Posted via email from tony steward

Tonight at the Saddleback Worship Conference, Rick Warren will be live talking about the need for recovery and revival in our lives. Our family getting chance to be members of Saddleback Church for two years were huge in our growth and faith – anytime I get a chance to hear from Rick is a something I don’t miss!!

Here is the info you need:

Live Webcast | Facebook | Twitter | Home Page

This app was made by @km. You can go find Twitfiend Here.

That little phrase has embodied a turning point in my life for a couple of simple, yet for me, profound reasons.

First, I had always approached changes I wanted in my life through an emotional response. Losing weight, wanting to connect deeper with God, etc – all felt at time when I was feed up. But I then responded emotionally, trying to run too much at first, trying to eat too little, reading for too long, burning out. I would end up starting many times but not finishing because I couldn’t carry the emotion long enough to develop a habit. The habit wasn’t really the point -the theraputic feeling of trying was the quick fix.

And the other side was the understanding that no matter how “right” of a behavior was that I wanted to transition to, that if I wasn’t familiar with it then it would feel foreign and unnatural to me. Since it wouldn’t “feel” right I needed to learn to trust the known practices for developing that behavior and trust the science behind it – beyond how I was feeling.

My current example is that I have been working out consistently for five weeks now. The only reason I have made it this far is because I have focused on trusting the science behind the benefits of the program I am on – even though I’ve not seen the irrational results my emotions expect. And I’ve focused my emotions on the energy to motivate myself to keep going each day, and staying positive.

It isn’t a magic bullet, but making a change not just a response to a frustration, but a appropriately realized commitment makes a world of a difference.

Now a new set of horizontal skills are necessary because the priority of control has shifted to results. As an example; as churches we need to change from the set of skills that helped us have the largest ministry in a town; to a set of skills that helps us work with others to serve and reach the entire town.

All of the tools and environments are in place for this to occur – the only thing holding it back is our willingness to change our processses and habits from control focused to focusing on better results.

It is a changing from credit to contribution, from competition to collaboration, and from our kingdom to His Kingdom.

So, what part will you play?

It is likely that we will grow emotional bonds not only through technology but to it. That is if we allow that control to exist. The ability to properly interact with technology has more to do with emotional health and spiritual awareness than we think.

I am not saying this technology is bad or that some of the things I mentioned will be harmful. But at times I’ve become aware that my participation with tech and the social web has more to do with seeking emotional validation than “convenience.”

So, how tethered are you?

I have recently been doing a “productivity” reboot looking back through “Getting Things Done” and “The Four Hour Work Week” because the amount of things I have in my system has continued to expand and grow to the point where I have a hard time even doing a review under and hour.

What sorta “clicked” is that I have gotten fantastic at the capturing of POTENTIALLY valuable information and tasks into my system, and that many times the actual inboxes are in the system – the line between “best to do” and “maybe should do” has gotten blurry.

Simply, I’ve been skipping a step and just like it can get easy to assume all email is important if we always have it alerting us when something comes in, it is easy to assume everything I’ve put in my task inbox is worth doing if all I do when I process is to put it on a list – instead of stepping back and placing some perspective on it.

So, I have put the Omnifocus away, my inbox for tasks is now a notebook because it takes longer to write something down and because it is easier to just cross something off – basically it is harder to make it into my system . But also because it isn’t where I keep my project list and action lists, and as I review that notebook I am better at deciding if what I’ve captured is even worthy of making it on the list.

In this information age our ability to find “good” or “interesting” things to do will be overwhelming and the skill of being able to be hard-nosed on only doing things that are “great” will become essential.

With the launch of smart phones like the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3Gs – and my nerdy productivity ways – I started thinking about how effective mobile phones are at “results.” Now I know for sure we can look busy on our smart phone with email, twitter, facebook, etc buzzing all the time. But does have that access truly help us obtain more results that if we just batched our time with those sources of information while in front of a computer?

I know many of us think we need the smart phone for accessibility, but more often than not I think it is more that I want to feel like I am always that needed versus the actual reality that I am.

What do you think – does your iphone (not the phone part the “smart” part) actually make you more productive in ways that you couldn’t do if you didn’t have it?

I started thinking about how if I left my back this way the pain would decrease some, but never really go away and this area of my back would eventually degenerate to the point of chronic pain. It would affect the health of my entire body.

Read More…

I’ve been feeling this tension for awhile, and have been seeking to cut out big rocks whether based on the time I spend on them (like TV) or their personal importance (this blog). Part of what I am finally feeling and seeing in my experience, and it is something I’ve heard many times, is that good is the most significant enemy of greatness.

So, while I feel like this blog has had some extremely good conversation, some very good posts, and obviously a fantastic community I am deciding to shift focus on where I blog.

You may or may not realize that I also blog at the LifeChurch.tv Church Online blog along with our team there and others that contribute. It is a fantastic blog both for the online church community over there and also for anyone interested in the convergence of ministry and the social web.

