How does one go from a 5-times a week blogger for over three years to being the guy with the blog not updated in weeks? Simple:

Turn his world upside down.

Not that kind of upside down. That actually looks pretty pleasant. Creative Commons image courtesy of notsogoodphotography.

Now my job is to “connect people to their world” by selling mobile phones, internet, and TV solutions. I am thoroughly a fish in water surrounded by smart phones and the latest technology. And I am finding out that I REALLY enjoy customer service and sales. It’s fun to see every customer as a puzzle. They need to experience something memorable at the AT&T store for me to feel like I’ve done my job.

Sure, they primarily need a cell phone, or UVerse set up at their house, or a way to get internet access at work. But I want them to receive not only that but to enjoy it. If you aren’t smiling when you walk in, I want you to be smiling when you walk out. My favorite transactions are ones where I clearly make money and provide for my family, but I also meet a need for the customer. It’s a win-win.

So I love my new job. But it’s not really conducive to producing experiences from which I can generate memorable content for my blog centered around missions and life. Here’s the three main reasons:

1. I can’t blog about outreach in progress. “Hey pray for my coworker Billy, I’m pretty sure he wants to accept Christ.” It’s insensitive to Billy and counterproductive.
2. I can’t vent about frustrations with my job or the structure of the company. It is neither wise nor helpful to digitally bite the hand that feeds you. Besides, I am overall very satisfied with my job. And so I can’t blog about pay structure or the intricacies of working in a hybrid corporate/retail environment (I signed away that ability when I accepted the job)
3. I’m learning discretion and patience. This new season of life has been educational in so many ways. I’m very thankful for it. It’s just meant I either become the guy who just blogs about his kids (and nobody likes that guy) or I spend some time away, storing up good content for later.

Saw this video over at Zack’s place.  Like him, I have been floored by reading the Bible through this lens.  The Old Testament is an Easter egg hunt that has been so loaded with eggs it’s unfair.  Once you start to see the Bible in this way, it’s pretty awesome.  Please take a few minutes and let Tim Keller blow your mind, and like Zack said, if your pastor is not giving you this kind of stuff on a regular basis, kick him in the hind-parts.

In August of 2002, I drove my Nissan Maxima (that I nicknamed “minima”) back from New Staff Training in Winter Park, FL and started raising support for my ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ.  I was a single guy, comedically overconfident regarding my abilities, excited to go where God had called.

Over the next 4 years my teammates in Murfreesboro got to watch a magical transformation whereby I changed from a really disorganized, painfully self-unaware kid into a slightly disorganized, moderately self-aware adult.  God used my time and teammates on CCC staff at MTSU to do a ton of overhaul in my life and heart regarding adulthood and responsibility.

I met my bride in August of 2005, and married her 9 months later, before she could find out what she was really getting into.  The time we spent on staff in Asheville, NC was so formative in our marriage, as we got to see marriage modeled by our director, and folks from our amazing church.  We learned what it meant to strive for balance in life, juggling home life, ministry life, and eventually parenthood.  Through it all, the support network of fellow CCC staff was so instrumental in teaching us things like conflict resolution, effective communication, and rooting us deeper and deeper in the gospel.  We’ll always look fondly on our time in Asheville, and the life-long friendships we forged there.

The past year has been a lesson in perseverance, faith, and perspective.  We persevered to the bitter end in raising support, and God taught us much.  We strengthened our faith muscle as we prepared to step into the unknown.  We gained such great perspective on issues like calling, vocation, and finances.  We’re still smack-dab in the middle of most of those lessons, eager to see where God has us next.

Tomorrow is officially our last day on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. (um, please continue giving until November, though–just to be clear) But rest assured that no matter where we go, it’s because we are being sent there by CCC.  I wouldn’t trade the life skills, relationships, and experiences of these past 8 years for all the money in the world.  I am overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude.

For a couple more hours, I can still proudly say “I’m on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.”

If I could draw a 3-5 mile circle around my house on a map, and then facebook/twitter/foursquare/gowalla would never report my exact location inside that circle, I’d be way more comfortable with location-based stuff.

I just don’t want to make it easy for folks to find out where I live, so that when I tweet about not being home I invite robbers/vandals.  I know, you can find my address online (though I’ve personally gone to some length to try and make it more difficult, and if you do find a spot that has my address online, I’d love to know about it…) but I just don’t want every 5th tweet to be geotagged with my home address.

