I have been pondering this verse from Deuteronomy:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

Deuteronomy 6:5 GNB

It should sum us up as Followers of Jesus … we should be a people who love God with all they have.

Credit: RGB Stock

The thing is with ’all’ is that it is pretty black or white. All our heart, soul and strength. All our gifts and our talents. All our material possessions. All our relationships. All our time and our money and our pleasure and our pain and our desires and our … well, you get the gist. We need to give God our all. Not a part but our all. 99% is not all … it’s 100% or nothing.

There is no space for something not of God. Nothing should come between us and our ability to give our all to God.

We need to weed out all that interferes.

My wife is an excellent gardener. She has a tremendous knack of turning a space from the bland and ordinary into something beautiful and extraordinary. Her exploits as a guerrilla gardener are impressive and inspirational. She doesn’t talk about this hobby of hers and I’d better stop or she’ll kill me … the point is she employs a zero-tolerance to weeds like dandelions. She weeds them out … each and every time she’s faced with one. She is relentless. Her discipline is exemplary.

God wants this kind of relentless discipline … He wants us all to Himself … and we can help make this happen through our own relentless weeding.

Don’t get me wrong … we can’t do it alone … but we don’t have to. He has given us His Spirit as guide and comforter. He has also placed us in community with others be it our family, our church, our friends, or all three.

I believe He has given our passions – the healthy ones, that is – for a reason … so that we can use them as a means to connect with others. In this way, we can use all we have for Him through our interaction and engagement with others.

The way we connect with our fellows is vitally important, however.

Judgement is a sin and has the ability to come between us and God. Jealousy. Resentfulness. ’Us and Them’ tribalism and exclusivity. The inability to forgive. Name-calling depersonalisation. All these things can and do come between us and God … if we let them.

We need to build safe-spaces where people can search and discover their failings. We need to build the kind of community that will be gentle with its members … but will, paradoxically, encourage each individual to partake in this kind of relentless weeding. A space where people are so busy sorting themselves out that they don’t worry about even attempting sorting out their neighbour … yet a community that is so wholly mindful of our collective situation … that we are all in this together … that they can and do provide loving care and support to each member according to the member’s need.

This is church for me. A safe space where introspection and communal compassion meet … where we work together for the betterment of one-another without judgement or blame.

God wants for us to love Him with all we have. Let’s do all we can to ensure we can give Him our all by removing the weeds that get in the way … whilst supporting others to do the same.

Tx

Credit: Stockfresh

She see’s it.

“Father God, I realise that You have set an appointed time for everything, and I may not necessarily know when it will come or how it will happen. I choose to remain expectant & trust that You will bring my breakthrough no matter how long it takes. Amen”

Cross our postings sounds a bit risqué, a bit like cross dressing. This practise is generally frowned upon and shunned, but I disagree and I’m ready for a debate (on multiposting, not cross dressing you understand).

What is it?

Wikipedia says this: “Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple information channels; forums, mailing lists, or newsgroups. This is distinct from multiposting, which is the posting of separate identical messages, individually, to each channel, (a forum, a newsgroup, an email list, or topic area)”. The Next Web has a more interesting social media take on it here. Services like Disqus are an attempt to sew the net together. I’m not convinced we have reached a point where we have the nirvana of a unified solution. Until we get there, I’ll continue to be a multi poster.

Why do I believe multiposting isn’t bad?

I believe Jesus would want us, as churches, to cast our nets out far and wide to spread the word to the largest audience possible.

Social media purists would suggest concentrating a message to one network, so any resulting feedback is focused in one place. That’s all very well and good, but sticking to one network your message isn’t going to reach as many people, if you’re a local church, wanting to reach a local community. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn each have different groups of people using them for different reasons, just like those who have a preference for a Volvo, Audi or BMW car. Leaving out any one group is like only inviting Volvo car owners to church on Sundays. It may lead to a really engaged congregation, but it would leave a lot of people stranded.

