You've got spam!

SPAM email seems to be on the rise. It is rare for a week to go buy without a church member asking me why they are receiving emails that are less than desirable. Most of the time their question is accompanied with a caveat that they have never sent emails to these folks, browsed their web sites, etc. I can understand. I get those emails too.

So, why is their SPAM in your inbox? Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. The same technology that makes email great also makes it weak
2. Combatting spam is an arms-race and we're living in Berlin
3. SPAM costs the spammer almost nothing, so they will make money.

The same technology that makes email great also makes it weak
Email is a great communication medium because of interoperability. In simple terms, you can send email to any person on the planet as long as you have their correct email address. Assuming there are no problems such as a full mailbox, they will get your message. There is no advanced configuration or pre-coordination required. You type your message, hit send, and as a benefit of globally accepted standards, your message will show up in a few minutes. Every time you buy a stamp at the post office you can see the global success of email.

The global standards for email are weak in several ways. For example it is easy to create an email message that appears it came from someone else (just using Outlook Express). There is no reliable way to determine where an email came from. This is why you should never respond to an email with bank account information, etc. Spammers take advantage of these holes.

Various approaches are in the works for beefing up to standards for email to overcome these issues. We will probably have to go through a global upgrade to fix it. It will become one more of those technology-driven upgrades that will impact consumers (see HDTV, underground utilities, alternative fuels, etc). You might have to upgrade or replace that Windows 95 machine for your email to continue to function.

Combatting spam is an arms-race and we're living in Berlin
SPAM email comes to you through a sophisticated decentralized ecosystem. First of all the spammer does not maintain a huge data center to send millions of emails. They do not maintain a list of email addresses. They do not even maintain the systems that sell their wares. They lease these assets from other folks on the Internet who have gained control of these assets through a mix of ingenuity and illegal activity. In general we have multiple people or organizations in the ecosystem. The spammer, the email address harvester, the bot herder, and the vendor.

• The vendor has a product to sell.

  He hires the spammer to send out the messages and processes orders that come through the spammer.

• The email address harvester works to develop a list of known-good email addresses which are for sale.

  They use brute-force approaches and other techniques to locate email addresses. For example they might concatenate various combinations of initials with first and last names to build candidate email addresses. They then use the spamming network to send out sacrificial email messages. These messages are specially formatted so that if you open the message it will send a signal home to the harvester that the email address is "good". For example they might download an image in the email message from one of their servers. When you open the email, a request goes to their server for the very small (1 pixel by 1 pixel) image at a unique address that is based on the email. This is a simple description of the very elaborate techniques that the harvester uses to obtain, validate, and characterize email addresses.

• The botnet herder has a decentralized network of computers with high-speed Internet connections that can send millions of email messages and process incoming orders.

  A botnet is essentially a transportation system utility. A good analogy would be a railroad. The railrood maintains the tracks, engines, and freight cars and rents them at market rates to move goods from point A to point B. The railroad does not own the freight that it carries. The difference between the botnet herder and a railroad is that the botnet herder does not own all of the computers and internet connections that he is using. He has stolen them. Typically a botnet herder uses viruses and security vulnerabilities to compromise computers on the Internet. Once the machines are compromised the botnet herder adds them to his distribution network. The header carefully balances the workload that he assigns to each computer so that he can keep using them for as long as possible. Many users are unaware that their computer is controlled by others and has a devious alter-ego. This is why you should run up-to-date firewall and virus scanning software.

• The spammer brings all of these folks together and bingo! You've got spam.

SPAM costs the spammer almost nothing, so they will make money
Spammers send out millions of emails at once. They have very little overhead. If just a tenth of 1 percent of the emails result in a purchase, they make money. As a long as they make money, SPAM will continue.

The new math: 1 + 1 + 1 = 111

Tonight we conducted our first family worship event. Based on our estimates, we believe around 80 adults, youth and children attended our special Palm Sunday Family Worship service. It was a great time of worship together and I have a few thoughts on how it came together.

1. Planning a service like Sunday night's family worship is a team effort. Graham brought together a group of parents from the Parent Leadership Team to plan all of the elements of the service.
   
2. Conducting a service is a team effort. We had greeters, folks in the kitchen, scriptwriters, dancers, musicians, costumers, and actors.
3. Attending the service is also a team effort. We had children who participated in a triumphant entry with Jesus, parents and youth who cheered and waved palm fronds and folks who attended who wanted to know the difference between a hamburger and a cobb salad.

In the Bible the predominant form of worship is in the context of the community of faith. While there are notable examples of individual experiences (Moses and the Burning Bush, Jacob and his ladder, Paul on the road to Damascus) the majority of the worship experiences in the Bible are in the context of the corporate worship. Even Jesus tells us that if more than two or three of us come together in His name, that He is there with us.

So 1 + 1 + 1 = 111?

My point is simple, the sum is far greater than the parts. Planning worship is hard. Try trading places with our dedicated church staff for a week. Consider the effort you might expend planning an elaborate birthday celebration for a beloved family member. Now try to do it 52 times a year. And that is just one weekly event, usually our church staff plans multiple events in any given week.

