As a leader, I’m usually on the side of promoting change. Not for the sake of change itself, but if something is going to make things better, I want to do it. I’m rarely satisfied with the status quo.

I recently learned a lesson about change itself when I upgraded my laptop.

You see, for the last six years (yes, I said six years) I’ve had an Apple iBook G4 laptop that has served me well. It got me through the second half of seminary and it’s been my main computer since I started pastoring four years ago. It fits me well. There are about four letters on the keyboard that are no longer recognizable from wear. It’s been my sidekick as I’ve traveled, used it to give dozens and dozens of presentations, write all my sermons on it…it’s grown on me. And I love it.

Recently, though, Apple released an upgraded line to their MacBook Pro series and I decided that it was finally time to take the plunge on a new one. The older one was still working, but it was beginning to run out of space. I’d been doing the dance of moving stuff to an external hard drive for some time, but now I wanted something I could finally just use without worrying about space and such.

So I bought the 15′ MacBook Pro.

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about why people should quit Facebook. Newsweek joined the game recently and posted why you should quit. Ed Stetzer, a noted author and researcher for LifeWay recently quit and gave his reasons. So what are some of the reasons people give?

“There’s no security and people can see all your stuff!”

“I’m way too busy!”

“There’s too much information coming at me!”

If that’s you, I would challenge you to think about a few things:

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Ok, so most churches are not quite like this. But I thought this was pretty funny.

Check it out.

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

I think the dilemma of the missionary is such: how far does the missionary go in becoming like the people he’s trying to reach, in order to reach them?

It’s a question that I’ve been asking myself for a long time.

I just read a powerful quote, in which the author, James K.A. Smith (Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism), addresses this exact issue with a great metaphor. I’ll share the extended quote here:

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I think we all deal with this question: how much of what I think needs to be done in my organization should be highly processed through various teams and levels?

While I certainly think it’s appropriate to discuss, and study, and process, and cast vision, I also think it’s appropriate to sometimes act and apologize later (if need be).

Chris Brogan shares a short and fascinating reminder of this principle.

Check it out.

A few days ago, I was full of excitement as I purchased a new Kindle 2 e-reader. I’m reading quite a few books these days, and I made all the arguments, which I think are still good arguments, that I would save money by buying the e-versions of the books. And I could carry all the books in one place. And I can search through the books. I was pumped.

But then I actually started to use it. And here are the reasons why I’m returning it:

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In this post, I mentioned that we were doing a free book giveaway to someone that had left a comment on that post.

I’m excited to announce that we have the winner, and he just submitted a picture of the book he received next to some nice munchies!

Congrats to Anthony WagenerSmith…hope you enjoy the book!