Not a goodbye...
Monday, December 22, 2008
You've probably noticed that I have not posted in awhile and friendly emails asking what is going on have mostly gone unanswered. The quick answer is that I'm taking a step back from the site for awhile. For some time I've been juggling multiple priorities between my family, my full time work and assisting with a couple of start-ups. Working with this site was never a focal point in my life, it filled in gaps of time and gave me a platform to express my opinion while giving others the opportunity to express their opinions. While many people are going through some difficult times in this economy, I'm fortunate and blessed that work is going well. The downside is that it has become more difficult to create time for my biggest priority - my family. As a consequence, I've forced myself to set priorities and, at least for now, UCCtruths didn't make the cut.
My choice was to either hand off the site to someone else, close it down or put it on ice. After considerable thought and after discussion with others involved in the site, I decided that "hiatus" was the right term. The message board will stay open and I will be assigning more moderators so that others can keep up on the threads while keeping them civil.
My intent is to come back when things settle down but I fully recognize there is a potential that I will not be back. In which case, I'd like to wrap with potentially one last commentary on the United Church of Christ.
Embracing dissent and difference of opinion is an important part any dynamic group whether it's our government, our work, our religion or an online group of malcontents. As cliche as it sounds, Working through the tension of division always makes the group stronger.
The United Church of Christ leadership would be wise to embrace those with which they disagree with the most... and not just those they deem "loving critics". To this day, I don't know if UCCtruths was considered a "loving critic"... and I don't really care - the idea that the one being criticized can determine which criticism is valid seems a little too convenient and a little too self serving.
Our faith heritage is full of dissent and I'm glad I was able to add my voice to the chorus. In over 5 years, this web site has generated millions of views. The message board contains tens of thousands of messages by over 500 users and was recently recognized as one of the top 2% in Yahoo Groups. My purpose for the site was never to change the UCC but to find an audience of UCC members that would use this site as just one of many sources of information about the denomination. We found an audience looking to embrace dissent even if they did not always agree with it.
Dissent doesn't always mean you are right. I'm particularly thankful for those who tolerated my rants even when I was wrong. The web is an imperfect medium of listening, learning and responding... and not always in that order.
Like I mentioned earlier in this post, it's my intent to come back to this at some point in the future but there are no guarentees. If nothing else, I'll be popping up on the message board periodically to spout off. Till then...
My choice was to either hand off the site to someone else, close it down or put it on ice. After considerable thought and after discussion with others involved in the site, I decided that "hiatus" was the right term. The message board will stay open and I will be assigning more moderators so that others can keep up on the threads while keeping them civil.
My intent is to come back when things settle down but I fully recognize there is a potential that I will not be back. In which case, I'd like to wrap with potentially one last commentary on the United Church of Christ.
Embracing dissent and difference of opinion is an important part any dynamic group whether it's our government, our work, our religion or an online group of malcontents. As cliche as it sounds, Working through the tension of division always makes the group stronger.
The United Church of Christ leadership would be wise to embrace those with which they disagree with the most... and not just those they deem "loving critics". To this day, I don't know if UCCtruths was considered a "loving critic"... and I don't really care - the idea that the one being criticized can determine which criticism is valid seems a little too convenient and a little too self serving.
Our faith heritage is full of dissent and I'm glad I was able to add my voice to the chorus. In over 5 years, this web site has generated millions of views. The message board contains tens of thousands of messages by over 500 users and was recently recognized as one of the top 2% in Yahoo Groups. My purpose for the site was never to change the UCC but to find an audience of UCC members that would use this site as just one of many sources of information about the denomination. We found an audience looking to embrace dissent even if they did not always agree with it.
Dissent doesn't always mean you are right. I'm particularly thankful for those who tolerated my rants even when I was wrong. The web is an imperfect medium of listening, learning and responding... and not always in that order.
Like I mentioned earlier in this post, it's my intent to come back to this at some point in the future but there are no guarentees. If nothing else, I'll be popping up on the message board periodically to spout off. Till then...
