GlennFrazier.com http://glennfrazier.com/ The personal musings of the Rev. Glenn "Mac" Frazier, New Christian (Swedenborgian), American, husband, father, entrepreneur, preacher and all-around know-it-all. All opinions and errors are his and his alone. en Copyright 2007 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:00:55 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Introduction The Long Tail and start reading. Don't know what I'm talking about? Go check out my earlier post/podcast on this subject for all the details. In essence, I'm podcasting and blogging through this fascinating book, looking for insights relevant to the life and future of the church, both generally the Christian church and also as it specifically applies to New Christianity (Swedenborgianism). Anyway, welcome to the first real installment: "The Introduction". First, for those who don't (yet) have this fantastic book, here's a quick synopsis of what you missed from the Introduction: SYNOPSIS Chris Anderson, editor in chief for Wired magazine and author of this book, opens up by noting how as a society we are obsessed with tracking "hits". Best-seller lists, music charts, movie box-office figures, television ratings, and all that. He then notes that hits are becoming harder to achieve, and that fewer people are watching the "best" shows and buying the "best" albums. A major cause of this decline of the economic popularity of "hits" is the Internet. Anderson contrasts his own teen years with that of an adolescent of the early 21st century. Today's teen uses TiVo, iTunes, Web comics, Slashdot, Fark, BitTorrent and instant messaging to enjoy a huge host of niche versions of standard media in a way that caters to his very particular tastes, and all in a manner that is independent of schedule and location. This is a big jump from those of us that sat in front of the TV in the living room for Gilligan's Island and whose parents learned about the world from the city newspaper and the nightly network newscast. Back in the day, most information, media and entertainment consumption was done by means of a small number of "big buckets". This was an economic necessity in the era of broadcast media that dominated the 20th century. Today, though, the idea of one-size-fits-all media marketplaces is ending. As Anderson puts it, what we once thought of as "the mainstream" is "shattering...into a zillion different cultural shards". Traditional media companies don't like this. New technologies that allow information consumers to pick from scads of "little buckets" are resulting in a decline in the economic power of "hits". Bottom line: more and more money is flowing to a larger number of "non-hits" and away from the small number of big bucket "hits". The category of "non hits" has of course always been bigger than the category of hits. Only a select few movies can be blockbusters; only a handful of books make the best-seller lists. These non-hits may have audiences in the millions, but put into the larger context of the overall human population, they don't make even a blip on the radar. And yet, that is where people are increasingly turning. This doesn't mean the mass market is going away, to be replaced wholly with millions of niches; it's just that the balance is shifting. This synopsis is running long, but it's important to get this idea clear in everyone's heads up front. Future synopses will be briefer. Anyway, Anderson says "This book began with a quiz I got wrong." Want to take the quiz yourself? There is a company called Ecast that places digital jukeboxes in public places (bars, restaurants, etc.) which through a broadband connection to the Internet are able to offer a huge selection of music to paying customers. Here's the question: "What percentage of the 10,000 albums available on the jukboxes sold at least one track per quarter?" Heard of the 80/20 rule? Well, Anderson used it as a starting point, and then guessed, somewhat outrageously, that 5,000 of the 10,000 available albums sold at least one track every three months. And he was wrong. The answer? 98 percent! It turns out that the combined market for niche music is, as Anderson puts it, "effectively unbounded." It turns out that this phenomenon appears in a number of places today. NetFlix and iTunes are two examples of services that capitalize on this effect, making a good deal of money renting out niche BBC documentaries and anime series, and almost-never-heard-on-the-radio indie rock bands and classical recordings. It turns out that the market for all the millions of niche titles, aggregated together, is the same size as the traditional market for hits and near-hits combined! This may seem like strange economics. Economics are usually driven by scarcity, right? Well, the invnetion of digital media and the decreasing costs of digital storage and transmission are creating a situation in which there is effectively no inventory cost in certain industries. This means there can be unlimited supply. Unlimited. Factor in the fact that there are as many peculiar tastes in the market as there are individual people, and you get a really cool situation: effectively unlimited supply serving the needs of what turns out to be an effectively infinite variety of niche markets. Traditional supply/demand curves show the interplay of those two basic economic factors. But if supply no longer counts as a constraining force, you get something more like a "pure" demand curve—something that describes what people actually want or need, not merely what they can manage to get given artificially limited selection. Anderson starts looking at data from music download site Rhapsody. When you graph their "best sellers", you get this huge spike at the left of the chart, showing their top downloads. The curve falls off steeply, but it doesn't drop right to zero. Trailing off to the right is a flattening curve showing all the other downloads, ranked by popularity. Even the 100,000th most downloaded track has been downloaded thousands of times, and the curve keeps going like that past the 400,000th download. This is called a "long tail distribution" and is the source of the title of this book. Anderson makes three important observations here:
(1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; (2) it's now within reach economically; (3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market
