This isn’t a note directly about those things, but about the things I am currently musing over. These are the three that I think of as I walk to and from work, drive to class, and just let percolate in my mind.

Transition into Post-Modernity

There has not been a shift in thinking like we are currently experiencing since the enlightenment. I believe this shift is accelerating due to the prevalence of information around us that forces everyone to be their own information gatekeeper (what they accept/reject and why). Many leaders in the church today condemn this way of thinking with a straw man argument (“They absolutely do not believe in absolutes”) creating a very hostile environment for leaders and believers alike.

• How can we graciously accept and grieve what the Church will lose with the passing of modernity (emphasis on church authority, notion that all things are knowable with proper technique, that we can know the mind of God, et al).
• How can we communicate the blessings of post-modernity (a few being: contextual theology, a focus on self discovery over conformity, broader acceptance of progressive revelation of God in scripture [different people knew God differently], et al).
• How can we have communities where moderns and post-moderns co-exist and thrive alongside one another.
• What does the role of a pastor look like in the post-modern world?

Jesus and Life Elsewhere in the Cosmos

There are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Even given the necessities of timing over billions of years it seems assured that there is life elsewhere that is separate and (potentially) distinct from our own here on earth. I believe that Jesus is the savior of all.

• Can the passion be replayed for another people? Was it done this way for us?
• Is there a biblical basis to limit salvation to humanity (homo sapiens sapiens)? Could other sentient creatures be included?

Salvation in the Multiverse (membrane theory or m-theory)

The deeper we as a people look into the problems with gravity (gravitons in particular) we are being led more and more away from a universe, into the multiverse [membranes stacked and continually splitting/dividing]. This is a similar discussion to the life elsewhere in the Cosmos but instead of a difference in location, it is a difference in dimension.

• Can Jesus save those versions of ourselves that exist in a separate dimension without a conscious knowledge of Jesus if myself in this dimensions does?
• Might God save those in a dimension where Jesus was never present?
• Could the coming restoration of all things involve bringing all the dimensions back together?

Do you have anything to share?

I know that the questions and descriptions are not that complete – I wanted this short. Do you have any thoughts or insights on these? Or am I the only one who spends his time letting his mind wander in this direction.

Photo: Bruno Gilli/ ESO

Choosing Bi-Vocational

This does not mean part-time pastors. This does not mean that don’t believe we could secure employment at a church full-time. We have chosen this because of the call we have on our life (to minister in France – more on this in the future). As we sat down 4 years ago looking into the fog of our future we were faced with one primary question – How will we go back to France?

There were several immediate paths we could have chosen from (going back with Agape, plant an independent church, or others) but we also had the opportunity for me to go to seminary with the support of my parents. The long-term the benefits of having my divinity degree in a country with more than 70% of pastors retiring in the next decade were quite obvious.

Accepting the reality that we would be here for at least another three to four years while I did my schooling our gaze turned to supporting our work in France. When I was short-term I was exclusively supported by a personal support network. I do like this approach, but to raise enough money to live in Paris proper, do ministry, and afford to rent space to meet in would take at minimum $14k a month for the two of us, more as our family grows. The reality that it would take at least a year to raise this support we looked to what we could do to offset this cost.

The Other Vocation

This is the hard part. My past business experience has involved event production, film production, writing for magazines, and web development (software engineering). As Jordan and I put our heads together an opportunity presented itself (it actually had the summer of 2007 prior to our graduation in december of that year) to develop software for the Church. We clumsily fell into this market, and slowly found our footing. By 2009 we had landed in a definite direction and were receiving confirmation from the market. We were onto something.

The company we founded is Fresh Vine and it helps churches better understand their communities. This fits the bill for becoming bi-vocational as the monthly subscriptions churches pay to use the service provide an even revenue for projections, and building our team.

I wish I could write the next section on ‘Being a Bi-Vocational Pastor’ but it will have to wait for now. Our plan is to cover 90-95% of our monthly expenses for ourselves and our church through our ongoing leadership role with Fresh Vine. Then supplement our income with monthly support of family and friends. As our community in Paris grows we will be able to take on French leaders into paid positions and develop them as pastors and leaders within the church much more rapidly than if we required it for our own sustenance. For now we are still at least 18 months away from moving.

Important Caviate: We do not believe what we are doing to be normative, or the biblical expectation for leaders in the church. It just happens that I have a highly desirable set of skills we have been blessed to use in a strategic way. This won’t work for everyone, and shouldn’t be expected of many. We are just excited this is the path before us.

Are you Bi-Vocational?

