Scott Fillmer » internet

This Time Next Week We’ll Be Over the Atlantic

Scott Fillmer — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:30:41 +0000

I’m still finding it hard to believe that in less than a week our team will be en-route to Uganda to the scene pictured above. Our church has a team in Uganda right now that comes home on Thursday and that photo was one that was taken and posted a few days ago when they arrived.

I know our culture, church, and climate are worlds apart (well maybe not the climate, it can’t be any hotter there than it is in the south in the summer) but we share the same faith in the same God and I can’t wait to see how that translates from southern speak to African. As I write this post I’m sitting in the electrical closet in our church office desperately trying to get our Internet connection to behave properly after multiple lightning strikes. After working on this issue for what seems like an eternity it got me thinking about where that connection between our two churches resides when not having the Internet shuts down all our work and productivity here and they don’t even have electricity in their church building let alone an Internet connection. Each church reaches a different culture and a different individual and we can no more pretend we are a church in Uganda than Buloba Community Church can pretend they are us.

The one constant is God. It says throughout scripture that God never changes… but you [God] are the same and your years will have no end (Hebrews 1:12 among many other places). The same God we serve here in Auburn Alabama is the same in Uganda and was the same for the Israelites as they marched into the Promise Land. This week is so crazy and for some reason my to-do list just keeps getting bigger and bigger the closer it comes time to leave so I would appreciate all your prayers and your prayers for our team. This is an all-guy trip, their names are below, and I know they would all appreciate your continued prayers.

Bo Morrissey
Christopher Mills
Fred Riggs
Graham Hill
Jason Welstead
Jordan Ross
Mark Fuller
Scott Fillmer
Myron West
Brian Johnson

As always, Thanks so much for your prayers and your continued support for this trip and my upcoming October trip as well.

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Our Life of Multitasking and Skimming in Search of Productivity

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:29:55 +0000

Maybe its photography over the past 20 years that has made me over sensitive to our cultural demands for productivity, which in turn has given way to our two worst developed habits in search of better productivity, multi-tasking and skimming text. I am probably the worst at putting aside distractions but photography is one of those art forms that takes time, sometimes, a lot of time, and has helped me immensely over the years. Photography takes time just sitting there doing nothing, waiting, waiting on the right moment (hunters will appreciate this too). This one shot of the bird above took me at least an hour to capture last night, and it wasn’t a multitasking hour, it was a setup and wait hour, something almost unheard of anymore outside of photography, hunting, and maybe a few other tasks like actual Christian meditation or prayer.

I am trying to walk (not run) my way through Tim Challies new book, “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” where he talks about these very issues. In one section on learning to live without distractions (because we live in a world of constant and continuous distractions) Challies points out that when we turn to the bible we see very little demand for constant productivity, especially in ways we measure today. What we do see is a constant effort by Jesus to slow the pace of life, making time for meditation, prayer, and communion with the Father and His friends. Challies puts it like this:

What is unique in our time is that skimming has now become the dominant form of reading… The danger for Christians is apparent. If we grow so accustomed to skimming words, to passing quickly over texts, we will eventually impose this practice on the words of God… The danger today, in an era of skimming and fragmentation, is that we will fragment the Bible into small bits and have no time or ability to craft unity from the parts.

Being Productive is Not Our Higher Calling in Life

Productivity is one of those things that came out of our big factories decades ago, something that has never diminished, and has only gotten more and more intense as the years go by. Brought on by an insatiable need for being productive (in anything) we multitask and skim. In fact, if you have actually read this far, you are a rare breed among readers today. Most of us just skim text, especially text on the Internet, in approximately 2-3 seconds, and then move on.

According to Challies research, when we “multitask” we really aren’t multitasking as much as we are just jumping from task to task, paying little attention to either. In fact his research showed that it takes us 50% longer to complete each task than if we had done the one task and then moved on, and when we have completed each task the overall quality was greatly reduced as well. It forces us to give partial attention to the task or person right in front of us.

We Can No Longer Give People Our Full Attention

One of the most annoying traits I run across today is that very few people are actually capable of giving me their full attention. I rarely have a conversation with someone without them constantly looking at their cell phone, checking their email, sending text messages, or whatever. Face to face may be more rare today, but even when we do give someone our time, we don’t get but a part of that person in return. I will often just stop talking and wait for them to finish what they are doing, but many times the person won’t notice at all (something Deborah has done to me for years as well).

