These stories have left me very concerned that the world is moving faster than many parents are prepared for.

If this has happened to you and your child, please know that Jesus can and will restore that child’s innocence when you pray! Talk with your child and work through all of their questions. Then pray with them, and for them, and you will be amazed at how easily Jesus can wipe their little soul clean for a new start. The last thing you should do is start down a self-accusational road that makes you feel condemned and keeps you from ministering effectively to your child.

So, I want to address this in as helpful way as I can. I don’t normally write blog posts that are this long or this detailed, but I really believe this is an important and timely issue. If you have young children, or have friends that do, please take the time to read through this and pass it on.

Don’t Feed the Monster that is Hunting Your Child’s Innocence

The porn industry is incomprehensibly big. The ease and anonymity of the internet allows us to consume pornography without any of the social consequences of former generations. The sex trade is a booming business and at the end of the day it exists because we want it to exist.

So, before we talk about keeping your kids safe, I want to give you a few resources that will help you keep your heart clean.

• If you need some info on how to deal with a porn problem Biblically, or if you are not convinced that pornography is a problem for the Christian life, read “Porn Again Christian”. You can read it online, or download it as a pdf. Really good stuff. It’s written primarily to men, but frankly, if you are a woman that struggles with this it will benefit you as well.
• FREE Accountability software, X3 Watch. It doesn’t filter your internet, just reports any and all suspect traffic from your computer to the email address of your choice. It’s like having your best friend, or spouse, looking at your screen all the time. I recommend this to people all the time – works great. It’s FREE too.
• Get support, help, encouragement, information and more at the awesome web ministry xxxchurch.com
• Confess your problem to a trusted friend or spouse. Maintain an open relationship with that person so that you have a place to go when you stumble. It gets easier with time as your heart changes, I promise! Don’t let shame and fear keep you from freedom.

Do It Now, Don’t Wait

The first thing that has to change is that you have to confront any naivete you have, and most of us have it to some degree. Understand this: the porn industry, doesn’t care that your child is too young for sex. The younger the better. Stop assuming that your child will not encounter hard core and disturbing pornography unless they go looking for it. This has not been true for a very long time.

This is not about you not trusting your little ones. It’s about you not trusting the porn industry. Your children may complain, and you may have to get into some tricky conversations. You will have to decide what to say, when. But, if the villagers continue to complain, I suggest you introduce them to the brick wall that is your wise parental will. Whatever you do, don’t sacrifice their long term innocence on the altar of their short term convenience.

Start With Common Sense:

1. Get every child-accessed computer in the house out in the open. Your children should never, ever be allowed to use a computer in privacy. If there are computers that you want to keep behind closed doors then password protect them and do not give your children the password. Require them to use a public computer, in a public area of your home. This will provide implicit accountability, and it will allow you to very easily monitor their computer usage without being overbearing or annoying. It will also teach them early that privacy is not a right in your home. It is a privilege that comes with age and trust and can be revoked at any time.
2. Talk to your children about internet safety. You are the parent so you should trust your instincts about what to say at what age. But all children, regardless of age, should at least know that there are bad people out there and that not everyone they meet online, and not every website, is good. They should know never to give anyone their name, address, etc.
3. For younger children, any time he/she wants to visit a new website they have not visited before, they should ask your permission first. Then you visit the site to check it out before giving the green light. (don’t just trust the web address of the site – in the scheme of things, it means very little)
4. Don’t be afraid to restrict social media access until your child is ready for it. Surviving the social media insanity takes a certain amount of emotional maturity. Make them wait until they can handle it.

Software Solutions:

There are basically two routes to go here. The first of which is that you can purchase software that you install on every computer in the house. You would then have to configure them to block unwanted content at each computer and portable device. The problem with these is that if you have multiple computers you have to keep up with them all. For novice computer users, this can be a pain. These programs are also notoriously easy to bypass, so for your older children this may not be a great solution.

I like SafeEyes for this, but there are others.

Though I don’t think these programs are the best option, they are far better than nothing. If this is all you can manage, go for it. Lots of people use it and are very happy (especially if they are not dealing with more than one computer or internet device in the house).

The second option is a proxy filter. This redirects your internet traffic through a 3rd party service that filters your web traffic. The advantage here is that you can configure your home’s wireless router to feed all of your internet traffic through the filter regardless of what device or computer is accessing it. It’s a web filter for your entire home, setup and configured once and in one place. This means that smart phones, tablets, etc will also be filtered. And once it is setup, you can manage your filter settings from a convenient web interface.

In my opinion, this is a much better option.

Of course, these services can also be bypassed by an enterprising child, but it is much harder to do and makes browsing much more inconvenient for them if they try. There is no perfect web filter, but in my opinion this is as close as it gets.

The clear winner in this category is OpenDNS. It’s free for personal use too, so there’s no reason not to try it. I use the “OpenDNS Home” service (FREE) and have no complaints. OpenDNS provides pretty good instructions as you go along, even specific to your brand of router, but if you need more step by step details try this.

I should also mention that many newer wireless routers have some basic parental controls included. Often, these options are not obvious if you don’t know about them. You can typically do things like:

• filter by a set of keywords
• block specific websites
• have internet access shut down at specific times of day (night-time, homework time, etc)
• block specific types of media like video, chat, etc.

Some routers even allow you to set these options for specific computers in your home network. None of these router features can fully protect your home, but they are handy as a second tier of protection in addition to something like SafeEyes or OpenDNS. Check your router settings or user manual to see if these additional features are available in your hardware.

What Works for You?

I’m very curious about other parents, and what they have done that has worked well for their families. Have you come up with any solutions that I have not mentioned here?

Have you ever noticed in Scripture that Jesus, even though He revolutionized the whole world with just 3 year’s worth of public ministry, never seemed liked He was in a hurry? He waited 30 years before He even revealed Himself publicly. Then, after His very public baptism and affirmation with an audible voice from heaven, He disappeared for another 40 days.

After Jesus’ incredible ascension into heaven, His disciples didn’t immediately run around telling everyone, they went to Jerusalem and waited like Jesus had told them to (finally they were listening). Then, after an extended time in which they “joined together constantly in prayer,” God moved, and just like that 3000 people got saved.

His timing, manner and method will be perfect, be it fast or slow. [We should] take things one step at a time with Jesus’ earthly ministry and the early church’s start as our pattern. They understood that prayer is the work and everything else is the result of the work.

What are you struggling to “take one step at a time” with right now?

What was peculiar to me was what happened at the end.  The set ended, the lights went out, the band mostly left the stage, and a large group of men came up on the stage.  It was a choir made up of about 15 or so men from a local Teen Challenge camp.  In case you don’t know, Teen Challenge is a Christ-centered drug rehab program begun by David Wilkerson many years ago.  This choir was primarily made up of men who are former drug addicts.

They sang one song.  I don’t remember the song.  I do remember the worship. And that one song, sung by those broken men, blew me away.  Spiritually speaking, there is a peculiar “sound” to the worship that comes from people who know what it means to be broken.  People who have a deep sense of the magnitude of the debt that was paid for them.  It’s the sound of worship that is not self-seeking, self-exalting or self-aware.  It is Christ-seeking, Christ-exalting, and Christ-aware.  It’s raw and it’s real.

This moment today took me back to the days when I was volunteering years ago in a similar ministry in Britain.  I remember the first time I worshiped while standing in the middle of a crowd of broken men singing to Jesus at the top of their lungs.  It sounded different than any worship I had heard up until that moment and my concept of what worship is changed right there.

I knew right in that moment that the quality of worship for me would never again be measured by what it looks like, how competent it seems, how bold or strong it is, or how loud it is sung (if sung at all).

I spoke to a young man this week who worships much the same way, only he’s quiet and often overlooked by the competent people.  I felt inspired by God to tell him,

“You may think your life and worship is like the squeaking of a church mouse, but in heaven it is like the roaring of a lion.”

I don’t hear the “lion’s roar” often enough.  Either it’s not there like it should be, or I’m not listening. I think the Church needs to make room for the squeaking church mice, and the broken ones.  I think if we don’t, we will soon forget what unsynthesized and unsanitized worship sounds like.

This is the 4th installment of a series of posts I’m doing to help pastors get themselves and their churches online and plugged in.

