:Something can be labeled 'Christian' and not be true or good. It is possible for music to be labeled Christian and be terrible music. Just because it is a Christian book by a Christian author and it was purchased in a Christian bookstore doesn't mean it is all true or good or beautiful. A Christian political group puts me in an awkward position: What if I disagree with them? Am I less of a Christian? What if I am convinced the 'Christian' thing to do is to vote the exact opposite?
'Christian' (the word) is a great noun but a poor adjective.Another issue with using 'Christian' and 'Worship' as adjectives coupled with the word music has meant that both new commercial opportunities and new genres have arisen over the years. These have led to sub-standard product being peddled to churches and Christians in preference to most mainstream music on the grounds the former is more sanctified. It is not! It is simply not as good as the mainstream equivalent, often a poor quality sound-alike!
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.P
If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before - free time.We have a positive way of making a difference, by not wasting more of the precious resource of time. It is clear how this applies to charities as well as businesses and particularly to the church. It is interesting to see that Mr Shirky is not so active online himself and along with David Keen's 'final' blog entry today issues a further challenge to be considered...
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.
The problem is that a large massive group of people who have gathered for an hour a week can easily deceive themselves into thinking that's 'Church'. But Church is a sort of revolutionary movement of people who have the body and blood at their centre who see themselves as we are here to break OUR bodies and to pour out OUR blood for the healing of the world. And what can easily happen is the 'show', the hour on Sunday, the big exciting thing, can easily become a surrogate for actual community...Listen to the full version on Greenbelt website.
Only the Green party has approached this issue honestly, by accepting upfront that economic growth is the problem and that current levels of consumption cannot be sustained. It's time we called out the other parties on their failure to acknowledge, let alone tackle, this contradiction. And it's time we all recognised that consumption is the big issue.
Yeah...worship songs are "shipped in" to many churches... every now and again they get a new delivery. All the way from California or Australia (and Sussex!). Like crates of CocaCola being delivered. Now Cola is nice to drink once in a while, theoretically I've got nothing against it... but what about local ale... or beautifully matured wine from the local vineyard, real food that we all cook together, here and now? Where are the songs of THAT church? THAT town? THEIR hearts? How good would it be for people to find THEIR song, not the x-factor, big screen, 'every song sounds the same' song.
One of my regular reads is former BT futurologist Peter Cochrane's Blog on the technology news website silicon.com. A recent posting of his provides food for thought on the current economic crisis, some sections I quote here:Where do these times of monetary and market instability come from? There appears to be a limited number of fundamental mechanisms over and above human ignorance, greed and stupidity.
First, I would cite the fundamental tenets and assumptions of economic theory that are obviously wrong:
1) Infinite resources - Not true for the atoms on this finite planet.
2) Infinite markets - Not true for a finite population and ecosystem.
3) Linear channels - Nothing to do with markets is wholly linear.
4) Continuous growth - Was never, and never will be, possible
5) Known behaviours - People and markets are increasingly unpredictable.
6) Understandable - Probably beyond the grasp of humankind.
Second, I think we can identify a set of new and progressively growing factors of increasing influence:
1) Complexity - Managers and people no longer understand products.
2) Connectedness - Everything is now related and not isolated or standalone.
3) Scale - Everything is now huge and networked globally.
4) Machines - They perform more trades than people.
5) Fundamentally non-linear - Chaotic and probably beyond human control.
6) Short-termism - The focus is on the immediate and making money now.
7) Speed - ICT has improved speed and removed latency.The first set of factors set the scene for beliefs and the illusion of understanding, while the second present ideal components for the occurrence of one economic crisis after another. Perhaps the most critical, given (5) and (6), is the reduction of latency (7) as a prime factor in a world of non-linearity, chaos and strange attractors.
Read the full article here: Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense
