like a fire

The second day was again more of a surprise. It is still a bit cool here and rainy. We met at the church and ate breakfast. Sand some worship songs and did some mission prep. We left the church for lunch and went to a local park to play “football” (soccer for us Americans). This was actually a lot of fun and we all got to really play though Jared, David and Trisha got to shine and Wade and I got to make everyone feel better about their skills. We got to hang out with some of the locals and that was good time. After that we went to peoples homes by the street and handed out more flyers. Actually they did, while the leaders came back for some planning (and blogging).

I am really proud of the team. They are working together and getting outside of themselves in huge ways. Chad and Nelson surprised everyone yesterday doing surveys when they had two people respond and say they wanted to visit the church.

Not much more to report today. Tomorrow actual camp starts. Pray for the weather and the teens to build relationships early.

We arrived yesterday in London at 9:30 AM and got settled in. After lunch we walked around and saw the area we were going to be serving in. Though it is somewhat cooler here and it rained most of the day, it wasn’t too different. The religious diversity here is amazing. Literally it’s Hindu, Muslim, and Siek all mixed together and on just about every corner. The big surprise of the day was a stop at a Hindu temple where there was a very vibrant celebreation going on. They had all the drums and harmonium and dancing, which was really great. Many of our team got into it, when we were all asked to dance to Hari Krishna. We of course knew who we dancing to and they knew too I think. Still they were very welcoming and did most of the verbal communication in English, which isn’t very common for them.

Today we did some team prep for the sports days and then went to the big marketplace callede High Street. We did some face painting which was great and set up tables with free books in many languages. We also passed out flyers for the sports camp during the week. That was really cool and it was great seeing our team jump in there. Jared Akers was especaillly gifted at working with kids and face painting.

We then attended services at New Life Masi Ghar. It was really great to see the diversity of the community represented there and half of the service was in Punjab and Indi language. It was especially interesting to have communion and see the explanation that has to go into it for the different cultures represented there. Bob Heppe did a great job and we were blessed to be there. Then we had a potluck dinner afterwards and got to mingle a bit with the people there. Our guys got seriously schooled in table tennis, but it was fun to see people drop their inhibitions a bit.

I am really jumping out there myself a bit and I think that is the best part for me. Pray for us to be bold this week.

I am leaving for London today and won’t be posting until I get back.

OK, I confess that I don’t usually read youth ministry magazines. Lately, though, I have ordered subscriptions to two of the top ones. First there is the very academic sounding Journal of Student Ministries (recently Zondervan) and then there is the very publisher oriented sounding Leading Student Ministries (Lifeway). I received my first copy of each this week and had to do a mash-up.

What’s this about?
No matter what they have beyond this, content is what I need. Looking at the titles of articles, I usually decide if I want to read it or not. Article titles from JOSM, Understand that You Don’t, Counting on Them, When the Time Stops, and Now Remember How. From the LSM Essentials of Small Town Youth Ministry, No Longer Little Children, Using Recreation to Draw Students, True Love Waits in Africa and Homosexuality?. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what the first set of articles are about. I started reading the first part of each article and wasn’t helped much there (more later on that). LSM on the other hand gave me a very clear view of what the article is about. One point for LSM.

The Eyes Have It
I don’t care how good your content is, if you can’t read the article, then it doesn’t matter. This is where I am really scratching my head. I’m not an editor or publisher, but I know what looks good and what looks like what a pre-school class worked on for a crafts project. LSM looks very professional and is very readable. It has a consistent look and good typeface. Thumbs up. JOSM is just a disaster. It looks like they used 12pt font, as many fonts as they could find (one blurb for wanting user submitted articles uses at least 4 fonts in the same box) and pictures behind text that render a lot of text virtually unreadable. I emailed the team at JOSM and they assured me that they knew about it and were working on the problem. Still it just looks really bad and is just a mess for the eye to follow. Hint: Editors are supposed to look at the magazine BEFORE it goes to print.

So after this, can you guess which one I am reading right now? I have to admit I really thought the LSM from Lifeway was going to be an advertisement for their products and the JOSM was going to be more about actual ministry. So far I would pick LSM. It didn’t have a lot of ads about their products and actually gave me some things to think about. I have yet to actually read the JOSM and I probably won’t. I just can’t bring myself to read something that poorly executed (especially after a day with middle schoolers).

If you have never heard of LSM, give it a try. I think you will like it. If you subscribe to JOSM, maybe you might want to reconsider. I will give them another try, but if the look is consistent will drop my subscription.

A List Apart: Articles: Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters Here is a great article on the problems of anonymity in online communities. It responds to a problem that is becoming more and more prevalent.

Anonymity is a double-edged sword when it comes to an online community. While anonymity may allow people to feel more free and disinhibited to discuss otherwise embarrassing or stigmatizing topics, it can also be a community’s biggest enemy. Anonymity allows people to hide behind their computers while saying whatever they want with little ramification. Psychologists know that online community is far more disinhibited than face-to-face communications.1, 2, 3 Pair that disinhibition with anonymity and you have a recipe for potential disaster.

This only affirms some of my experiences online. From years ago on an “emerging church” website to only a couple of weeks ago on an up and coming youth ministry site, it is just too easy for people to flame, spout off, and just be childish without some form of accountability and recognition of what they have done.

Many people who are really into forums and online community would have a lot to say about this, no doubt. They might argue the benefit of moderators and that poster’s profiles and how that prevents anonymity from becoming a problem. The actual practice of this is a dream though. Often moderators are involved in the conversations online or at least biased toward one person over another. Occasionally they take sides and then it really gets ugly.

The article suggets several solutions. My favorite is to provide a reputation system. This will get ugly, but al least there is some accountability.

Is it possible to actually have an “online community” in any real sense? Maybe, but the fact that anyone can submit only what they want people to know about themselves is the antithesis of real community. The question I have is, if this is true and the new generation loves authentic community, then why are they flocking to these online forms of community? Either they don’t really want authentic community or they don’t realize that they are being duped by sites like myspace, or possibly both.