and there are some things i want to highlight for pondering as i close this darn thing called letter.

"Since their birth, this generation has been told they can change the world, and they intend to do it. But many are disgusted by what they see as the incongruity of spoken values and lived values in the church and the culture." if we don't want to give up control and spread this out then we really just holding onto a traditional framework of educating and resourcing that can (and prob should) be done by umcom & umph. it would be seen skeptical by the young people it is trying to reach.

"...the church’s token attempts to reach young adults are actually alienating rather than attracting them. They see it as hypocritical when the church states how important their presence is but develops program for them but not with them such as “90’s style” praise services. This is a generation of “doers” and not “watchers.” " i don't know how many of this advisory group are actually young adult age. i know i am not. i am the same age as some folks on this list i know, 33, and younger than most i know. if you want the young adults, and the ones that actually are on the net (consider me an exception cause i am a geek).. the 28-35 younger adult doesn't want to get on the net at home unless it is for work. they have been on all day already. you are looking for the 18-25 year old. to capture this networks like fox has embrace this "doer" that marty highlights by signing many of these young people making videos for their own networks and putting them to work. these teams should be made up of the people you want to attract and commission them with producing the content to meet the audience they know. to give "oversight" with an advisory board is just giving a message of who is actually in charge. you can find some people who work well as a mentoring editor/producer role, but to have a large team of folks, that wouldn't fly. mtsu has a nationally known communications program. i am sure there is a methodist or two in there who would love to be a part of something that has such promise, but we have to be willing to give it away.

the problem then is.. when the young people move into the church, how are they treated and what structures are there for them to plug into? this is a greater issue than just an electronic media.

if any of you have read "the hidden power of electronic media" by shane hipps (which is mentioned in the proposal, if you haven't it is my suggested reading) he would warn against doing tech stuff for the sake of tech stuff because we have tech stuff. leo laporte (techtv & this week in tech podcast fame) warned of that when jay voorhees interviewed him on "the methocast" a methodist related podcast.

what are the benefits but more importantly why? i think this idea needs more flushing to meet that why. so i look forward to some sort of meet up in the coming weeks to talk all this face to face.

shalom
-gavin

now, maybe some of these things were talked about. i just wasn't in on the action. so i'm throwing in my thoughts at the first opportunity

monday music : stone roses - she bangs the drums

going old school that most of you don't know. the stone roses i was introduced to by my cousins over in england. they apparently were huge over there. i loved them, but they never seemed to take here in the states. took a little youtube tour of my old favorites.

it's friday, but sunday's comin'

i like this. if you want to get the dvd package or just download the video.

rain : part of our noon day service

21st century teen love life

what you focus on dictates what you miss : revisit festival of homiletics

last spring a group of us local misfits pulled together to help lead worship at the festival of homiletics that brian mcalren was leading. during the worship or his speaking session he showed a video and it was one of those moments when everyone was baffled. i was packing up brian's equipment after the session was over while he was receiving people with their questions and thanks. many of the questions were "where can i find that video" which he apparently had some kids do. thanks to jonny, here is a similar video.

the simple statement from brian was, whatever you focus on dictates what you miss (paraphrase). if you are going to focus on this person or that person then you will miss the third person. if you are going to be focused on defending the bible then you might forget the people who need a lunch.. etc.. i loved it

anatomy of a picture

not my normal video posting, but i sure did like this