theo|digital

My April trip was two weeks long: it was mostly for ministry work, but some for fun. I was in Washington DC for the Missio Alliance gathering, Detroit for GCM meetings, near Ann Arbor with the Collegiate Church Network. I slept in 5 different places, and when you travel with gadgets, that means finding new plugs, new wifi access, etc everywhere you go. This trip was the first that I really starting relying a little more on my Verizon LTE hotspot on my iPad… and it worked really well.

So I wrote up some quick tips for those who might be thinking of trying it out:

Not a lot of writing on this here blog, but I am contributing to ChurchMag, the blog at the intersection of the technology and the church.   Today I have a post on using Vine, the 6-second video app, for missions trips. Examples are from my church Illini Life.  Go take a look.

I’m re-reading Orthodoxy (cause I barely remember it) and want to post quotes as I go. I like this one:

Oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life.

This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), Orthodoxy

I couldn’t agree more. But does this fit with recent decade of super-hero movies?

Remember biology and the classification of the Animal Kingdom? Eesh. Species and Phylum (those are the two words I remembered before I referenced Wikipedia) and a whole lot of something about whether your spine was inside or outside your body (hint: yours is inside).

And if that didn’t scare you off, here’s another associated word: taxonomy. That’s what the scientific classification system was: a taxonomy—an ordering—of information. About mammals and such. So we knew what skunks were supposed to be.

Of course, this was because someone had seen (smelled?) a skunk in the physical world and now wanted to Sort It. And because skunks didn’t come with a sewn-in label, we had to start by making up something to sort it in TO. Where does it GO?  It’s not like God handed us carnivora is what I’m saying (in other news: I just learned that skunks eat meat. Weird).

Of course information taxonomies can organize just about anything and though we’ve left biology back in the 9th grade, the taxonomies we now all use on a daily basis are website taxonomies:  known to geeks as  ”web information architecture.”  This thing—information architecture—is high on the list of “affects us on a daily basis and we don’t even notice.”

Which, of course, is why I’m excited about it.

Let’s do a quick website example. When I show up to the website of a museum of natural history, I expect to be greeted by a bevy of information and possibly big photos of dinosaur bones. If you’re the museum making your website, suddenly you need to sort not only reptiles you find in the physical world, but also “information chunks” that you only find in our information world. For instance, what time the museum closes on Sundays, and how many curators have PhDs from places other than wikipedia.

So how do you sort information chunks?

Like the biologist, the information architect has to make something up. A mental folder. A category.

For instance, which of these would you look under to find out what time the museum closes tomorrow?

I grabbed the category examples from The Field Museum (Chicago), the American Museum of Natural History (in New York), and Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of Natural History (WashDC).  And it’s pretty easy, right? I’ll assume most of us choose “Plan Your Visit,” which all three museums use as the first header on their current websites.¹

And these seems relatively straight forward to us. But it gets more difficult. For instance, in the above categories, which might have more information about dinosaurs? Research? Exhibitions? Explore?  About Us? (<– assuming the dinosaurs possibly run the website)

It could be under any of the four, couldn’t it?  Less easy.

This is the problem of the web information architect: to name and sort information chunks. From business website perspective, the job is really pragmatic:  People want information as efficiently and fast as possible i.e. in the least amount of “clicks.”  Where will the person on my website expect this information to be? How can I put it there?

So this is a user-oriented approach.

((I’d actually call it a ”persona-action” approach, but user or “bottom-up” is simpler.))
Let’s assume that dinos are actually crazy popular at your museum. So you decide, using the user approach, that Dinosaurs is a perfect category to put at your top level alongside the others. This might even take care of  two different questions users have. Maybe one wants to find out more about dinosaur bones and another wants to find out information about when they can see the dinosaurs bones. You could put both info chunks under Dinosaurs.

This approach simply asks: who is the most common visitor to my website, and what do they most commonly want to do?

But there’s a problem with this, and I’m sure you already see it.  We learned it on Sesame Street. “One of these things are not like the others:”

Dinosaurs  Plan Your Visit  Support the Museum About Us

Dinosaurs is out of place. It doesn’t seem to “fit.”  And this is of course because we all naturally sort things in our heads. Categories are easier to understand if they seem to “make sense” in parallel to each other.

The Logical Big Idea approach

So instead he museum might think: what big categories define us as an institution? Well, we have:  a) Exhibits  b) Visitors c) Donors, and d) our own Researchers. If we create one category for each, most information chunks fill fit neatly somewhere. Dinosaurs winds up under Exhibits, even though the popular user approach might have done it differently. This is more “logical.” But of course, it has its challenges too. it can be a less efficient to get to popular topics. And sometimes we realize that information chunks can still fit in two big categories instead of one.

So how did I get on this trail?

We find that websites we see every day come from the hard work information taxonomy: of sorting ideas and information chunks into little buckets that make sense.  But the buckets can be hard to define:  they can be more user-oriented, or more big-idea oriented or something in-between.

