Wired Parish Blog

Get Your Very Own Email Assistant

Check out IWantSandy.com. Sandy serves as your very own email assistant.

I'm beta testing it now, and so far I'm extremely impressed. I run a great deal of my life through Outlook, and Sandy looks to leverage my inbox in some powerful ways.

CC her on an email about a lunch appointment. She'll email you an iCal file and send you email and txt reminders 15 minutes prior.

Forward her an email with a signature line. Sandy emails a vCard back to you with the correct contact info.

Attach any tags you want to any info, contacts, appointments, etc. Then send Sandy an email requesting all the data with a particular tag, and she'll email it right back to you.

Send yourself a Jott, forward it to Sandy when it lands in your inbox, and it's added to your to do list.

Extremely impressive so far.

You can enter your email address at IWantSandy.com, and you'll be added to the queue for a beta invite.

Missional Communities: Input Wanted

Putting together a side project. Looking for input/feedback from people who are involved in/leading missional communities. If you'd be open to a few questions, I'd love to drop you an email. You can email me here.

The Problem with Preaching

Been preaching quite a bit lately. Gave two talks this morning at my beloved church. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

However . . .

I gotta confess that preaching wears me out. Why? Because it's not a context where people can easily talk back, ask questions, or disagree out loud.

I'm fairly intentional about putting together talks designed to make people think, question, even disagree. But preaching at a Sunday morning church service isn't the best venue for that kind of content.

Not sure what to say about that.

A Facebook Profile for WHO??

I talked Reggie McNeal into creating a Facebook profile. I didn't even have to twist his arm too hard. Make sure you track him down.

Metallica- A Reflection on Mortality

Watching Metallica play 'Enter Sandman' from Live Earth. (God bless TiVo.)

Please understand: This was my FAAAAVORITE band as an early teen. Listening to 'Creeping Death' or 'Trapped under Ice' still brings a tear to my eye. And let's not even talk about 'The Four Horsemen.'

The good news is they are still going at it like crazy. Great performance. Loved it.

The bad news is that somewhere along the way THEY GOT OLD!

Lars Ulrich's hairline is in heavy reverse. Kirk Hammett's isn't far behind. James Hetfield's beard is white! WHITE!

But wait! If they're old . . . and I've been a huge fan since they were young . . . does that mean . . . I'm . . . getting . . . old?

I'm now scrambling to find 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' in iTunes to drown out the reality of my impending battle against grey and disappearing hair.

(Note: Metallica's first album was 'Kill 'Em All.' Anyone know who the original guitarist and bassist were on that album? ANNNND does anyone know what Metallica WANTED to call the first album?)

Reggie McNeal Killed the Radio Star

2 days of meetings w/ Reggie McNeal. Helping us thinking through a substantial project we're working on.

Couple of thoughts:

1. I love this guy. Hopefully that comes through in the podcast I get to co-host. But I gotta say--really love the dude. Love his heart. Love his mind.

2. He pushes and pushes until he makes you (me/us) uncomfortable. If the limits of our comfortability had been 'yeah, but we don't want to sacrifice chickens over a flaming altar of Jell-0,' he would have suggested we do that just to make sure he had found the limits.

Shameless Plug

Just a reminder that if you subscribe to the WP blog feed, you get daily doses of my del.icio.us links. Some pretty cool stuff shows up there that I don't take time to blog about but is interesting nonetheless.

Just looking out for your well-being. Your life could possibly be whole and complete with a click of a button.

VBS Redux: The Emergence of Winston Wolfe

Apparently, Matthew is doing a four-stop VBS tour this summer. I was thinking 'big time overkill' on the way to Holy Trinity Lutheran this morning, but his strong response to the sink-or-swim nature of walking into a new classroom full of people he doesn't know is truly remarkable. He's done this four times this summer, and I've watched him each time on his first day. Very confident. Very comfortable. I'm really impressed. The dude is growing up.

But that's not my point.

My point is that upon arrival at check-in, we ran into the 'we don't have his registration' problem again. Different church. Same story. I am immediately thinking, 'No way this happens twice in a row with two different churches. We're the common denominator here. We're the problem.'

Turns out, his age was recorded incorrectly. He was pre-registered, and they found it after a few minutes of looking.

Here's the kicker: When it was apparent there was a problem, the lady helping us stepped away, conferred with someone else, and the someone else came back to us to say, 'I'm Winston Wolfe. I solve problems. Yours is solved.'

She gave off a 'I'm in charge around here' vibe; so I'm assuming she was the director. Didn't ask. Didn't need to. All I cared about was getting the problem fixed, and she did it.

The place was an absolute madhouse. There was a line out the door of people registering. Much crazier than the previous VBS I blogged about. Yet, Holy Trinity Lutheran--God bless 'em--had a system in place to handle curve balls when (not 'if') they occurred.

Learn it. Know it. Live it.

(Read about the previous VBS saga here.)

Making Twitter Valuable

I've never figured out why Twitter is so popular.

If I want to know what my friend Bill is up to, I'll just call him. And keeping track of where A-List Silicon Valley types are eating lunch or when they're going to the grocery store just seems ridiculous.

But Live Earth has it figured out. Their Twitter feed is actually valuable. They send out ways for you to reduce energy consumption, lower your carbon footprint, etc. Very practical. Very cool.

Twitter has a future--if for no other reason than by the sheer volume of people using it. But the future is likely not in keeping tabs with what your friends are doing right this very second.

Instead, it's in businesses, organizations, and individuals providing short (140 characters or less!), practical tips, advice, and announcements.

(BTW, I'm experimenting with this; so you can find my Twitter page and feed here.)

Pownce Invites

I have 6 Pownce invites. Email me, and I'll send you one for as long as they last. The only caveat is that you have to promise to send out all of yours as well.