Social media purists might also suggest posting a unique message to each network, tailored for that network. That reminds me of the old fashioned corner shop like the one in the TV show “Open All Hours”. Each customer gets an individual service tailored to their needs. I commend this approach if you’re a church social media officer with lots of time on your hands to deliver that level of service. In reality, you’re probably juggling your day job, family and church. If you do have a message to send out, or see an interesting piece of news you want share, you wont have time to edit it for each network. Then the question becomes, what’s more important, getting the message out, or dropping it because you don’t have time?

That said, one should still behave responsibly. Monitor responses from all networks you post to.  Try and be multi network friendly (Twitter style posts can be confusing to Facebook users if you are too curt for example).

What Apps?

There are lots of phone apps out there which will allow you to post an update to more than one social network, but here are my three favourite on Android. Multipost is a simple app (free and paid versions). Register your social apps with it, and it will simply call each one, and allow you to edit your message before posting. Not rocket science, and I’ve not encountered any limit on networks, and that’s why it works. Hootsuite and Seesmic are my top social media apps, both allowing posts to multiple social networks, but unless you have a paid version, the number of networks are limited. So Multipost gets my star rating.

I’d like to encourage you to rethink your approach to managing multiple social networks, and consider responsible multiposting.

Do you disagree? Join the debate.

Can you give us a bit of background into the new project “Message to the Masses”?  How did the idea emerge and what’s its purpose?  

Well Message to the Masses is more than just a project, we exists to ignite a faith-sharing passion in young people’s hearts, but we mainly do this by using social networks and multimedia. We wanted young people to not only understand their faith, but also to help and support them in defending that faith. It basically started two years ago when I realized that there wasn’t really anywhere for young people to learn answers about their faith in a creditable and easy way. Starting a journey with Jesus doesn’t mean you know all the answers, and I was noticing that the Church seems to want the babies (i.e. people to come to faith) but then not clear up the mess afterwards (i.e. help them in understanding that faith). Follow up was lacking as a resource within the Church and so that Message to the Masses was born as an idea.

How has the first week gone? What kind of feedback have you been getting?

Its been going great! We were given the great privilege to launch the website at last week’s Pentecost Festival Event in London and since then the site has been gaining between 20-30 new visitors a day (with no real advertising). The feedback has been great, people find it really easy to navigate around and love the way in which the answers are presented. The aim is to have many different Christian faces presenting from all different backgrounds. We really wanted users to feel that they were entering a site that wasn’t just of one opinion by had the feel that you were gaining knowledge from all walks of life.

We’d love to know a bit about the people behind the site, how has your journey put you where you are now?

Well the only person working full time for the charity (unpaid) is me and then I have three trustees who look after me and manage the background admin that takes place when running a charity. My background is in youth work and have been doing that for around 14 years (with 9 being in full time ministry) but have always had a creative eye for film media. After finishing at my last full time youth workers post I started to do a bit of freelance youth evangelism. At this point I started to see the need for Message to the Masses and decided to pull back from preaching and spend the next two years investing into the charity. Because of my love for film and editing, it was a natural choice to use film as the main media for the website.

Do you think it’s important for Christians to be online, and why so?

Yes, The 21st Century has brought with it the Social Revolution, what some people are calling the biggest culture jump since the Industrial Revolution. If this is the case then Christians need to use this new social media just like Christians used Johannes Gutenberg’s Printing Press to distribute the first printed Bible. The issue is that Christians are still on learning terms in how to best use social media and some are still very sceptical about it, saying it is creating loneliness, taking away one’s privacy and above all questioning the reliability that is formed within relationships made online. Christians have been adapting to the way in which culture communicates for centuries and social media and the digital world is no different.

What digital media tools do you use to tell your (project) story? Why choose those?

I’m a massive fan of YouTube (mainly because of my love for film), but also because film is so much more memorable. 24 frames (pictures) make up one second of film. How does the phrase go, “a picture says a thousand words”? Well if that is the case, imagine what films say! If edited well and in a creative way films can bring story to life and make you feel all sorts of emotion.

