Windows 7 Released Today

Today is a big day in the computing world as the latest operating system from Windows, Windows 7, is being released. This event will cause nary a ripple in the life of 99% of the world’s population (including, for instance, my wife Donna’s world), but here I am sitting at my laptop typing using the “old” Vista operating system and suddenly I feel totally outdated. Why is that? I wasn’t outdated yesterday. Why do I feel that way today? What kind of hold do technology vendors like software companies, television makers (HD, 3D, 780p, 1080i, etc….) and telephone makers (Iphone I, II, III, etc..) have on me? What kind of power do they have over my mind that they can suddenly make me feel old fashioned with the release of the latest, greatest device or program that will instantly change my life?

The truth is, it’s impossible to stay updated with technology unless you are Warren Buffett, and he doesn’t appear to care about technology. And so I sit and wonder; should I spring for the $119 upgrade to Windows 7? Should I trade in my old-fashioned Blackberry for a sleek new Iphone?

Naah…the best things are the oldest. Give me a good old book – the paper and ink kind, not a Kindle. Give me a telephone that makes calls and doesn’t do everything else in the world. Give me Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Most of all, give me Jesus. He alone can satisfy that emptiness that makes me think I need to update my PC or buy a new television.

It does occur to me that the church has something to learn here however. Imagine if we could create the kind of thirst for God and the things of God that technology companies do for their products. Imagine driving up to your church on Sunday morning and seeing the line to get in going around the block like you see whenever the latest Iphone is released? Wouldn’t that be awesome? What can we learn from them? Food for thought….

Lost in Cyberspace

I just had a weird experience with email. One of my accounts is with AT&T (formerly BellSouth) and apparently AT&T is currently migrating all their mail to Yahoo. Somehow in the process 458 of my emails got temporarily "lost." At least I would call them lost - lost in cyberspace. But AT&T claims they never were really lost; my overly polite and courteous customer service agent told me tonight that AT&T knew where my emails were all the time. They just didn't get them to me.

Long story short...I was sitting at my laptop with Outlook open when suddenly emails started flying into my inbox, one right after another. I knew something was going on. I called and spoke with AT&T and they apologized, but still, I've got a mess to clean up.

It turns out that of the 458 emails only about 20 of them were anything even remotely approaching what you would call "important." Not a single one reached the "crucial" level. Still, it's scary to think people emailed me three weeks ago about something and I didn't get their email until tonight (I have already apologized to everyone who did). I suppose I rely too much on email; the failure to receive one, or worse, to respond to one can cause a lot of unnecessary grief and pain. Who wants a pastor who you can email, but who is apparently choosing to ignore you?

I am sure there is some deep philosophical, theological, or homiletical gem in this snafu somewhere, but for the life of me, I can't think of it tonight. Maybe I should just turn off my laptop and turn in. Yes...that's exactly what I'll do. Good night.

PS - if you ever email me and don't hear back within three weeks, please call.

Tweeting Prayers

I found this article on the BBC. For years thousands of believers have come to place their prayers on handwritten notes between the 2,000-year-old stones of the Western or "Wailing" wall in Jerusalem in hopes that their requests will find a short-cut to God. I went to Jerusalem myself in 1995 and visited the Western Wall. I prayed there and put a written prayer in one of the mortar joints of the wall.

In recent years, people from overseas have been able to email and fax their prayers which were then printed out and taken to the wall. Now an service has started using the social networking service Twitter so prayers, sent as "tweets" can be printed off and posted on the wall to sit alongside the thousands of other notes placed there by visitors.

Since the service began hundreds of people have taken advantage of it. Founder Alon Nil is now looking for sponsorship to pay someone to help maintain the site or a programming service that can do some of the work for him.

What will they think of next?

Big Weekend

This is a huge weekend for the Jackson family. My daughter Leigh is graduating from Berry College in Rome, Ga. We are so proud of her. Leigh has done great in school. She already has a job too! Leigh enrolled and finished her senior year at Georgia State in Atlanta. She is getting also getting married on June 6th. We are so excited for her and for her fiancé John Harper. Way to go Leigh! We love you dear!

