Six Ways to Get Unfollowed on Twitter

    People follow one another on Twitter (and unfollow) for a lot of reasons, but in my book, these six things will get you unfollowed pretty quickly.

1)      Post too many times a day -  My general rule of thumb is that most people can post five times a day.  Even ten is acceptable if you have something really good to say, or if there is some special event that you are live tweeting.  But once you start crowding my feed, you are a target.

2)      Post too many times in a row – Some people post five or ten tweets in a row.  Sometimes it is a bunch of separate things all sent at once, and other times someone strings a long post into five or ten tweets.  If you want to blog, write a blog.  Either way, if you do it very often, I’m probably not going to follow you.

3)      Post too many pictures – I know everyone says that pictures attract attention, but if all you do is post a bunch of pictures, posters or memes on my feed, I’m probably not going to follow you.

4)      Post Off topic – I generally follow people because I am interested in what they post.  I completely understand that we are all human and a little “human interest” is fine.  The occasional post about your kids, or your nice dinner is okay, but if you say that your posts are about science, religion, business or whatever, and spend most of your time posting about something else, your days on my list might be numbered.

5)      Post ads – I understand that many of us are on social media to promote our place of business, books, or even ourselves.  But if all I ever see are ads instead of useful content, I’m probably not going to follow you.

6)      Post “click-bait” – We all have a variety of interests and occasionally we find interesting things that we want to share, but if the majority of your posts are links to “click-bait” advertising that looks like “Wow! Look at this Crazy Stuff!”  I’m probably not going to follow you.

    

I'm sure that  missed a few.

What have people done that made you unfollow them?

I tweet primarily about church, faith and religion, but also science, technology, the space program and the human condition.  And of course, a few about my kids.  Follow me @PastorPartridge

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Reprogramming My Head

    A week or so ago, I returned to my audiologist, John, who programs my cochlear implant.  It’s a little confusing when I describe it, because I still see Walt, the audiologist who takes care of the hearing aid in my other ear.  Anyway, we started out the way that the last couple sessions started.  John connected my implant to his computer and ran through a series of tones to see how my brain was adapting to the electrical impulses from my implant. 

    But before we got very far, he took me down the hall to the soundproof booths that are used for hearing tests.  There, he re-ran the test that was required to be approved for surgery.  In that test, a voice reads random sentences and you have to repeat back any words (or whole sentences) that you can understand.  This test is run one ear at a time, so I took off my hearing aid and listened only with my implant.  I thought I did well, but John seemed excited.  We laughed because one of the sentences said something about the gecko that is on television commercials.  For some reason, John was very pleased that I had understood the word “gecko.” 

    After he did the math and calculated the results of my test, I understood why he was so pleased.  In the same test, prior to my surgery, I had understood 7 percent of the words.  Now, four months post-implant, I understood 70 percent of the words.  No wonder people keep telling me that my hearing is noticeably better.

    After the testing, John tried some more programming.  Whatever he did was too much made everything sound like my head was inside a garbage can, so he tried some other things.  Along the way, we discovered that of the 12 electrodes that were inserted into my cochlea, two of them don’t seem to be doing much.  Ten of them I can “hear” but the last two, while I can “feel” them, I don’t really “hear” anything with them.  For each electrode, John turns up the volume until I say that it is “uncomfortably loud.”  But for those two electrodes, there really isn’t a “loud” and a “soft.”  I sort of hear something, but it doesn’t really get louder as he turns up the input.  What I notice, is that in one ear, instead of getting loud, I can feel the volume pounding in my head much like you can feel a loud bass thump from a big speaker at a rock concert.  I feel it more than hear it.  The other electrode is similar, I don’t hear it or feel it, but instead, at high “volumes” I can feel my head hurt.  It’s like I have a bad headache that pules with the beat, on, off, on, off, on, off. 