I would love to hear from you if you’re bi-vocational, and what your journey into that place has been like. Sound off below and I’ll be sure to read it and feedback.

At the heart of this issue is the vast resources involved in searching for and punishing those who violate IP laws. This is only made more complex by the lack of national borders on the web. Sites like ThePirateBay.com (based out of Sweden) have pages dedicated to the take down requests sent to them, but due to their physical location lack any jurisdictional authority.

Following this the US Congress (after more than $91 million in lobby money from Hollywood, media establishments, and others) drafted a twin set of bills SOPA and PIPA that would effectively place the whole of the internet under the jurisdiction of the United States by allowing the US Government to censor any site on the web at a structural level – a nuclear options since it destroys the whole site in efforts to remove specific IP content (not through a take down request, but by taking over their domain name without the owners consent removing the entire site from the web).

This legislation assumes that it is the responsibility for those who run websites to police all of the user-generated content for any IP violations, or be threatened with the loss of their livelihood. This threat to the web community has drawn an unprecedented response to inform all web users what our elected officials are attempted to do. The burden upon web-companies to police content will effectively kill all innovation and progression on the web. YouTube receives more than 8 years worth of content every day, how can this content be proactively monitored for IP violations.

Furthermore any site that link to a site hosting illegal IP content can also be shut down in the same way. One would not only be required to monitor the content their users submit, but also all the content on websites with links on their sites (including in user profiles and generated content). Overwhelmed yet?

Even more so since the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) states that every created work is implicitly copyrighted by its creator (every photo ever taken, every sound ever recorded with or without the ©) meaning that sites would, potentially, need to independently verify who the user is in the real world, and that they did indeed create 100% of the content submitted or that they are correctly using other copy righted work as allowed by fair use. After all if you can hear the radio in the background of a video you have violated their copy right by not getting their permission to reproduce their sound.

At the end of the day the expectation set by this bill is to overwhelming to think about let alone to implement. SOPA/PIPA will cause the web to grind to a halt and only those with deep pockets will be able to do anything online (again I refer you to those who are have lobbied for this bill).

The web is the new town square where ideas are exchanged and goods purchased – the huge difference is that it makes global local. Using old approaches to solve problems with the web will only move us backwards by erecting artificial walls. The internet requires new approaches to protecting each other, and IP.

Did I miss anything? What are your thoughts on SOPA/PIPA?

Video Explaining SOPA/PIPA:

Helpful Links:

Wikipedia on SOPA/PIPA
Google Against SOPA/PIPA

Understanding Copyright:

This has been a struggle for me since I understand the apathy. If our assumption is that Jesus is on the verge of returning and before this occurs there will be wars, death, collapse of society it would appear that everything is going according to plan. Why would we attempt to intervene if that very intervention might be in opposition to God’s plan, or even delay the second coming.

Yet a glance at history tells us this is not the case. The authors of the new testament assumed that with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD that Jesus would be coming back shortly, and yet we are still here nearly 2000 years later. This same understanding could be applied to the demise of the African church (700-1000 AD), the asian church (roughly the same time period), fall of the Roman Empire, the pillaging of Genghis Khan after his conversion to Islam, the sweeping of Black Death and  Spanish Flu, and many more localized incidents.

Instead I say we need to engage what is occurring in the lives of our fellow citizens (of country and terra) and look past the darkness to the coming dawn. The people of Israel went through many dark periods before Jesus arrived on the scene. Would it be outlandish for us to believe the same will happen again? While unpredictable, God does love patterns.

My Frustration

First the frustration. There has been widespread attempts to marginalize this movement of people. This has been done by attempting to hijack their slogans (We are the 99%, etc.) and calling them to get jobs. Those who have marginalized this movement have – more than likely – avoided interacting with their very clear core complaint. This also includes all of the spin-off advertising (Jay-Z…) and attempts to redirect the frustration into other pursuits.

Engaging the Movement

I do believe that they OWS movement is raising a valid social critique. According to many of the metrics used to track the economy we have left the recession that we were in for a number of years. The financial sector has bounced back, and yet this growth has not been experienced by those outside of the markets (read as most of Americans). This, as I understand it, is the precepts for the movement’s beginning. Why have the majority of the american people taken the brunt of the recession that one can easily argue was caused by a few people (who are doing better than ever).

The only other point I will make here has to do with structuralism in american society. Most people live unaware of the invisible networks and systems that inform their propensity to succeed in life. The way the game of life has been setup in america has certain rules, and by birth and good fortune some find themselves in situations to succeed more than most of their peers. I do not say this to imply that those guided to success should feel guilt for their good fortune, but if they stay unaware that these structures exist to ensure their success it becomes abusive to the majority who live without the same opportunity.