Wow, it is funny how time catches up to you. I remember graduating from college myself; it seems like just yesterday (University of Georgia, 1978). I had no idea what I really wanted to do when I graduated. Donna and I were already married. I worked at the Athens YMCA. I had three job offers upon graduating. My three choices were: Delta airlines as a “Junior Accountant,” Georgia Federal Savings and Loan as a bank teller, or Northside Realty in their commercial real estate division. I chose Northside Realty because I believed I could get to the top quickest with them. It did not work out that way, but God had His own plan. Donna took a job teaching at Headland High School in East Point, Georgia and we bought a 750 square foot house on Romain Way in East Point for $15,000 and we were on our way! Wow, that was a long time ago.

Back to the present day: My daughter Amy got back from Thailand and India last night. It is nice to have all our offspring on American soil again. Sounds like she had a fantastic time. She comes home to Georgia on May 31st. We can't wait to see her.

I broke down and bought a new digital camera today since we have so much coming up with the graduation and wedding. I gave our Nikon digital camera to Amy the last time she was in Georgia because her camera broke. Buying a new camera was a very difficult choice; I did a ton of research and finally settled on a Canon SD 790 IS – a “point-and-and shoot” digital camera. It is amazing how difficult the simplest thing can be today. There were a million choices.

It is also Mother’s Day weekend. I have a great mom. I also have a great wife who is the mom to my own children. I even have a pretty cool mother-in-law. I guess I am a lucky guy in that. Everyone is coming over to our house for Mother’s Day. We are privileged to honor all the moms and we’ll have at least seven moms at our house that day – what a joy!

May God bless you this weekend – He is so good!!!

P.S. I will be pretty busy this weekend, not too sure how often I will get to blog....

Defriended!

It is a cruel world out there. A few days ago I got “defriended” on Facebook. I didn't know you could even do that. Turns out you are not actually notified when someone defriends you. You simply notice you are no longer seeing any updates from that person in your newsfeed (especially if they were a heavy Facebook user). That’s what happened with me. I realized I hadn’t seen anything from ___________ in a while so I tried to go to their Facebook page and it said, “Add as friend.” I had been defriended!

I did a little research on the topic and discovered the concept is so new the jury is still out on whether the word “defriend” should be hyphenated or not. Here is the entry for "defriend" in the Urban Dictionary.

Ending friendships face-to-face is difficult and awkward enough. So far no one is quite sure of the etiquette of how to do it properly. Most of the time out in the “real world” we simply ignore certain individuals we want to defriend and, over time, the friendship fades away. We rarely make public pronouncements (e.g. “I’m no longer your friend”), and so unlike online defriending there is seldom a single action that indicates it is over. Online, of course, we can do it swiftly and easily, by selecting the option, “Remove from Friends.” There’s no need for an explanation. It’s all over in a single click.

Of course sometimes defriendings are not about actually ending friendships. A defriending may not have anything to do with anger or lack of interest in the person being defriended, or passive-aggressive behavior. Instead it may be about lives that are changing where the person being defriended is no longer a part of your social circle. For instance, people move away, get divorced, change jobs, sue one another, change political views, and other tastes change. In short, people change and life situations change so our relationships change. There are plenty of reasons for defriending. I read where one woman had an uncomfortable defriending episode where she felt the need to defriend someone she barely knew that insisted on continually sharing far too much private information about their personal lives publicly.

Bottom line, for now there does not seem to be a way to defriend without the implied insult that goes with it. I am sure over time this will change. But for now – to the party that defriended me – no hard feelings!

Getting the Word Out

Although I am relatively new to the whole blogging, Facebook, Twitter phenomenon I have obviously recently embraced the concept as a way to get the Good News about Jesus (and NewSong) out. Upon browsing other blog sites I noticed that other bloggers list their Facebook and Twitter accounts and I’m suspecting one reason they do so is so these links will be picked up and indexed by Internet search engines, especially the more often the links appear.

What and I trying to say? Well, the first place most people are going to turn to find out anything on the Internet is a search engine, most likely, Google. Thus by pointing a link or two at my blog, my Facebook account and my Twitter account I should generate more public listings on search engines, so here I (shamelessly) go.

Here is a link to Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church in Cumming, Georgia on blogspot and Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church in Cumming, Georgia on Facebook and Steve Jackson pastor of NewSong Community Church on Twitter.

Oh, I feel so cheap now! But hopefully in a little while a web crawler will be by to pick up those links and before long, voila, more people will find me, view my blog and my Facebook account and my Twitter account and discover all the absolutely astounding information that can be found there! :-)

It will be interesting to see if this works…