Archives for category: communication

Tweet This!

September 26, 2011 //

News of author and pastor Rob Bell leaving the church he founded, Mars Hill in Michigan, has set off another round of tweets and updates in the Christian blogosphere and Twitterverse. While this particular flare-up doesn’t seem to carry the particularly nasty tone of the whole Love Wins controversy, a few prominent church leaders have already taken to their keyboards with harsh words (which I won’t be quoting here).

While the cynic in me wants to wipe the dust of this latest Christian dust-up off my feet, particularly in light of some of the important national and geopolitical happenings this week, this news raises some significant issues for the Church and how we’re called to be the people of God together Read the rest of this entry »

Categories church, communication, culture, leadership, ministry

Collaborate for Good

March 31, 2011 //

The Idea Camp tribe has been so life-giving to me over the last couple of years. This amazing group of compassionaries has inspired, challenged, and partnered with me in ways that have changed me and compelled me towards concrete action for good — to demonstrate the reality that God has not given up on the world by becoming better expressions of God’s love for the world.

I loved being a part of #Ideation11, even if it was only for a day. While the Ideation Conference is not strictly faith-based, this gathering of amazing idea-makers, creatives, and doers from both the nonprofit and business worlds moves powerfully together for good. A huge thanks to Charles Lee and the team for bringing together such an incredible gathering.

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Categories church, communication, community, conference, hope, innovation, justice, leadership, nonprofit, social media

Fight the (Good) Fight!

February 25, 2011 //

As Eugene Cho commented recently, it’s altogether too easy to act like a jerk in the name of “contending” for the Gospel.

I think Rob Bell’s characterization of broader American culture is unfortunately true of the church many times as well: “There is this low-grade boiling rage that many people carry around with them everywhere they go.”

[Ironic edit: The aforementioned Rob Bell has become a trending topic on Twitter because of a group of people who are adamantly opposed to him, filled with the typical name-calling, gnashing of teeth, and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hysterics typical to such trending topics.]

Apologies for sounding like a stereotypical, institution-suspicious Xer when I say this (but totally not apologizing for still nerding out over The Breakfast Club, as seen in the photo above!), but I am growing weary of the infighting in my denomination. I think we could play a pretty mean game of church insider-bingo with the vocab being thrown around: tall steeple churches, white papers, open letters, angry responses, clarification letters… BINGO!

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Categories church, communication, community, controversy, justice, Kingdom of God, leadership, ministry

I Knew I Knew You From Somewhere!

January 18, 2011 //

Yesterday, our family made a trip out to Walmart.

We don’t usually shop there, but my wife needed to pick up some supplies that we were pretty sure we could only get there.

While we were leaving the fabric section, an employee engaged me in a game of “cross-race blindness.” Our conversation went something like this:

Employee: Hey, Jackie Chan!

Me: (Blank stare)

Employee: Oh… didn’t I see you last week? Remember when I told you that you looked just like Jackie Chan?

Me: No, that was someone else. I wasn’t here last week.

Employee: Oh… but you look just like Jackie Chan, too! Right?!

Me: No, I don’t. Not at all.

As we left the area, I could see the employee give another employee an astonished look, as if she couldn’t believe that I could not see my own striking resemblance to Jackie Chan.

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Categories asian american, communication, family, race, reconciliation

Say No Go (To The Logo)

January 5, 2011 //

Toward the end of 2010, a couple of high profile corporate logo redesigns made the social media rounds.

The Gap unveiled a strange new logo to pretty much universal jeers. See for yourself below (the original on the left, the updated on the right):

While one can make the argument that any publicity (even when extremely negative or hostile in tone) is good publicity, I’m not sure what they were trying to communicate with their new logo. Maybe something like, “We know what Web 2.0 is“?

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Categories communication, culture, design