A Reasonable Expectation to Privacy

A reasonable expectation to privacy. With the online world intersecting more of our lives on a nearly daily basis, do we have really have a reasonable expectation to privacy?

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. That’s one type of privacy that, at least here in America, we can expect. But beyond denying someone access to things in our homes, cars on wallets, are our lives really private?

I submit that we’ve willingly sacrificed privacy for immediacy.

We share our lives out loud. From GoWalla or FourSquare telling me exactly where you are, to Twitter and Facebook telling me what you’re up to, and blogs telling me what you think, to out of office email messages, we’re providing an unprecedented level of access into our daily lives.

It used to be we had work lives and personal lives. No longer. The lines between our work life and personal life have been blurred due to our propensity to share. Though not anonymous, there is a certain sense that because we’re not looking directly at someone when we share something, our status update is somehow still limited to a semi-private audience.

Though it is possible to use multiple accounts and limit networks to only a few followers – I do this myself with a ‘family-only’ Twitter account – the reality is that anyone can choose to re-post anything I say in a very public fashion. You see, privacy today is limited only to the extent that I control what I share and when I share it.

We seem to have forgotten that what we share, say, post and do online is stored, forever accessible, cross-indexed, referenced and cached. I wonder how many young people looking to advance in a career 10 or 20 years from now will have what they’ve shared today come back to haunt them? And here’s another thought: our kids and our kids’ kids will have more than a photo album and grandma’s memories to find out about good ‘ol granddad.

Do we have a reasonable expectation to privacy? I think we have a very limited expectation to privacy when we share so freely. What say you?

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Experiment Often, Fail Quickly

I’m amazed at the sheer number of church conferences in a single year. Catalyst. Orange. Story. Unleash. Uprising. Exponential. WFX. C3. Innovate. The list goes on and on.

There’s a reason that there are so many offerings for church pastors, leaders and volunteers: there’s an undercurrent of need for the local church to be more effective and less stagnant. More often than not, the guys and gals up on the stage speaking to these crowds are people who experiment often and fail quickly.

I’ve visited hundreds of churches and seen just about every variety of style and format of church. An interesting thing that I’ve noticed at the most dynamic and healthy churches that I’ve visited: they don’t look or feel like every other church. They’re distinctly unique and passionately focused on their vision. Moreover, the staff shares the vision of the house.

Where there is an unrelenting focus on vision and unity of purpose, there is freedom. Freedom to try. Freedom to fail. Freedom to succeed. Freedom to do it all over again.

I wonder how many ministry opportunities are not merely missed but altogether avoided because we’re afraid to experiment with a new idea, a new model or a different way of doing something? I wonder how many church leaders are really willing to lead and not just sit at the helm of low-risk management? How many will truly evaluate their current teams, processes and results and be willing to cut things – even good things – to make way for the possibility for great things that resonate with the harmonics of a God-sized vision?

Then again, are church leaders listening to the plurality of influencers instead of the singular voice of the One?

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