One of the amazing people I get to work with on a weekly (sometimes, daily!) basis is Kevin Hendricks. Kevin acts as the editorial director at the Center for Church Communication and is a clever and thoughtful writer.

As you might know, I’ve struggled with book publishers asking me to promote their books. This happens on a weekly basis and I always send my standard form letter. “Thanks for considering me but I only review books that explore the intersection of faith and technology….” Nevertheless, the books keep coming.

Today, I make my only exception for the last year. I simply can’t resist talking about a cause I support (adoption) by an author I respect (Kevin) in a format I love (tweets). Wait! A book written in tweets about adoption – ok, I’m gonna call that the intersection of faith and technology.

Lemme clarify…

Kevin’s newest work, Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 Characters, is the Hendricks family’s personal journey of adoption presented as a collection of tweets; you heard me right … a book authored in Twitter.

I just got mine in the mail. You can get yours today at Amazon. And to seal the deal, a good chunk of the proceeds go to charity::water!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Those of us who use Twitter as our primary instant messaging system (and rolodex, and news channel, and social networking site, and life-streaming host, and water cooler, etc.) got a substantial dose of blackout this morning as Twitter simply….. well….. evaporated.

No Fail Whale, no worm, no ice cream (iScream) nothin’.  My primary communication vehicle was simply missing from the internet.

I can’t return my dms, access my link stream, get my tweeple’s contact information, find my record of things I’m supposed to respond to today, etc.

Just thought I’d randomly yell at cyberspace for it…. and will completely diversify my internet presence in a much more strategic way following today’s crash.   I’ve invested too heavily.  No one medium should have me like this.   Especially one that’s being run by a couple of guys from a garage-sized office in San Francisco.  It’s even crossed my mind that there’s been a NorCal earthquake!   But of course I can’t find out because I always check Twitter for my instant earthquake news.  Biz, Jack, EV where are you?

Agreed?   Comments, ideas, complaints, criticisms… are you with me?

The “real” blog post that was supposed to go up today will still appear… only not until I register my complaint here.

No, not against Twitter.

Against myself, for knowing better than to let a tiny, upstart, micro-medium with under 5 million users have me.

Oh, I bet “twitter fails” is trending, but how would I know?

The blogosphere will be missing a couple of faithful bloggers over the next season.  Heather Whittaker (aka Whittakerwoman) and Crystal Renaud (aka PinkHairedGirl) both long-term bloggers are on blogging sabbaticals of indefinite length.

Heather, one of the sweetest gals ever and wife of well-known North Point – Buckhead Campus worship leader Carlos Whittaker, is going to focus on her family and take a break from the fishbowl she lives in.  Her public blog will likely resume in the fall following a summer break.  (If you’re a personal friend of Heather’s you can email her and she’ll give you access to a “private” site she’ll use for keeping those of us updated who will miss her public blog.)

Crystal Renaud, a Kansas City based gal who’s on staff at Westside Family Church, is taking a refreshment break and will devote any writing she does to the book she is working on.  I first learned of Crystal and her unique ministry through Anne Jackson and look forward to the many ways God will use her in the future.  Her departure from the blogosphere might seem abrupt but actually she’s been contemplating for awhile….

If you follow either of these ladies blogs, would you consider praying for them while they use their time off for rest, motivation and fresh inspiration.

I, too, am planning a blogging sabbatical and will take at least a month off during the summer for our relocation from SoCal to NorCal – more on that later.

Of course, none of us will stop tweeting (women have daily word quotas to meet ya know) so it’s easy enough to follow our lifestreams via microblogging on Twitter:

• http://twitter.com/whittakerwoman
• http://twitter.com/pinkhairedgirl
• http://twitter.com/cynthiaware

Backstage Interview: Marcia Graham by Cynthia Ware from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

As far as I know, the Foursquare Church is the first denomination to use Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, to support it’s annual National Convention.  You can follow  @WeAreFoursquare & @FoursquareEvent for ongoing status updates from Connection ‘09.  We’ll be here until Friday.

Also, the Vimeo channel started above will archive the video clips shot from the event.

If you Twitter, you can use the tag “#connect09″ and all your tweets will appear in the in primary stream.   Although there are many people in the denomination who use Twitter, here’s a handful I thought of who are present this week who are experimenting with the usability/value of the platform.  You can add your name to the Foursquare Twitter’s list by commenting here whether or not you are tweeting Connection ‘09:

@jiwata

@jamescraft

@bradabare

@anivus

@tdunahoo

@hardlynormal

@revkevgcc

@MatthewBarnett

@MarciaGraham

@shawnmichael

@geoffreygraham

@schopkins

@BenEige

@cynthiaware

@dancho

@Paul_Kuzma

@jcobler

@skypilot_TL

@pastortimclark

@mike_mercer

and you…….

Although the list below is hardly exhaustive (in fact, it’s a very rough start), I want to crowd source it so we can get a more concise record of the twitterers who were/are talking about The Idea Camp.  Of course you can search @theideacamp or #theideacamp, but if you twittered about the event, please represent here.

Twitter is the subject of the Internet Ministry Class at Biola University that I’ll be presenting at this Friday and I want some specific people, trends, patterns, etc. to mention.

Just to give you an idea of the popularity of Twitter at The Idea Camp, the breakout I hosted with Rich Kirkpatrick (and the unsuspecting Drew Goodmanson) was attended by about 30 people and there was only 1 person who was not on Twitter.   Since the session was an exploration of social media, I know this isn’t an accurate representation of the whole crowd, but still that’s a pretty amazing number.

The preliminary list below can currently be found at The Idea Camp – Live site but needs serious additions.  Can you help by adding your twitter name, your company twitter name, or your friend’s twitter name so we can see who the twitterers “present and accounted for” were/are in connection with The Idea Camp.

