identitySPECIALIST

I follow a few blogs and a few people on Twitter.  Some of the stuff is super helpful.  Some of it is funny, and some of it is just plain ridiculous.  It’s interesting to me how the web has changed the way that we think about relationships.

I could probably write pages about this stuff – because of my research but I just want to share 2 quick ideas.

1. Our ideas of “friends” have changed.  I have over a thousand “friends” on Facebook, but a majority of them are students at the schools that I’ve worked at.  I have a built in “friends” builder in that I interact with hundreds of students that translates into over a thousand friends.  It adds a dimension to friendship – where if they are following me as I follow other people, we can get to know them and know them as “friends.”

2. I was reading an article on friends and a blog post on how to grow relationships organically.  Let’s think about that last one – How to grow relationships organically.  First, you have to read an article on the Internet to learn how to do that?  Second, you have to read an article to learn how to grow something organically?  It’s like we are forcing something to grow organically.  We have come to the point where we are strategizing how we just let things happen.  The nature of something being organic is that it’s a natural process.  Even a search for a definition of organic sounds like a forced process of something natural.

I’ve heard of people programming services in church – in an organic fashion.  Let’s plan, strategize, or force something to look natural.  In many cases, what is labeled as organic simply isn’t.