like a fire

MS Ipod Parody - Google Video I don’t know how I missed this, but it is hilarious. Basically, this video outlines the difference between Mac and PC. Mac goes for the consumer being able to do most things they would want to be able to do very well. The PC, well, they would like to be able to do everything that anyone can imagine and the concept of doing it well is up to the user.

Again, process ministry should take lessons from this. Rather than try to educate everyone on everything they should do and let them decide what is “well” or “good”, we should focus on what all believers will want to do, and do it well. What is that? More later.

Creating Passionate Users: Highlight quotes from SXSW
This site always has some great ideas that I listen to very closely. It is geared toward marketing and leadership, so of course it applies to us guys in the church. This from one of the keynotes they attended from a t-shirt company called threadless.

“Community replaces advertising.”

“The community could kill Threadless… we don’t think they will, but if the community thinks we deserve to die, we probably deserve to die.”

“It’s not like our idea to make stickers came out of some big marketing plan. One day someone said, ‘Let’s make stickers cuz that would be awesome.’ so we did.”

“We turned down Urban Outfitters, because if we put our shirts there, then we’d just be one more cool shirt on a rack of other cool shirts. There would be no story and no community. Then our work becomes just cloth and ink, and that’s not why we did it.”

Why is it that commercial companies encounter huge success when they do what the church ought to be doing but isn’t known for?

I hate being sick. Of the things that we suffer in this fallen world, being sick is the thing I hate most. That and other drivers. So instead of being my carefree, happy-go-lucky self, I’m stuck doing lines of sudafed and advil (take as directed, mainlining these will not cause them to work any better).

On the bright side, we finally got a car to replace the one I totalled five weeks ago. We are now the proud owners of a minivan. I actually like it. Either I’m sicker than I thought, or I’m just getting comfortable with names like Graybeard.

Eventful: Calendars Well I haven’t blogged any tech stuff lately and mostly that’s because I have just been busy. But here is a great new web app that could be really great for you and your ministry. Basically, it is an online calendar of events. You can view events locally, regionally or even nationally. You can search performers, cities, venues, etc. and, according to whether people actually look at it, get some publcity out of it. Thanks Hash.

Church Marketing Sucks: McPassion: The Church Marketing Parody

First there was monster trucks, then there was the McPassion. This re-presentation for Lent is an over the top 4 minute video parody. You may have trouble getting it because they have a lot of traffic suddenly. I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself if it is too far. However, I wonder what the future of this shock marketing is for the church. Maybe this isn’t too far and maybe it is, but how long will it take for someone else to go farther. We have probably all seen how someone has taken the context of a message too far. Is this the beginning or is it a new era of it being OK to express yourself in many ways? Even heretical ways?