Can somebody make that happen?  I’m eager to share my location when I am away from home.  But I am not going to turn on and off location-based applications every time I leave the house or come home.  It can’t be that hard to develop a “safe zone” that just tells people that I am in the town, without sharing my precise location.

As somebody who is contemplating getting into freelance website design, this may be a bit of a marketing mistake for me, but:

You might not need a web page.

In fact, until you can give me a clear vision for how your website is going to be used, who the target audience is, and how it directly functions alongside your ministry’s offline objectives, you are not ready to have a website built.

90% of the time, what folks tell me they want out of a website could be better accomplished (and for free or virtually free) with a concentrated facebook campaign.

Unless you are into content creation online (blogging, vlogging, podcating, etc) and therefore need to “own” your content, you don’t need a webpage.  If you want to create a space where members in your organization can discuss, interact, get a feel for the distinctives of your group, and be digitally introduced to you, you can often do it with a facebook page far better than with a webpage.  Why? because your members are already on facebook.  Stats are coming out every day on how often folks are visiting facebook.  All of them agree: people are on facebook a LOT.

Why try and get them to leave facebook to come to your site?  What can your site do that facebook can’t or doesn’t?  Until you can answer those questions (and I don’t mean to insinuate there are no valid answers to those questions–you are reading this on a non-facebook site), your money and time would be better spent formulating strategy for your online presence.

Once you have answered those questions, then dump money into the project.  But just like you wouldn’t spend $3,000 on sound equipment without a clear vision for how that equipment is being used, you shouldn’t spend a dime on web design until you have a plan.

But once you do have a plan, and if you find that plan includes a need to branch away from facebook, don’t skimp on the web design.  Pay a good designer good money to develop a site that does exactly what you want.  There’s a reason a good designer can pull in $3,000-$9,000 per website.  You get what you pay for.  And with all due respect to the kid from your church that can design a site for $35, he’s not an expert.  Hire an expert with proven skills and results.  Find someone who has done what you want to do (google it) and find out who designed their stuff.

But you have to convince me you need a website in the first place.

What am I missing? Am I way off base?

I’ve just rounded the corner out of my third decade, and I’ve hit a strange crisis.  Up until this point I’ve always known what I want to be when I grow up: a missionary.  I want to get paid to share the gospel.  The gospel is preeminent, foundational.  The paycheck has always been secondary.

So it’s tough to think  in terms of benefits and 401-K, as I have been looking out at my options going forward.

I feel pretty marketable in church circles, in that I am a worship leader who is also a bit of a tech guy/jack of most trades.  I can fix the wireless network and code the websites and help streamline interoffice communications, in addition to leading the music on Sunday mornings.  So, I’m not really concerned about being able to land a job somewhere in churchland.

But I just quit my dream job, and most of the places I’m looking at now are either part-time or not in my dream situation (denominational/theological differences that would likely become an issue, need for a Masters degree of some sort, etc) and so here I am at a crossroad.  I am not going to jump at the first ministry job out there, just for a paycheck.  I’d rather work at Starbucks or Harris Teeter while I wait on my dream situation than to get roped in to a less-than-ideal vocational ministry situation.

Which leads me to the same question I faced as a 3rd grader: what I want to be when I grow up.  Back then I said I’d like to be an artist when i grow up.  I didn’t miss it by far.  My 3rd grade heart knew that ultimately, I want to be creative.  22 years later, I now can confidently say that I not only want to be an artist, I want to be an artist who is focused on creating, because I serve a creative God.  My heart can’t help but to image and promote the creative heart of God.

So now I just have to figure out a way to monetize that.  In the meantime, I’ve put in some applications at various spots, like selling cell phones (let’s face it, I am always talking about iPhones and Android phones anyway, I might as well get paid to sell them…).  I am very excited for the next step, and interested to see how tossing a new baby into this mix will affect things (I’ll let you know in a week and a half).

Bottom line, if I show up at your door toting a Papa John’s box, you’d better tip well.

Here’s the thing about roller coasters: how well you do on them only affects you.  The same coaster that makes some people scream with excitement makes others shriek with horror.

One person laughs.

Another pukes. (fair enough, in that case how well you do also affects the people directly behind you…)

There’s that neat story in Mark 4:35-41 that others have pointed to where we see this principle at work.  There’s a storm that has professional fishermen scared for their life (read: really bad storm), and Jesus is ASLEEP in the stern of the boat.  The thing is literally falling apart, and Jesus is sleeping.