The point to all this is that, at least in part, is that we as Christians are in a faith that requires us to learn. And one of God’s biggest chosen methods is text, completed paragraphs of thought, made into full letters and books. Thoughts that flow from one book to another and are all connected from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible isn’t full of bullet points, it’s full of completed thoughts. The more we multitask, the more we demand productivity, the less ability we have to sit and read full blocks of text.

It’s like a drug. The less we sit in one place working on one single task, whether that’s reading, photography, or work, without regards to productivity, the less we can. Over two years ago I wrote a blog post called The Internet is The Church’s New Drug of Choice and it’s quite fascinating to see how much father down the road of distraction, multitasking, and skimming text, we have come in only two years.

Thoughts About the Constant Search for Productivity

Because I know for a fact that almost no one is going to read the above 775 words, I give you the bulleted version. In case you didn’t guess by now, I am far less concerned with the productivity factor in life than I am in developing a history of quality. I personally want to be able to do a few things well, never a lot of things in a mediocre fashion.

Photography has been one of those grounding things for me, because it takes time to perfect. There are no shortcuts to learning how to be a good photographer, it takes time no matter what equipment you buy (even if it’s a cell phone). As the time I spent shooting went down in 2009 and 2010 I had forgotten the value of time spent doing just one task at a time, until I got to this point. Since then I have taken more shots (spent more time) in the first 4 months of 2011 than I did all last year, and it’s a good reminder that productivity isn’t the most important thing in life.

Productivity is not what we are called to achieve in life
Multitasking is just doing several things at once, poorly
Multitasking leads us to ignore people standing in front of us
Skimming leads us away from thinking and ultimately knowledge
Skimming text is detrimental to our ability to read completed thoughts
The bible rarely calls us to hurry up and be more productive
The bible is not a book we can skim, we have to actually read it
There is a difference between taking your time and being lazy
The more we live a distracted life the more we need it
Embrace tasks that can only be done by themselves

There you have it, my ten bullet point thoughts from this post. Better stop now, 1,138 words is certainly WAY longer than any successful blog post is supposed to be, next time I’ll try to shoot for the standard 250 words… but don’t count on it.

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Review of the AT&T MicroCell or Personal Cell Tower?

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:13:34 +0000

I finally had a chance to get around to doing a review on the AT&T MicroCell, but in the end, the MicroCell review was different than I had anticipated. I was so excited when I found out that AT&T’s MicroCell had come to Auburn a few months ago, especially because I have been desperately wanting to cancel our landline for years. I have NEVER (yes never) had a cell signal at my house, and no matter how many times AT&T doesn’t believe me, I still can’t make a cell call from my house, so the AT&T MicroCell I thought was finally going to be THE thing to be able to solve the cell signal issues we have here.

Well, I gave it about one or two months to test out to see if I would actually be able to cancel my landline, and at this point, no way. The concept is really cool, but there are far more negatives associated with the MicroCell than the positives. For me, since I have no cell coverage here, I am going to just keep it, after all, what else can I do with it.

The two big issues I have with the MicroCell is that the phone calls drop constantly (yes, even more than the normal cell tower), and the call quality is really like a bad Skype call. There is a huge delay (I’m talking 1-2 seconds) when talking with anyone, a noticeable echo, and occasionally there is just overall call interference. The fact that AT&T actually has a monthly fee that you can (not required) to pay on this “cell tower” is so laughable that it is an insult that they would even try to charge for what we already pay for with our AT&T/BellSouth landline, AT&T Internet service, and AT&T cell service. To charge me for a signal I already pay for it ridiculous.

So, about all the MicroCell is useful for on an ongoing basis is the ability to send and receive text messages, but I wasn’t able to do that before the MicroCell, so I guess paying $150 for text messages is probably not the best use of money either, but there was no way to know that before hand. If you are still going to get one, be sure to allow for plenty of setup time, along with other ridiculous requirements like making sure it is near a window (see photo below, that isn’t quite close enough) for the GPS signal, and also make sure it isn’t near your WiFi signal (how I don’t know, but that’s what AT&T says). I will start with the Pros since there really aren’t that many. My list of Cons or reasons I would not recommend the MicroCell if you have another option available to you (we don’t) I will continue to evaluate, but in our situation (no AT&T service for miles around) this is our only choice.

