Tag: Mikey Lynch

A collection of web 2.0 bits and bobs…

Mikey posted a bunch of reflections on the web and ministry the other day in a stream of consciousness bullet point diatribe. They’re tips that are worth reading – and a good perspective from somebody who is in ministry and thinking about how technology can be used as a platform for the gospel and for building relationships.

Blogs are definitely different now Part 1

Blogs are definitely changing now Part 2

Blogs are definitely changing Part 3

Blogs are definitely changing Part 4

Blogs are definitely changing Part 5

Once you’ve finished reading those and you’re all depressed about the internet and stuff…

I’ve recently started using Twitter heaps more. It seemed all I needed was a better app on my iPhone and the new Mac app. You can follow me @nm_campbell if you like. Let me know if you’re a Twit too.

I’m also getting close to having 100 fans on Facebook. Which is cool. I’ve started using that Facebook page to share links that I maybe once upon a time would have posted here (and possibly eventually will). These links appear on the top right of the blog proper, so if you’re a feed reader I suggest you join the masses and “like” St. Eutychus.

If you are a feed reader you might have noticed a bunch of new links on the bottom of feed items – these come courtesy of feedburner – you can now click a few different links to share stuff you like where you like. Isn’t that exciting. I like it when people share the stuff I’ve found. It somehow legitimises the time I waste on the Internet. So please do it.

And, I’ve installed a theme that I paid for (called Standard Theme) on my coffee blog and Venn Theology. I’m trying to decide whether or not to install it here too. Check them out. Especially my coffee blog – thebeanstalker.com. I’m pretty happy with it.

That is all.

February 1, 2011

Facebook for ministry…

Tim Challies has this wise advice on how to take a balanced approach to using social media to enhance, rather than replace, your church community.

“So as you use Facebook, be careful to use it in a supplementary way, a way that supplements your real flesh and blood contact with the people you are seeking to serve. Use it to share event information, to get people remembering last week’s sermons and thinking toward next week’s, to get people singing the songs you sing and praying for what needs to be prayed for. Use it to share photographs of great events and to encourage people to make contact with one another. The ways it can supplement ministry are nearly endless. But all the while use it to push yourself toward, not away from, face to face contact.”

Mikey has some practical tips for building a custom landing page for your Facebook presence.

This site, mediaforministry.org, has some good tips for using Facebook, and WordPress. And you should, of course, all be reading Communicate Jesus already if this kind of post excites you.

September 1, 2010

Warranted Belief

Mikey keeps posting quotes from this philosopher guy Al Plantinga (wiki). It turns out the book he’s quoting from – Warranted Christian Belief – is available in its entirety online. And free.

Might be worth a read if, like me, you keep getting in over your head in philosophical arguments with atheists. It’ll save you reaching out for the succor offered by a quick Google. And it’ll give you an intelligent “scholar” to quote…

Here’s a (long) quote on historical criticism – particularly on why it’s hard to argue with people who presuppose that the miraculous accounts in the Bible are mythical because they are miraculous, and why this shouldn’t be convincing:

The Troeltschian scripture scholar accepts Troeltsch’s principles for historical research, under an interpretation according to which they rule out the occurrence of miracles and the divine inspiration of the Bible (along with the corollary that the latter enjoys the sort of unity accruing to a book that has one principal author). But then it is not at all surprising that the Troeltschian tends to come up with conclusions wildly at variance with those accepted by the traditional Christian. As Gilkey says, “Suddenly a vast panoply of divine deeds and events recorded in scripture are no longer regarded as having actually happened.” Now if (instead of tendentious claims about our inability to do otherwise) the Troeltschian offered some good reasons to think that, in fact, these Troeltschian principles are true, then traditional Christians would have to pay attention; then they might be obliged to take the skeptical claims of historical critics seriously. Troeltschians, however, apparently don’t offer any such good reasons. They simply declare that nowadays we can’t think in any other way, or (following Harvey) that it is immoral to believe in, for example, Christ’s resurrection on other than historical grounds.