This effect shows up in non-entertainment industries as well. It's not just about the economics of digital media, but of abundance itself. Think of produce. You can go into a Whole Foods today and select from twenty different varieties of flour, some of them quite niche. We are all becoming "mini-connoisseurs", engaging in things labled as "massclusivity", "slivercasting", and "mass customization". The Long Tail is everywhere. It's easiest to see, though, in the world of digital entertainment media. Prime examples are found in the economics of Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, eBay and in Google advertising. And exploring this phenomenon is what the book is all about. COMMENTARY I'm going to keep my commentary short after that long synopsis. This is the reverse of how future installments of the "Church and the Long Tail" podcast blog series are going to go. I just wanted to get everyone on board with the basic premise, and hopefully inspire some laggards and inquirers into actually borrowing or buying the book so they (you!) can follow along with future installments. I don't know if you see what I see, here, so let me give you my own premise in a nutshell: the world of "church" is a long-tail world, with a handful of megachurches getting giant crowds along side zillions of very small "niche" churches scattered among the billions of communities of the world. Furthermore, the world of "religion" is a long-tail world, with a handful of religious denominations getting the limelight while an increasing number of niche religious movements and independent churches, are gaining interest among more and more people. Add into this the fundamental nature of the "preaching industry", of you will. The lifeblood of religion is moral behavior. Church is only effective when lives are transformed so that people do more good and less evil in the world. To stretch the image of lifeblood a little, the oxygen that binds with the red blood cells of the church and makes religion possible is, essentially, information. It is truth wed to good that is the very breath and heartbeat of any effective church. The job of the preacher is to provide instruction in truth, and then to use that truth to guide people to live a life of goodness. And this puts priests, pastors, ministers and preachers squarely inside the realm of the information economy. (For those of you that are squeamish about putting "priest" and "economy" in the same sentence, let not your heart be troubled; "economics" isn't the study of commercialism, but the study of human interactions with regard to resources. Yes, economics often is about currency and commerce, but more broadly it's really about human behavior. Why do you think Jesus sometimes taught by means of parables that use economic frameworks?) Anyway, this means that the primary activities of a pastor—instruction and leadership—are clearly susceptible to long-tail market forces. In other words churches, through blogs, podcasts, social networking sites and other Web 2.0 technologies, are in a position to have surprisingly important effects on the world, out of proportion with traditional expectations. So, in short, I see my field of religions, congregations and priests to be one squarely placed for taking advantage of long-tail effects. I see this from the perspective of my niche denomination (General Church of the New Jerusalem), my niche congregation (Pittsburgh New Church) and my own personal niche ministry (TheoBlog.com). The question is—as it always is—what are we going to do about it? I invite comments via email, phone call, and (of course) comments posted directly to this blog. Next installment, I will go over any interesting feedback I've received, synopsize (briefly!) the first full chapter of Anderson's book, and then provide some thoughts on what I think this all means. Oh, and spread the word. More minds on this task will make it a better project by far. I look forward to hearing from you all! (This special blog series is also available in audio. Click here to listen to the audio of this post, or click here to subscribe to the free podcast.)]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/introduction.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/introduction.php Church and the Long Tail big idea church long tail pastors religion web 2.0 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:00:55 -0500 The Counter-Clockwise Power Meter am a conservationist; conserving natural resources makes good economic sense, it's aesthetically pleasing, it's charitable to one's neighbors, and it is part of being a good steward of God's gifts to mankind. I know it sounds like I'm playing a semantics game, and I guess in part I am. It's like feminism. I am a supporter of all things feminine. However, much of what cloaks itself in formal "feminism" looks to me more like female supremacy. Perhaps one might more properly call it "femaleism"? Anyway, I love women, have deep respect for all of the important, powerful, and underappreciated ways they contribute to civil and spiritual life. But I abhor group identity politics and all the ugly intellectual violence it does to individuality. But I'm way off track, here. My point? No one would ever accuse me of being an environmentalist, probably just on the strength of my political conservatism. However, the idea of "going off the grid" with regard to power consumption—the notion of being a net producer, not user, of energy—and clean energy at that—has always been a little fantasy of mine. My conservative appreciation for what is sometimes called "rugged individualism" has yearned for years for the opportunity to become more and more self-sustaining and less and less dependant upon burning other people's resources in some faraway coal plant. And so, I find this article, “'Zero-Energy' home plans, in the city or in the sticks" (Matt Edens, Knoxville Metro Pulse: Commentary, 2007) to be really exciting. Here's the lead paragraph:
Living “off the grid” in a home that uses superior efficiency and renewable sources to produce all its electrical needs without plugging into the power grid has long been a goal of environmentalists and conservationists everywhere. Today, that goal is essentially achievable, and you don't have to be a tree-hugger living deep in the forest to do it.