VIEW THE ENTIRE SERIES

“Are you crazy?  I don’t have time for a blog, Facebook, and Twitter!”  ~ You

Yes you do.  I’ll show you how to leverage Twitter and your WordPress blog to get your feet wet in the social networking world with minimal effort.  Read on.

What is Social Networking?

I mentioned in my first post of the series that we are now living in a global culture.  Everyone is asking the question “Where do I fit in this new global world?”.  The internet, to a large degree, has been the arena in which people have sought to answer that question.  We’ve seen a shift in the past 10 years or so.  Around the new millennium, people were just trying to make money with the internet.  Since then, the big innovations have been centered around people connecting with other people.  This is social networking.  People finding new ways to connect to each other on the global stage of the internet (at least, that’s how I define it…)

There are a dizzying array of social networking options out there.  Feel free to explore them, but I’m going to focus on the two big ones:  Facebook and Twitter.  (forget MySpace – it’s been thoroughly trounced by Facebook at this point).  Let’s take them one at a time.

Twitter – Beautiful in It’s Simplicity

So be careful not to underestimate it.  Twitter began as a simple question, “What are you doing?”  Not very impressive.  What’s impressive is how the “hive mind” of the web took the simple idea and used it to redefine social networking.

This video might help with the background:

I was very skeptical of Twitter at first. It all seemed very narcissistic to me.  But I finally got convinced to try it and I’ve never looked back.  I’m meeting people that I never would have met any other way, and it’s one of the few social networking tools that I have tried that actually improved my life.   If you need more convincing, here’s 12 more reasons to start today.  For the rest of you that are ready to dive in, here’s what you need to do:

1. Get your free Twitter account.  Choose a username that makes sense and can be remembered easily.  Resist the temptation to give yourself a goofy nickname.
2. Use their tool for adding anyone in your contact list to your follow list.
3. Search for anyone else you want to follow.  You can search by name, topic, whatever.  Check out people you like and see who they follow.  This really is the key to enjoying twitter.  Following people in whom you are interested.
4. Get a desktop twitter client.  The web interface is ok, but Twitter will really come alive for you when you get a nice desktop app for it.  I very highly recommend Twhirl for beginners.  Try Tweetdeck when you get the hang of things.
5. Start by listening and making note of how other people use twitter.  When someone says something you think is interesting or entertaining, Retweet it.  Reply if someone asks a question.  Take your time, ease into it.
6. Remember that Twitter is about adding to a conversation.  Don’t let it become all about you.  Use it to point out interesting things on the web.  Use it to share thoughts, quotes, etc.  Think of Twitter as microblogging. The more value you add, the better your experience will be.
7. Tweet your blog posts.  Every time you publish something on your blog, announce it on twitter and provide a link to the post.  This way you are leveraging your twitter following to your blog.
8. Use your phone.  You can send tweets by text message and use the mobile version of the Twitter website.  Blackberry and iPhone also both have some nice twitter apps.

If you need more help with Twitter, try this collection of resources.

Facebook

I have to confess.  I don’t really like Facebook and I don’t go to it very often.  But, no one really knows it.  If you go to my Facebook profile it will look like I’m there all the time.  It’s not so.

Where Twitter is like a focussed, short, and somewhat controlled connection tool… Facebook is like trying to drink from a fire hose.  It’s overwhelming to me at times.  I’m certainly a minority there… Facebook is HUGE and most of the people in my church are active there.  Here’s how I maintain visibility on Facebook without letting it rule my time:

1. Install the Twitter Facebook application.  It will tie your Twitter messages to your Facebook status.  Once you’ve done that, every time you send a tweet it will show up on your Facebook profile as a status update.  2 birds with one… tweet.  ;-)
2. I use Flickr to share photos with family.  There’s a facebook app for flickr too.  Every time I add a photo to my flickr account, it shows up on Facebook.  2 birds again…
3. Google Reader has a facebook app.  If you use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds, you can install the GR app and every time you “share” an article in Google Reader, it appears on Facebook.  Notice, all this Facebook activity and I haven’t gone to the FB site once.
4. Now the only time I have to go to Facebook is when someone emails me from there (rare for me because I don’t send emails out from FB) or does something on my profile that warrants a response.  SHhhhhh…. don’t tell.