But here’s what I really want to talk about:  

This information architecture affects us.

But that’s for next time.

See Also:  Good article by David Cohen: The Art of Structuring Information Effectively

1. Actually, all three museums also display the hours on their homepage, which is perfect audience-centered design, but it distracts from my point right now, so I won’t mention it. [↩]

What do I know about my friends?

Well, lots. I know my friend Ty tells jokes and I know what tends to bother him. I know a couple books he read last year, what he does on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and where he lives.

And not so much. For instance, I could drive to Ty’s house, but I don’t recall the house number, or even the street for that matter. I know Ty’s age, but God help me if I can remember when his birthday is (I have trouble remembering my own family birthdays!) I absolutely don’t know his shoe size, and couldn’t make a list of the schools he went to growing up.

But Facebook can.

Last week I got added toFacebook’s “Graph Search” preview, which gives you a Google-like search box to paw through your friends’ meta-data.  You can search for:

• “Friends who currently live in Minnesota”
• “Music my friends who work at [workplace] like”
• My Buddhist friends who went to Kubasaki High School in 1994

Metadata is, you know, data about data. It’s that part of the Word document (do we use those any more?) that has the Author Name but isn’t our actual (half-finished) Rhetoric homework. It’s the GPS coordinates of the Walgreens that Google doesn’t show you but uses to locate it on the map. Most often it’s sortable and measurable. A number or a list.

People carry tons of meta-data. Even before the facebook-era. We’ve always has small snapshots of it being recorded: like the “M or F” and our height (feet and inches) on our driver’s license. It’s weird:  it’s both impersonal and very personal, isn’t it? Most of us don’t think our driver’s license carries the essence of us. But we also don’t love it when acquaintances grab it to take a look.

This is what I wonder about with Facebook’s new graph search. How personal or impersonal is it?

Facebook can’t categorize much of the knowledge about someone that we associate with being close—say, mood or shared experiences. But the impersonal information, once filtered and arranged, can feel intimate. My closest friends can’t list my three high schools. Do I care? Not particularly. It’s too detailed to expect. But someone who searches the Facebook social graph for the same info—suddenly it’ll feel like something only a good friend might (should!) know. Why?

Initial reactions to the Graph Search will be, like they always are, indiscriminate worries about privacy and Facebook ruining our lives. Many people will close their accounts (only to open them again a week later on a bored Thursday evening). Advocacy groups will file privacy law briefings with the courts.

But the issue will fade. And not because Facebook caves, but because we will start “not caring.” It won’t be because we can’t sustain the fight, but because we will simply grow accustomed to new definitions of personal and impersonal. Our Facebook meta-data—the numbers and lists about us—won’t seem so bad. I might actually remember a few more birthdays.

This morning we woke to the snow—gentle and universal—and it’s another reminder that Orlando, Florida is far away now. The temps here have occasionally been in single digits, but I welcome the life-cycle of seasons that reminds me how our lives too have greys and blues and hints of spring.

A few observations. They’re very personal, but maybe you can relate.

I feel tension between familiarity and new. When I arrived, the streets of Champaign had that writers cliche of being both “strange and familiar.” My steering wheel seemed to know the way around, even as I gawked out the window remembering buildings and intersections and how long the left-turn arrow lasts. Now, after six months, I feel emotionally caught between the comfort of being in a place with long personal history and wondering if there are unknown, more exciting things I’m missing. Do we all feel that as often as I do?

When it comes to old friends, stopping-through-town visits are different than re-establishing daily rhythms. It’s been very good to be around old friends again. But past those initial warm meetings and “catch-ups” it’s been a different thing to re-establish the patterns of daily life that overlap. People have changed, or their patterns have. So have mine. Good friendships are not only built on deep history and shared values but also on that sense of “spontaneous unplanned interaction.” While it’s much easier here in Champaign than the other places I’ve been in the last five years, it’s still a challenge to figure that out.

Life stress can vary dramatically. It’s more evident than ever for me: the two years in Orlando were much higher paced and had a significant more level of stress and task than I currently have. These months I feel like I’m just as effective (maybe more?), but the pace is less frenetic and I work much more from the “important” rather than the “urgent” quadrant. This is a welcome change for now. Here’s the thing though: I’m actually not convinced that I want to avoid high stress moments. Some of my most memorable accomplishments have been under pressure. It suggests to me that seasons of slower and then faster and then slower may be a good way to live.

Change reveals constants. Changing responsibilities and locations—leaving one fish bowl for another—maybe can give us a better clarity on what remains and what goes away. I’m reminded again that the core things I love are authoring, teaching, information, systems, and human communication.

Observations by nature are unsettled, and these certainly are. But as I look ahead to this coming year, they are helpful to me.

The Goal? Get the blog back spun up in 2013. At least to semi-regular posts for a time.  :)

I’m reading through portions of JR Woodward’s Creating a Missional Culture—where the experienced church planter paints his view of how to lead the church. He spends much of the book arguing for the virtues of a polycentric leadership approach.

