1. lose weight
2. stop procrastinating
3. write a book
4. fall in love
5. be happy
6. get a tattoo
7. drink more water
8. go on a road trip with no predetermined destination
9. get married
10. travel the world

Some of these goals are very easy (drinking more water or getting a tatoo seem quite achieveable). Others are more difficult (unfortunately falling in love isn’t as easy as walking into a tattoo parlour).

Some goals are just plain weird. Like Jeff’s, “who set out to eat as many “weird meats” as possible. Recent dishes, outlined on his blog, include raw yak , crickets, ostrich sandwich and deer penis wine.”

I hope you don’t share the same goal as Jeff.

Regardless, I’m interested in hearing your goals for 2009. Perhaps we can share our resolutions and keep each other accountable - for longer than the first week in January!

http://www.communicatejesus.com

The Communicate Jesus concept has been quietly bubbling as I’ve become more familiar (and excited) with the ways in which the internet can be harnessed to maximise Christian ministry. I realised that others might benefit from the things I’m constantly discovering, and so today Communicate Jesus is born.

Communicate Jesus will share (without technical jargon) how to use the latest tools and techniques to more efficiently conduct Christian ministry, but more importantly, to share the best news the world will ever hear.

Would you like to keep in the loop with the latest articles from Communicate Jesus?

There is a box on the right-hand side of the homepage that says “Keep up to date via email”. If you’d like to receive an email each time a new article is added, you can add your email address here. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time if you decide it’s not for you.

I encourage you to take a look around and pass on the details to others you think might benefit from this resource. I also welcome any suggestions or feedback you care to send my way.

I’d like to thank Nate and Tim for their invaluable help and advice in getting this off the ground.

May Jesus be glorified.

I recently attended a one-day conference for people in full-time (vocational) Christian ministry. During the conference it was advertised that the talks would be available for purchase as an audio and video package—$45 conference special ($55 post-conference). I sent an email to the people producing the talks, asking if I could just buy a single talk in MP3 format, instead of all the talks and videos on DVD. I received this response:

“We don’t split packages or sell individual speakers because it’s just a logistical nightmare for us. We used to do it 20-30 years ago, but it was all too hard - takes too much labour, staff and administration time.”

This response confused me.

Read the rest of the article here.

Many of you helped me do the research for this article - thank you. Unfortunately due to space limitations the full article couldn’t be published by Neue, but I’m considering publishing the full article on this blog.

Those who hold a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or are Veterans Gold Card holders eligible for Seniors Concession Allowance will receive a payment of $1400 if they are single or $2100 to couples…Families who receive Family Tax Benefit (A), families with children who receive the Youth Allowance, Abstudy or a benefit from the Veteran Children’s Education scheme will be eligible.

This breaks my heart. Over the past several months I have come to know a very small number of the 800+ people who live in the housing commission estate just down the road from my church. The stories I have heard from the people I have chatted to - from their own lives and the lives of others who live there are just terrible. They are stories of abuse, drug and alcohol dependence and every mental health disorder under the sun.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that for many people (not every person, but still many people) the government bonus will only go to fuel gambling, drug and alcohol addictions. Our government is effectively supporting - funding - the addictions of the vulnerable.

If I mention the word ‘paternalism’ I’m likely to get punched in the face. Civil libertartians would argue that these people are adults and the government has no right to dictate how they spend their money. But if it’s the government’s role to care and protect and provide for the people (and I believe it is), then it is doing exactly the opposite by giving people the means to continue to abuse themselves.

I think of one man in particular who I’ve met who sits outside the train station on a picnic table, all day, every day, drinking his bottle of VB. There are no prizes for guessing where his $1400 will go. I can’t help but think that the people who stand to gain the most from the government’s bonus at the Kirribilli Hotel and the local BWS store.

I don’t know how the government can best take care of its people particularly in “tough economic times”, but I’m certain that dumping money in their bank account isn’t it.

As the lucky couple said said their vows to each other, I was struck by the gravity of what they were committing to:

Andrew, will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?

I will.

Hannah, will you have this man to be you husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?

I will.

Witness, will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?

We will.

These are massive promises - both in scope and in the length of time they are committing to each other - forever!

They are also unconditional promises. They are not promising to love, honour, care, keep, forsake when it’s convenient, or when they feel up to it, or if the other person makes it easy for them, or until they get a better offer. From this day, until the day they die, regardless of what happens, they are committing to each other.

I also noticed the important role of the witnesses of the marriage. It’s our job to help them keep the promises they made to each other, to “do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?” It’s a significant responsibility, but I’m very pleased to be able to help my friends throughout their life together.