As you can see, Twitter really is at the center of my social network.  I suggest you set yourself up the same way.

The next, and last, installment in this series will be a guest post from Trendsetting Design to help you use the power of graphic design to enhance your ministry online and offline.

This is the 3rd installment of a series of posts I’m doing to help pastors get themselves and their churches online and plugged in.

VIEW THE ENTIRE SERIES

I mentioned in my first post in this series that there is a new expectation in our church culture that wasn’t there just a decade ago.  People want to know their pastor, and that’s perfectly right and good.  I don’t think most people expect to know everything.  They don’t want to stalk the pastor, they just want to know him.  They want to have some sense (even if vague) of what his family life is like, what he laughs about (if he laughs), and what his dreams are for the church and his own life.  This isn’t hero worship.  It’s kind of the opposite, in my opinion.  It’s taking the pastor off the ivory pedestal and making him human again.  It think that’s a good thing.

If we pastors are honest, we will admit that our hesitancy to setup a personal blog has to do with a fear of being more vulnerable than we have been in the past.  You need to get over it.  If you don’t, you are going to find yourself more and more ineffective as a leader.  This is a bigger issue than your website.

I started blogging before I became a pastor.  It was just an unfocused creative outlet for me.  Then I took the pastorate and the significance of my litte corner of the web totally changed.  Immediately people in my new church started reading.  I didn’t know it, but they were making connections with me through this medium.  People that did not know me yet, felt like they were getting to know me before I was able to even introduce myself.  I didn’t feel like a stranger to them anymore.

THAT’S POWERFUL!

Visitors to our church mention my blog when they meet me.  They already know some of the funny stories about my kids.  They know some inside jokes.  They know my first name.  Pastor, if you aren’t blogging you are not taking advantage of one of the most powerful leadership tools available to you.

General Tips

• I suggest that you do not use your church website as your blog. Most CMS-driven sites will allow you to blog.  I don’t think this is ideal.  It will help you and your readers to have your own space.  It should look different and have it’s own web address.  You should feel free to speak freely and make the site your own.  And your readers will feel like it’s more authentic this way.
• Please.  Please don’t turn your blog into an online devotional. In my opinion, this is perhaps the number one mistake I see on pastor blogs.  Your blog, on the whole, should not be an extension of your pulpit ministry.  Stop preaching, and talk.  Talk like a human being.  Sermonize on Sunday.  Conversate on your blog.  If you want to blog your sermons, I suggest you do that at your church website.  Keep your blog personal.
• Practice using a personal tone in your writing. Address your readers by using the pronoun “you” a lot.  When you write, imagine that you are talking directly to a person.  This will inspire you to be personable.  A blog is not a formal writing medium.  It’s informal, personal, and conversational.
• Be yourself. Talk about books you are reading, thoughts you have, what you love about being a pastor and what’s hard.  The temptation to build a false persona as a pastor is very strong.  Resist it when blogging.  A lack of authenticity is murder in the blogging world.
• Don’t be long winded all the time. One of the main reasons I hear pastors cite as to the reason they don’t blog is that they don’t think they have the time.  That’s because they don’t understand blogging.  It doesn’t need to be long.  Just a paragraph or two.  A few minutes of your time.  Of course, there will be times when you want to really knuckle down and write some serious prose.  Go for it when you want to.  Mix it up.  Just don’t feel like you need to write a book every time you post.  Relax and have fun with it.
• Post with some regularity. This doesn’t mean you have to post every day (though that would be nice).  I post about 2 times a week.  However often you can do it, decide on a basic schedule and stick to it.  People will get into a rhythm with your site and consistency will build stable traffic.
• Have an opinion and state it with passion and sincerity. Passionless writing is boring.
  
• Remember that what you publish, is out there forever. Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t want them to hear.  Never click “publish” when you are angry.  Never use your blog to solve relationship problems.  If you wouldn’t email it, don’t blog it.
• Remember that blogging should be a 2-way conversation. That’s what commenting is for.  Encourage it by asking the reader to respond.  Write in a way that inspires people to add to what you said.  Leave something unexplored and ask for opinions.  Commenting is what makes a blog fun for you and your readers.  Encourage it.
• Make it easy to comment. I’m a big proponent of wide open commenting.  No pre-moderation.  I think anything more restricted sends the wrong message.  However, at the very least, don’t make people register at your site before they can comment.  Having to remember yet another username and password is a barrier many, many people will not get over in order to comment (myself included).