Read on to discover how people are building homes for under $100k that give back to the power grid almost as much energy as they draw from it, all without looking like dorky George Jetson style twinkidomes. (Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.) ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/the_counterclockwise_power_meter.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/the_counterclockwise_power_meter.php Philosophy Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:09:16 -0500 New Health Program Diet Low in fat and calories, high in fiber, protein and water. Breakfast is 400 calories and under 14g of fat; lunch is under 550 calories and under 18g fat; dinner is 650 calories and 22g fat. There are also one or two snacks during the day/evening, totalling no more than 200 calories and 6g fat. That's a total of 1800 calories and 60g of fat per day. Breakfast is mostly meal-replacement products (e.g. SlimFast), since early morning is my most productive work time and I hate wasting it on food—especially since I don't really enjoy traditional breakfast fare. Lunch during weekdays is often a mix between more high-protein meal replacement stuff and low-fat sandwiches ala SubWay. Weekend lunches and dinner all week long draws alternatingly from home-cooked meals and "healthy" prepackaged convenience foods, depending on my and my family's schedule. Snacks are mostly popcorn and low-fat frozen desserts. Finally, I am taking a multivitamin at bedtime (for good reason), and one alli (over-the-counter orlistat) with almost every meal. Exercise I do three sets of pushups the moment I get out of bed, to boost metabalism and build arm, chest and back muscles. At the end of the afternoon, between work and family time I walk 30 or more minutes—in Frick Park or in my neighborhood (Edgewood, PA) when the weather is nice for it, and on a treadmill at a small local fitness club on other days. By the way, I have mastered the art of reading while walking, so this is also a time for me to do either devotional reading of the Word or (occasionally) professional development reading. Bedtime I do between 15 and 45 minutes of Taiji Quan (a.k.a. Tai Chi Chuan). All this is seven days per week. Also, I am now taking Taiji classes on Monday and Thursday nights, after the kids are in bed. I plan on going down to just one class per week in August, when I will be adding in one or two classes per week of Kendo. (Eventually, I hope to spnd time in the next five years studying Taiji, Kendo and Tae Kwon Do; in particular I am fascinated with the different approaches each martial art takes with regard to the sword.) Sleep Tuesday through Sunday my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. Monday night through Saturday night, another alarm (on my phone/pda) reminds me to go to bed at 10 p.m., although I often ignore it. Sunday night / Monday morning is stay up late / sleep in late time. I try to read for half an hour every night, rotating through serially the Word, reading various non-fiction books for professional development, and reading an occasional novel just for fun. Work There's a lot of variation right now. Once school begins in September, my teaching schedule will force some changes as well as more overall rigidity, but for now here's what I (mostly) am doing. Tuesdays I work in the office in the church; it's our senior pastor's day off, and a time for me to catch up on email, touch base with folks on the phone, check in on my denomination's listserv for priests, tackle long-term writing projects, etc. Wednesday through Friday I work in my home office up on the third floor of our house; these days are dedicated to sermon development, spiritual growth campaign work, outreach projects, and other long-term tasks. Also, Wednesday nights are frequently church meeting nights, and I have various pastoral duties that have me out and about town in unpredictable ways Tuesday through Thursday. (Fridays are protected time for in-office work, unless there's an emergency in someone's life.) Saturday is family time, although Saturday night I will often retire to my home office for a bit of sermon prep—what some call "internalizing", and others might call "practicing", although it's not necessarily either. Sundays I preach; on those days I don't preach (not many this summer) I make room for a little extra prayer and devotional reading. When I finish preaching and socializing, I rejoin my family at home for lunch, then go up to my office to upload sermons to websites and then to do some reading towards a future sermon. I also use this time to decompress, play guitar, daydream, and so on. (By the way, I am also spending about 15 minutes per day in structured guitar practice.) Monday is a total blow-off day. It's the "second" day of my weekend, since Sunday doesn't count as a day off. I sleep in, play trains with my two-year old, go to the pool, emotionally unwind and mentally return to neutral stillness in preparation for the week that is about to start (on Tuesday). I'm thinking of adding even more structure to the work week. It'd be nice to say "Thursdays are for pastoral visits", for instance, but from my experience the life of an outreach coordinator / assistant to the pastor has too many tiny moving parts (controlled by other people) to make that work. So why am I sharing this? In part to get it down in writing for my own benefit. In part because I know I was often curious as a theological school student to know how ordained men spent their time. Hope I didn't bore you too much. ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/new_health_program.