We’re working on the @bigbible project: How do you think the (stories in the) Bible can inform what we do online, in whatever sense?

People think they can don’t anything on the Internet and forget that there is always someone on the other side reading their comment and taking it to heart. You can tweet Harry Styles from One Direction and call him names, bad mouth comments on someone’s Facebook… But the Bible still has morals and values that we can learn to live by (even online). For some reason people think that the Internet is a value and moral free arena where anything goes, even Christians have this attitude (remember Rob Bell’s book release of “Love Wins”). We need to remember that our neighbour is on the other side of the comments and thoughts we write and so the Bible does have a place in the online world.

And finally, where do you see things going over the next few years – either for your project, or attempt some digital futurecasting!

My hope for Message to the Masses is that we stay ahead of culture. When imagining Message to the Masses I was always thinking about 2020 and what young people would be using at school. My theory was that textbooks would be a thing of the past and be fully replaced with digital tablets. Why use DVD’s (or even Blu-Ray) if everything will properly be downloadable. The Church has always been good at being 10 years behind; I wanted us to be 10 years ahead. Our hope is that we stay at the forefront of culture and support and empower young people to become evangelists in all aspects of their lives. People are confident to say anything online, it would be great if we could use that confidence to be (rather than negative) positive in communicating the Christian message.

When the sun doesn’t shine and it’s cloudy and grey,
And it’s only the beginning of the wombling day,
And you’ve got to do the washing up for Madame Cholet,
Remember, remember, remember, remember,
Remember, remember, remember,
Remember you’re a Womble.

(c) The Wombles/2011 Dramatico Entertainment Ltd

Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

So sang Mike Batt, back in the 1970s.  Did you catch the repeated word there?

Remember.

Remember who you are.  Remember your identity.  While the song raises a number of questions for someone who’s never watched the wombles (such as, ‘who is Madame Cholet?’ and ‘why is your identity as a Womble significant in such a situation?’) it makes it clear that your identity as a Womble is worth remembering.

And although Wombles aren’t directly referred to in the Bible (not in mine, anyway) I think there’s a link.  In Deuteronomy, we see the identity of the Israelites being forged.  Their land, given to them by God, is part of their identity.  Their laws, given by God, also form part of their unique identity and sets them apart from those around them.  Fundamentally, though, their identity is as God’s people.  People He has rescued.  And they are not to forget this.  Deuteronomy 8 warns them:  “…when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God…”  The key to avoiding this danger is remembering.

The middle few chapters of Deuteronomy then talk about Israel’s worship.  How they can live in a way that demonstrates God’s worth.  This isn’t restricted to their visits to the temple.  It’s about how they live, how they give, how they celebrate God’s actions.  Their worship is about what they do and about what they avoid doing.

For us, too, there is a link between remembering and our worship.  We worship God when we remember who He is.  We worship Him when we remember what He has done, and we worship Him when we remember what He will do in the future.  These three things; who God is, what He has done and what He will do, form the crucial part of our identity.  We, like the Israelites, are God’s people.  We, like them, can remember God’s identity, His actions and His promises.  We, like them, are called to remember and worship our God.

But it’s easy to forget.  To forget who we are.  It’s easy to forget our identity.  A friend recently wrote about authenticity online.  In the post, he challenges us to be authentic online.  It reminded me of the need to be myself, to remember my identity as God’s ambassador.  Is this what happens online?  Could what I do online be described as ‘worship’.  The Israelites were called to stand out from the people around them.  Does this describe my words and actions online?  Or do I simply blend in with the crowd.  Do I forget?

Perhaps remembering can form part of the focus for worship over the coming weeks.  Bring to mind something about God’s character, His actions or His promises.  And when we have that as our focus, we can allow that to draw us to worshipping Him.  His actions might be something you read about in the Bible, or it might be something that only you know about.  Whatever it is you bring to mind, allow it to inform your response to Him, your worship.  Allow it to shape your convesations, offline and online.  Let it influence your interactions with others in your community.