His perspective on the roller coaster was right.  He knew who made the thing, and was supremely confident in it’s construction.

As we have buckled ourselves into this current coaster (leaving staff, click-click-clicking up the hill toward unemployment), I’m so confident that God is the one who pulled down the safety bar and gave the thumbs up for the cart to begin up the hill.  But as analogies go, this one is falling apart quickly.  God is not a carny, going on a smoke break while I fly upside down across the theme park.  He made the coaster, holds the coaster up, controls the weather, etc, etc.

But I think he enjoys us experiencing the mystery of the click-click-click.  Let’s hold our hands up and enjoy the ride!

Last week I posted a link to my new resumé, and I’ve already received some great feedback.  That feedback was unsolicited but super-helpful.

Today I am asking for feedback.  I’ve made some changes already, and will be making more throughout the next few days.

Would you take a few minutes to go and look over my resumé with a mind to helping me make it the best one you’ve ever read?

Later, I’ll be adding some more insightful and useful content here, but for now, can you help me out?

Three questions:

1. What should I add? (let’s stick to true things–one of my rough drafts indicated that I invented the iPad.)
2. What should I take away*?
3. What other question(s) should I be asking here?

You can comment below with your thoughts on my resume, (I especially need spell-check help, as I made this all by hand in html) or email me

*I am not going to take away the QR code.  It’s my bit of geekery, and I am going to leave it.  I am also not going to make the links clickable on the left pane.  Those are just part of the background image, added for a bit of branding flair.  Don’t have the time or skills to make them clickable.

Jacqueline had just found out we were pregnant with LB a few months earlier.  Then it happened.  Due probably to a combination of poor communication and wishful thinking on our part, some folks who we thought were going to give a total of $10,000 in the month of October, 2007 ended up giving us a couple of emails saying they weren’t able to give.  That 10 grand amounted to $7500 in annual support, or $625 per month.  For perspective, in a healthy economy, it takes on average one week to raise $100 per month.  So we were put 6 weeks in the hole, in a matter of days.

We have spent the last three years trying to recover from that month.  Instead of recovering, we have consistently continued to lose financial support.  We’ve raised much over that time, to be sure.  Just this past year of raising support full-time has seen more than $1,000 in monthly support come in.  But over the same time, we’ve lost about $1,300 per month.  We’ve worked extremely hard, prayed harder, and given it the best shot we can imagine.

So, when I say we are leaving, I don’t mean that we are leaving with our head hanging down or our metaphorical tail between our legs.  That’d indicate we don’t believe in a sovereign God, or that we think we didn’t work hard enough.  And neither of those is true.  After much prayer and involving more than a few tears (even some tears by Ben in public coffee shops, thanks to Neale Davis), we’re moving on.

We’ll miss being on staff.  It is still sinking in that we won’t be at the conferences, seeing our dear staff friends.  The last time I went to a New Years Eve party that wasn’t at a CCC conference was 1997.  Well, since they shortened the conference thanks to the Y2K scare, I think I technically partied like it was 1999 in a non-CCC fashion–but you get my point.

Check out the two updated links above “Give” and “CCC” (same text in both, now) in the top bar for details about giving.  Please don’t just stop giving.  Read that first.  We love you all.

More clarifying posts to come.  And Im looking for a job, if you’re into worship music/tech/social media/good at making coffee type people.  Holler at me.

Brian Barela, a friend and social media guru within CCC, commented on yesterday’s post:

i’m an early adopter and i DON’T expect others to be what i am.

my experience in the church w never adopters is this:

i’m a never adopter and i EXPECT you to be what i am.

I heartily agree with him: you don’t have to be an Early Adopter, like I am.  There’s no need for everyone to push the envelope, to try all the new technology, to constantly be changing, adopting new strategies, and the like.

It’s even ok with me if you are a Never Adopter.  I know folks that are being fruitful, obedient, and God-honoring by  doing the same things they were 30 years ago.  That really is OK.  It’s more than OK, it is necessary.

Here’s what every Christian should be: OK with the presence of the other two categories.  The honest truth is that we all have blind spots.  As an Early Adopter, my blind spot is a tendency to throw out a technology or method while it is still useful, in favor of something shiny.  Never Adopters have a blind spot centered on an aversion to change.  Ministries that have no Early Adopters become totally irrelevant.  Ministries that have no Never Adopters lose their core identity.

We need each other.  So we need to stop shooting at each other.

Our critiques of each other are correct.  Let’s learn from them.