Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Monday, September 27, 2010

Enough of Politics, Lets Change the World

I've had enough of politics for a while. There are more important issues on the agenda. Not that politics is a game that we can play or not play. Because of the growth of government in the last few years, politics are encroaching on every aspect of our lives.

If your like me your not looking for the government to fix our world. Your already working, paying taxes, raising your kids and donating time and money to causes that you feel will benifit the world you live in.  It's a pretty funny thing that many of the big, left leaning charities get most of their money from right wingers. Because we believe in helping people help themselves, we give generously and work with people in all walks of life. So much for us being a bunch of haters.

That is the thing that sets conservatives apart from liberals. Conservatives put their time and their money into what they believe. Liberals historically expect the government to do it. Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household.

It is one of the bitterest ironies of liberal politics today that political opinions are apparently taking the place of help for others. People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition. Conservatives are 18 percent more likely to donate blood as well. No government program can manufacture blood.

Liberal policies hurt private sector non-profits such as ours. Conservative nonprofits tend not to take taxpayer money; liberal nonprofits often are financed over 50 percent with government money.  Liberal plans to reduce tax deductions for charitable contributions will disproportionately hurt charities relying on purely private financing, a political maneuver little noticed except by some liberals, who understand it will ensure government, not private donors, decide how tax dollars are allocated. This is politics in America today and it is ugly.

Also consider that people who have earned their money tend to be more generous with it than those who got their money through welfare. The working poor give three times as much money to charity as welfare recipients at the same income level, and they are twice as likely to give and to volunteer. In essence, welfare tends to make people less self-sufficient and responsible, and creates communities where people have no models of hard-working people striving to improve their lives. In short, welfare programs impede virtue in both the person and the community.

Its up to all of us as individuals to change our world. At Computers for Charity, we do it one computer at a time. Your monetary and hardware donations make it possible for us to help bridge a growing digital divide. Without access to the same tools that many of us take for granted the underpriveleged in our communties will always lag further behind when it comes to education, employement, and information. If not our charity, then donate to some charity. What sets Amercans apart from our Socialist European conterpats is that, we take care of our own. We dont need income redistribution scemes lift up our fellow man. We have always done it best through our private institutions.

This is why I say enough of politics. I welcome all of you who believe in helping other people, regardless of your political stripes, to join us in our mission. If your conservative, don't be discouraged. I know you work too hard and pay too much in taxes already. I do too. But you are our core supporters. If you believe that individuals, not government, offer the best solution to social ills, we need your support now more than ever.

If your liberal, I simply ask for you to put your money where your mouth is. Don't just sit and wait for the government to take action and tax someone else to do what needs done. If liberals were as generous with their checkbooks as conservatives we may not even need the big government bureaucracies that end up wasting valuable resources that could be spent helping those most in need. In fact if you really care about the disadvantaged, donate some blood! If liberals gave blood like conservatives do, the blood supply in the U.S. would jump by about 45%

If your not feeling charitable today I invite you to come to church. Even more so than politics, people who attend a house of worship every week are 25 percentage points more likely to give to charity each year than people who never go to church, and give away about four times as much money. And this is not just a question of religious people giving to their churches, as meritorious as that might be: They also give and volunteer significantly more to explicitly nonreligious causes and charities.

Enough of politics already! Lets change our world instead!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Do You Follow Jesus...On Twitter?

Social Networking And The Church

In a lot of ways the church is the home of the original social network. The church has a greater spiritual role than just meeting new people and making friends, but that is the number one reason people return to a particular church. Relationships formed in the church can be lasting and powerful. When it comes to members of the church, social networking can compliment these traditional relationships.

Social networks provide a way to stay in touch, share photos, videos, and thoughts, hopes and prayers form divergent geographic locations. So even if your friends are on a Mission Trip to Uganda, you can still keep in touch with them in an instant. What a powerful tool this provides us! So far the church as a whole has failed to embrace this medium. We all have our church website and we all have our own personal site, be it Facebook or MySpace, or Twitter (just to name a few).

One of the cool trends in social networking is the ability to synchronize content between sites. A person with a little knowledge can link their YouTube content to their blog and MySpace page with ease. This allows us to gather content from various places and have it all displayed in a central location such a feed on our churches main website. Various churches are experimenting with these freely available tools with varying degrees of success.

The problem is you need a few people dedicated to publishing CONTENT. We need pastors to embrace blogging. Ministry leaders willing to post updates about their ministries, church members who care enough about their churches happenings to view this content and post an occasional comment. This is all pretty basic.

You can go beyond this and have someone to post pictures from recent events, video clips from sermons and worship, presentations or exciting outings. A churches newsletter can easily be transferred from its original format to a web friendly format. There are a million ways to integrate the churches activities on the web so there are no excuses for not experimenting and finding out what will fit your churches form and culture.

A Divine Mandate

If the church is the exciting and vibrant place we know it to be then why are we so dull and dead looking on the web? Are we not to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mark 15:16)? Do we have anything positive or encouraging to say to a broken world (Luke 4:18)? In our modern culture isn't the internet the equivalent of the rooftop we are to shout from (Mathew 10:27)? Are we not to pull down the strongholds of the world (2 Corinthians 10:4)? Is it not our responsibility to shed some light in this present darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6)?

We not only have the ability to utilize this medium to its fullest potential but wee have a divine mandate. So how do we start? Do we sign up for an account on Facebook and play online games with our friends or send each other virtual gifts? Although these things are amusing pastimes and how most people use social networking we should always look for ways to express our spiritual values and our causes through our interactions on the web. As we should be doing in all of our daily lives!

The Time IS Now

On many of the social networks you can add Pages as well as Causes. Its easy to go to Facebook or MySpace and set up a site for your church. This does not limit you to those mediums. As I pointed out earlier you can use some easy tools to integrate all of your feeds into one or multiple sites across the internet. But just building a website doses not mean they will come. You have to nurture relationships with people and give them a reason to keep coming back, just like in the real world.

Not only that but we need to use this opportunity to interact with other churches and build bridges, uniting in a way never before possible to pursue our common goals and interests. We have a lot to learn from each other and the unity of the entire body of Christ is needed now more than ever before. Our world is becoming more fractured and polarized in the political and the social realms. We need to let them know the love of God through our love for one another (1 John 4:7)

So do you follow Jesus on Twitter? How about on MySpace and Facebook? Why not follow him in your daily life and make his presence known through your interaction on the medium of social networking? He called us all to follow and in turn lead others into the Kingdom of God. There is a time for everything under the sun and the time for the church to embrace the freely available technology of the social networking phenomenon is now.

http://computersforcharity.webs.com

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