Faith-Based Blog a blog about faith from a believer with bandwidth

The Weekly List: 1/4/09

I hate lists. To-Do lists, Top 10 lists, Best Guitarist lists. You name it. And yet ... on the agenda for this week:
» Reading (online): 6 ways technology has changed religion
» Reading (offline): "The Seekers" by Daniel Boorstin
» Fixin' to Read (offline): "Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith" by Shane Hipps
» Listening: Jesse Rice interviewed by Steve Brown
» Singing Along To: Jonathan Salas
» Working: Developing a mobile version of this blog.

Ironic that after I've spelled out a fairly ambitious reading list for the first quarter of the year, I'm adding to it with the Shane Hipps book already. Actually, I'm ordering it along with the two books by AJ Gregory mentioned previously.

I've heard Shane Hipps preaching before via an appearance or two at Rob Bell's Mars Hill Church. It took me a while to click with what he was saying. But I seem to enjoy it more as I read what he has to say. One of the goals of kick-starting the blogging habit here is to enhance it as a community for whoever the heck stops by for a read. While I hope to always be at some point on the path where I have no idea what I'm doing in that regard, I'm obviously hopeful that Shane has a few words of wisdom to impart along the way.

Among the topics I'm really looking forward to diving deeper into this year is how different churches are using their websites. So, in addition to seeing how much I can improve this little blog, I'm likely to dig around and seek out some best practices around the world and see if this little pixel factory can assist a church or two out there looking to reach out a bit more. I've been in the web business for slightly over a decade and there are periods where changes look appealing and unappealing to me. The current move to more mobile web use and using richer media and content along the way ... all very appealing to me.

In other matters of "starting the new year off right," I've gone through the usual ritual of filling in a new notebook to track sermons with, note whatever scripture is screaming most loudly to me, or drop whatever thoughts are in need of writing down. I've written before on my challenges & struggles of maintaining this habit and it's probably a huge enough surprise to me that it persists as a habit no matter how poorly executed.

This year's game plan is to simplify my commitment list to tracking the four churches I listen to the most: Lakewood, Woodland Hills (Greg Boyd), Mars Hill (Rob Bell), and Northland (Joel Hunter). As much as I love the others, I'm going to have to be a bit more honest in how I get around to listening to them. These four will probably happen on a quasi-religious weekly basis. The others ... might or might not be playing on a regular basis. I do tend to catch up, but it sometimes means listening to 4-5 sermons in a row on a quiet evening at home (which is not half-bad, I maintain). I think I spent more time feeling miserable that I was falling behind in my routine of listening to about 7 services over the course of a busier-than-average week in the past year.

Anyways ... it's Monday. Off to work I go. Look for the mobile version of this site on your iPhone or other smartphone sometime later this week.