AT&T MicroCell Pros

You can send and receive text messages (if you couldn’t before)
Voice mail works, you just can’t call anyone back
If you really HAVE to make a phone call (like long distance), you can, but don’t expect much
Range is about 5,000 Sq Feet, so you can get the signal in the whole house (if within widow shot)
People think it’s cool to have one (I just threw that one in there, to make this list longer)
You get this really cool AT&T M-Cell signal on your iPhone (that’s one doesn’t really count either)

AT&T MicroCell Cons

Drops more calls than the regular cell towers do
Major interference with the phone calls that don’t drop
Major delay talking from person to person, like 1-2 seconds
AT&T charges any data against your data use even though you are using your own Internet ISP (whoa)
GPS signal is impossible to keep and reconnect if power goes out
Setup, while not technically difficult, is a pain, and takes forever (45-90 minutes)
If setup doesn’t work on your own, you are pretty much out of luck
AT&T has basically no support for the MicroCell (i.e. anyone that knows anything)
It costs $150 when AT&T should be providing cell coverage for their own customers
Not supposed to put it near the WiFi signal even though it uses an ethernet cable itself
Your only “allowed” to add 5 phone numbers that can use the signal (might be 10 can’t remember, but any limit is stupid)
Any allowed numbers have to be manually added on the AT&T website, every time you want to change
You will need a additional router if you don’t have an empty ethernet slots available
They actually charge $15 a month for unlimited use that doesn’t count against your cell service (crazy)

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Lala.com Now Shutdown and Discontinued

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:45:41 +0000

I was sorry to see Lala.com get shut down by Apple on May 31st. I had been a Lala.com user, trader, listener, since it was back in Beta testing and it was only a few guys trading CD’s with no jewel cases or artwork, back when their logo was red, not blue. That was back when LaLa was great. Bill Nguyen started LaLa.com with an invite beta phase on March 6, 2006, for the purpose of being able to trade physical CD’s.

It was great, I had stacks of CD’s I didn’t want or didn’t want to listen to any more, I just threw them up there and looked for CD’s I did want (the original Swaptree but only for CD’s). All for $1 a trade. I got to meet new people who were also interested in music, and added to my music collection quite a bit during that time.

That led into a new phase called LaLa 2.0, which totally killed the trading on the site. To me, this was the beginning of the end for LaLa because I was there for the trading. They moved everyone over to Swaptree but it just wasn’t the same at all. The site then moved into live streaming music and really became a totally different site at that point. After a while, I came back and really began to like the new format of streaming music and the ability to listen to virtually any album via stream, or any of my own music, synced to their servers. I could listen to an entire album before I went to purchase the album on iTunes or Amazon, and the format was totally different from Pandora or Last.fm (both of which I like for different reasons).

But then… Apple bought LaLa.com, and as much as I like Apple, LaLa’s day were numbered. It was very clear Apple was going to shut down the site. Many of us were just hoping for an Apple version of LaLa, but so far, that has not come to pass at all. Of course they could be just shutting down to reload at this point but who knows. See ::

… and so on… There are all kinds of speculation saying that Apple will now lead the way in music in the cloud (and Apple Sees New Money in Old Media from the WSJ). Those saying Apple will be…

rolling out a cloud-based version of iTunes that would allow users to upload their media collections to Apple’s servers and stream the content to their computers and portable devices, reducing local storage requirements and eliminating the need to specifically sync content between devices…

I know Apple is powerful and all, but the music industry has been trying, really hard, to kill itself for years, and Apple would have to completely rearrange their agreements with the music industry to make this cloud stream happen. I guess Apple could be the one, they have to announce something at WWDC next week that hasn’t been blown by Gizmodo. In the mean time, the consumer is the one who looses, along with the artists, and especially the Indie artists who can thrive in the world of online music streaming.