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/new_health_program.php Miscellaneous Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:59:11 -0500 Communicating for a Change New sermon up at TheoBlog.com: "Make Spiritual Victory a Habit". It is the first sermon I've done that fully follows the Communicating for a Change model of "ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE", in that for the first time, after study and prayer, I decided to go all out and actually use the dreaded first-person pronouns in the introduction portion of the message. I'm posting my outline, for those interested in the method. It wasn't written to be read by others, so you might want to listen to the audio at TheoBlog.com while you read through it, so it'll make more sense. * * * TITLE: Make Spiritual Victory a Habit LESSONS: Matthew 11:28-30; Psalm 51; Heaven and Hell 528 TEXT: Matthew 11:30; Heaven and Hell 533 POINT: Make a mental habit of shunning evil, and the Lord will transform you into a better, happier person. ME • Leading a good life sometimes seems hard, but if we just make a habit of repenting then the Lord will do all the heavy lifting. • “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” • Love your enemies? WE • Sincerely, justly, faithfully? • Talents? Light? • By this will they know you… Do they? • Committed adultery with someone in your heart? • Ask yourself, “If this big stone building fell and killed me here and now, would I wake in Heaven Tuesday?” GOD • Good news: the Lord is Merciful! • While on earth, he faced every one of these temptations, and more. • Psalm 51: • “Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. / Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. // For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me….” • So what are we to do? • HH 528: • IT IS NOT SO HARD TO LEAD A HEAVEN-BOUND LIFE AS PEOPLE THINK IT IS • Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called “spiritual” because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and “live spiritually”. • All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh. • …In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us after death. • No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is…no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.... • But how is that an “easy yoke”? A “light burden”?? • The key is HABITS: • HH 533: • We can now see that it is not so hard to lead the life of heaven as people think, because it is simply a matter of recognizing, when something attractive comes up that we know is dishonest or unfair, that this is not to be done because it is against the divine commandments. If we get used to thinking like this, and from this familiarity form a habit, then we are gradually united to heaven. • To the extent that we are united to heaven, the higher levels of our minds are opened, and to the extent that they are opened, we see what is dishonest and unfair; and to the extent that we see this, these qualities can be dispelled. For no evil can be banished until it has been seen. This is a state we can enter because of our freedom, since everyone is free to think in this way. • However, once the process has started, the Lord works wonders within us, and causes us not only to see evils but to refuse them and eventually to turn away from them. This is the meaning of the Lord's words, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mat. 11:30) • WOW. • Power of habits. • Developing tastes for foods. • Eating right. • Brushing teeth. • Regular exercise. • Quitting smoking. • Speaking of smoking, there’s a dangerous side to habits. HH 533 continues: • It is important to realize, though, that the difficulty of thinking like this and also of resisting evils increases to the extent that we deliberately do evil things—in fact, to the extent we become used to doing them until ultimately we no longer see them. Then we come to love them and to excuse them to gratify our love and to rationalize them with all kinds of self-deceptions and call them permissible and good. This happens, though, to people who in early adulthood plunge into all kinds of evil without restraint and at the same time at heart reject everything divine. YOU • So what are you going to do about this? • Repent: Examine, Acknowledge, Pray, Live. • Make repentance a habit. • Pick something and make shunning it a habit. WE • Imagine if every person in the world was making a habit of true repentance, of shunning something. • Just imagine what your own life will be like. • We make a habit of thinking, “The Lord said no,” and the Lord moves in us to fight evil and do good. • He will give us the habit of spiritual victory, and with it, the joy of heaven. • Truly, his yoke is easy, and his burden light. ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/communicating_for_a_change.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/communicating_for_a_change.php Philosophy Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:12:25 -0500 Refinery, Inc.: SOLD! Refinery (ne Image Refinery Productions) a dozen years ago, that I was an executive there until my career change a few years ago, and that I remained a significant shareholder and occasional board member. Well, after months and months of behind the scenes efforts, I and my partners have sold the company. As the flurry of press releases and news articles linked to below correctly indicate, Refinery has been purchased by G2 Worldwide, a part of Grey Global Group, and a subsidiary of WPP, and will become a part of G2 Interactive. (Yeah, that's a little complicated, isn't it?) Of the eleven shareholders, most of us have moved on to other occupations already. I can't and won't discuss the particular terms of the deal, so don't ask. Just know that I am very, very happy with the little company we started a year too early, and that I wish its new owners all joy and blessings as they take it into the future. For more info, here's AdWeek's news article on the sale: "Grey's G2 Adds Digital Shop Refinery" And here is the press release from Refinery's new owner, G2, on the matter: "G2 Worldwide Acquires Digital Agency Refinery in North America" And here is the press release from WPP (ticker WPPGY), G2's owner: "G2 acquires digital agency Refinery, Inc. in US" Associated Press incorrectly calls Refinery an ad agency: "WPP's G2 Buys Ad Agency Refinery" I cannot begin to express what a relief it is to have the majority of all the sale-related business finally done with and no longer taking up time and emotional energy, and my involvement in the process was nothing compared to those of my fellow shareholders who were on the board for all this. Don't get me wrong: all the distractions and lost sleep and awkward secret keeping nighttime conference calls were TOTALLY worth it in the end. This is a very exciting week for me. Now I can just focus exclusively on all the cool stuff happening in my ministry going forward... Life is good. ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/refinery_inc_sold.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/07/refinery_inc_sold.php Features Miscellaneous Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:40:26 -0500 Long Tail Coming Soon Sorry about the delay, folks. I've been running around like a madman these past two weeks, and Friday and today were especially crazy. It looks, now, like the first formal installment of the Church and the Long Tail podcast / blog discussion will go out some time in the next three days, while I'm in Ivyland and Bryn Athyn, PA. In the meantime, other related topics/books worth glancing at are The Tipping Point, Blink, and The Black Swan. Gotta run. I just finished packing and will be driving from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia within the hour. http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/long_tail_coming_soon.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/long_tail_coming_soon.php Church and the Long Tail Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:32:34 -0500 My Life as a Car I'm on the road, again. Two weekends ago was a little break from travel. Last Friday I spent the night (with wife and kids) in nowhere, West Virginia. Then Saturday and Sunday we stayed in Charlotte, NC, where we had a blast celebrating New Church Day. Folks came from all over and we had around 50 in total attendance. Then Monday we drove down here to Atlanta to visit my wife's family. We've been bumming around and now are looking forward to a 10++ hour trip back to Pittsburgh tomorrow afternoon/evening/night. Hoody hoo! (One of my best friends once wrote a poem titled "My Life as a Car" and mailed it to us from somewhere between Pennsylvania and California. I wish I could remember how it goes.) Anyway, I'm hoping to get back to the Long Tail blogcast project on Friday, before I head out (this Saturday) for a multi-day visit to Bryn Athyn and Ivyland, PA. Happily, I have no more long drives after that until the end of July. Yay. http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/my_life_as_a_car.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/my_life_as_a_car.php Housekeeping Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:05:45 -0500 Young Church Adults in Michigan retreat up in Michigan, on the lake about an hour south of Grand Rapids. I was there with over a dozen men and women in their twenties and thirties who came together for fellowship, discussion, support and fun, all in a New Church context. I had a blast, but as the second oldest one there I have to admit that I am now worn out. I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. We talked about and practiced holy gratitude, and also discussed topics such as relationships, what it means to be "in the church", reconciling the more practical teachings of the church with what some might call the more "out there" parts. We also had a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed leading vesper services each night, culminating with a very intimate and reverent holy supper service. I am a big fan of the contemporary praise and worship music found in some New Church congregations, but I don't get much of a chance to enjoy it in the congregations I normally serve, so I was really happy to be able to sing and hear so much of it these past three nights. I also really appreciated that there was such a wide range of experience in the group, with single, dating, divorced, married, and married with children all represented. Also we had people raised in the church, drifted away and then returned, discovered it as young adults, and even those still exploring, all there and participating. It was wonderful, too, to have the varying perspective of those from large church congregations, from small ones, and also from places where there is no established congregation to speak of. Best of all was the spirit of gratitude, support, and love everyone shared. I also really liked that everyone was so serious about better understanding the Lord and improving their spiritual lives while still being able to practice what I think of as "holy playfulness". There was a lot of sincere conversation well-salted with a lot of warm laughter. If you ever get a chance to attend one of these retreats put on by the Young Adult Connection (a part of the General Church of the New Jerusalem), I most certainly would recommend it. ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/young_church_adults_in_michigan.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/06/young_church_adults_in_michigan.php Miscellaneous religion travel twenty-somethings Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:38:17 -0500 The Long Tail and the Church mentioned yesterday, I've been reading The Long Tail and thinking about its implications for the church. Between going to bed and falling asleep, I decided to do a blog series on just that. So what I'm going to do is blog through the book, chapter by chapter. I'll be posting a very short synopsis of each chapter, accompanied by my thoughts and reactions and questions and musings. In general, I'm looking to find answers—or at least have conversations around—the following questions:
  • What implications does the Long Tail phenomenon have for religion and spirituality in general?
  • What lessons can the individual church congregation take from all this?
  • What about whole denominations? Entire religions?
  • What can an individual do to take advantage of the lessons learned here on behalf of their church?
  • What are the special implications for new/unusual/niche expressions of faith, such as New (Swedenborgian) Christianity?
  • What does this all imply with regard to online ministry?
  • How can we benefit as content providers?
  • As content aggregators?
  • As information "consumers"?
  • How do we fit our new understanding of Long Tail distributions into the concept of Divine Providence?
