Wired Parish Blog

revolution conference update

just a reminder that we'll be at the revolution conference in seattle this friday and saturday. mucho fun. if you're planning on being there, make sure you come by our table to visit.

jim henderson from off the map actually recorded some podcasts for us this morning. jim's exceptionally cool and his 'casts rock. he should be one of the characters on 'heroes' . . .

(and by the way, last night's episode was good but not great. spoiler alert if you haven't seen it: i TOTALLY called the professor's neighbor being a spy.)

heroes

stop everything you're doing and watch nbc's 'heroes' RIGHT NOW. go to itunes, download the past episodes and watch it. i've already convinced myself it won't last past 1 season (see 'alias' and 'arrested development' for examples of shows that just can't last even though they were brilliant.); so i'm going to enjoy this one and only season for all it's worth.

search engine traffic

i find it quite humorous that the blog post that gets the most search engine-generated traffic is the one i did on the bachelor: rome a few weeks ago.

please tell me this is a joke

i'm stunned by this article in the detroit free press.

short version: chrysler is sponsoring a church tour by singer patti labelle called 'the gospel according to patti.' the tour is designed to promote a chrysler suv. they're targeting urban megachurches. the potter's house (t.d. jakes' church in dallas) is the first stop on the tour.

let me repeat: a concert tour. taking place in churches. DESIGNED TO PROMOTE AN SUV.

not only will attendees get to hear patti, but they'll also be able to test drive the suv, and apparently the suv will be prominently displayed outside the church.

best quote of the article. a pastor at one of the churches said: 'when you have the crowds we have, the corporations have a responsibility and an obligation to sow back into those ministries.'

news flash: they're not sowing back into your ministry. THEY'RE USING YOU. and if you don't believe me, pastor, just read a few lines lower. the chrysler spokesman said: 'it's not about religion for chrysler; it's about getting the chrysler aspen in front of a target audience.'

unbelievable.

richard dawkins on the colbert report

stephen colbert interviewed richard dawkins last night on the colbert report. you can check it out here.

dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist. (he's the author of the selfish gene.) he has a new book called the god delusion and was on colbert to talk about it.

i found it interesting that colbert was actually quite engaged with dawkins and was fighting back a bit with serious objections--not just jokes. colbert is a committed catholic; so that didn't surprise me totally, but i was grateful he didn't a) try to make dawkins look stupid and b) didn't let dawkins have a bully pulpit.

dawkins might be more properly termed an anti-theist rather than an atheist, and his new book apparently bears this out. (i've not read it yet and likely won't. i've only read reviews.) he's concerned with actually getting people to stop believing in god; so his atheism is agressive, not benign.

at any rate, it's an interesting interview and i was quite proud of colbert for taking a stand and pushing back against a really, really smart (albeit wrong in his atheism) cat.

why charge?

i've gotten a couple of emails over the last month or so along the lines of 'why do you charge for wiredparish.com? shouldn't this just be free?'

actually, i expected more than this; so maybe our reasons are generally intuitive to people. but it's probably worth laying out the reasons since i take them to be compelling.

1. your subscription supports our hosts' ministries. at the end of the day, we want our hosts' ministries to thrive. we believe in them and want to support their work for the kingdom of god. a large, large percentage of our revenue is dedicated to supporting our hosts. and we like that!

2. we don't want to be captive to an ad revenue model. if you make money on advertising, you're somewhat at the mercy of advertisers in terms of the messages you're sending. if company x want to advertise with us, but we're not really fired up about what company x does or stands for, we have a tough choice to make.

it's much simpler for us ethically to generate revenue from subscriptions than have to constantly evaluate if the messages of our advertisers is consistent with our views. that's not to say that we won't advertise something we really believe in, but we want that to be a choice, not something we're constrained to do because of our revenue model.

3. our profits support non-profit ministries. i haven't said this before because we weren't ready to say who we were supporting. we have 3 or 4 ministries that we're deciding between now, and i'll let you know when we've decided who to support. but the bottom line is that we are serious about supporting non-profit ministries. it's the right thing to do.

4. this is REALLY good stuff. can i say that? we're very grateful that the production and content quality of our 'casts are as good as they are. our 'casts are NOT recycled versions of last sunday's sermon (with the sounds of a baby crying the sanctuary) or last week's radio broadcast.

there's absolutely nothing wrong with many of the free 'casts out there, but we're doing something different. we're delivering (at the moment) nearly 20 extremely well-produced 'casts a week for $1.25/week from some of the most insightful and profound voices around. AND we're supporting our hosts' ministries. AND we're delivering profits to other ministries. AND i'm about to talk myself into raising the price! :)

keep it lively,

jay

threadless.com

i GOTTA have this shirt. problem is that it's sold out. but you can help, dear friends, by voting for a reprint of the shirt. just go to the link and let them know they need to reprint it. i will love you for it.

more love for the wp

check out worshiphousemedia.com. we're featured on their home page this month.

and make sure you check out the real christians of genius video while you're there. extremely funny.

mychurch.org

as a general rule, i'm out on the whole 'myspace for christians' vibe. several sites are attempting to be this, and i'm not a fan. that's for several reasons, not the least of which is that the last thing we need to do as christ-followers is retreat further from culture to continue creating our own christian ghettto.

that said, i'm kinda digging on mychurch.org. it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

it looks to be very clean (as an app, not in terms of content; although i'm sure it's clean in that respect as well). it seems to have tools that churches would find helpful (blogs, sermon archives, groups, calendars, etc.).

as i think about it, a couple of things come to mind. 1) it could be a REAL competitor to companies that provide content management software to churches. 2) it could save churches TONS of money in printing and postage if they get widescale buy-in from members to check the site for info.

i'm not sure if their primary goal is to be a connecting/communication tool to existing members, but if that's all they're doing (and it likely is NOT all they're trying to do), then that alone could make them very valuable.

couple of things they'll have to contend with (which i'm guessing they've already thought of):

1) getting a church community to use their site on a broad scale. i'm sure 10% buy-in from a church has real value. 90% has infinitely more. if they can figure out how to motivate church leadership to push a significant amount of their communication through mychurch.org and incent people in the congregation to actually use the site, then they've hit a grand slam.

(maybe branding the site for individual churches? maybe providing rss feeds so that people can get info delivered directly to them? i dunno.)

2) deciding if their growth is going to be driven by church members or by church leadership. this is an interesting question . . . if it's driven by church members, it will be more organic, but will likely have less cohesiveness. if it's driven by church leadership, it will likely be really cohesive (complete information, etc.), but it may have more of an institutional feel.

and maybe it can be a both/and deal, but it seems like growth can be driven either way, with both having plusses and minuses.

at any rate, i was sort of energized to find a social networking-type site that wasn't just trying to be another myspace for christians. this one looks pretty good, and i think it could really have some legs to it. i certainly hope it does.

we have arrived

we got a little love from jimmy eat world's drummer. interestingly enough, when i used to host a radio show, 'in the middle' was our theme song. saw these guys when they opened for greenday a few months ago. they completely rocked. with those two connecting points, zach and i are practically taking our families on vacations together.

i have a speck of sentiment in my eye.