Now if we could only get Spotify to open up their service to those of us in the United States (without having to use a proxy server, bit torrent, tor, IP address changer, i.e., just open up your international servers) we could get back to the business of discovering new music, and listening to the artists, not the businesses fight back and forth for the almighty dollar.

Looking for an alternative to LaLa in the mean time? Try Pandora, Last.fm, or Spotify (if you can get on), all good sites, but just not the same as LaLa.com of old.

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In the Beginning, ARPA created the ARPANET

Tumble — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:11:49 +0000

I love this quoted poem below. You probably won’t appreciate it unless you are a ham radio operator or understand the language but if you do, it’s quite something.

In the Beginning, ARPA created the ARPANET.
And the ARPANET was without form and void.
And darkness was upon the deep.
And the spirit of ARPA moved upon the face of the network
and ARPA said, ‘Let there be a protocol,’ and there was a protocol.
And ARPA saw that it was good.
And ARPA said, ‘Let there be more protocols,’ and it was so.
And ARPA saw that it was good.
And ARPA said, ‘Let there be more networks,’ and it was so.

http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/

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We are No Longer Selling Books as Amazon Marketplace Sellers

Scott Fillmer — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:10:01 +0000

It’s official, we are no longer selling books on Amazon. For those of you who didn’t know, we have been selling books on Amazon in the Amazon Marketplace (those are the used and new books you see when Amazon is sold out or when you just want to buy the same book Amazon sells for $39.99 for $.01) for years. Yesterday we sold all our remaining inventory, some 4,000 used/new books in one large bulk sale to a buyer in Texas. For Deb and I, the books had become (as Andy Stanley put it last week) the old sofa that no one wants to get rid of because it has always been there.

We started selling book on Amazon at the same time we were full time eBay sellers (eBay lost out as a viable place to sell as a business long long before Amazon) back in 2005, and sold full time on Amazon in 2006-2008, and it was some of the hardest work, most laborious, and in the end least profit making work I can ever recall doing in my life. It came at a time when Deb and I needed to work from home, needed and wanted to work together, and many blessings came our way over those years of selling books online.

Over our selling life on Amazon, we sold over 9,000 books at a retail price of $65,000 (that’s not as much as it sounds when you divide by 3 years and then start thinking profit margins), kept a high feedback rating, and learned a lot about hard work and to appreciate what we were given. Not much different than what we gained and learned from our previous businesses we started and ran together, except that this particular one took over our entire house top to bottom.

After running several small businesses over the past 10-12 years I have come to understand that each business or product has a defined life cycle, especially when you are running very small self made businesses. Products come in and out, jobs, customers, and life in general, has a lifespan or timeframe where some things work well. The key is to know when it is time to move on and get rid of the old sofa. For the books, yesterday was that day, and we were both thrilled. There were many many reasons, but knowing it was indeed the right time to let it go was a good feeling.

Anyone that wants to know the inner workings of selling on eBay or Amazon feel free to drop me an email. Combined I think we have about 12-15 years experience selling on both platforms and we lived and breathed eBay and Amazon, so we do know our way around. We certainly know how to get in trouble with big brother, and how to survive when the rules get changed (and they always do).

Our online selling life was great, and really is always something we think about no matter what we are working on or doing. In those years, we managed to:

work together 24/7, netting 20,800 more hours spent together
fought off fraud
and copyright infringement issues
fended off domain landsharks
had $300,000 in sales without making a profit
sold alongside corrupt competition
continually fought customer theft
avoided a few lawsuits
didn’t sue a few times when we could have
were falsely accused of anything and everything
Witnessed to many (I hope)
were praised and awarded
ridiculed
made some great friendships
ate at a huge unknown number of restaurants
filed for our own patents and trademarks
never clocked in once
travel to every state in the country
live in a bus, apartment, house, tent, campground
lived in Nevada, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Alabama (and many others)
filled approximately 250,000 orders
counted approximately 2 million crystals
imported products from Austria
invented our own products
worked for a competitor
took 50,000 product images
went through about 30 computers
used miles and miles of tape, boxes, and packaging
cried, laughed, bled, and cherished every second

Thankfully for us, now, we have both moved on to a new chapter in our lives together and it doesn’t look like there will be much online selling involved, and that’s a good thing, because I am exahusted.

