Twitter Sanity

Twitter Followers

Scott Jangro and I are recovering from an interesting experiment in which we followed back everyone who followed us. Sounds pretty simple and easy, right?

Well, it is an easy task to click “Follow” under a person’s avatar, but it is a much more difficult thing to give away a sense of sanity on Twitter.

Jangro explains it incredibly well:

Does anybody really think that anyone with thousands of followers is reading anything but a select list of tweets? What’s the use of an army of followers who follow everybody back? Especially at the expense of having to follow them and ruining twitter for yourself. Neither cares about what each other has to say. It’s just a game of who has the biggest, uh, Twitter.

I’ve cut down from the 4,500 or so people I was following back to the 100 or so folks that I am actually interested in or care about. Twitter is completely usable again on my Touch, on the web, on my mobile and on the desktop via TweetDeck.

So, it’s all well and good to follow everyone who follows you if you are looking to gain more followers on Twitter. However, doing so comes at a cost of usability of the service (much more than the cost of losing a few bots as followers as shown in the chart above).

Talking Futurisms, Podcasts, and Ethics

I chatted with Andrew Wee on his Friday Podcast this week about a number of topics.

Here’s his show notes:

– How he got involved in online marketing and his quest to become a Renaissance man.
– How he has “given up marketing”
– Ethics and morals in affiliate marketing
– What inspires him to podcast
– The origin and direction of his Thinking.fm podcast network
– Monetization options for podcast network owners
– One of his favorite podcasts and why it works effectively

Head over to Andrew’s site and give it a listen. I always enjoy talking to him, and it’s always amazing to me that we can do a podcast together even though we’re on opposite sides of this pale blue rock.

Here’s the mp3 for your downloading pleasure.

What is a High Church Baptist?

 

I’m a Baptist.

That’s not always an easy descriptor to assign to myself because I am…you might say…”high church.” A “high church baptist.” Weird, I know.

What does high church mean to me?

1. High church is an adjective that, to me, helps differentiate my preference and personal theology of worship from “low church.”

2. Neither high church nor low church is preferable to God or general polity of denominations or congregations. One is not better than the other.

3. To consider one’s self high church does not automatically mean one is Catholic or Episcopal (or Anglican) or Lutheran. To consider one’s self-low church does not automatically mean that one is B/baptist, Quaker, Pentecostal, Holiness or Primitive Methodist.

4. High church and low church are descriptors about worship preferences.

5. The distinction between high church and low church transcends a church’s carpet color and includes views on sacraments, liturgy, the lectionary and theology (and anthropology).

So, in this chain of thought, I’m a high church Baptist and there’s nothing contradictory there (at least that’s what I tell myself).

What does it mean to be a high church Baptist?

1. I consider the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper and the Word (Scriptures) to be the two fundamental aspects of worship. Worship, as Robert Webber points out in Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative, tells God’s story (it’s not something we do, but something in which we participate). I wish we participated in the Eucharist more often in Baptist worship services. Much more.

Oh, and I prefer wine to Welch’s Grape Juice. WWJD? Just saying…

2. I adhere to the mystical nature of the sacraments rather than viewing them as memorial events celebrating the life, death or resurrection of Jesus. Instead, our ordinances or sacraments are real and meaningful symbols that defy our post-Enlightenment cling to rationality.

3. As a high church Baptist, I hold that the place of the minister is to serve the congregation and creation in order to help a) tell God’s story daily and b) bring about the realized Kingdom of God. Preaching is a part of that, as is daily pastoral care and counseling… but being a minister is much more and includes recognizing the need for sacraments in the life of congregants (and the creation) on a daily basis.

4. High church Baptists recognize the need and responsibility for ecumenical discussions and inter-faith dialogue with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’i, and other forms/strands of faith communities. High church Baptists realize, through the Word and Table, the cosmic scale of our faith and are driven by the need to bring the creation into union with the Creator.

5. As a high church Baptist, I live my life in communion with God by participating in the Lectionary. It is an amazing experience to adhere one’s self to a daily and holy pattern like the Lectionary which helps us overcome the confines of a secular calendar and conception of time. Time itself is transformed and opens us to a move closer to the divine.

There you go. That’s my (always developing and always unfinished) conception of what it means to be high church and a Baptist.

Here’s a post that sums up things nicely in general (less specific and subjective) terms.

I’m sure I’ll post more on this as I reflect on these ideas over the coming months.