Neither of these is remotely persuasive as a reason for modifying traditional Christian belief in the light of Troeltschian results. As for the first, of course, the traditional Christian knows that it is quite false: she herself and many of her friends nowadays (and hundreds of millions of others) do think in precisely that proscribed way. And as far as the implicit claims for the superiority of these Troeltschian ways of thinking go, she won’t be impressed by them unless some decent arguments of one sort or another are forthcoming, or some other good reason for adopting that opinion is presented. The mere claim that this is what many contemporary experts think will not and should not intimidate her.

January 14, 2010

Simple love

If you ever find yourself running out of ways to show love to your neighbour (literal and figurative) you might find this Simple Love website useful.

Via Christian Reflections ages ago.

November 22, 2009

Giving notice

I was a little bit surprised that so many people spoke out in defense of announcements at church. I want to be clear that I’m talking about things that are generally covered in the “news” section of a church bulletin, and hopefully these days the church’s website and Facebook page*.

Announcements are dead wood. They should be cut. Like a pine forest. They should just be printed on literal dead wood.

I don’t buy into the whole “seeker sensitive” style service where everything is run for visitors and the people who are part of the church family are ignored. But if you’re spending 10 minutes reading out the handout that everybody is holding already** that’s 10 minutes of wasted time. You could, though I wouldn’t, fit three more songs or one long prayer in that time. There are myriad things that can be done in ten minutes that are more beneficial to church life than boring advertisements for things that are no doubt already boringly described in your boring newsletter.

You know what happens when church is boring – people fall out of windows and die. And Paul isn’t going to pop in and resurrect the poor souls that expire during your overly long promo of the church working bee.

* Here are some great tips from Mikey for how churches (and in fact any organisation) should use Facebook. He’s much better equipped than me to comment on this matter… I’ve only got 27 fans on my Facebook fan page after a week of relentless self promotion… you could become one now. It would make me feel special…

Here are some more Facebook friendly resources I found through Church Marketing Sucks… an e-book called “Facebook for Pastors” and a set of general principles on using Facebook for your business.

**And while I’m on that note – what’s with churches (not just ours, though it’s guilty here) being so miserly about the number of handouts they print. One per couple? Per day? Are you serious? My attendance isn’t worth 5 cents to you? You’re expecting me to “give generously” when the offering comes around and yet I have to share the handout…

I also miss handouts with sermon outlines written in them.

October 14, 2009

Evangelism and relationships

We’re doing Introducing God at church this term. We just did week seven tonight. We’ve got an odd mix of people where probably 75% of the regulars are Christians who are hoping their irregular non-Christian friends will turn up, or are just there in lieu of small groups.

I’ve been sitting with a couple of guys – one of whom is a new Christian from a very non-Christian background (the guy I’m cooking with), the other is his housemate who has grown up in a staunchly Christian home who is not a Christian. Tonight was good. We’re at the stage where a relationship exists and some pressure can be comfortably exerted.

Having a relationship with someone is pretty important if you’re going to understand where they’re coming from in order to offer an alternative or a critique on their life.

Mikey Lynch is an AFES worker in Tassie who has handed out tasks to his student leaders to make sure they have relationships with non-Christians. These relationships are important. And his challenges look fun.

The challenges are things like:

  • Catch up with an old school friend,
  • Be chatty to everyone you interact with,
  • Catch public transport and chat to the people you sit next to,
  • Go to the pub and talk to people at the bar,
  • Piggy back on someone else’ hobby.

September 9, 2009

The father of all links posts

Ah, another week, another post chock full of links from the narrow sector of the world wide that I like to call the blogosphere.

I thought I’d get a little bit geographically specific with this little link edition. Just to give you an idea of the spread of blogs that I read (that you should too). This is by no means comprehensive – but here are some of the homes of regular commenters, people I know, and people I reckon you should discover (along with some choice posts from their sites).

Right-o. Lets go.

Starting with those in my own neck of the woods – the Townsville scene… (in no particular order). 

