Apple

I woke up early this morning and made my way down to the Cherry Creek Mall to get in line at the Apple store so I could by a new iPhone 3G. I arrived at 6a and was the 24th person in line. Not a bad deal to be there two hours early, especially when you consider that, if I showed up later a little later, I would have spent 6 hours at the mall rather than 3.5.

Anyway, the news was there to cover the release and I ended up being interviewed and having my picture taken a few times. While my video bit which focused on the whole Mac community and experience didn't make it onto www.denverpost.com, my picture did a few times. Here's my few minutes of iPhone driven fame (I wonder if I'll be in the paper tomorrow):

The front page of the paper's website:

The lead picture on the iPhone article:

An "in article" picture:

A larger version of the "in article" picture:

Many of us love Mac ads, be it Mac vs. PC or just a new product being unveiled with catchy music. So, what happens when Microsoft attempts to be creative? This:

On another note, for all of you in the LCMS, doesn't this remind you of most of our video production and creative communications?

The other night I watch the D5 joint-interview featuring Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (download via iTunes here). While the two are obviously very differences in their personalities and they exchanged some entertaining barbs, as they sat there on the stage together, either they are amazing actors or there is no bitterness between them. I found this to be incredibly refreshing.

As I mentioned the other day, I've been reading Alan Hirsch's The Forgotten Ways. While it has a few elements of brilliance (there is a blog on the way both here and on the Genesis blog about his "Jesus is Lord" chapter), there is also this incredible bitterness. As a friend put it, according to Hirsch, Jesus said something to the effect of, "Oh crap, what am I going to do now?" when Constantine became a Christian. Flowing out of this is the general idea that the last 1,700 years of Christianity have been a complete waste and we really need to hate our past if we're going to look towards our future (note, this is different than looking at our past with rose colored glasses).

It seems to me that it would be far more productive to celebrate the good things that flowed out of the Church while we had home court advantage. Take for example the number of people who are now with Christ because there was so much freedom to share the Gospel or, more directly impacting us, we have some amazing artistic expressions of faith in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music (talk about wonderful discussion starters on the kind of faith that would drive someone to produce such works).

At the same time, while honoring our past, we can also say that the Church now holds or is moving towards a different place in the world ... a place where we are on the fringes of society rather than in the center. Given this new place, it should force us to rethink how we do ministry. Given that we're in the transition, this means we'll have congregations of both kinds active in our midst, side by side, sharing the same Gospel together. Wouldn't it be beautiful if we, like Microsoft and Apple, could be different but not bitter?

By the way, don't worry, I'm not going to end my friendly barb that describes Microsoft as the Budweiser of the computer industry, that is, a product lacking character, distinction, and style so it can have mass appeal.