I'm posting this now, but my plan is to wait a bit before putting up the first chapter post. I'd like to invite you to get a copy of the book to read or listen to so you can follow along and participate. Even if you aren't reading the book along with us, though, feel free to participate in the conversation, whether by posting comments here or writing in your own blog or emailing me privately or whatever. I'm not doing this because I'm an expert in the topic, but because I want to tap other people's perspectives on this new and exciting way of looking at how people trade value and information with one another. If you missed yesterday's post, go back and scroll to the bottom for a list of resources that will help you learn more about this book, where to get it, where it came from, and what it says. UPDATE: I have decided to also offer this series as a podcast. I'm also hoping to include interviews with various knowledgeable people, but we'll see. Click here to hear this post's audio, and click here to subscribe to the special Church and the Long Tail podcast. ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/the_long_tail_and_the_church.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/the_long_tail_and_the_church.php Church and the Long Tail Features big idea church growth long tail podcast Tue, 29 May 2007 10:24:07 -0500 My Two New Brothers ordained as priests of the New Church. Godwin Zatay-Agboga and Ekow Eshun both entered theological school the same year I did. I graduated a year early becuase I took the compressed three-year schedule while they took the standard four-year path. We took the same classes, but not always at the same time. Still, for most of our time at the Academy of the New Church Theological School, we were interacting with each other one way or another. Both Godwin and Eshun are remarkable men. Each became New Christians by their own paths, in their native Ghana, many years ago. They studied the Word and our religion's theology before coming over to the states for formal training, and in my opinion arrived knowing more about it all than many others who in the past have come into the Theological School after four years at Bryn Athyn College of the New Church. (That's not a strike against the College but a testament to their training in Ghana.) Anyway, this past Saturday they each graduated, having completed the Master of Divinity (MDiv) program, and on Sunday they were ordained. Not long from now they will both be going back to Ghana to bring New Christianity to all who can benefit from it in their home country. It was a priviledge and a pleasure to go to school with them, and I am blessed and excited to now call them my brother ministers. I am also very happy to be home. It's over five hours each direction (almost exactly 300 miles each way), and, while I loved seeing family and friends, as well as the graduation and ordination ceremonies, I am now very worn out and happy to not be sleeping in a strange bed tonight. Oh, and one other fun part of the trip. My wife and I got to listen to about two thirds of the unabridged audio of The Long Tail. This amazing book has major implications for online (and even traditional) churches that we are exploring as we go through it. Perhaps more on that later. For now, I need to eat dinner. If you don't know about the long tail, here are some links: ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/my_two_new_brothers.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/my_two_new_brothers.php Church and the Long Tail Features Philosophy Review Mon, 28 May 2007 19:38:17 -0500 Back in the Bladdle Again TheoBlog.com) and at my local church's website (PittsburghNewChurch.org). But I want to get back into "real" blogging again. Why? Partly because I think it's good for me. Partly becuase I think it'd be good for my church. Partly because I think somebody out there might enjoy having me back on line again. It'll be different, though. Before, I was focused almost exclusively on politics and policy. Sure, it was fun getting linked to from time to time by Best of the Web, being contacted by inner-circle types in Washington D.C., doing web radio interviews with pro-democracy anti-Iranian theocracy groups, participating in blog bursts and all that. It was useful, fun, exhilerating, and a boost to the ego. But I'm a minister, now, and I worry about my political opinionating getting in the way of my spiritual calling. First of all, I don't want people to feel like they can't approach me because of my politics. I love everybody, and I try to love everybody else. (Heh.) My religion informs my opinions on government and society, not the other way around. In this hotly divided political era, in which people scream hatred at one another over ridiculous things, like who is in the White House, I worry that even tacitly connecting my political opinions to my name will cut off 50% of the world from being able to approach me on a spirtual, pastoral level. Also, I want to be very careful to not let anyone make the mistake of thinking my personal opinions are also the opinions of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, the Pittsburgh New Church, or, for that matter, of God Himself. I'm not making that claim. My opinions are my own, and are guaranteed only to have error and uncertainty mixed in with them and to sincerely be my own. There's also the time thing. The height of my blogging came during my semi-retirement between leaving active work at my company (Refinery, Inc.) and my beginning training for the priesthood of the New Church. I had more time on my hands, then, and if I'm going to pick it up again now, it will have to be in a way that serves—rather than competes with—my ministry. Also, I worry about my role as confidant. What I would really like to do is offer a totally candid, sincere, unguarded, open, transparent accounting of my thoughts, feelings and actions. (Or at least of the interesting ones.) But I