Digital Discipleship

We live in a digital world, or at least so it seems at times. We are surrounded by virtual places and technology that has inserted itself into our lives—for good and for ill. In this rapidly changing world, we have to learn what it looks like to follow Jesus. In lots of ways, it is… Continue reading Digital Discipleship

Reframing stories

David Foster Wallace starts his famous speech This is Water by describing two young fish. They’re happily swimming along and meet an older fish coming the other way, who nods in greeting and says: “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them… Continue reading Reframing stories

Commercialising Church

This article in the New York Times describes two tools that Facebook are developing for churches. Firstly, a subscription service, “where users pay, for example, $9.99 per month and receive exclusive content, like messages from the bishop” and secondly a prayer service “where members of some Facebook groups can post prayer requests and others can… Continue reading Commercialising Church

Forging digital tools

Facebook want to work with churches. Which shouldn’t surprise us, why wouldn’t they want to work with anyone they can show advertising too? The surprising bit is that some churches seem to want to work with them too. As has been widely reported, some very large churches and denominations want to collaborate with Facebook on… Continue reading Forging digital tools

The liturgy of social media

If we believe James K. A. Smith’s work in his Cultural Liturgies trilogy, then we are constantly being formed by everything around us and the ‘liturgies’ that they tell us. Everything from shopping centres to televisions to motorways are influencing the way that we view the world. While I think Smith’s solutions are helpful but… Continue reading The liturgy of social media

9 books that changed me

At the end of 2019 everyone had a books of the decade list. A few friends of mine shared theirs with each other, which gave me a good list of reading material, and a book group span out of that discussion. It’s more recently morphed into a group that reads old Christian works that we… Continue reading 9 books that changed me