Tonight's worship service was a success because as best as I can determine at least 20-30 people were involved in making it happen. When than many people are involved a lot of good things can happen: We had music, drama, dance, prayer, message, food, excellent visuals and printed take-home items. Even with all of these elements, the service had a consistent flow and pace and went without any significant problems. A great outcome for a first-time worship service.

When you have a bunch of folks working together to plan and conduct a corporate worship service the following good things happen:

• People will come to the service: Many folks have ownership and want to see it succeed. Even more so, they invite others to join in.
• Our gifts are used more effectively: God has given each of us gifts to be used in the church.
• Our experiences come into play: Our variety of perspectives give us a broader view of who Christ is. Just think the Bible has four different gospel writers, giving us a complete picture of Christ.
• Our skills and talents are used: Some would say the service had music, drama, dance, and a message. But the total worship experienced friendly greeters, palm fronds, announcements in bulletins, directional signs, and some awesome desserts (I loved the PB cookie sandwiches!)

I'm sure we'll do this again. As an exercise for the reader I leave the following assignment:

If the equation is 1 + 1 + 1 = 111, where can you fit into the equation?

Convergence

On Friday we added a new online calendar to the church website this week. As a result of that simple addition, it seems that life has slipped into high gear.

• Sunday, I returned from a great weekend at Eagle Eyrie with over 700 youth and adults.
  
• Monday, I participated in the interview process for the General Contractor for the new Hospitality Center
• Tuesday, In the morning I attended a workshop on Enneagrams with Terri's coworkers (I'm a type 7, a.k.a Enthusiast) and I spent an hour practicing music for Sunday's special Palm Sunday family worship
• Wednesday, I have dinner and two different practices for upcoming Easter music
• Thursday, I have a Student Ministries committee meeting at the Neals
• Friday and Saturday, Terri and I will be in Waynesboro for the CBF-Virginia General Assembly meeting. My friend Darrell Cook will be speaking on Friday night. We will also get to see Natalie Kline who went to India with Terri in 2005
  
• Sunday, we have the Easter music with the choir, and the Palm Sunday Family Worship at night
• Monday, I have the encore presentation of the Easter music and the celebration dinner
• Tuesday I sleep

I didn't list my personal calendar for the week to get sympathy or an atta-boy. Take a look at the church calendar. We only really have it populated for March and April but there are already many opportunities for you to grow.

Convergence is when everything comes together. Even in the midst of a busy week where I might feel like I have lived at church, I feel that some really great things are going on in the life of our church. We are moving forward with the construction, we are planning some really great worship experiences and opportunities for our college students, and there are some neat opportunities to hang out with the larger faith community. With all of these things coming together WHBC has an exciting near-term future.

I may be a little tired, but I'm really excited about the next few months.

The rain has stopped

Our youth group is at Eagle Eyrie this week for Senior High Weekend. It has been a very wet weekend so far, but the rain has stopped for a while. We had a group trip up last night and we have enjoyed the conference and Amy's group that is sharing our lodge. Amy and Graham have been friends for many years.

The speaker for the weekend is Laurie Polich and the band is Dana Jorgensen and both are really great.

Seeing the big picture

This year we had the "good fortune" of having a TV die at our home so we entered into the realm of HDTV. Getting our TV up and running was a month-long ordeal which I will save for another blog. Last week I was reading a book by Len Wilson and Jason Moore called Digital Storytellers: The Art of Communicating the Gospel in Worship when I hit upon an interesting quote. The authors mentioned that mostly HDTV consumers did not want a better picture, they wanted better content.

Technology is here, and it is making an inroads into your worship experience. Consider the modern extravagances that we have in our sanctuary. We have carpeting, comfortable seating, lighting, heating and air-conditioning, running water in the bathrooms, a heated baptistery, etc. Most of these conveniences do not guarantee that our worship service will have better content. Instead as they unobtrusively perform their functions they help us to comfortably participate in worship. until they are missing...

Consider the image below. You've seen it every week, but do you know what it is?

Here is a larger view of the same item. Do you recognize it now? Your experience of the same item was improved because the second view was not limited to a small portion of the item. The same is true of technology. Used appropriately it can help us to experience God more fully.

Consider the progression of technology in the church

• Jesus and disciples - oral tradition
• The early church - oral tradition
• The missionary Paul - circular hand-written letters
• The gospel authors - oral tradition organized in a written form
• The great cathedrals - artisans sharing the gospel through stone, sculpture and art
• Monks - copying the text of the Bible by hand
• Gutenberg - The gospel in movable type
• Charles Wesley - The gospel in song
• Billy Graham - The gospel on radio and TV to a worldwide audience.
• WHBC - The gospel on the net. (OK, I admit the last one is a stretch; we were not the first. I just wanted to see if you were still reading.)

In each of these progressions the content was the same, but technology enabled the content to reach more people. Even the brute-force copying approach used by dedicated monks was an effective tool in ensuring that you have access to a Bible today.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to open our eyes on creative ways we could use the technology of today (and tomorrow) to reach this world, without sacrificing content.