There is no spoon.

[HT: Emily Carver]

Jon Acuff just changed the world. And he did it with little more than an idea and a blog.

18. Keep that number in the forefront of your mind. Why? Not only does it signify the amount of hours it took Jon and the Stuff Christians Like (SCL) community to raise $30,000 for a kindergarten in Vietnam, it’s also the new number for change.

“18″ means that you, yes you, can change the world around you.
“18″ means that you no longer have to wait for a church or business or ministry to effect change–all you need is a blog.
“18″ means that people want to give their lives to something bigger than themselves.

$30,000 in 18 hours. That is astounding. Can you imagine how long that would have taken in the “real world”?

• Committees would need to sign off on the idea.
• Campaigns would need to be planned.
• Brochures would need to be printed.
• Announcements would need to be made.
• Staff would need to be assigned to the project.

I’m not suggesting that giving campaigns like this are a bad thing, but what if Jon Acuff has found a better thing? What if he’s discovered a way to better utilize the time, talents and offerings of faithful Jesus followers in order to better effect change? To better build God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven? You can clearly sense his heartfelt conviction, joy, and amazement as this project progressed. Track the journey of this epic idea from start, to middle, to finish.

And people wonder if online community is “real”. You’d be hard-pressed to find another community that could raise this amount of money in such a short time–online, offline or anywhere in between. The question now becomes, “online community is real so what are we going to do with it?”

Congratulations, Jon. Congrats for acting on your convictions and utilizing technology to shepherd the flock that God has given you. Congrats for being faithful and opening an avenue for bloggers everywhere. You’ve changed the game. All this from goofy blog that pokes a little fun at stuff Christians like. Amazing.

Google is a strange bunch. Not only do they have foosball tables and “nap lounges” at their headquarters, they employ a working technique called the “20 percent rule.”

What is it? From the Official Google Blog:

The 20 percent time is a well-known part of our philosophy here, enabling engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren’t necessarily in our job descriptions. You can use the time to develop something new, or if you see something that’s broken, you can use the time to fix it.

Translation: You get to spend 20 percent of your paid time at Google working on something that isn’t your job. That. Is. Awesome. With a perk like this (and many others), one could see why Google is a tremendously popular place to work.

But Google isn’t just being cute here. They’re not trying to make their work place into the adult-version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. They’re actually onto something. Creativity–structured time to explore the imagination with no expectation of a immediate tangible output–actually increases productivity on the job. BrightHouse, an innovation consulting company, builds “thinking time” into their workflow:

BrightHouse’s 18 staff members get five Your Days, in which they are encouraged to visit a spot conducive to reflection and let their neurons rip. No mandate to solve a particular problem. Just blue-sky thinking — often under actual blue skies. Reiman [BrightHouse's CEO] believes this unstructured cogitation is just as important to a project’s success as time spent hunkered down in client meetings. Or as he puts it: “I think; therefore, I am valuable.”

This is an appeal to the imagination in the workplace. Not only that, but it’s an appeal to the “being” part of human being. We need time to “goof off” and spend time contemplating the sky, a passage of Scripture, quantum physics–heck, something other than the sometimes monotonous drone of everyday life. After all, it was Einstein himself who said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Question: Do you buy this? If not, why not? If so, how are you structuring imagination into your day?

Bonus Question: What are the biggest differences you see between Google (“new” company) and older, more established companies?

HT: Jake Bouma

My jaw dropped after I read this. From Mashable:

Students at Purdue University are experimenting with a new application developed at the school called Hotseat that integrates Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging to help students “backchannel” during class … Hotseat is used to allow students to comment on the class as it proceeds, with everyone in the class including the professor able to see the messaging as it happens.

Right now it’s only being pilot tested in two courses, but has already become a fast favorite for both teachers and students. Professor Sugato Chakravarty, whose personal finance course is one of the pilot tests, said, “I’m seeing students interact more with the course and ask relevant questions.”

This is brilliant. And inevitable. The leadership at Purdue is onto something. They see that these social media channels are the preferred methods of communication for college students. Instead of trying to block Facebook or Twitter, they’ve embraced that this is as much a part of a student’s life as homework and pizza. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” as the saying goes. It’s educational judo.

If commerce, communication and education–basic building blocks of our society–are being shaped and influenced by the web, what makes us think our faith lives should be exempt from this? They won’t (and shouldn’t) be, unless you’re Amish. In that case, you won’t even be reading this.

If we’re smart, we’ll learn from what Purdue is up to and find ways to bring this dialogical approach to our teaching and preaching. The Hotseat (or something like it) would allow congregations to break down the “fourth wall” and provide an avenue for real-time discussion on what is being preached. Questions, concerns, clarifications–all could be addressed in real-time amongst people who are having a shared experience. Brilliant.

What do you think? Could your pastor sit on the hotseat?

Read this passage from Body Politics by John Howard Yoder:

Sometimes the early Christians said they were all priests; sometimes they said that the priesthood was done away with. The concrete social meanings of the two statements, though verbally opposite, were the same. All members of the body a like are Spirit-empowered.

