I want to thank all of you who participated in any way in the donate-an-iPod thing. Noelle deserves special props for being the first to jump onboard. And Tom spoke to me in person, because he had come into an extra iPod recently (through brute force). But in the end, I went with a random person who sent me an email saying, “I’m a friend of Keith who reads your blog,” who generously offered a 3rd gen 30GB iPod! Wow!
Rob turned me on to a paper about faith communities as scale-free networks, and its statement that God’s community is not a set of people, but a system of relationships. Check out this “Christ-cluster“:
A few things strike me about this graph:
- There are three “hops” between the need and the fulfillment of that need.
- If I had merely stepped in and fulfilled the need myself without asking God how to proceed, four other people would not have entered this story.
- In this cluster I am a hub. In other clusters to which I belong other people are the hub.
- My relationship with Keith is an Internet relationship. 10 years ago it was through email discussion groups. Now it’s through blogging.
Yesterday I met the Girl in the Globe (who chose to upgrade to a U2 iPod). What could have been a mere business exchange became a fascinating hour-long conversation about our God-stories, and I feel that I have made a new friend.
Today my friend who badly needed an iPod asked me how much I wanted for my old, 1st gen 5GB iPod. I handed him the 30GB model saying, “I got this for free. It’s yours.” His jaw dropped, and he said, “Oh f…! Oh f…!” (He did not complete the words as we were in our church building with children nearby.)
God is good, my friends.
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Rock on another successful Christ Cluster.
It’s a good thing Thomas doesn’t read your blog otherwise it wouldn’t have been such a surprise since it was all documented here. Way to go Jon!
It was really cool to be a part of this Christ Cluster. Also, I feel like I made a new friend too. It’s neat to meet people outside my usual circle who seem to be on the same sort of path (if it can be called that) as me. =)
gg
You’re a good man, Jon.
Your “christ-cluster” image shows up as a little red ‘x’ in both IE 6 and my recently updated IE 7 Beta.
I wondered if embedding a PDF might cause problems, Randall. I’ve switched it to a PNG — now can you see it?
Yep, it works now… very cool! I like the link to the article too. I hope to have time to read all of it soon. I wonder if Keck did anything like this for his thesis?