Combinational Logic

Combinational logic makes decisions based on currently available input. Results are based on a limited set of data. In terms of social networking, Twitter is a good example of this type of logic to a point. When you post a tweet, that limited data is posted on a wall. Those who follow you get a snippet of your thoughts floating down their digital river for that isolated moment of your life. That tweet alone has no context, no history, and no connection to other information in cyberspace. Subconsciously your followers make a split-second judgment of your intelligence and your worldview every time you post your brilliant or not so brilliant 140 characters.

Porting this concept to real life, sometimes we make decisions based solely on limited available data. We make judgments of others without really knowing them. We take hearsay as fact and by nature we tend to believe one side of the story. How many times have we issued a final judgment on someone based solely on one person’s account of a situation or something we hear/read on social networking. Without context, we are essentially uninformed and not qualified to make decisions or judgments.

“First Impressions Last” is an example of combinational logic. Judgment is passed without ever knowing anything deeper than the surface. People who judge books by their cover are entrenched in tunnel vision decision making.  Have you ever purchased something on impulse only to be burdened with buyer’s remorse later? Buyer’s remorse usually comes when we did not collect enough data about the product we purchased. Impulse buying is driven by a limited emotional data set. A good consumer researches a product, finds the best deal, and makes a financial plan to purchase the item.

Making real-life decisions based on limited data is purely reactionary and rash.

Sequential Logic

Sequential logic makes decisions based on a history of previous inputs. Results are based on a wide array of information past and present. A good example of this is Facebook’s friend finder. Based on your friend list and history of fan pages, Facebook’s algorithm prepares a set of possible friends you haven’t connected to yet. Advertisers use a history of keywords stored in cookies on your computer to serve up relevant ads to you. Google has an option to store your web history on your Google account for the sole purpose of tailoring advertisements to your demographic. These services use a history of your text inputs to produce a relevant set of results.

When dealing with people, it’s important we don’t make haste in scrutinizing others with limited data. It would behoove us to get to know a person before we criticize them or judge their character. Too often we only hear one side of the story in conflicts. A responsible person will hear both sides of the issue before making a decision. It’s easier to make an armchair judgment than taking time to learn about a person. It’s hard work to find a person’s context. It sometimes involves painful details and emotional investment.When you learn someone’s history it fosters trust and appreciation. It also builds community and strengthens diversity.

When you make important decisions with a wide array of information, you are wise.

This image reminded me of that office scenario – the green monochrome screens, the decades old stained, mildewed keyboards, and the sound of dot matrix printers spooling paper up and buzzing line by line. Don’t forget the perforated rip sound when the job was done, and the peeling off of the paper track with the little equidistant holes, not to mention the LPT and serial cable spaghetti bowl.

Imagine trying to cram this 1980’s hard drive beast into your cellphone for extra storage.  It’s quite the dichotomy for sure.

What if there was a photo that depicted your current methods and mindset with the imperative of the Gospel, modern innovation, the direction of the church, and the culture around you?  Would you need an upgrade?

Here are my questions for those methodologically obsolete. Why upgrade your methods and your mindset if you’re comfortable doing what you’re doing? Why teach your team new concepts if they’re hitting status quo? Why expand your mind and learn new things on a weekly basis? Why use social media for your church? Why upgrade your God-forsaken website made with Frontpage? Why stretch yourself to find more creative ways to share the Gospel?

The answer: you might just find a more efficient, effective, economical, engaging, evangelistic and exhilarating experience around the corner.  Jesus was a  mindset and method changer. Work smarter, not harder for the Kingdom.

(Photo via http://www.dump.com/2010/03/20/20gb-in-1980-vs-32gb-in-2010-pic/)

Here are a few ways  I see how this can be accomplished:

1. Hire a language student as an translation intern at your business. Go to your local university and post the job in the student center.
2. For short-films, use actors who are multilingual.
3. Provide subtitle versions in multiple languages.
4. Export sermon/worship images in multiple languages. After the initial design, it’s not difficult to drop in translation text.
5. Create a page template translated (UI and content)  for each language that displays all relevant content.

By creating a multilingual-friendly environment in their marketplace, worship media companies would be in lock-step with the trending direction of American diversity, especially within the church.

Update:

Worship House Media has a collection of Spanish videos.

