better

Last May I blogged on a talk by Leonard Sweet on two ways to do more ... better and different. Since that time it's become a standard piece I use when talking about why I approach ministry the way I do, be it downtown, online, or in my writing. While most of Christianity is still caught up in the "better" game, be it a better band, a better choir, better theatrical effects, better liturgy, better marketing, or better whatever else it is that we have done throughout Christendom, I'm grabbing onto the idea of a "different" yet still Biblical ecclesiology (the study the Church itself as a community or organic entity).

So, what does this have to do with Mac? Well, yesterday was the annual keynote address from Steve Jobs at MacWorld and, like any other Apple freak, I was watching the highlights of the address on a live updating site and chatting about the new products with a slew of mostly Mac users from across the country.

I say mostly because, for some reason, a Windows guy decided to drop in on the conversation and repeatedly tell us how great Vista is ... never mind that Bill Gates himself admitted that, even though it was incredibly late on its release, it was still released too early because not all of the bugs had been fixed. Anyway, after the introduction of the Mac Book Air, this guy had to go off on Mac being all about novelty and not really caring about usefulness. According to him, the Air is all style and no substance.

Now, if we're working on a "more as better" model of computing, then he's exactly right. After all, the Air is, in no way, shape, or form designed to be the latest and greatest portable desktop ... after all, it doesn't have an optical drive or firewire port, it's 80 gig hard drive (60 if you go flash) isn't all that impressive, it's not as fast as other computers, and it only has one USB port.

However, if we think of the Air in the "more as different" category, we can begin to see how it's the beginning of a new genre of portable computing, one that I'm already moving towards on my almost 3 year old iBook.

So, what's this genre? The laptop computer as terminal. Now, having a terminal isn't anything new, you can find them in my corporate environments and in places like libraries. What is new however is that the terminal will hook onto the Internet which is where all of your documents and other files will be stored.

For example, I rarely use a word processor on my desktop anymore. Rather, I use Google Docs (I tried Zoho which has more functionality, but I continuously had issues entering text and moving around the page which makes a word processor worthless no matter how many bells and whistles it has). So, if you send me a document in Microsoft Word, since all of my e-mails run through a Google account, I won't download it, I'll just click a button and it will open up in Google Docs (although, using a Greasemokey Script and a Firefox extension, I do download back up copies fairly regularly, but, ultimately, this will happen on a desktop and not my portable). As a result, I don't need a ton of room on my portable's hard-drive, I just need it to have the processor power to interact with the Internet seamlessly. As a result, I have my docs, email, and pretty much anything else I need accessible to me anywhere I go (or on any computer that can get online).

So, why an Air? When you're on the road, in a small space, or regularly on the move, to have a full sized screen and keyboard (which is where an iPhone falls short) that weighs three pounds and takes up less than an inch of depth is a beautiful thing. Now we just need to get universal free wi-fi across the globe and in the air.

Thanks to Mac for thinking "more as different" ... again.

By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, you can see the Mac Book Air ad here.

Throughout most of my life I've had a very short fuse. I think it's the result of being really passionate about, well, pretty much everything. I can quickly become intense about topics ranging from theology to the Broncos and have gone off on a tirade because of things ranging from kids talking while I was trying to teach, to arguments where somebody belittles my point, to something that caused me pain, be it physical or emotional.

I'm not proud of this and have worked hard to control it. Over time I've done a semi-good job, but typically, because I hold so much of the frustration in, when I finally do go off, it's all too often way over the top.

That brings me to today. I was walking in the kitchen and trying not to step on Robbie who was sitting right in the middle of the entryway playing with Tupperware. As I moved my foot around him I smashed my little toe against the wall and knocked off the nail ... well, almost knocked it off, it's still bound to my toe by bit of skin at the base.

Anyway, it starts bleeding on the kitchen floor and throbbing with pain. At this point my initial reaction would be to get angry at the person who caused the accident (because I couldn't possibly admit that my lack of grace was the culprit) and then think about fixing my toe. Well, as I looked down at Robbie, I really couldn't get mad at him so I just hopped into the bathroom to rise out the wound.

Of course one of Robbie's favorite things these days is the bathtub so he heard the water running and came crawling, first into the bathroom and then up my leg so he could get to the water. What's odds is that rather than getting angry, I couldn't help but laugh and, as I did, not only did my frustration level decrease but the pain also went down.

I'm not sure exactly what all this means but I have to wonder if this is a small example of how having Robbie is helping me to be a better man.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the Day of Homiletical Reflection at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis (yes, I'm back in St. Louis ... again). The keynote speaker was Dr. Leonard Sweet, a prolific author, speaker, and preacher whose writing played an interesting role in my life in that he helped me understand myself (yes, I once confused myself as much as I continue to confuse others).

While his primary topic was something to the effect of preaching the church through the perfect storm, with the storm being the convergance of post-modernity, post-Christendom, and post-scale), he made a couple of points that really struck a chord with me. The first deals with the idea of how we, as a church, can offer people "more".

When we offer "more" we have two options, the first way, which also happens to be the most common, is offering a "better" version of what we already have. In the church world this tends to be slicker productions, older liturgies, better music (organ, bells, or band), and an increased number of programs or educational opportunities. The basic philosophy runs with the idea that we're doing the right things, but they aren't going to work unless we do them "better" (note how this happens in traditional and non-traditional churches alike).

For another way to look at it, I'll point to one of Len's examples ... the XBox 360 and PS3 are the video game version of "more" in the "better" sense. They have improved graphics, sound, controllers, games, and speed. However, there's a different kind of "more" out there, one personified by the Nintendo Wii, which doesn't have anywhere near the memory or processor power of the XBox 360 or PS3, but it does offer "more" in that it is "different" and therefore has a radically different impact on the users experience (and as a result, stores can't keep them on the shelves).

For me, when I've been involved in churches where we try to do "more" in the "better" sense, it has always left me feeling like I was in "The Little Shop of Horrors" with the ministry being Audrey II and me being her next meal. This reality (which has huge connections into the doctrine of vocation) is a primary reason why I've haven't pursued the big, flash, sexy, "more as better" ministry that so many people expected me to start.

Rather, for me, "more as different" is the goal. It's not being different for the sake of being different, rather, it's how can a ministry shape lives that flow from grace and are, as a result, "more" because they are "different" from the lives that the rest of the world lives. This was the kind of "more" that reshaped the world in the 1st Century and it's the kind of "more" that I'm convinced our world needs today.