The monopoly of the sacrificial celebration that enables and delimits human access to the divine is swept away. The priestly person as the primary agent of access to the divine is swept away with the special ceremonies. Jesus was the last sacrifice and thus he was also the last priest. The antipriestly impact of this change, although expressed emphatically in the Pauline writings and in Hebrews, is one of the dimensions of redemption least noted and least honored in Christian history.

Translation: You have a part to play in God’s redemptive work through the church. It’s not just for “staff,” it’s for all of us. Your gifts are valid in the church. Use them.

I’ve been using the Amazon Affiliates program when linking products on this site for a year or so. Basically, every time you link to a product on Amazon they give you a percentage of the sales if someone ends up buying a product you referred. It’s not going to pay your bills, but it gives you some coin for doing something most bloggers do all the time: Link products.

Amazon just took their affiliate program to another level by adding Twitter integration. Yes. Now you can share links from products you find useful with your tweeps and make a little coin on the side. It’s a win-win.

Want to give it a try? It’s easy.

1. First you need to sign up as an affiliate.

To do this, go to Amazon and look in the upper right-hand corner. You should see a little “Amazon associates” link that looks like this:

Click on it (or you can just click this link) and go through the quick sign-up process. After you sign up, you’ll be given an individual “affiliate ID” that’s unique to you. It shows Amazon who you’re referring and what they buy.

There’s a lot you can do with the options on the other side of the sign-up, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll focus on the Twitter integration.

2. Find a product you like.

For demonstration purposes, I’m going to pick the latest album from Discovery, “LP” (and yes, this is linked to my affiliate ID). After you’ve signed in as an affiliate, you find the page of the product you want and click on the “share on Twitter” button on the affiliate “stripe.”

This will open up a new link that will take you to Twitter. Which brings us to the next step…

3. Share it on Twitter.

The hard part’s over. Amazon built a script that allows you to share the link of the product you chose with you affiliate ID already built-in. Alter the message as you see fit and share it with your tweeps.

Done and done. Hopefully someone will find it useful and “buy what you’re sellin’!”

A few tips in closing …

Don’t be “that guy/girl.” Share stuff that you truly find useful or exciting. Spamming your Twitter friends with useless junk will get you unfollowed faster than sending an auto-reply DM.

This new feature from Amazon can be a great way to let people know what you’re buying while making some cash on the side. Sign-up, have fun and make that dough!

Some people get hijacked by Scripture. I get hijacked by people describing their workflows. In particular, Jason Fried’s. Fried founded 37signals.com, a web-based software development company. In an interview in Inc., here’s how he describes a part of his workday:

I usually get to work between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Of the 16 people at the company, eight of us live here in Chicago. Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.

Notice how he said “40-hour workweek.” Some weeks, that may mean you work 60, 70 hours. Other weeks it may mean you work 20. Or 10. Or even four. Either way, younger people seem to gravitate towards “getting things done” rather than “punching the clock”. Either way, this is the quintessential work philosophy for the next generation workforce:

• Show up when they feel it appropriate to show up; when their schedule allows.
• Work from where they want to work. Not necessarily where a company dictates.
• Working to accomplish goals rather than passing the time.

If you are leading a team full of young people, this is how they think. If you want to lead a team of young people, this is how they will think. If you are frustrated with the young people in your workforce because they think this way, they will always think this way whether you’re frustrated with them or not. If you aren’t willing to compromise with this younger generation, they will take their time and talents and find a place that will.

This was a great look into a start-up company with a young person at the helm. As young people take leadership positions in America’s workforce, look for more of this, not less.

A few days ago, I received this comment on the blog:

At first, I laughed. I mean, how can you not appreciate the subtle nuance of “yousuck@hotmail.com”?

Then I thought, “Wow, this person was upset enough by something I said to leave a comment that forcefully told me stop speaking.”

Then, it stung a little bit.

As any person who creates knows, you put something of yourself into that which you create. I create on this blog. I create thoughts and ideas and hopefully a new type of reality that we can step into together. So as a creator, when someone says, overtly or covertly, that they do not like what you have created, it stings.

But this shouldn’t be surprising. Not after the past week I had. Last week was a great week, and the Devil hates when people have great weeks. I’m reminded of something I heard at STORY:

The devil wants to steal your stories by convincing you they’re not worth writing.

Isn’t that the truth? You create and you write and you send your tiny, little creation out into the world hoping it makes it. You tell your story and try to live it out and the devil wants to make you believe it’s worthless. No one wants to read it.

It’s like when a nest of turtle eggs hatch and those tiny little turtles make a sprint for the ocean. Along the way, some are eaten by birds, lizards or fish. Some don’t even make it out of the nest. Our stories, much like tiny little turtle hatchlings, are delicate.

But we keep creating. We keep telling the devil to “shove it” and we keep creating, and telling, and sharing, and declaring: “This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Maker, all the day long.”

Have you ever been discouraged? Has anyone ever told you your story wasn’t worth writing? More importantly, did you believe them? Do you need to “pick up the pen” and start writing again?

Cultivate/STORY were a lot of fun. I even have proof.

Below are a few videos I collected from the week. They roll as follows:

1. A walk from the back of the Paramount Theatre to the front during the opening session of STORY.
2. This is short clip from the session I facilitated. I prayed that three people would show up. They did … And then some.
3. We found a bag of weed. Yes, that weed.

Enjoy.