The old school way was to install an amplifier on each line after the split. This was cost intensive and hard to maintain. Today, you can purchase one distribution amplifier that can meet most or all of your needs for $150.00 or less. The distribution amp takes an input signal, splits it and amplifies the signal to 100% on multiple outputs. There are plenty of these devices out on the market. Beware of spending too little or too much. I try to stay within the $100-$200 range for longevity and good quality.

Sample Distribution Amps by Cable Type

• RCA – Video/Audio – 7 Outputs – $99.00
  • If you’re on a tight budget, use coax cable with RCA adapters for long cable runs. Coax is cheap, shielded and carries a good signal for hundreds of feet.
• S-VIDEO + RCA – Video/Audio – 4 Outputs – $149.00
• VGA – Video Only – 2 Outputs – $154.95
• HDMI – Video Only – 2 Outputs – $129.99

This is not a comprehensive list, but simply a means to get your feet wet. Make sure to do your own research for your specific system. Read customer reviews and try to speak to a local church who has a system installed.

One Last Note

Beware of video to CAT5 converters as they place two devices inline from your video room to your screen. My rule-of-thumb is to keep a solid cable from output to input if at all possible. The more gadgets you use to get your signal to your screen, the more headaches you will have when one of them goes bad. If you have any questions, please email me. I am not the video expert, but I’ve been through the school of hard knocks setting up a video ministry cold turkey.

1. Pay an iPhone developer anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 to have a completely custom solution.
2. Create an iPhone friendly website.  This also costs a bit of money to hire a web developer.
3. Use a service like Mobile Roadie that keeps the cost down with an app template. – $500 setup fee – $29.00/month

If I were undertaking this project, I would go with option 3. I have never used Mobile Roadie, however I’ve looked into their site extensively and it appears to service all the needs a church might have in an app. It’s originally created for bands, but it can be morphed into a pretty feature-rich digital church app.   Here are some of the features that caught my eye:

• Videos
• Music (Sermons)
• Photos
• Events
• Fan Wall (Member Interactivity)
• Blog/News/Updates
• Social Sharing

They also offer custom functionality for additional cost.  Check out all the features here.

Go to Mobile Roadie

Also check out:

Right Brain Media

Truthcasting

AppChurch

And via Paul Povolni from Head Snacks:

AppMii

AppMakr

After reading Flickering Pixels, I made some habit changes. I would highly recommend reading this book. It will change the way you look at what’s being served on the media platter in your life. I’m glad I have this one under my belt before my wife and I have children.  Check it out!

Flickering Pixels on Amazon

I’m going to be adding more features to the site soon.  You’ve asked for more tutorials and screencasts and you will certainly see more of both on Mister Nifty very soon.  If you have any more suggestions, leave a comment and let me know what you think!

My last post was about poverty in the context of the US economy.  I’m a firm believer that we must impact our local communities because God has entrusted us with a geographic responsibility to those around us.   However, to truly impact our local communities, I also believe that one must see the condition of our world in real life.   If you’ve never been on a missions trip, you need to plan one this year.

I’ve been privileged to travel all over the world including Asia, Central and South America, and a lot of the Caribbean on missions trips.  Without fail, I return home with a broader worldview and a greater appreciation for what I have.  When you see the hillsides of shacks lining the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, or the tent cities of thousands of citizens who lost their homes to the Olympics in Beijing, it makes you realize we don’t have it as bad as we think sometimes.   When I visited El Salvador, I saw sweatshop workers who made $10.00/month for their entire family.  Or, how about the kids in Haiti making dirt cookies because they have no food and their fresh water rivers are lined with garbage.

The truth that hits me the most is even our poor live as kings compared to the rest of the world. It is important that we have balance between local and foreign missions.  If you are just helping your local community, and never reaching the world, you are not fulfilling your full potential.   Our local communities are the training ground to go and help foreign missions in some fashion.  I realize everyone cannot go, but most of us can take a trip a year.  If you are in the medical profession, you can help on a medical missions to Haiti or other third-world countries.  If you are a teacher, you can help stamp out illiteracy which leads to poverty in third-world countries by taking a teaching trip.  If you are a young person who has never traveled outside the US, take a youth missions trip and build homes and churches.  There are countless ways to get involved in missions.  Find one that fits your interests and your skill set and give it all you’ve got.