OWS and Myself

I write all this understanding full well that I am one of those who has been given more than the average american in terms of opportunities (emotional, scholastic, relational, fiscal, gender, race, etc). Most people don’t have the resources or connections to start a software company, get my masters degree in divinity, or to have the freedom in life to dream the dreams that my wife and I do for our future (they are audacious dreams, i know). But I believe I hear OWS asking those living the high life to accept these advantages, and then to accept their civic responsibility to help the next generation to be lifted up. My hope is that who I am becoming, and what I do will help to elevate those around me, and those whom I may never meet. As a Christian, and a member of society I believe this is my responsibility. That for me to love and serve God means to love and serve my neighbors with whatever I may or may not have.

Other Issues

I have not spent time here talking about social issues like amendment rights to expression, speech, assembly that have obviously been violated all over the country. America has always had the freedom of speech, it is just that for the first time the ability to speak and be heard is free. Maybe in the future I will write about these, though there are many other more qualified than me on this front.

Photos: BoingBoing

Over the last many weeks I have been watching my own life, and those lives intertwined with my own, to see how we view these moments. There have been many big changes in my life this year that fall into this category: my dad’s passing away, changing churches, and bringing on staff to help Fresh Vine grow (amongst smaller stories). The same goes for my friends, but I won’t write of them here.

I try to look at each of these being the beginning of a new story. My dad’s passing starts the story of my life continued without his council and smile. Starting to attend Mill City has been the beginning of many new friendships and opportunities. Fresh Vine is a different organization than it was a year ago (two new employees, many new clients, amazing opportunities, new branding, and more exposure).

Looking at scripture this plays out as well. When Adam/Eve fell in the garden it was the beginning of the story, not the end. When Christ died on the cross it was not a conclusion, but another beginning. There is life after the fall, there is life after Christ, and there is life after death. This is not mystical hogwash, but reality. Yet many want to look at Christ as the end of faith, yet I believe Jesus saw himself as the beginning and means to a new life. The life that God intended from the beginning and was never possible before Christ. Even death is a new beginning, eternity is not an end but another beginning. There are no last pages in life, only starting points to what is to come.

Starting points call us to live each moment with excitement for where the story goes next.
I can promise you it will be good, bad, and ugly – and I can’t wait.

I feel immense change is coming to America (and the Euro-zone) yet struggle to know how to respond/participate… Any  thoughts you could share with me?

Master of the Upsell

This is really the core of my issue with apple. Yes they are the most valuable company in the world for the time being, yet their user base is relatively small compared with the others at the top of that list. They sit in the top ten with companies like Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell (top 25 list) who sell to hundreds of millions of people every month whereas has sold far less. The biggest change that Steve Jobs brought to Apple, in my opinion, was the ability to create loyalty and then resell the daylights out of those individuals.

In my opinion this was the whole purpose of iTunes and the App store, it was to draw more funds from their user base. Apple has not successfully built a walled garden that far to many are content to play in. A garden where apple controls everything, and gets a piece of every sale. As I understand it even apple accessories must pay a royalty to apple. It isn’t that isn’t bad business (it does make a lot of money after all), but it has changed the technology game from being a more open, free, democratic process (where a great idea can take hold and change lives) to a more locked down regulated one where Apple has become a gatekeeper to success. Even the whole application craze fits into this notion by wooing individuals into a smaller environment without the openness and freedom of the web.

Weaker Hardware

Not going to spend a lot of time here, but their consumer level devices (phones, tablets, and MacBooks) have failed to keep up with the technological progression that well. The specs are just lack luster. The plus side is that since apple doesn’t license their OS (like windows does) they optimise for these weaker specs and generally get comparable results… but I just wonder why they wouldn’t put in better hardware and have superior machines.

Cradle to Grave Mentality

Instead of mastering a product like a phone (thing HTC) or a product category (like Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Dell, Microsoft) apple has built their company to control every aspect of their product from production through its entire life cycle – from purchasing in their own stores, to selling you applications and music through their app store. It isn’t that this convenience is undesirable (in fact many have been calling for it and attempting to replicate), it is that they do not allow competition on their devices (Android and Windows desktop do in contrast). It used to be that you could buy hardware and it was yours to do with as you pleased, this mentality has worn away at that reality. After all why would you create a device that if tampered with could make the device non-functioning (a bricked iPhone for example).

Disclosure
I do own a 15″ MacBook Pro (2.5 GHz) along with an iPad2.
I have also owned a 12 Powerbook G4, and a G4 Mirror Door tower.