How to Get Started

It’s a whole heck of a lot easier than you think to get a blog up and running.  I’ll give you two options, in order based on the best to the least desirable.

1. Host your own blog with your own domain and use WordPress to do it.  WordPress is the best blogging platform.  There, I said it.  And I believe it.  This doesn’t require much expertise, but some.  If you are new to blogging, you probably will not be able to do this on your own.  Find someone to install WordPress for you.  This gives you maximum control over the design and functionality of your site.  It will be yours to tweak and make your own.  Installing WordPress is easy and should not be expensive to hire someone to do the basic install for you.  In fact, this is one of the things that a geek volunteer in your church could do with some research.
2. Create a free WordPress blog, hosted by WordPress.  It takes less than 5 minutes to create the free account, choose a theme, and start blogging.  You have less control over your design and funtionality than if you hosted it yourself, but it’s the same engine running it.  DON’T USE BLOGGER, or any of the other free blogging platforms out there.  Just do what everyone else eventually comes around to and start with WordPress.com.  If you decide later to host the site yourself with the WordPress software, moving it from the free hosted service to your own is a cinch.

Go on.  Get started now.  You can thank me later.

The next post in this series will be about social networking.  Don’t worry.  It won’t hurt.

This is the 1st installment of a series of posts I’m doing to help pastors get themselves and their churches online and plugged in.

VIEW THE ENTIRE SERIES

Most pastors know that they need to get plugged into web technology, but they have no idea where to begin.  This series is for you.  I want to help you engage your city and the world with the gospel.  I also have another audience in mind.  It’s those that still don’t see the need to get on the web tech bus.  Maybe your seminary prof told you the web is a dark and evil place that should be avoided at all cost.  Or maybe you just see this as a big fad that will go away soon.  Let me address that problem first as a way of providing some context.

Only a crazy hermit could deny that web tech has taken over, particularly in the form of social media and networking.  Still, I meet pastors all the time that simply don’t see how participating in that world can possibly benefit their ministry.  If they do participate, it’s begrudgingly.  They say, “Humph.  I guess these days this is the kind of thing you have to do.  All the young kids are doing it, so I suppose we should too.”  In other words, I don’t see the value in this, but I’ll do it to make people happy.  However, I know in my own mind that I’m not going to really give this a shot.  I don’t understand it, so it must not be important.

What that pastor is missing is the way these technological trends are shaping our culture.  These things ar not just culture add-ons.  They are shaping the cultural ideals and perspectives of people on a global scale.  This is also not an “outside” the church thing.  It’s inside the church too.  Very much so.  The different ways that’s happening are too numerous to unpack here, but here’s a few for starters:

1. The days of senior leaders sitting in ivory towers is over.  People expect to be able to have some connection with you, even if only through your blog or Twitter updates.  I think this is true regardless of church size or staff size.
2. Whereas people used to expect their senior leaders to at least appear to be perfect, they now expect their leaders to at least appear to have some flaws (though only small ones…).
3. People expect to be able to customize their experience, particularly when it comes to interpersonal connection.  One size fits all doesn’t fit anyone anymore.
4. It’s no longer about a global economy and where we fit in it.  It’s about a global culture and where I fit in it.  Pastors have to stop thinking locally, and start thinking globally like the rest of the world.
5. Your first impression used to happen at the front door of the church building.  Now it happens on the web long before that potential church member ever leaves the house.
6. You and your church are now “competing” against other religions on a global stage, whether you like it or not.  It’s no longer just about the Mormons down the street.  It’s the Muslim a world away that is competing for the hearts of the lost in your city.

And that’s just the beginning.  Engaging on the web is not an issue of fad or keeping your parishioners happy.  It really is about the gospel and the Kingdom of God.  If you are a pastor and you can’t get into that, then what are doing?

In the next installment, I’ll be giving you some simple tips to help you get started.

Come celebrate Easter in a fresh way.