Getting Time-lined

Thinking of facebook and getting time-lined. (No, that is nothing dirty or inappropriate, at least to my knowledge. Let's be safe and not google that.)

It is going to happen.

It hasn't happened to me yet, but this latest change to Facebook has run the risk of putting me in that crazy don't-change-anything-I-need-facebook-to-stay-the-same-or-I-will-whine-and-impotently-threaten-mark-zuckerburg-and-maybe-quit-but-realize-I-can't-quit-I-need-facebook-to-survive camp. They are legion.

This always makes me wonder about the dynamics of change, and what in us is so alternatively attracted and simultaneously repulsed by it. I feel both monsters. I did not like the news feed change, but it has grown on me and I can deal. I look at Facebook and actually think an update could be good. But then I am repulsed by the notion that everything is changing...that nothing on the internets will remain the same except change. It is odd both to think that Facebook did not exist when I was growing up, and it will likely be an inside joke between my wife and I as our kids grow. A way of dating us as relics from a time gone by.

I help lead an organization, and this simultaneous need and hatred for change is one of the most helpful and toxic dimensions for a group of people. Some change we need. We need to grow, and growth involves change. Stagnant organizations are dead ones. The organization I am a part of is actually an organism, namely, the church, and she is quite familiar with the risks and dangers of death-by-irrelevance.

We need change, but what change? We need to be challenge out of comfortability, challenged into mission, challenged into relationship. We need to let go of some familiarity in order to reach out and give away our lives. This is healthy, this is the hardest type of change.

But there is easy, grab-onto-what's-now change, the change that has me reaching for Ecclesiastes and wanting to take a nap until whatever this present trend is runs its course and dies. This is running after vapor, trying to grab the cool before it is gone, trying to reach for the latest definition of something and all the while missing the constant, in preference of the fleeting buzz.

The hardest thing for me: these differences in change often intertwine in ways that make it difficult to lead. If you ignore current culture, if you turn over and go back to bed until facebook dies, your relationships will suffer with it...you miss out on fresh ways to connect and grow and move forward. If you flit from trend to trend, you miss out on the people behind them...this is a narrow way after all.

I am after healthy change. I hate destructive change. I don't always know the difference. Bring it Timeline.