Saturday, August 29, 2009

Open Sourcing my life


The big thing over the past few years is open source materials. That means that rather than charging for everything, people, companies, churches, etc. put there stuff out there on line for free. Download it, modify it, upgrade it and use it for your own benefit.

That idea got me thinking about living an open-sourced life. It's a bit of a pendulum swing. The opposite is where someone has so many boundaries and layers in place that they've protected themselves from every possible intrusion. It's very efficient...allowing no interruptions or messiness. If your life is in chaos...this might be where you need to go to get some balance and margin in your life.

But I'd like my pendulum to swing the other way a little. So I'm thinking of ways that I can crack open my life and get more people in. I've always been quick to meet with people that seek me out. That's good. But I've thought of two new ways that seem fairly effortless. One is just to open facebook whenever I'm online. That way people can chat with me about big or little things.

Another way is to have a regular open house. Lisa and I did our first one last night...a mix of neighborhood friends, staff, and newcomers to Cedarbrook. We are thinking of doing this every two weeks on Friday. Super casual with the goal of getting to know Cedarbrookers better as well as quickly incorporating newcomers to Cedarbrook into the flow of relationships.

I'm often so busy managing Cedarbrook that I feel like I miss the heart of what we should be about; relationships. I'd be interested in hearing some other ideas you might have about living an open sourced life...