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A New Website About to Launch at Cornerstone Church

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:00:25 +0000

It is not to much of a surprise (outside of the actual look) that Cornerstone is about to launch a new website. I had the privilege of working with Brad Ruggles, a website/graphics designer and creative developer, on the launch of this new site. Two of my three earthly passions are faith, technology, and photography, which means I was pretty much able to combine all three into one project.

This project was something that took a few months to put together, and was the collaborative effort of every staff member at Cornerstone, but it was something I have wanted to work on for many years now. Not just a new website, but a new mindset into what potential the Internet has in the Church body.

Tools like Twitter, Facebook, rss feeds, podcasts, videos, and all the things that make up the Internet today can be utilized for kingdom purposes, and done in a professional way. This isn’t a new subject for me personally (see The Churchâ€™s New Drug of Choice // Part 1, Does a Church Really Need a Website?, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 1, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 2, to name a few past posts), I have been on a quiet campaign for relavant church websites for the better part of 10-15 years.

This is (to me) what people expect out of their church today, and especially those Believers and visitors in the 19-29 age range. It is a connected world, a connected society, and they don’t want or expect to walk into a church today and see 20th century technology. We don’t need to or have to spruce up Jesus. The Salvation message has remained the same for 2,000 years, but each church in the Church body reaches different people according to its purpose, and a website is a great place to start.

I say start because a website, a well designed, relavant, media based website, is where you can start to bring people to the Church and where they can learn and connect with others that have a love for Christ. It is no longer about displaying something static that shows the worship times and directions, it is about how do we connect with each other and grow in the Body. I can’t wait for the new site to go live. I think this is exactly what Cornerstone is to me and my wife when we arrived about a year ago and I was thrilled to have some part in putting it together.

I know there are a few other Church IT people that read my blog so I will be writing some additional posts on how it went together and how to even get started. What to look out for when choosing a website design company, and what you should be able to expect from your developer. I think we chose one of the best in Ruggles but throughout the course of the project I did meet several other companies, some good, and some very bad, and hope to share that with you in the upcoming months. Hope you enjoy the new site, it should be live some time this weekend.

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The Internet is The Church’s New Drug of Choice

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:36:46 +0000

The Internet can be many things to many people. Can it be the drug of choice today or is that to harsh a term to describe what we as a society have done with the Internet?

Most of the time we have a negative connotation associated with a “drug”, but drugs can be just as positive as negative, especially when one company has promoted their product as the “wonder drug” of all time. One legal definition puts it like this:

Some governments define the term drug by law. In the United States, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act definition of “drug” includes “articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals” and “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals.

This is one of those random blog posts I couldn’t decide if I wanted to dive into or not, but I am going to do it anyway. I started writing this several weeks ago but it culminated this week with a conversation I had with the worship leader (photo shown above) here and moved into the finer point of Calvinism (if only we actually had time to just sit and discuss these things). And that is… what is the Internet doing to fellowship and how does it change how we read Hebrews 10:25 (in context) that says: “25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another€”and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

If you are reading my blog and are not a Believer, then insert “social skills or socializing” in place of fellowship, but for the rest of us, what does it mean to move our worship and other networking (i.e. fellowship) to the Internet? This is what I envision when we combine the greatness of the Internet with the Bride of Christ. Something totally awesome if I can still use that phrase, but how careful are we to not be slowly creating a generation of Internet only Believers that don’t know how to, want to, or even care anything about fellowship?

The ultimate online church campus right now is lifechurch.tv but this week I was really excited to watch the initial launch of the iCampus for NewSpring as posted on ChurchCrunch (read NewSpring Church Launches iCampus BETA). I was so excited to see NewSpring launch a full blown service that I could sit here in my office and watch Sunday evening from a church in Greenville I have never been to (but will in about a month) and feel like I was part of the service, but was I really part of the service?

