iGod

Putting our own lives into a little perspective

Just catching up with Asbo Jesus and came across this little gem.

ASD

Ten Commandments for Bloggers

A couple of posts ago I spoke about getting together with other other bloggers in the flesh at Whitfield House, Kennington, London. One of the aims of the day was to consider the social impact of blogging.  Thus, the Evangelical Alliance came up with an idea for a set of cyberspace commandments, which we were subsequently invited to add our two penneth worth to:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.

2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.

3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.

5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.

6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.

7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.

8. You shall not steal another person’s content.

9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.

10. You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.

I guess the one issue I might have with producing a set of 10 commandments for bloggers is that only the compliant will, er, comply. it won't impact the the mischevious or subversive one iota.

The blogosphere's strength is that it is an untamed, yet evolving self-regulating community and, although it can accomodate an ethical sets of guidelines, it has to be formed on its own terms. The 'conversation' has to had together.

But, let's also remember, as Krish Kandiah, Churches in Mission Executive Director, said, it is only meant to be a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, so let's chill and take them just as that.

BTW, Krish, thanks for getting us thinking. Great day!

ASD

4 Degrees of Love - Dan Wilt

I am grateful for the tip-off by Ted in our church for this video. Dan Wilt is the Director of the Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Church Studies at St Stephen's University in New Brunswick, Canada. He is also a well-respected worship writer and leader in the Vineyard movement, as well as I know much appreciated across other church streams.

His video resources are easy and accessible for all worship leaders who want to cultivate a heart and mind for worship. Anyway, I've said my piece, you be the judge.

ASD

What’s does a Web 2.0 Theology look like?

This week I have been involved in a healthy discussion with other Christian bloggers where, alongside other stuff, we looked at a theology of Web 2.0. Nothing unusual in that you may say, until I tell you it was face-to-face! Shock! Horror! Gasp!

Having maybe picked yourself off the floor and imagining me relating to real people in the flesh, you may still be slightly cloudy over what Web 2.0. actually stands for. Allow me to elaborate very quickly.

When we first discovered the joy of websites they were set up as informational sites.  It was where we went to be told what an organisation or company did.  In essence, it was where we found an online version of a printed document.

Then along came Web 2.0, a wholly new revolutionary form of online communication. The internet was no longer a monologue, but an interactive stream, allowing ‘conversations’. The arrival of Web 2.0 applications such as FaceBook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Flickr, Typepad, Skype and, of course, YouTube meant that we could create our own content and publish it for the world to see. We no longer needed to be spoon-fed content. We can now choose to not only digest what we want, but also hold any shape ‘spoon’ we wanted too.

But along with that new-found freedom has come some challenges, such as people will post anything and everything and editorial control has become a challenge.  We can no longer edit the information we want people to read. Where there was once just one version of the Bible in Latin which only the monk or educated priestly scholar could own, read and interpret for the masses, everyone can now have access to information and can interpret it in their own way.

 I guess it is the ultimate experience of Western Liberal Democracy at work, which is why the Chinese authorities had such a hard time at the recent Olympics in Beijing.

With that freedom we criticise people, leak secrets, devalue world brands with our stories of flaws in people, products and bad customer service experience.  I remember a US bike lock company went almost bust because someone posted a video showing how you could unlock a bike and ride off on it with just a Bic biro. This became one of the earliest and most successful virals ever.

Right now all over the planet people are having conversations with strangers. The chances are they will never meet each other.  Then there is the FaceBook community. If you are on this application, you’ll have people who are vaguely familiar to you requesting that you accept them as a friend, so do you?

There appears to be minimal accountability on the internet. You can call yourself anything, say anything, believe anything and feel nothing. I know this bothers a number of churches and institutions.

One of the things I love about bloggers is that the majority of them, like me, are not famous. They are not celebrities.  Many write because they need to write. And I think that is not a bad reason to blog.

So the question is, do we, the Web 2.0 generation want our experiences or preferences to continue in the same way in our offline world. For instance, if we go to church, do we want to be preached at or have a conversation?

Do we stay within our comfortable church community of like-mindedness and take everything the pastor, like me, says for granted or do we look for the opportunity to say, “What do you mean?...What if...I am not sure I totally go along with that...Can I just ask a question here?”

Another issue is the apparent loss of absolute truth.

For instance, I heard a fact recently that if anything is put up on Wiki connected to Islam and is wrong it is corrected in less than two minutes.  I guess this is where life gets interesting. I was thinking that where Web 1.0 had one contributor/writer/editor (or at most a selected body of experts) Web 2.0 has literally thousands of contributors.  For example, I read that there are 75,000 editors on Wiki alone. We, therefore, are starting to take our truth from the many, not the one.  Does this lead to relativism or can The Truth still find a way through? One of the emerging strengths of Web 2.0 culture is surely self-regulation. It takes a strong dislike to anyone trying to conform it to its way of thinking.

This made me think about the Bible’s reliability.  Being as Christians are a ‘one book’ people, it could be seen at first glance as being very Web 1.0, but actually that is far from the case, as scholars will tell us.