absolutely cannot have people always wondering when they talk with me, "Is he blogging this?" So at least some level of guarded abstraction seems unavoidable. I'm also looking for general guidance from others on how to live out loud online while faithfully doing my job as a minister. I'm looking for advice from you, if you've got it. Those that know me can email me. Strangers are welcome to post comments below. A related puzzle is what to do with my two seperate blogs, TheoBlog.com and GlennFrazier.com. How do they relate? My current whim is to keep GlennFrazier.com as is and use it as my "main" blog, and to rebrand TheoBlog as something else, rolling it into a larger web project I have in mind, and using it solely for "official" communications, like formal articles, sermons, podcast sermons and shows, and the like. But then again, maybe it's weird and confusing to have two blogs going at the same time. I don't know. What do you think? ]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/back_in_the_bladdle_again.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/05/back_in_the_bladdle_again.php Features Housekeeping Thu, 24 May 2007 12:02:19 -0500 Still Here Someone noted I hadn't posted since December. Am I still alive? Yep. Just busy. I've got mucho travel this month and next, plus several projects starting up all at the same time. So the free ice cream is only coming out in little spoonfuls these days. Sorry! http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/01/still_here.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2007/01/still_here.php Housekeeping Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:17:35 -0500 Apocalypto Academico Apocalypto, just because of his quirky idea of doing the whole thing in a language practically nobody on earth speaks today. I don't know when I'll get around to actually seeing it, unfortunately, because I have four kids under the age of ten and babysitter time is dear. But I have the next best thing to a chance to see the film: a good friend who is an archaelogy grad student with field experience in mesoamerica who happened to see a special pre-screening recently. I opened up the discussion by passing her a link to Traci Ardren's Archaeology article, "Is 'Apocalypto' Pornography?". She agreed to be interviewed so long as her identity was protected against retribution from fellow grad students, and this is what she said... Anonymous Archaelogist (AA): Yeah I read the Ardren article. It is interesting that everyone is making a big fuss about the violence when I didn't think it was that over the top. (I saw it at a preview screening last Monday and I thought it was a good chase/action movie). People complain about the "Maya on Maya" violence, but it seems that everyone is missing the point that the protagonist is also a Maya. There are plenty of anachronisms that people complained about when I saw it, but at the time no one mentioned the violence. There was a desent critique of the movie and I'll email it to you. (She sent a link to William Booth's "Culture Shocker" in the Washington Post.) Me: The part that really grabbed me in the Archaelogy review was when she complained about the film ignoring the Mayans' "profound spirituality". How in the heck can one make an objective evaluation of an entire culture's spirituality" centuries after the fact?? I guess I'm once again asking the question, "What is 'spirituality'?" Also, do anthro's have some sort of rubric for measuring spirituality that they all generally accept? AA: Yes there is. In order for a civilzation to be portrayed as acurately spiritual they need to:
  • Not be white;
  • Pray to multiple spirit beings at least 8 times a day;
  • Hurt themselves;
  • Erect little statues everywhere thanking the spirit beings for letting them live;
  • Walk around with a faint white glow around them;
  • Be ignorant like children (because we know all non-white people are children);
  • Know that they could defeat the white man at any point (and the white man would be better for it) but choose to lose instead.
Okay, so obviously I have some pent up issues but soon I'll be done. I'll probably keep complaining about academia but I won't have to be surrounded by them! Woohoo! (At this point, we were joined by another close friend and fellow language geek who also happens to be a teacher of religion and history with a grad degree in the classics.) Fellow Geek (FG):Wow - Traci Ardren certainly speaks the academia party line well. It is my understanding (haven't seen it yet) that the Christian vessels at the end ARE the impending doom, not the savior. The reviewer's own politics and delicate academic sensibillities are only a little less entertaining because they are so predictable. "But what about their engineering?" indicates she is more interested in forwarding her political interests (1970's wars? why?) than in informing the public. A fun read. AA:You're right. The Spanish were obviously the impending doom. Me: Huh. And all this while I thought the two keys to anthropologically correct "profound spiritualism" were (1) a deep awareness of agricultural cycles, and (2) a noble inclination to voluntarily and collectively abandon urban living and return to obscurity in the jungle because it's what's good for dear Momma Earth. Shows how much I know. AA: Ha ha. FG: I thought spirituality was about endowed chairs and silence. For a culture to be "spiritual", it has to provide enough academic grist for several departments to justify their study of said "spirituality" while having few enough current members that there will be no jarring discrepancies between the academic study of the spirituality and the spirituality as practices in the real world. This makes the Maya perfect—lots of spooky painting, tantalizing hints of everything, and no current culture to mess with PhD approval process. Me: You should also read this AP story ("Mayans Excited, Unsure" by Mark Stevenson) on how Mayans are