  1. Tim – doesn’t post often and when he does it’s usually a YouTube video.
  2. Leah – is the Andrew Bolt of the North Queensland Christian blogosphere, or perhaps the Tim Blair. She also covered North Queensland’s lost and found saga this week where a local lad from a local church went missing in the bush, and was found a couple of days later.
  3. Stuss – has picked up the pace a little, though most of what she’s saying is about gardening and decluttering. Which is fine. Because both are good things.
  4. Phoebe – hasn’t really said anything for 21 days. I just counted. But no list of bloggers from Townsville would be complete without her.
  5. Joel – if Leah is the Tim Blair of the Townsville blogosphere then Joel is the Piers Ackerman.
  6. Carly – is an education student and gives some interesting insight into the female psyche with pieces like the one she wrote last week about Oprah.
  7. Chris barely posts enough to rank a mention. But he’s a blogger. In Townsville. So he sneaks in.

If you’re in Townsville, and I’ve missed you, let me know in the comments.

Moving south, here are some of the notables in Brisbane…

  1. Kutz – I mentioned his new endeavour last week. It’s been trickling along. I’m sure more comments from nice friendly readers would keep his motivation levels up.
  2. Tim and Amy – The same could be said for these two. They’ve kept a pretty steady pace and you should go over, read what they have to say, and say hello.
  3. Simone – well, I’ve talked about her blog enough for you to know what goes down over there. She gets a prize for being the third blogger to mention my dad* this week. Her little piece of speculation about narrative in the new creation was interesting enough to get my hippocampus firing today.
  4. Will Henderson – gets the prize for being the first to mention dad*, and also for being the first Acts 29 affiliated church planter in Australia – a story that apparently hadn’t received all that much coverage before I mentioned it the other day (based on some posts like this one from Jeff Attack)… check out the website for his upcoming plant. Unfortunately it’s a bit grungy. And we all know how I feel about grunge.

Now, on to Sydney. The city of my birth and home of many good blogs.

  1. Izaac is back from a holiday and taking on the challenge of posting about Christian love and social justice.
  2. Ben celebrated his birthday yesterday – and I promised him a link. Then he posted a story about how the Governator has the Conan sword in his office – that I was all set to feature in my next little string of “Curiosities” posts.
  3. At the fountainside Soph asks the important questions about train etiquette – something we’ll have to (re)familiarise ourselves with next year.
  4. Ben (of the Bathgate variety) lists five things that made him tough(er). I score one on his list.
  5. Dave Miers managed to scoop Mikey Lynch by posting an interview with Andrew Heard, one of the Geneva Church planting crew (another post on the network from Dave), before Mikey could wrap up his series of similar interviews with church planting figures (including Will Henderson and Al Stewart).

Mikey (from Tasmania) was also the second person to, somewhat vicariously, mention dad this week because his name came up in one of the posts from the aforementioned series of interviews.

It has also become apparent – from what Andrew Heard said on Dave’s blog and what Al Stewart said on Mikey’s – that the Geneva portmanteau was only a vicious rumour, and that the name is actually a reference to Calvin’s work in that city. Which is a good thing.

And to conclude, here are my favourite ten posts from my blog this week (including bits from Robyn and Benny).

  1. Benny on Ministry
  2. Robyn on Grammar (PS – you should all encourage Robyn to blog more – she needs some comment love…)
  3. Good bad haircuts
  4. Bad relevance
  5. How to pick a cafe
  6. Cool stuff to do with your photos/iPhone
  7. Tips from a guru (my dad – since he’s the flavour of the blogosphere these days…*)
  8. The one about being wrong.
  9. The one about yawning.
  10.  The one about being a PK, and the follow up about being a PK being a bit like being Harry Potter.

* I should point out that these constant mentions of dad being mentioned are a mixture of patri-pride and because I think it’s slightly funny that he feels a sense of discomfort about being in the spotlight. It’s not because I think he’s super special (though he is). And if you want to join the fan club here’s the video I made for his 50th.

September 1, 2009