This is a featured piece on Shrink the Church, but here it is for you too.

Lets do a quick exercise is common sense. Pretend for a second that you are a smart person, this shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for STc readers. Now imagine that you combine your knowledge of media technology and your common sense and you invent a revolutionary tool that allows humans to conversate in real-time from all over world in 140 characters or less. Your invention is simple, sweet, and widely popular. Now imagine that companies, entrepreneurs, and everyone under the sun begins using your tool to make money. This is all great news except for one problem: you don’t make a penny. This all leads one to question the first part of this exercise, can the person in this scenario really be that smart if he is the only one NOT making money off his own invention?

Well, meet Twitter. To date, there are no ads, no charges, and no premium level accounts for this widely popular, free social media staple. If there is one thing I have learned in life, nothing stays free for long.

Twitter started during a brainstorm meeting in 2006 at a podcasting company called Odeo. In less than a year, it was being used at South by Southwest festival and the rest is history. To date, Twitter subscribers have used it to fuel revolutions, inform others of major events in real-time, and most recently assist relief efforts during the Haiti earthquake. But Twitter’s business model was late being born and as far as anyone can tell, its income simply involves investment funds from venture capitalists.

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Sorry for not posting in forever. Since my last post, a lot has happened in my life. Someday I will blog in further detail (trust me, the draft is saved). For now, I just wanted to give an update on the last couple of months. To help keep myself focused, I will use bullets…

• I got laid off/fired/let go from my job at Mission Community Church in late October
• I also was diagnosed with H1N1 the same day
• My family lost it’s church home and safe place.
• I slipped into a brief depression that was dotted with brief moments of hope
• I found new friends
• I lost close friends
• My wife and I found a new level of confidence and trust in each other
• I learned stuff about people and the church I had never allowed myself to see before
• I learned even more stuff about myself
• I fixed, planted, and cleaned a lot of things around the house
• I saved over $1,000 by fixing my own car
• I gained a lot of weight and lost some to equal a grand total of a little extra weight
• I wrote thousands of words that will never get published
• I became self-employed
• I thought I had a heart attack

Hopefully, my ADD will allow me to retain this blog design/format for a while. I am busy working with Tipping Media and exploring a few other career paths as well all the while I freelance as a web designer and consultant. My wife is now working full-time which is both emasculating and a blessing for us. Each day, I wake up thanking God for His blessing and the hope that only He provides and I ask that His Spirit will not allow me to be an ass and miss whatever He is trying to teach me.

Right now, my family is in a season called “transition.” We dream of what God has next for us but are trying not to overlook what He has now for us. Thanks for your prayers and support. Happy New Year.

Guess who said this:

“Our future society will be a free society, and all the elements of oppression, cruelty, and force will be destroyed.”

That’s right, none other than Ayatollah Khomeini, the current religious leader of the ever-so-oppressive Iran. Today marks the anniversary of their revolution which began when Islamic students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held hostages for 444 days. We all remember the images from this summer when the Iranian people where insulted by their government when it threw the election for Iran’s next president. For a few weeks, we all hoped that we were witnessing a new revolution in Iran. We prayed that those who we watched die on YouTube at the hands of the regime did not die in vain. Hell, we even joined the fight ourselves by changing our social media avatars to green.

But there was no revolution. The deaths may not have been in vain, but they were later justified by the ruling authorities. And slowly, our avatars went back to full color.

It is important in the course of human events to take note of days like this. When a few people, with a flag and ideals can establish a new government and yet radically compromise the essence of their revolution in a matter of a few decades. Do not forget the people of Iran, but do not think that America is any less open to such brutality. We are one political party with guns, tanks, and a General away from the same reality.

Let us never abandon the deliberative process.