The questions that ran through my mind when talking to other about where the church is going through technology goes something like this:

What about those Believers who really don’t like to fellowship in the first place, or worse, highly dislike it? To say “they should” is what I would equate to saying a gay Christian just shouldn’t be gay (from Anne’s post Why is being gay a sin?). Can we look at the issue seriously and not just say “because the Bible said so”. I know that, but that often doesn’t change a person’s behavior or attitude.
How do we fulfill Hebrews 10:25 online? Can we fulfill Hebrews 10:25 through only online means?
Can we effectively fellowship with others online? I have gotten to know quite a few people online I have never met in person?
What about those church-a-phobics (that would be the opposite of church-a-holics)? How do you get people in the building when they highly dislike (hate) the thought of “going to church” but will engage online?
What intentional steps do we take to move from online fellowship to discipleship? Are we being intentional about the steps we take to pull people to our online venues in the name of Christ?

These are just a few, but serious questions to me, and quite personal. I have asked myself these and many other questions for many many years and I will continue to try to find where technology fits into God’s kingdom. It is not just something the church can ignore, or misuse. In some respects, it is the future of the Church. Thoughts?

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The Church Body and the Internet, Part 2

Scott's Misc — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:02:55 +0000

This is a continuation of, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 1, on my blog discussion on the importance of the Church as a whole and how it uses the Internet. What is amazing is how fast things change. The text below was for the most part written around the same time that part 1 was written, and that was only about a month ago.

Since then, changes in the way churches are using the Internet are showing up all over the place. Most recently, Twitter Church was incredible to watch. Not saying it is for all churches, but wow, these guys tried something just to see its results (see Twitter Church Hurdles?), without actually knowing what they would be ahead of time.

According to the poll taken at Church Marketing Sucks on the event (see Twittering Church Poll Results), a good percentage of people said it was a waste of time. Great, even if everyone said it was, at least they tried something different. Interesting to note that a good percentage also didn’t know what Twitter actually was, so they would probably consider it a waste of time (and I do think there is a Twitter learning curve as well)

Importance of Effective Internet Use

Starting back in the early 1990′s I stressed to a very large church, what I felt was the importance of an effective presence of Christ on the Internet, through the church, and it was largely dismissed (although I know the term Internet Minister was largely unheard of then). We do know that in this world, where the church is absent, Satan will quickly fill in the gaps, and the Internet can certainly be one of those places.

As the Internet intertwines itself more and more into our very existence I believe it is important for the church not to be absent and left wondering how did Satan get such a strong hold on something that effects everything we do and everyone living in an even semi-modern society.

Hopefully “the church” will have (and I think they do) technologically advanced, knowledgeable parishioners that can discern God’s will and are able to reach out to those Believers and non-Believers alike through the Internet. Not to shy away from it because it is something not totally understood, or a place where Satan can obviously take a hold of the mind if we allow him to do so.

Some of these ways can include blogging, flickr, use of Twitter, (follow me here if you are on Twitter), or even some new music. Groups like Third Day and Robbie Seay Band, among probably 1,000 others, are leading people to Christ, and… they are real bands.

Share Your Story and Testimony With Others

I know over the years my wife and I have met (and hopefully ministered to in some way) thousands and thousands of people whom we have never met face to face, in countries we could never visit. Like our church has said in the Fluid series, everyone has their own “my story”, and I have found that sometimes, they are far more willing to share it with someone over the Internet than they ever would be in person.

One only has to look as far as the explosion of the social networking sites to see that people want to reach out to someone and connect to other people that understand their needs on a personal level. We all know, that someone is Christ, and hopefully the church’s presence will be felt wherever there is a need, even if that need is through the Internet.

How Does Your Church Use Technology?

So, what ways does your church use or embrace technology? Does it at all? There are so many different ways and methods that there are countless ways we, the church body, can use the tools we have today, to expand our reach for Christ.

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The Complaining Christian Can Leave, Please

Scott's Misc — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:54:13 +0000

I really don’t like to do any sort of “non-positive” post, but sometimes it is just to much. I would love to have someone chime in below and hear their opinion after you read my rant, BUT, if you do not want to read a critical article on our faith, just skip this one and check out Blogger Small Group, James 2, for a less irritating post. My wife and I have been earning a living on the Internet for the last 15 years (current Amazon, see our Amazon store here, and our Amazon feedback here), so I can say with some confidence that we have had many thousands and thousands of customers over the years, and one group always seems to stand out to me. The Complaining Christian.