Instead of trying to write for both I am shifting my focus for writing primarily on the Church Online Blog. In all honesty you will find extremely similar content to what you’ve been a part of here at TonyStewardBlog.com. And while I am keeping this blog open, because we have connected here socially, I just want to let you all know that I won’t be nearly as present here both in the posting of content and my responsiveness. I value the relationships we have established here, and as you would want to continue to connect you can find me very active over at the Church Online Blog.

My hope is that by letting this very good thing slow and take more of a back seat I will be able to provide some great conversations, some great posts and to continue to build into the already great community over at Church Online.

(As always, my sharing of links and conversation on Twitter is a place where we can connect in conversation and realtionship)

Here are some of the best blogs and books on the topic of social media in general. I’ve included some ministry ones, but these are the best resources I refer to on a daily basis – and you can contextualize for your situation.

Blogs:
http://internet.lifechurch.tv
http://churchcrunch.com
http://reachingtheonlinegeneration.com
http://ipiphanist.wordpress.com/
http://davidhelbig.com/
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/ (not ministry specific but focused on non-profits and a thought leader in the space)
http://chrisbrogan.com (not ministry focused but thought leader and heavy on practical instruction and experiences.)
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ (not ministry focused but an analyst from Forrester Research, big on both measurement, news & trends – another significant thought leader)
http://conniebensen.com/blog/ (not ministry focused but heavy on community management and very practical advice)

Books:
Now Is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World

But, here are the responses, if you have more please add them into the comments below.

An example is the thinking behind lanching social and interactive features to a church website and presence. Should you stick with something like Facebook or use a custom community solution like The City, Unifyer, 360 Hubs or NING? The different points that come up are wanting our community to be outward focused, if we create something just for us will it make people inward focused. If we stay in Facebook it has the challenge of less control and maybe not as specific, but it will help people be more outward focused. Comments come up like “we don’t need a Christian MySpace” “we don’t want to create another social network” etc.

But all of the questions and points being made in those conversations have to do with leadership, not technology. If we are leading our community to be outward focused, then that is where their focus will be, technology will only be leveraged to amplify our leadership.

You can be a terrible leader and use fantastic technology and only amplify the bad effects. And you can be a fantastic leader and use terrible technology and still have a tremendous influence because people that believe in you will figure out a better way. But if you can work on growing fantastic leadership and then learn to leverage technology in effective ways then you can rock the world

This isn’t because being a pastor in the church isn’t important, vitally important, it is just that all of us are part of the priesthood of Christ. Regardless of vocation, followers of Jesus are his ambassadors of love, grace, truth and faith to the rest of this world.

Vocations are vocations – God is able to accomplish his purpose in powerful ways through any of them and any of us in any place he chooses.

The best job in the world is the one that you’ve stepped into while in the midst of God’s will during God’s timing and that centers on your passions, gifting and purpose.

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What is it’s result on us as individuals, as a community and potentially on our faith?

Especially when I was at Walmart the other day and for a product they said they do a price match to any price I can find. That is “we want to put all the other businesses out of business” strategy and who wants all the culture and innovations that local businesses bring lost to the “borg” nature of Walmart? Its a weird place for me to find myself, because the supply chain and global changes that have occurred to make Walmart what it is – fascinate me and aren’t going away.

At the same time I find my streets looking more like ad magazines with the same ads and wild colors that I am quickly starting to ignore like ads on a website. And what sticks out to me is the non-franchise place that has a story, a culture and something “more” than the “copy paste”  of businesses.

That said, here are some fun pictures of the Collective Thread store. You can also find out more on their Website and Twitter profile and Store Location.

Why? Over the past few weeks I started to realize that I was following so many different “stories” that I was losing sight of my own. This gluttony of stories felt like an addiction to living through something with purpose and excitement without any of the challenges or work to get there.

I mean look at shows like Chuck. I think the major appeal is that it is just a regular guy who has this amazing hidden potential that no one can see and gives him this whole new level of importance and purpose. It is a show built around a whole generations desire that they could be the star of their own video game with the same excitement and purpose but little consequence.

Maybe it is just me, but do you struggle with this identity crisis? Where you ask “who am I and what am I really about versus all the other humans on earth?” Where you stop and it seems like your life has moved so far since you last took a look, and you feel spun around? Where you are frustrated and complain that you don’t have time for God, but you are able to stay up to date on the 6 + tv shows you watch that takes a weekly commitment of 6 or more hours.

The noise of all those stories and my weird overcommitment to them (come on even with DVR you get excited to catch that newly released show as soon as possible) was stealing clarity and commitment. It was diluting … me.

After just one week, I realize I’ve been starving my heart and mind. It feels like a personal awakening of sorts. Being an online pastor it probably sounds weird to hear what appears to be anti-media/tech talk. We can leverage technolgy and stories for incredible good, but we can also hide in them and lose ourselves.

And thanks for the link love guys!!