    In the end, John turned off those two electrodes.  His thinking is that if these electrodes aren’t working by now, they aren’t going to.  Most likely, they are in a part of the cochlea that has more nerve damage and isn’t really “talking” to my brain anymore.  In any case, my implant can function with only four electrodes, so I should be just fine with ten.  Before I left, John finished reprogramming everything using the ten working electrodes, as well as some additional changes and enhancements that I now have to get used to.  It wasn’t as much as he had hoped to do, but we’re still moving forward.  John said that for being only four months after my surgery, he felt I was doing very well.

And so the adventure continues.   Not with giant leaps forward, but with baby steps.

But forward is still forward.

Onward.

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Join the Adventure!  

Earlier posts about my hearing adventure can be found here: My Hearing Journey.
Read them all or just catch up on what you've missed!

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Youth Questions: How Does God Speak to Us?

Note: Not long ago I asked our youth to write down any questions that they had about faith, the church, or life in general and I would answer them during later group meetings.  This is the first of that series.

Question: I don’t get the whole “God will tell you what to do” thing (ex. What career, etc.)

    It’s been a while since they were popular, but not too many years ago, everyone was wearing bracelets and t-shirts that said “WWJD” which stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”  Wearing them was supposed to be a daily reminder to make the kind of choices that Jesus would make in your place. The difficulty is not in wearing the bracelets and not in remembering to ask ourselves what Jesus would do, the difficulty is really in having some idea of what it is that Jesus would actually do.

   This question deals with the same problem.  Too often adults like to tell young people that “God will tell you what to do” or “God will lead you to the right career” or the right job, or whatever.  But how does that happen?  Few of us have ever heard God speak in an audible voice, so how is God supposed to tell us these things? 

    Honestly, the adults in church are probably just as confused about this as you are.  In answer, let’s begin by reading 1 Corinthians 2:6-16…

⁶ We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. ⁷ No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

¹⁰ these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. ¹³ This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. ¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. ¹⁵ The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, ¹⁶ for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

    What we learn here is that, as believers of Jesus Christ, we are connected by the Spirit of God to the source of infinite wisdom.  When we became believers in Jesus Christ, put our trust in him and were baptized, something happened to us.  Baptism isn’t just about what we do, but also about something that God does.  When we became followers of Jesus and were baptized, God sent his Spirit to inhabit us, to live inside of us.  What Paul is saying is that because the Spirit of God lives inside of us, and because the Spirit of God knows the mind of God, God is able to speak to us and to tell us things that we had no other way of knowing.  We are, through the Spirit, connected to the infinite mind of God.

But we can carry that thought a little further and peel back another layer. 

We can also know the mind of Christ in an even deeper way.

    If you have a close friend, you can probably finish each other’s sentences.  You can stop and buy them lunch or an ice cream cone without asking them what they want, because you know what they would order.  You have taken up space in their mind, and they have taken up space in yours.  This is what it means to “have the mind of Christ.”  When you read the Bible and spent time in prayer on a regular basis, you begin to know Jesus in a deep and personal way similar to the way that you know your best friend.  When that happens, although you might not know what kind of ice cream Jesus would order, you do begin to know what sorts of choices that he would, or would not, make.

In Romans 8:5-6, Paul says…

⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

    Because the Spirit of God lives within us, and, as we begin to grow closer to Jesus and increasingly “have the mind of Christ,” our minds become set on what the Spirit desires.  What we want begins to look more and more like the things that God wants. 

    Finally, there is a scripture that people often people take out of context and claim for themselves.  In Jeremiah 29:11, God makes a promise specifically to Jeremiah and the people of Israel who have been taken captive into Babylon, but even though it is a promise to them, it reveals God’s heart toward his people.

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

    We can’t say that God made this particular promise to you and that God wants you to be rich, but we can say that God does not make plans to harm you.  We know that God wants what is best for his people.  For these reasons, we “borrow” Jeremiah’s promise and we’re not too far wrong.  That doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen.  After all, this promise came to Jeremiah after he watched the destruction of his nation and his people carried off into slavery.  What this means is that even when life doesn’t go the way that you thought it was going to go, even when bad stuff happens, God is in control, God has a plan, so instead of complaining about how God abandoned you, you ought to be looking for what God might be trying to teach you through those particular circumstances.

