Author: Ron Baker

23 brave souls are headed out.  To Calgary.  To hear loud music.  To serve others.  To have fun.  To come home exhausted.

Wish I was with them!!

As I completed the day, I spent two hours continuing the cataloguing of books for Tim Crump’s estate.  The earlier part of the day saw a first draft of my sermon completed, a few projects forwarded, and even the opening of a bank account for a local organization.

All this was good enough.  But then I sat down to organize.  Books, that is.  And my juices start to flow.  I tried to find a way to gather groupings of authors together.  And then, sought a way to arrange books that did not come in groups.  By the time I was done I had gained a further sense of the library I was working on.

So, if there is a book buyer who would love to pick up mysteries, World War II history (specialty in Winston Churchill), British monarchy history, Sherlock Holmes oriented books . . . and that’s just the core.  Then there is photography and Canadian history . . .

My wife shrugs her shoulders.  Not her bag!  But for me . . . close to paradise!

Last week my work computer died.  No one shot it – it just died.  Probably should have shot it – but why add more metal to useless metal. 

So, another computer was pieced together for me.  With just the basic operating system and a few Windows programs.

Which means I had to reinstall a number of programs.  And had to find the application data.  Which is always tucked away somewhere on the hard drive.  Of course, the computer companies are not going to outline this in bold print.

Off to Google and the internet.  And soon I was given the information and health was restored to my computer system.

Which brings me to the great aid that the internet has become.  On a TV newscast today the item featured was nurses using their iPod touch to show patients medical information.  Instead of turning to older textbooks, the current place to find data is online.  The textbooks are outdated too quickly, the indexing too slow and just generally they have become obsolete.

May we never have a power outage, or an interruption to the world wide web.  In a few years that will spell the death of us.  

Drive by Daniel  Pink.

On of those books that, although I’m only started, has great promise.

I heard Daniel Pink over a simulcast at the Global Leadership Summit held by Willow Creek Association.  The talk was given by a self professed geek, who is an amazing speaker – dry sense of humor and lots of content.

His basic thing relates to the matter of motivation in getting things done.  He admits to the idea that the carrot and stick work for some efforts.  But the real motivator needs to be intrinsic (or as we gospel types would say – from the heart).

The true motivators?  Autonomy (let them go at it!), Mastery (do something you are good at and be good at it), and Purpose (we like to do what is significant).  Money as an incentive actually is proving to be a disincentive. 

Can we apply this to church?  Start accepting people’s ideas about the wild way they would like to do things.  Don’t necessarily look to give unexplainably high salaries, but rather give a significant mission. 

Well, that’s a start.