It is noted that while historians usually settle on a few or even a single fragmented eye-witness account, the Bible is made up of literally dozens of individual sources which were reviewed for patterns of consistency (I’ve got the actual number somewhere, but don’t have it at hand).

Maybe, just maybe some books of the Bible were written later than their time of happening to ensure the sources were validated and tallied with one another before committing to print. An interesting thought, isn’t it? Maybe this goes to show that there really isn’t anything new under the Sun, just the language and experience of contextualisation.

So there are some challenges for the Christian Church today.

But these are my mutterings, what’s your take on it? 

ASD

My Global Impact - Carbon Calculator

Tearfund, the Christian relief and development agency has devised an interesting online tool called Carbon Calculator. As you might guess from the name, it takes you through a load of questions to work out if you are a friend of fiend to global warming. I am afraid I have some repenting to do.

Worth doing if you've got 5 minutes, though you will need to know how much you pay for your utility bills to complete one section of it.

ASD

iGod Word Cloud

I thought it would be fun to see what I speak about most on my blog by creating a word cloud. The most commonly used words are marked by the size of the word in the cloud.

This app is a great tool to use in other more serious settings to see if values really are valued, as well as what things occupy our minds the most. I am not sure what it says about my humble blog, but I let you be the judge and jury on that.

ASD

Daily Prayer site

Alongside SU's WordLive, which I blogged on at the very beginning of the year, I thought this little application from the rejesus people was worth a gander. It's for those of us who aren't use to regular prayer or for those who they feel they would benefit from the discipline of someone else's written prayers. No shame in that.

Although it might not be natural for some of us to use set prayers, I believe we can benefit by being open to some traditional ways and have our lives enriched by the experience of others.

The site says: "Prayer is a rewarding and life enhancing conversation with God. But at times it can be difficult. You can feel isolated from others, running out of things to say and getting distracted.

Pre-written daily prayers, started centuries ago by Monks and Nuns, can be a great help. The words already written can help you concentrate and to know that many other people are praying along with you can be enormously encouraging. Jesus encouraged his followers to pray regularly and discipline is needed to accomplish that. Daily prayers help by developing a habit."

Amen to that.

ASD

Remembering 9/l1, and remembering there is a thing called hope

This is a follow-on from the last post and really worth a view, as well as a timely reminder of 9/11, being the seventh anniversary of that horrific day. If you would like to know more about Hope 08, the people behind the initiative, click here.

ASD

Quote from Desmond Tutu: the power of the Bible to free the poor

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was in town at the weekend speaking at a conference organised by Christian aid agency Tearfund and Jesus House for All Nations. He made some interesting comments about the place of the Bible in developing countries:

“There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”

Read on

ASD

Is it just me or do we need persecuted Christians overseas as much as they need us?

I have been challenged this last week to think afresh. I have had two distressing emails, both talking about severe persecution of ordinary Christians in other countries. It kind of put my own spiritual life into perspective a bit.

One charity wrote: “According to reports from our Mission India staff and partners, as well as other sources (including the BBC) at least 21 people have been confirmed dead in more than 100 incidents of violence against Christians following the August 23 murder of Swamiji Laxmanananda Saraswati and four others by suspected communist insurgents.

In the hardest-hit Kandhamal region, at least 400 churches and 500 houses have been destroyed. There could be as many as 10,000 Christians living in refugee camps.”

Just read that last paragraph again.  Be honest, it takes some getting your head round.

I find it disturbing, if not plain pitiful, that while one of the UK’s main church denominations’ spends its time and energy battling one another for the moral high ground over same-sex relationships and another part of the Church gets obsessed with creationism, increasing numbers of Christians worldwide are worryingly being systematically harassed, hurt or worse murdered.

It is like we live in two different worlds – even though we are supposed to be ‘one catholic (universal) and apostolic Church’.

It made me wonder what kind of church is being seen by non-Christians observers in our different cultures.

In Communist and some extreme Islamic cultures Jesus’ Church is a blatant thorn in the side, an irritation which just won’t seem to go away even though it has now been 2,000 years.  It is considered dangerous, subversive and revolutionary.  Authorities confess and readily admit that unless they can suppress this ardent bunch of followers the Church will grow, gather momentum and cause trouble.

In the UK, the picture of Jesus’ church couldn’t be more different.  I really can’t see it giving any enmity a sleepless night. It is perceived as institutional, out of touch, issue-driven, political, divisive, unreasonable and ambiguous to say the least. I go on.  It is seen as an eccentric hobby, a weekend interest, much like the local history society or the golf club. It is middle-class, ageist, in some cases racist and exclusive, preferring conformity to its way of thinking as part of its terms and conditions to membership.

Okay, it might paint an extreme picture, but I guarantee at least one of your neighbours can tick at least two of these boxes.

 This is why I am sort of happy to receive these horrible, if sober emails from these charities.  I need to be made to feel uncomfortable with the suffering of others to get some perspective in my own life. I need persecuted Christians as much as they need us. I need to be saved from mundane, meek and mild Christianity. It makes me ask myself, ‘What has my faith cost me today?’

Download urgent_persecution_of_chrstians_in_orissa.pdf

ASD