Youth and the InnerChange

I just responded to an email from Mike. I feel exhausted. You know how sometimes you get rolling on a thought and you keep writing...and writing...and writing.

There's a lot of youth that come to our church. A lot. Sit with Josh sometime and go through the pictures he has. Go to our myspace. Go to Jenny's site. Go to battleground or the Fish. I would say in the last five years, since the InnerChange has been alive, we have ministered to THOUSANDS of students. Maybe more. And we HAVE seen lives changed. We HAVE seen disciples being born.

And we've seen hurt. We've lived through the downs of life and the pits of death.

I think the ICY team is getting burned out. We've been carrying a heavy load...school, work, painting, cleaning, planning, teaching, relationship drama, life drama. And then I sit here and I take a second...just a second...to reflect on what has happened and what God has done. And then I remember, I'm not done yet. There is more to do.

When Lee went to heaven I know God said "well done my good and faithful servant". He and Cathy did a great job. All of the students, all of the youth ministries, Lee had a hand in. He built the first skate park for crying out loud. He started ICY in Mike's garage. He planned with Jennifer to get the Fish at the IC. Now God has brought him home, and He has entrusted this wonderful thing to us.

There is a mountain to climb to attain our goals. There's a lot more that needs to be done. More planning, more painting, more cleaning, more building, more systems. But all of that is to bring to life the vision that God has given us. And He has given us vision. I know it.

There is a time for rebuilding our Jerusalem. Our sacred city of refuge from the world, our place of worship. That time is now. (my interpretation of Micah 7:11)

Facebook Privacy

I am really getting tired of Facebook. I resisted the urge to create an account for a very long time, but about six months ago gave in. For the most part, I've been extremely impressed with Facebook's amazing site, and yet appalled and bored with it. (I will get to the appalled part later) For one, Facebook's tools such as face recognition, search capabilities, and photo albums are very impressive from a technology standpoint. They have some very clever software engineer's working for them. As a web programmer myself, I am very impressed.

On the other hand, the whole Facebook as an operating system is kind of stupid. I mean seriously, would someone please develop an application that is actually worth a damn. I get ten emails a day telling me I've been poked, or someone likes me, or I'm a favorite, or rate my videos, or compare music taste, or take this movie quiz, or join the warriors of the revolution group, or lastly someone has thrown a sheep at me. And seriously, I already have a wall I don't want an advanced wall, or super advanced wall, or picture/video wall. What the crap. Are they serious? Do people actually find entertainment value out that crap? If you do, please tell me. But personally, I get tired of wading through all the bunk messages trying to find someone who is actually trying to connect with me.

And then there is the appalling factor... Facebook has some serious privacy issues on their hands. I guarentee someone in 2008 will sue the crap out of Facebook. First of all, the cyber-stalking feature is cool, and I'm glad that they allow you to set which information share and which not to. However, do you remember when it was released, you had no control over it. After thousands of their users complained, and many threatened legal action, they finally added the ability to manage your information. Now, they've come out with a clever way to sell you personal information to advertisers. Their beacon system actually tracks your internet usage so that they can turn around and sell it to advertisers. To their defense, a lot of the websites you go to "sells" your information. But it seems Facebook has gone from a cool social networking site to a bunch of money hungry suits who are willing to compromise their user's privacy in order to make some change.

To make matters worse, I read an article today that says you can't delete your account. So basically, I'm tired of getting emails from advertisers selling me something that Facebook tracked me looking at, and I want to cancel my account. No can do. Better luck next time. What the mess.

Now I know what you're thinking. Myspace isn't much better. Well, yes they are. You can cancel your account. You don't have to put up with a bunch of useless features. You can actually make your page look like you want it. And on top of that, they don't track your usage. Sure they put up some annoying advertisements, but what website doesn't? They are not turning around and selling your email address every time you click on Old Navy.