Remember.

Stand out.

Worship.

If you’re anything like me, you walk away from large Christian events like Spring Harvest with a mixture of emotions. You long to hang onto that closeness to God, away from all the day to day challenges of normal life. You want to make sense of all the notes you took in the meetings. You want to maintain the new friendships you made and keep in touch with the people you connected to on social media who were also involved in the event. Oh and most importantly, you want to read those books you bought while you were there to further your understanding of the topic and see what God has in store for you over the next 12 months.

And so it was then I sat down with Krish Kandiah’s book, excited to read what I might learn. I came to the end of the introduction to realise that while I don’t go to a “Spring Harvest” church, I am part of a Spring Harvest community, if only online.

I have set up a closed Facebook group, primarily so that we can have a space to share our journeys in a relatively safe environment and yet have left it open for members to invite others into the group. I then posted to explain the purpose and how I hoped the group would work. We went on to provide a bit of background to each of us so we know who each other are.

From Monday 22nd April we started working through the book, starting the journey wanting to do 5 chapters a week but everyone quickly noticed we wanted more time for reflection on each chapter so we are now to 3 chapters a week. Don’t panic, they are daily readings in length. There I will be sharing a few thoughts on each chapter and then posing some questions to help get us all engaged.

If you would like to join us please do get in touch – we would love to have you as part of the group. If you’re wondering how you could make more of social media within your church or personal setting again do say hello @jayblake_ on twitter or at http://www.facebook.com/JayBlakeMarlow

The call the digital as a ‘mission field’ – anyone read the book?

Last month, I shared some first thoughts and early findings from my research into digital Bibles.  This time, I’ll look more closely at why people read on screens. Are Christians really putting down their paper Bibles and turning to phones and iPads, and if so, what’s the big attraction? 

(Image generated by Wordle and accessible online.)

Before I started this research, I expected to find that digital reading would just be an added extra on top of paper reading. Over the last twenty years, academic research into digital religion has consistently reported that digital media are not rivals to life offline – people do not stop going to church or stop talking to friends, just because they discover YouTube and Facebook and church online. My research isn’t finished yet, but so far it looks like digital reading might be an exception. Most of the people I’ve spoken to so far happily admit that they just don’t use their paper Bibles any more. Some still turn back to paper if they want to read something slowly and carefully, but most of the people I’ve spoken to say that digital reading is just better.

So what makes digital reading so good?

I created a survey earlier this year to try to find out, and 250 people replied. These were committed readers: 40% said they used a digital Bible every day, and another 45% used one every week. More than 200 of these readers included a written answer to the following question: “In what ways (if any) have digital media changed your relationship with the Bible?”

Now, I’ve interviewed designers of digital Bibles, so I know what the answer is supposed to be. Some designers are trying to sell a product, and they don’t really care about changing how you read – they just want to find out what you want, and sell it to you. But more often, designers described their work as mission: they are trying to encourage people to read the Bible more frequently, to understand the Bible better, and  to connect with new generations who preferred screens to print. They are trying to create what Ian Bogost has called “persuasive technologies”, designing their Bibles in ways that subtly (sometimes not very subtly) teach you how to relate to God’s Word.

Very few of the respondents to my survey had anything to say about this. Instead, there was one big theme: convenience. Reading the Bible on a screen is just easier, particularly for people who already love reading the Bible every day. I created the Wordle image above from all 6000+ words of responses to that survey question, and convenience is the obvious theme: easier, access, accessible, always, available. 

Looking through the written answers, readers are interested in different kinds of convenience:

1. It is easy to carry a Bible with you all the time, because it’s always on your phone. Five minutes to spare on the bus? Your Bible is right there, and it doesn’t make your bag heavy.

