I've Been Thinking About This…

I think this is clever marketing. In Japan, although newspapers are more widely subscribed to than in the US, the publishers can see an inevitable decline as the next generation moves up. They also observe that the next generation is crazy about manga – a stylized form of cartoon.

Wired Magazine on 'Manga News'

Putting the two together, they are appealing to young potential readers by setting the news into manga – real news in cartoon form. Talk about adjusting your approach to meet the culture!

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Imagine compressing the most important things you wanted to say to anyone into 9 minutes. If you were a skilled communicator, it would be a powerful message, wouldn’t it?

Now imagine sitting down with some of the best leaders in today’s church and hear what their “9 minutes” were. That’s the idea behind THE NINES. THE NINES is a free one-day conference that will take place totally on-line. It is designed for all current and potential pastors, church staff members and ministry leaders who want to be motivated and stretched in their leadership.

Over 6 dozen of the country’s best evangelical Christian leaders and communicators have each been given the opportunity to speak for a maximum of 9 minutes. At 9 minutes, you know each talk will be both intense and very specific.

THE NINES is an internet broadcast to be held on 9/9/09 at 9:09 Central (that’s 10:09am Eastern). These messages will help you and your church navigate into the future; each one will last a maximum of 9 minutes. Find out more at their web site here, and see their list of over 70 speakers – there’s the names of some impressive people whose books, blogs and tweets I read:

• Alan Hirsch (Forge Mission Training Network)
• Anne Jackson (FlowerDust.net)
• Dan Kimball (Vintage Faith Church)
• Dave Ferguson (Community Christian Church)
• Dino Rizzo (Healing Place Church)
• Ed Stetzer (Lifeway Research)
• Eric Bryant (Mosaic)
• Geoff Surratt (Seacoast Church)
• Greg Surratt (Seacoast Church)
• John Ortberg (Menlo Park Presbyterian)
• Larry Osborne (North Coast Church)
• Mark Batterson (National Community Church)
• Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church)
• Neil Cole (Church Multiplication Associates)
• Perry Noble (NewSpring Church)
• Pete Wilson (Cross Point Church)
• Scott Hodge (Orchard Valley Church)
• Scott Williams (LifeChurch.tv)
• Steven Furtick (Elevation Church)
• Troy Gramling (Flamingo Road Church)
  … along with 54 others that I’m looking forward to finding out about for the first time.

Praise Christian Fellowship is hosting THE NINES at 52 New Hartford Road, Barkhamsted, via internet feed. We’ll bring in lunch (bring a $5 donation to help cover costs) since the conference goes straight though the day. We’ve only just heard about this a few days ago, so unfortunately it’s pretty short notice. If you’d like to attend, please let us know in the comments .

Thanks – hope you can join us!

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Brad Cooper is the student pastor at NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC. He recently wrote a blog about how momentum ALWAYS starts with students. I see a number of reasons why this should be so:

• Teens are driven by a genetic imperative to build an identity that separates them from their parents, so they look for something new.
• Teens are in the middle of the mating dance (also a genetic imperative!) – both sexes showing off and trying to be cool, often by being silly – so again they’re looking for something new.
• Young brains get far more ‘exercise’ – they’ve had to absorb language, safety and culture lessons since birth – and are wired to assimilate, synthesize and communicate. This seems to slow down during the twenties, but during the teen years it’s at its peak.
• Teens have an enormous amount of time and encouragement to socialize – high school is designed to be engaging and fun; they are encouraged to date; they are expected to watch a lot of television and go to movies. Their work load is relatively low – mostly homework and a few chores. Some take jobs, it’s true, but as a whole (and we’re talking about teens as a class here remember) they have a lot of time.
• Kids are expected to make mistakes, so they can afford to take greater risks because they know they will be indulged and forgiven. Some of the trends they start are simply moronic – wearing baseball hats backwards or sideways; pants that look like they’re falling off (don’t you just want to get out your power stapler?); jeans with holes in them – the sillier the better at present, although in 20 years there’s a chance they’ll look back at photographs and wince.
• Parents indulge their children in other ways too, which is why, as Brad notes, vast segments of the economy are tuned to teens – music, electronics, clothing. And in turn, since these corporations are trying to discover and market to the culture leaders among the teens, other teens watch what the corporations are selling so they can get in on those trends and look like leaders.

However, just because we can see some of the reasons for teens’ creativity doesn’t mean we can adapt them for us older folks (sorry!).

Teens are the life-blood of any cross-generation organization, whether we’re talking about a town or a church. And when a town or church fails to invest in their teens and design for them, they will leave. How does this connect with what you’re seeing around you – in your town or your church?

Are you seeing the exodus of the 13-31 year-olds in your church?

Check out Brad’s post here.

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It can be so difficult when you move into a new neighborhood. How do you find just the right small group? It can be a real challenge…[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eurATNkJBvQ[/youtube]
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I think it’s time to ‘fess up. I’m a member of the RRGBNQP. Hey, we’re friends. We do stuff together. We’re like that. Then I photograph or video the mayhem – see the clip thingy below – and sometimes make comments. This time I was experimenting with a product called Visual Communicator – a superb product whose price unfortunately skyrocketed when Adobe bought the company that wrote it.

[flv]http://www.gwilt.org/RRGBNQP/RRGBNQPlarge.flv[/flv]

But good times with good friends are precious and deserve to be remembered.

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It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people talk about time travel as a possibility, and that they’re busy working on devices that will let them move through time, either forwards or backwards.

The Earth rotates once per day (no duh!), and is approx. 24,900 miles around at the equator. It’s turning counter-clockwise from the perspective of someone hovering over the North pole. At noon in Quito (on the equator), you step into your time machine. You go back 6 hours. They opened the door at 6am that morning and found your body crushed to a pulp. Bone fragments too tiny to piece back together, and a really big dent in the floor and one wall.
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