In an attempt to document the migration back and forth between offline and online communications, it’s worth noting that a handful of Christian organizations are taking advantage of micro-blogging (a relatively new form of life streaming) and setting up Twitter accounts for their “followers”.  Of course, they’re not the only ones.  Twitter is also being used by:

• celebrities                            http://twitter.com/mrskutcher
• sports teams                        http://twitter.com/lakersnation
• news organizations            http://twitter.com/cnnbrk
• governmental agencies     http://twitter.com/LAFD
• industry leaders                 http://twitter.com/TechCrunch

Just to name a few.

As far as Twitter pages being set up by Christians, there are more and more pastors, church staff, layleaders, churches, and Christian professionals joining the ranks of the twitterverse.  Some examples include:

• bands & musicians             http://twitter.com/leelandmooring
• church denominations      http://twitter.com/wearefoursquare
• youth groups                       http://twitter.com/newhopeyouth
• churches                               http://twitter.com/newspring
• book authors                       http://twitter.com/donmilleris
• CEO’s                                    http://twitter.com/michaelhyatt
• magazines                            http://twitter.com/CollideMagazine

The blossoming “status update” genre is worth paying attention to and if you have no idea what to “do” with twitter you can find links galore at this site:

• master blogger     http://twitter.com/problogger aka Darren Rowse
• master blogger     http://www.twitip.com/ aka Darren Rowse

You can also follow me here:       http://twitter.com/cynthiaware

And more importantly, it’s Friday – Who do you #followfriday?

Friday is the day I often point to scholars who specialize in the study of media & the church.  This series of Friday posts entitled, Blog of the Weekend, is designed to cover a broad spectrum of world class teachers, researchers & scholars who assess the impact and influence of technology/media on Christianity.

This week is no different.  Today I feature Anthony Coppedge, someone I respect as a friend, colleague and resource for all things media-related involving the Church.  I have used Anthony’s expertise as a church consultant and on complicated issues he has registered his professional opinion (See his comments on my post: Viva La Vida – Did Secular Music Get Saved?).  Additionally, following meeting him last year at the Echo Conference, I’ve more closely followed his blog and work.  However, I completely missed a key project Anthony has been developing and thankfully he’s brought it to my attention.

The Reason Your Church Must Twitter, first draft e-book is currently available online.  When Anthony sent me an advance copy for review, I was amazed at it’s depth, detail and exhaustive all around thoroughness.  E-books are fantastic, instant, cheap resources that can’t be beat (I’ve written for several) and The Reason Your Church Must Twitter is highly recommended for those interested in harnessing participatory media’s value in ministry.  Two of my personal friends have already reviewed it…. see Jim Walton’s blog review and also Mary Beth Stockdale’s blog review.

Also, later today is the launch of a new website called Twitter for Churches. com.  Anthony will spearhead the site and some of us who use microblogging regularly have been asked to guest author.  There’s a progression of adoption  that most most people go through (whether you’re a maven or a luddite!) when it comes to new media.  Anthony quotes Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President at Ogilvy, in describing this progression.

Denial
“I think Twitter sounds stupid. Why would anyone care what other people are doing right now?”

Presence
“OK, I don’t really get why people love it, but I guess I should at least create an account.”

Dumping
“I’m on Twitter and use it for pasting links to my blog posts and pointing people to my press releases (or stuff about me).”

Conversing
“I don’t always post useful stuff, but I do use Twitter to have authentic 1-on-1 conversations.”

Microblogging
“I’m using Twitter to publish useful information that people read AND I converse 1-on-1 authentically.”

Collaboration
“Actual, meaningful relationships and collaborations have occurred out of my usage of Twitter.”

TechCrunch reports today:

“Facebook blew past MySpace in visitors from across the world back in April, but the global gap continues to widen.  According to the latest figures from comScore, Facebook attracted 161.1 million unique visitors worldwide in September, compared 117.9 million for MySpace. For Facebook, that number was up from 4.7 percent from the 153.9 million people who visited the social network in August.  Visitors to MySpace declined 1.6 percent globally from 119.8 million.

The global gap between the two is now 43.2 million visitors.  To put that in perspective that is a tad more than the number of people who visit Facebook in the U.S. alone, which in September was 41.4 million. Facebook still dominates in the U.S., with 73.0 million visitors in September.”

Besides these two golliaths, I can’t pass up an opportunity to mention LinkedIn (used primarily by business professionals) which has a reported user base of 29 million and the microblogging darling, Twitter, which has, according to a brand new Wikipedia update, has a mere 3.2 million.

Oh yeah and all the rest, Plaxo, ROOV, Friendfeed,  Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, Tagged & Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut in Central & South America & Friendster, Orkut, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Today I’m presenting “Leveraging Technology to Support Community” at the Group Life Conference.  I’ll upload it to SlideShare when I have time so you can access it.  My experience at Willow Creek has been amazing and being with scores of people who are desperate to learn how to serve others better has been invigorating.

Yesterday, in an afternoon session, Mark Batterson asked the attenders (about 2000, I’d say) how many were using Twitter and got about a 5% response rate.  Also, in that session, we had an opportunity to use a new system for texting in responses live during the keynote sessions.  Everyone got out their phone and we had a tutorial walking us thru how to text in our answers.  Of course, the instuctor was a 12 year old girl.  I’m going to post a more detailed review of this product within the next two weeks.

Following my presentation I’m heading off to attend a series of other presentations by friends who are also here.  It’s gonna be a packed day.  Unfortunately, while I’m speaking, I will miss Scot McKnight’s “Women in Ministry”.  Gotta download that one.