reacting. Uh-huh. AA: I like how they think that the Maya will come out with one opinion about this as if they are some sort of unified tribe (which they aren't). Frankly, I think that the Maya that I know will love it. They love Stephan Segal and Chuck Norris and all bad action movies; they also liked epic stories like Lord of the Rings. I'm sure some Mexican Maya activist group will come out with some "pan Maya" opinion, but I'm also sure that if the anthropologists just showed the movie to a bunch of people down there and asked them if they were offended they would probably wonder why they would be since hey, the people and civilization portrayed in the movie is not who they actually identify themselves to be. I think the freak out by archaeologists is spurred by the fact that they have been spending so much time and effort on giving the native people some sort of ownership over their own history that to have a portrayal of that history not perfectly doctored and overseen by them may "ruin it all." Gimme a break. You think Gladiator made Italians seething mad because it portrayed them as fight-happy barbarians? You think the British give a rip about the ridiculous raunchiness of the King Arthur tales? Do Germans protest every time a Nazi movie makes them all out to be fascist Jew-haters? Someone should tell them that it is possible to have a story that is based on history that is not actually making a direct historical comment on those people. I thought the movie was beautiful. Yeah there were some issues, but only issues that a dork like me would notice. I enjoyed the story, I really liked the main character, and honestly it seemed like the kind of story that people would sit around telling with all the embellishments and exaggerations without being magical realism. It is sad at some points and funny at others and Gibson incorporated all sorts of visual elements that I had never thought of (like the fact that if you work in a plaster mine you would be covered in white, how cool is that!). I particularly like how all the Mayanists are coming out and saying "uh...it was the Aztecs who did mass torture, the Maya were into slow torture" as if that is really an argument. Or "they didn't have slavery, just forced labor". (And by the way, the people building the temples in the movie are not ever actually depicted as slaves). Academics are worried that this will be the only view that people will have of the Maya. Well I say, at least it's a view! And hopefully this will open up the genre of bad history movies (China, Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc.) to include more movies about the Maya. Hey, it was a cool civilization that lasted for 800 years—someone should make a movie about it. And Mel Gibson did. Mel Gibson who made Braveheart and The Patriot and The Passion and Ransom. Mel Gibson isn't going to make a fun happy clappy story about how even though all these horrible things happen they still do good stuff. Mel Gibson is going to make a movie that is beautiful, action packed and points out that those horrible things destroy societies. I realize I am preaching to the choir here but grad students are such sheep. When the movie was over all they were complaining about were the inconsistencies and unrealistic pace, and now that the big important people say, "No, no, it's okay to have those things. It is a movie after all, but the violence...." Suddenly they all care about the violence. According to a friend of mine, I missed the dwarf (always gotta have one in ancient cultures) so I'll probably have to go back and see it again. Me: So you're saying this is a good flick. AA: Unless, of course, crazy Guatemala uses this as a propoganda piece to justify killing more people. Then I'll be eating my words. Me: Of course.]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/12/apocalypto_academico_1.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/12/apocalypto_academico_1.php Review Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:17:32 -0500 Goodbye Vlog, Hello GlennFrazier.com
Okay, inspired by my transferring of the archives from my astronomy blog (ylog.blogspot.com) over to my main site (GlennFrazier.com), I've decided to also import all my Dev Log (VLog) archives over as well.

So this is "officially" the last post done via blogger. No longer will you find Vlog at mac.thefraziers.org/dev/vlog/ but incorporated within the posts at GlennFrazier.com. For backup purposes, the old posts will continue to be available at macsvlog.blogspot.com, but I don't know how long that'll be the case.
--------]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/11/goodbye_vlog_hello_glennfraziercom.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/11/goodbye_vlog_hello_glennfraziercom.php Mac.theFraziers.org/Dev Tue, 28 Nov 2006 12:54:00 -0500 Goodbye Ylog, Hello, GlennFrazier.com!
I recently received an email from someone who noticed that it's been years since I posted to Mac's [Astronom-] YLog hear at ylog.blogspot.com. They asked if I would be willing to give up the URL. I suppose it's because their first name begins with the letter "Y".

Anyway, friendly netneighbor that I am, I of course agreed. So I've cleaned up the archives, and I'm making this last post, and then I'm transferring it all over to my main blog, GlennFrazier.com. All future (if any!) astronomy blogging I do will be done there...until further notice, of course.

Actually, I'd like to get back into it. I've moved from the Philly suburbs to just outside Pittsburgh, and I've now got a little less light pollution from my new yard. I haven't had any scope time, yet, though. We'll see, I suppose. I certainly miss it...

Anyway, see you over at the new address!
--------]]> http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/11/goodbye_ylog_hello_glennfraziercom.php http://glennfrazier.com/articles/2006/11/goodbye_ylog_hello_glennfraziercom.php YLog.blogspot.com Tue, 28 Nov 2006 12:19:00 -0500