• As interest rates go down, those with variable interest rates will be paying less per week/fortnight/month against their mortgage.
• Petrol prices have fallen significantly (20-30 cents per litre by my count) in just the last couple of months.
• Stock prices have fallen also - the perfect opportunity to get into the stock market at rock-bottom prices.
• The price of food has gone down (has anyone else seen signs for the ‘credit crunch lunch’?!)
• What other examples can you think of?

Think back just 12 months ago (or even less). When the economy was going well, we weren’t all doing well. Petrol prices continued to rise, and interest rates were rising by 0.25% almost every time the board of the Reserve Bank met. What was the media telling us then? It’s time to get scared - can you afford to pay off your mortgage?

My point here is that when the economy is doing well, the media can find reasons to try to scare us. If the economy is doing badly, they can find different reasons to make us feel scared. There’s never really a point where we can settle and say - “it’s all good, nothing could be better, there’s now nothing to worry about”.

1. News about the financial crisis. Everytime I turn on the radio I hear about recessions, depressions, mortgage defaults, retrenchments, slow-downs, rescue plans, bail-outs and “it’s going to get worse before it gets better”. I know the journalists are “just reporting”, but I can’t help but wonder if the more it’s reported on, a) the worse people feel, and b) the more people are prompted to fear and act irrationally. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, but reporting on it constantly won’t make it any better either.

2. Being asked if I suffer from premature ejaculation. It seems that ever time I turn on the radio I’m asked “do you suffer from premature ejaculation?” I’m also told that “thousands of Aussie men are calling [company name] every day” about their problems. Really? Anyway, I’ve heard your advertisement, and I don’t need your nasal delivery technology.

On a related note, I visited the company’s website and they have chosen some interesting graphics to visually represent these problems:

“NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF “PARACHUTE” OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How this can happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it’s only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an outrage. We have created the mess we’re in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. This has to stop. Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be fired before the company receives any help.”

This critique comes with the excited language that we’ve come to expect (and personally love) from Michael Moore. Regardless of what you think of the rhetoric, he makes a good point, doesn’t he? Or do executives deserve to earn 400 times the salary of the average employee?

So the next day I thought I’d jump online and send them some feedback. If I made a woeful salad and charged people $6.98 to eat it, I’d hope they’d let me know that this was unacceptable too. This proved more challenging than I would have thought. In the black navigation menu below, can you spot the ‘contact us’ link? I couldn’t, until I saw the tiny first-half of a ‘C’ in the far right. I clicked, and lucky for me, this was in fact the link to the ‘contact us’ page. I get the feeling they don’t want people to contact them.

I then encountered one of the most bizarre feedback forms. When you submit feedback to them, they give you options to select about the nature of your feedback. The first option, naturally, is ‘Compliment’. However, others in the list include ‘Burnt’, ‘Cold food’, ‘Portion Size’, ‘Raw’, ‘Alien Object’ (sounds ominous) and even ‘Alleged Food Poisoning’. Ouch!

What’s scary is that you only need to offer people those options if people are offering feedback along those lines.

I realise they are a food business, and things will go wrong. I’m not sure that it’s such a good idea to give people such detailed ways to complain on the website - it only makes customers more aware of potential problems, and hasn’t left me thinking that I’ve “just gotta go”.

Check out some of the most popular sites on the web:

Facebook
Digg
Flickr
Twitter
YouTube
Wikipedia

Keeping up to speed:

Google Alerts
Google Reader
Learn more about RSS

Managing tasks

Things
Remember the milk
I want Sandy

Creating forms and surveys

Wufoo
Poll Daddy

Managing your time

RescueTime

Sharing calendars

Google Calendar

Finding images and videos

iStock
stock.xchng
FreeFoto.com
Flickr

Editing images

Pixelmator (Mac only)
Splashup

Sharing videos

YouTube
Vimeo

Creating email newsletters

Toodle (currently unavailable)
MailChimp

Managing websites

Google Analytics
Have a Mint
Crazy Egg
Who’s Amung Us
Get Clicky

Note-taking

Evernote
Google Notebook

Managing contacts

Stafftool

Remembering passwords

Pastor (Mac only)
PasswordSafe

Further reading

Simple Spark
Web Worker Daily
Smashing Magazine
Life Remix
Listio
What’s Best Next

Finally, at the Create blog I wrote a couple of posts that might be of interest to you:

What do the top 100 [websites] reveal?
What if Starbucks marketed like a church?
Marketing a president
Big questions for your ministry