Tag: community

Editing for time

Wikipedia - Art Historian by quartermane

You know, I really hate editing — especially when it relates to someone else’s work.

Each week Thomas and I do our podcast and I always make a point to never shorten or cut the interviews we do with folks. After all, our goal is to share their story with folks and hopefully they’re something the listeners walk away from and talk about with their friends.

Along with the interviews, Thomas and I normally chat about the interviews/stories at the end of the show. I always enjoy the chats and wish time permitted us to really delve into these stories like we might do if we were sitting in a living room together. I think almost all of our podcasts could lead to a discussion that lasts over several hours.

However, due to the space-time-continuum, bandwidth and our listeners available time, I do my best to be sure our podcasts only last an hour in length. Which means that if we do a 30 min interview we have roughly 22-25 minutes to introduce the show and then to discuss the interview at the end (our musical clips take up 5-8 minutes usually). If we do a 45 min interview we end up with maybe 10 minutes to do all that.

Here in lies my frustration. I have trouble picking which part of the discussion might be more beneficial than others. If we really are “Free Range Christians” or “Open Source Christians” I hate the idea that I might be limiting the discussion when I go back and edit our discussions.

There are so many great points that Thomas brings up but I end up having to cut much of our discussion due to the “self-imposed time crunch.”

I also run into similar issues when leading a community group.

Everyone has a story to share. And I love hearing those stories. I love people sharing their stories (hence the podcast). Many people have examples in their life that relate to the discussion — but I also have to consider the time constraints other people in the group may have. That time constraint comes into greater play if its an early morning and people have to head to work — or a week night when folks have to head home so they can get to bed.

So what to do? I dunno. But I do hate editing — and thought you should know.

The Church is…

Here’s another great tidbit from Tall Skinny Kiwi & Phyllis Tickle (who by the way will be at The Great Emergence Conference in Dec.). The quote was featured in Tall Skinny Kiwi’s talk at GodBlogCon and comes from Tickle’s latest book The Great Emergence (need to get me a copy of that!)

…the Church, capital C — in not really a thing so much as it is a network in exactly the same way that the Internet or the World Wide Web, or for that matter gene regularity or metabolic networks are not “things” or “entities.”

I love that! It goes right along with the ideas/thoughts that I have running through my mind right now in preparation for “speaking” at encounter on Oct 12. We’ll see where it all leads me/us.

re-posts re: church

Was reading The New Christians today at lunch and came across a familiar name :: Jonny Baker.
Thomas introduced me to Jonny a while back and while searching my site for a few things I came across these quotes I shared back in 2006 from Jonny.

This was an ad for a church on Jonny’s site:

You love God but you just can’t do Sunday morning style church?
You’re really not into singing songs all the time or you don’t believe that singing songs is the only way we can worship God?
You would like to be part of a church where you are accountable to each other and are responsible for helping each other grow?
You’re tired of professional Christianity and you just want to be church like it was with Jesus and his followers back in his human days?
You believe Church is more fluid than a building or tradition.

And how about this…

Can we imagine church as ::

  • church beyond gathering?
  • church beyond once a week?
  • church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
  • church where community is the content?
  • theology and resources of church being open source?
  • church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
  • our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
  • an ethos of low control and collaboration?
  • an economy of gift?
  • church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
  • church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

I hope its coming true.

How Pixar builds collective creativity

There’s a story making it’s way around the interwebs from the Harvard Business Review about How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Pixar’s the CGI animation studio (originally a division of LucasFilms, then owned by Steve Jobs and now a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company) that put out great movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc. Cars, etc.

Since they released Toy Story in 1995, the studio has earned thirteen Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and one Grammy.

Pixar’s President Ed Catmull writes ::

A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas….

Unlike most other studios, we have never bought scripts or movie ideas from the outside. All of our stories, worlds, and characters were created internally by our community of artists. And in making these films, we have continued to push the technological boundaries of computer animation, securing dozens of patents in the process.

In the article Catmull shares 3 key organizational principals that guide Pixar ::

  • Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone
  • It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.
  • We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

Imagine what a church could look like that implemented these ideas! An environment where everyone recognizes that they are truly a part of the priesthood of believers and that all the believers around them are as well.

Brian mentioned this morning that at encounter we try and view everything as an experiment. There are some things we try that work great and then we work to make them even better — and there are things that don’t always work out as we hope so we scrap the idea and move on.

What if everyone really felt like they could really take ownership in ideas and participate in the ongoing conversation about God and life? What if everyone realized their ideas would be listened to, valued and built upon?

How differently would we view one another? How different would our conversations be?

I hope in my own community group and all of our community groups (as well as our church as a whole) we continue to foster community and environments where everyone feels a valuable part of the experience and process.


How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.

It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore. – psalms 133

Benched

Here’s what one group of folks did in their East Atlanta Neighborhood ::


Benched from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

What are you doing to make your neighborhood better? You too could become a community organizer – get people organized for the betterment of the community!

Community fertilizer

Checking in on one of the groups I’m a part of on Roov.com.

The question was asked :: What WORKS in cultivating community? What’s the fertilizer that causes rapid and healthy growth here?

Thought this was a great response of practical (and actual) things another member was doing ::

-sparking up more conversations with what look like new people at our church
-inviting old and new friends alike over for a dinner or coffee once a week
-saying hello to people *between* Sundays more often

And as for the results…it’s been INCREDIBLE so far!

What have you found that works great for building community (offline)?