Polycentric leadership is neither a flat leadership structure or a centralized leadership structure, says JR. Instead, multiple mature leaders “interrelate and incarnate the purposes of Christ.”

Love that phrase.

This view is high contrast with the CEO-celebrity model of pastoring we see so often. It’s such a common model that it’s easy to forget that the senior pastor on a central stage with huge video screens may be doing something more than simply amplifying the sermon. It’s a cultural structure that gives us the YouTube loop what we think leadership should be. It seems plain normal, that big stage—and our hip, charismatic, blog-if-you-see-them-in-person-getting-coffee leaders.

Okay, but why do we need a change?

Culturally, we’re shifting, says JR.  And it’s not just one thing:  it’s a Media Shift from Print to Broadcast to Digital (yes! I said aloud as reading), a Philosophical Shift to suspicion of power, a Scientific Shift to systems thinking, a Spatial Shift from rural/local to urban/global, and Religious Shift from Christendom to pluralism.

What do we need?

• Instead of leading from over, we lead from among
• Instead of leading from certainty, we lead by exploration, cooperation, and faith
• Instead of leading from a plan, we lead with attention

Okay. But there’s more questions than answers so far.  Is this practical or effective?  And shouldn’t we start with scripture instead of culture?  Sure.  JR does both those things… including an important question:  aren’t there examples of big central leaders in right there in the Bible?

I’ll get to that one next.

I belong to that category of people who pay for Amazon Prime, mostly for that little jump of joy we get every time we see the UPS guy—brown shorts and all—on a dash to the front door. New books are grand. And this box took me by happy surprise: Creating A Missional Culture: Equpping the Church for the Sake of the World by my friend and influencer JR Woodward (Intervarsity Press). I was pumped about this one enough to pre-order… And it arrived ahead of Amazon’s estimate. Bonus.

I’m sure I’ll need several posts on this one as we go, but I’ll start with the keyword Culture. Easy to skip if it’s just tossed on there, but you don’t make it off the first page of the first chapter without realizing that JR is going to make “culture” a centerpiece of his construction.

How would you characterize the typical person in the congregation you serve? A mature follower of Christ? A consumer of religious goods and services? Or something in-between? …

As a church planter, I have been haunted by these questions. I’ve started churches that continue to thrive, multiplying disciples and churches around the country. I’ve also started churches that have been slow to get off the ground. I’ve celebrated with church planters whose churches have thrived and are a great blessing to their neighborhood. I have also walked with church planters through the agony of having to close church doors. Through much reflection, reading and many sleepless nights, I’ve discovered that effective church planting requires thinking about the culture of the congregation.

Alan Hirsch and others have blurbed this one, so I’m a little lower on the Klout score chart. But having been acquainted with JR’s life and ministry for almost 15 years, I suspect (and hope) this book sticks. I think pastors will not find it to be the marketed book of the week (skim so you can tell people you saw it),  but really a compendium of true experience to absorb and re-read.

I’ll post a little more review or notes as I get time to jump back in.

David Boudia, US Olympic diver, said last night in his NBC interview that he was okay with his poor performance in the Olympic prelims because he knows that God is Perfect and Sovereign.

So, this may be the rant that officially requires apologies later. But I’m watching the Olympics on the couch, and my ipad is right here in my lap.

Here it is: fatalism is not submitting to the sovereignty of God. Speaking as if our action in the world does not matter is not submitting to the sovereignty of God. This is not how the Bible talks about the King of the world and our place.

We live in a created universe where our human actions have had both sinful and redemptive effects. When we do evil, or are even are simply poor at diving, there are consequences. When we do good, even simply choosing a soft answer which turns away anger—there are results.

What we do matters.

So I guess what I mean is, the accomplished David Boudia nearly was eliminated from the 2012 US Olympics because he struggled with his execution. And I don’t think God was Willing the judges down by a couple points.

The fear I sometimes hear from my Reformed friends is that this view is going to somehow heretically destroy a God who is Above All. Who is the rightful King. And who Sovereignly Works All Things Together for those who love the Lord.

It does no such thing.

I am confident in a King who made the foundations of the earth. Who has put himself into the human story to dramatically change the whole course of history. Who is making all things right, and will finish it.

But like Aslan aside frozen Narnia, all is not right in this world. Some follow the King, and some don’t. Aslan is not far away—never far away—but betrayal and death and failure happen. And these are because of what we do. Cause and effect are not only real in physics class.¹

Of course, David didn’t miss dives because of moral failure: that’s not at all my thought. Let’s also say that I’m happy for his faith in God and witness to it. But the God who loves him also didn’t guarantee his 18th/18 spot for the final Olympic final. David did that because his entry on dive 3 hit the “red” zone on the Splash-o-Meter.

And God remained King.

1. I’m taking some lightly phrased snipes here, but if you care, I’d more begin a more precise articulation philosophically as a collapse of particular causes into the telic; or theologically as a popular misunderstanding of concurrent sovereignty, which I affirm in its lighter forms [↩]