Our mission as Christians is not solely humanitarian, but it has to be coupled with the Gospel.  Jesus was a humanitarian, but his ultimate mission was to be a Savior to the souls of those he ministered to.  Whether you’re a builder, teacher, doctor, dentist, or student, above all you are a minister of Jesus Christ.  And with that, we can do our part to minister to those who were nearest to Jesus heart, the poor here, and around the world.  God bless you!

It’s be a few weeks since I posted.  My life has been a whirlwind this month with our annual missions conference, funerals, shooting weddings, early school photos, designing websites for local politicians, and much more.   Today, however, I must break the silence for Blog Action Day.   The purpose of BAD is to change the conversation from the typical topics and highlight how we can help stamp out poverty in our world.  Bloggers from across the globe have joined in to spread the word and get people thinking about those less fortunate.

Jesus was a humanitarian.  His very core of teaching was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in jail, take care of widows and orphans, etc.  Those touched by poverty touched the heart of Jesus.  He spoke often about the poor in the Bible.  He said if you will act in kindness toward the least of these, you have acted in kindness toward me.  The progression of ministry is that you first meet the physical need and then the spiritual need.

One of the projects I have been working feverishly on the past month is the Angelfood project at our church.  Basically, Angelfood feeds up to 500,000 families across America by purchasing bulk food and distributing it for an incredibly discounted price.  It was started by a pastor wanting to help some of his less fortunate neighbors with groceries.  It’s now a ministry that distributes nationwide.  It is not just for those in financial distress, but also for those who want to be wise with their money.

We became a host site this month, and I didn’t expect the response as we received.  I utilized Zoho Creator and built a simple application to take online orders.  Orders began pouring in from the AngelfoodMinistries.com website.  We announced it to our congregation and got an overwhelming response.  We are on target for 500 orders in November.

The beauty of this program has not just been the response, but more importantly the requests from the community.  With this local exposure, we have had single mothers and families contact us who have no food in their pantry and they don’t know how they are going to survive.  Many have lost their jobs in our tough South Florida economy and can’t make ends meet.  This ministry has opened the door to situations we would have never been aware of.  These are people touched by poverty right in our own back yards.  I’m a firm believer in supporting world humanitarian organizations.  However, as the local church, we are the humanitarians of our community. Angelfood Ministries has opened the door to even greater ministry in our local community.

With Angelfood, we have had multiple people donate boxes of food to charity.  I have received emails from people saying they can’t afford to purchase a box of food so I give them a donation box.  One lady said, “You don’t even know my family, how can you be so kind to us?”   By meeting her physical need, we’ve now opened the door of trust and I was able to share the love of God with her.   Angelfood distributes one time per month.  In the meantime we have cleaned out our food pantry ministering to those in near poverty situations right in our community.

The economy in the US is hitting everyone hard.  According to the official census numbers, one out of every eight Americans is living below the poverty threshhold.   These are people that we see every day.  These are kids that are going without food and necessities.  One of the problems in the innercity Miami community we do outreach is clean water.  People can’t afford utilities, so they bathe themselves and their children anywhere they can.  One little girl told me she has to take a shower using the condensation collection off the nieghbors AC unit.  These are real problems within our reach.

Again, I understand we must reach the world.  It’s important you support international organizations financially.  However, if that is all we do and put a checkmark on our consciences, we fail our mission at home right where we live.  There are people you can impact right where you are.  You don’t have to go to Africa or India or Manaus, Brazil, you can walk across the street or drive across town.   When you do that, you are as much of a missionary as the man or woman who is ministering in a foreign country.

The call is to the church to be answer for the community, not expect the government or welfare system or even other agencies to take care of our citizens.  If someone walks in your church, do you have a benevolence plan?  Do you have a clothes closet or a food pantry?   Do you have gas cards or grocery cards from donations that you can give to people in need?    Or, do you pass them off to another organization to take care of their need?   Even greater, does your church

offer education or intervention for homeless or destitute families?  Can your church teach people how to budget money and have good stewardship?  These are questions that need to be answered so that we can address poverty right in our own nation.  It’s what Jesus did and would do today.  We are His hands and feet.  God bless you.

For more information about Angelfood ministries visit: www.angelfoodministries.com