    While God wants what is best for you, sometimes in order to get from where you are, to where God wants you to be, God may take you through some painful places.  I used to be an engineer.  I had a good job, a nice house and a good life.  But when God called me to leave engineering and become a pastor the process was painful. I spent two years unemployed, we moved, sold our house, and I spend five years in school fifteen years after I thought I was done with my education.

    God may not call you to be a pastor or a missionary, but God has given each of you skills and gifts that are unique to you.  Each of you will go places and meet people that no one else will.  Wherever you go, and whatever you do, God has sent you there.

    When you have the mind of Christ, you will naturally be drawn to the things that God wants for you.  And sometimes, God gives you choices.  I have had friends go crazy trying to discern which of three job offers “God wanted” for them until a good friend and mentor suggested that maybe all of them were “God’s will” and God was allowing them to pick what sounded like the most fun and rewarding.  When you have major life choices to make, it is important to spend some time in scripture, prayer and in silence, listening to what God might have to tell you.  And sometimes after doing so, you will know what you should do, but other times, if you have done all these things and God is simply not sending you a message one way or the other, feel free to use your best judgment and pick what you think is best, or what would be the most fun.

After all, God loves you and wants what is best for you.



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Other questions and answers in this series can be found here: Ask the Pastor

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The Death of Communication in the Information Age?

    Sometimes it seems that the march of progress takes us places we don’t want to go.  Earlier this year, our East Ohio Conference magazine, Joining Hands, migrated to an all-digital format and this month we learned that our district newsletter, Tuscarawas Ties, is doing the same.  Both follow a trend.  Many other publications have made this migration for a variety of reasons.  

But these two cases are different.

    I think that the transition from Tuscarawas Ties was well done but fear that the digital migration of Joining Hands will not accomplish its intended goals.

    Tuscarawas Ties has been moving in this direction for more than a year.  Although produced once each month, it had changed to a schedule of eight electronic editions and four print editions each year.  Moreover, most of its recipients are pastors and church staff who are comfortable with computers and email.

    Joining Hands’ transition was more abrupt.  They transitioned from printing once every three months, to not printing at all.  In December’s concluding edition, our Conference Director of Communications, Rick Wolcott, said that we would instead publish “stories online as they happen” in order to “increase their impact.”  The target audience of Joining Hands was broader and directed toward the church at large and the mailing list included retirees, laity, pastors and local churches that ordered multiple copies to display or pass along to key volunteers.

    If your target audience is composed of those who prefer your product in an all-digital format, then such a migration makes sense.  Tuscarawas Ties is mailed to pastors and staff that use computers every day and the news contained in it is often reprinted in local church newsletters and bulletins.  For that reason, an electronic edition is both needed and valued. 

But I don’t think that the same holds true for Joining Hands. 

    Joining Hands brought us news from around the conference.  It was full of stories of how our churches were making a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.  But the audience was not made up exclusively of people who appreciated reading that same material online.  If the churches where I have served are representative of the rest of the conference (and I think they are), producing an electronic only magazine will make it impossible for eighty or ninety percent of our members to read it.

    Trinity Church (my current appointment in a suburban, middle class community) has, by far, the most computer users of any church that I have served.  We have more than 250 members.   I have email addresses for twenty-five.  Of those, perhaps ten spend significant time on the Internet, and four might read a church magazine online.  Based on the performance of our Facebook page (where I post links of interest) ten to fifteen might see a particular post but less than five would click on it.

    I am certain that in churches that are older or less affluent these numbers would be even more discouraging.

    Joining Hands is not the first publication to move to an electronic format and it won’t be the last.  But many of those that have done so no longer exist.  The readership that they had in print did not follow them online.

    I do not doubt the professionalism or the good intentions of our conference leaders, but I fear that we have created a system that is cheaper, faster, and produces news…

…that no one will read.