2. It is easier to look up references, because you can quickly search for the verse you want.

3. It is easier to study a digital Bible, because you can quickly compare different translations and access commentaries, without needing shelves of paper books.

4. It is easier to read on a screen (for some people, anyway). If you find it difficult to read printed books, you can change the font or the size of letters.

Most (not all) of the people I’ve spoken to have admit that something is lost when they read the Bible on a screen. They don’t feel an emotional attachment to their digital texts, they can’t flick through and browse the way they want to, and some find it hard to see the context of a whole passage when they are reading a few verses on a little screen. But they still prefer their digital Bibles, because digital is easier. 

So what does this mean for the dream of digital Bibles as persuasive, missional technologies? Can you convince someone to start reading the Bible, or to read it more, by giving them the right software? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll think about that in my next post.

Deuteronomy – Moses farewell address to Israel prior to entering the Promised Land. A handover to Joshua and a summary of the events leading up to this great event and moment in history. A challenge to re-dedicate to the task God had given them and the need for faith and obedience and relationship…

http://www.neighbourhoodprayer.net

“There is no one like God

Who rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty.,

The eternal God is your refuge – and underneath are the everlasting arms.

He will drive our your enemy before you…” (Deuteronomy 33:26-27)

“Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel.  For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant.  And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.”  So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel.

Deuteronomy 31, v19-22

Moses is dying and knows it. God summons him, along with Joshua, for a handover session. God knows the people of Israel well, and by this point in his life, I imagine that Moses does too.  Looking back over the preceding books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, the pattern must be painfully clear to Moses. Time and again, given half a chance the people turn to other gods, forget the Law and generally moan, carp and whine about food.  Moses has seen it all, begged the Lord’s patience on many occasions and done his best to call the people to repentance again and again. And here, at the end of his life, God asks him to do something I don’t think anyone would have expected: write a song.

Moses the composer. Who knew?

A permanent reminder

A good song is memorable and great songs bury themselves deep within a culture. Folk songs, nursery rhymes, football chants and famous hymns all persist in British culture. Moses is being commissioned to write something a little different though. The idea of the Song of Moses is that when troubles inevitably come upon the people, the song will be there to challenge them and remind them who they are and what God has done for them. As Lucy Mills pointed out earlier this month, the book of Deuteronomy is a recap of the story so far and a challenge not to forget.

In the online world, there is little that is permanent. Videos, photos and links do the rounds, some become famous, but very little persists as an underlying cultural icon of the online world for any long degree of time. The nearest thing to a persistent, living idea for the online world is the meme – this being an idea, image, video or turn of phrase (or ‘any unit of cultural information’) which gets passed around online, but which is adapted by others as it travels. In other words, it gets a life of its own which can evolve, change, be added to by the creativity of others and eventually may appear in forms which differ sharply from its original meaning.

Moses is commissioned by God to write a song which will call people back to him, which will persist in their culture deeply, unchanging, so that whatever happens to them, whatever disaster befalls them, however far they take themselves away from God, it will pull them up sharp, remind them of their journey with God and who he is. This is pretty much the opposite of an ever-evolving meme! You can read the words of the song in Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy. 

Anti-memes

Now, here’s the thing… where might we find the equivalent of the Song of Moses in online cultures? This song is an anti-meme: something which does not evolve but calls us back to the core, to what it’s all about. The only other place in the Bible where the Song of Moses is mentioned by name is right at the end in Revelation, so it is obviously a solid cultural touchstone until the end of time.  So, where on earth do we find the online cultural, prophetic equivalent?

It’s obvious, really, when looked at from the perspective of Pentecost. We are the song. A key role of Christians online, as the Body of Christ, has to be living in online cultures, not in our own side-alleys, but as a Holy Spirit-inspired presence throughout the online world.  The Christian anti-meme is not a website, a set of Christian resources or any “place to be” online. We are the anti-memes! We take God’s presence with us into our online relationships.  Like memes, we may evolve in those online relationships and behaviours, but let’s keep singing that song which calls people to Christ.