The Lost are Easier to Deal With, Really

I am not talking about some garage sale, few customers a week thing. We had over 10,000 individual feedbacks on eBay (meaning we shipped over 100,000 orders), and we currently work with about 100-200 new customers a week on Amazon. With this said, the most difficult customers, most complaining, disgruntled, and overall unhappy people turn out in the end to be Christians. WHY? I don’t get it, but I can tell you, I don’t want your business.

Inevitably after dealing with an unhappy customer I find out they are fellow Brothers or Sisters, and it is always over something really petty. And I am sorry to say, you homeschool moms buying A Beka books on Amazon, you top the list. (I have my own theory on the homeschool book issue but can’t get into that now.)

One Recent Classic eBay Example

The most recent was an eBay customer that was not happy with the selection of VHS tapes we shipped to her. I am not going to try the case here, but we always try to list as accurate a description as possible, and she received exactly what we said, then filed a credit card claim against us for shipping something “materially different”.

Usually this happens when someone doesn’t take the time to actually READ what they are bidding on, but the bidder will never admit to this no matter what, and then the ensuing emails begin.

After emails back and forth, with her accusing us of running an eBay fraud scam, purposely misleading bidders, and misrepresentation of everything, this was her final email to me, and the one that finally told me what I expected all along, she was a Christian (the CAPS are hers, not mine).

I HAVEN’T FILE A CLAIM AGAINST YOU I JUST TYPE WHAT I HAD TO SAY TO U AND I’M NOT A THIEF YOU KNOW WHAT I’M NOT GOING TO FUSS WITH YOU I’M GOING TO LET GOD DEAL WITH YOU AND LIKE YOU SAY OVER SOME LOUSY TAPES I JUST SAID I WOULD NEVER BUY ANYTHING ELSE FROM YOU U HAVE A GREAT LIFE ROBBING PEOPLE BUT REMEBER GOD IS WATCHING YOU

Nice. I hope God is watching me actually, thanks. Did I mention this was over a final bid of $10.51. This is a typical response I get from a fellow Believer when they don’t like the outcome. Yet, some of the nicest and easiest people to deal with are the lost. When this conversation first started, from the very first email, I told my wife, yep, here is a fellow Believer, guarantee it, you watch.

We are NOT in Business to Rip You Off

If you think I am ranting about some isolated incident, think again. Overall, our customers are happy. We kept a 100% positive feedback rating on eBay, and Amazon goes around 99%-97% (different system), so overall, our customers are generally pleased with the transactions.

But, there are always unhappy customers in business, no matter what you do. I have many that stand out in my mind over the last 15 years, and for one reason or another, what was most irritating about it is they were Christians. Over the years (keep in mind our products are generally under about $10/order), the complaining Christian has threaten to sue me, file fraud charges, contact the police, and overall rant about how we are just in business to “rip people off”.

I am going to write a piece in my business blog about the “rip people off” syndrome, but I had to personally address the Christian aspect of the topic, simply because it shouldn’t be this way.

We Should Not Be So Quick To Judge or Condemn

I say this for myself, not just the Complaining Christian. Should we not try to follow the example given out in Mathew 7:1-3. In business, I try to deal with people exactly how I expect to be dealt with, in a fair manner, with some expectation of intelligence on the part of the buyer (it’s assumed on the sellers part, to me).

I same “some”, meaning a basic level of understand of what you are doing at its most basic level when buying something on the Internet, like how to read and how the post office ships (i.e., we are not the post office).

1“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

We have not operated a business for more than 15 years just so we can steal from people. What this lady from today doesn’t realize is that most of what we sell on eBay right now goes to benefit a local missions store in town. But I shouldn’t have to explain this to her either, it shouldn’t matter, she should have the same response either way.

You Don’t Represent Me or My Faith

What I hate about the Complaining Christian is that they are examples of my faith as a whole body of Believers. We should be the happy-go-lucky people. We have the knowledge of the Truth. We should remember we are representing our faith to all those who see, and we don’t always know who those people will be. For the last 15 years this is something I have not figured out in business on the Internet. Why the Complaining Christian exists in the first place. Please, lets not be the Complaining Christian (TCC, I am going to deam it as). There are better ways to spend our days, our time, our money, our mental capacity.

There are certainly better ways for us as Believers to be effective witnesses?

PLEASE, chime in below and let me hear your comments on the subject.