postmodernbible

Biblical Literacy in a Media Culture - Home #biblefresh #bigbible

It is fair to say that The Bible is one of the texts of which everyone should have a good working knowledge. It informs so much of the cultural landscape of the western world that it is naïve to suggest that it is an irrelevant text. The English student in me is pressing to suggest that there are, in fact, many other texts that should also be known but that point is currently not important. Allow me to reiterate my main point more clearly.

It is essential, to be a culturally literate member of western society, to have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Think of the literature, films, art, television, music, sculpture, even architecture that is influenced by this one awesome text. In order to grasp it, we must first grasp the Bible.

The problem is, as numbers have shown, few people do. I wonder how many of these people also class themselves as exquisitely culturally literate. I venture one further, dear friends, and suggest that we, as Christians, cannot sit back and be smug and think ‘I know my Bible! I’m not one of them’ because that is not really true.

One of the arguments I come up against time and time again from my Militant Atheist friends is ‘How can you preach to us when you don’t know what you’re preaching?’ Their point is fair. So often it is to hear of good pious Christian folk preaching the importance of reading the Word without reading it themselves. Shame on us! I know I am as guilty as the next (wo)man. I read my favourite passages time and time again but the rest is largely an untrod path.

Perhaps before we start lamenting the state of Biblical Literacy in the UK as a very large area in general, we should lament the state of Biblical Literacy in ourselves. The Reformation put the scripture in the hands of the people and now, it seems, we are fighting hard to put it back in the hands of the clergy.

What do I suggest as action? I suggest you think about your own stance on this matter. Do you read regularly? Have you read the whole book – even just once?

If we are to be known by our actions, this is a good one to start with!

Hattie

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via biblit10.posterous.com

Great post here from one of CODEC's research student's, Harriet Earle.

Owl City Blog

via owlcityblog.com

I was alerted to this blog post by @peterould who wrote his own blog post "How to out yourself". I'm not so sure that that title does justice to this piece. Here is a modern icon (???) declaring himself for Christ. That's an interesting thing to do in the secularised world in which he lives. But I think it is yet another sign of post-secularism.

I was at a meeting the other day about new ways of being church and heard all that old talk of the death of Christendom and the march of secularism. Personally I remain very suspect of the whole PostChristendom argument. Despite Biblical Literacy collapsing. Despite the rise of the secularist agenda. Despite the in fighting in the various denominations. There is so much positive stuff to look at - the rise of the black-led churches in London and the UK in general; the empowering of the people through the Pentecostal revival in Brazil; the nascent Chinese Christian revival; the reChristianising of the East.

Well done, Adam. Hope God blesses your confession.

Pete

Wi-Fi Direct Connects Any Wi-Fi Device to Any Other Wi-Fi Device Anywhere - #cnmac10

via mashable.com

Excellent news about the development in wifi software - probably the end of bluetooth as we know it. Cartoon shows some of the applications. Could be much wider too at bitrates of 300Mbps and higher.

Really Good Thinking - Eleven absolutely unbreakable commandments for connecting with people, online and off. - @IanAspin #cnmac10

Picture credit:  MontyPython

 

11 Social Content Commandments to Paint on Every Wall in Your Home and Work Place.

 

I could write a fancy introduction to ease us into these, but never mind that, I’ll just jump right in.

 

1)  We’ve gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta care.

It’s the foundation for every kind of success in dealing with people (and everything else!). We’ve got to work out exactly what caring means for the people we want to connect with.

Caring.  Caring.  Caring. 

Figure out how to care for others, meet their needs, and say hello to a world of amazing possibilities. These exclusive treasures are closed to our non-caring counterparts. 

Warning:  we can't fake it for long.  We'll be exposed faster than a string vest dries on a windy washing line.

And remember, there’s an unbelievable return on caring. 

Reboot the world?  Caring will do it!  Ask Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams of MacroWikinomics!

Financial rewards?  Absolutely.  (Who isn't gonna want to deal with people who care about their customers, employer, co-workers, products, services, and the bigger picture, while making things great?)

I call the relationship between caring and its results “giveacrapanomics”.

Picture credit:  QThomasBower

2)  Know you’re not the centre of the universe.

You’re one of 6,845,609,960 people on our planet today (I’m so popular more than 0.001% of them follow me on Twitter tha knows!).

Think how many are outstandingly talented, geniuses even.  That’s a heck of a lot of people who are more talented than you or I!

And though we're but a speck of dust, and the universe doesn't revolve around us or depend on us, I still choose to believe we matter (even when we produce rubbish blog posts or talk crap!).

3)  Realise if we want to get attention we have lots and lots of competition.

Nearly two billion people use the internet.  That’s almost a third of the world’s population. Everyone can produce content, and it’s getting easier.

Do the maths. 

If just a minuscule percentage produce web content in our area of interest (unless it’s Stray Shopping Carts (Trolleys!) of the Eastern United States), that means thousands, possibly millions of new items appear daily.  We’ve got to work smart, and hard, to produce outstanding stuff that stands out.

Why does the world need another crappy website saying the same things as 17,309,215 others? 

Ordinary, average, OK are not good enough.  Figure out how to be remarkable, or forget it. 

4)  Never forget we have to earn the right to have anyone take notice of us.

Note to most people:  No one cares about you or your website.  There’s no interest in your videos.  People aren’t bothered how desperate you are to get traffic or to be popular.  It makes no difference to them what happens to you.

If what we’re doing doesn’t appeal to people, we haven’t earned the right to their attention and we won’t get it.

Picture credit:  Adam Pniak

5)  If just one person cares about us enough to look at our stuff, be incredibly grateful.

Attention is the rarest thing. 

Why would anyone want to spend time with us when there’s a world of infinite possibilities, with unlimited opportunities, to access free, outstanding quality content on every imaginable topic? (Even if you’ve to wade through loadza rubbish to find it!)

So if just one reader likes and benefits from our stuff, be thankful, we’re doing something right for at least one person, that’s a start!  Let’s build on it. 

Anyway, who said it was about numbers?  I'm one of the most followed, most listed, and probably one of the most attractive and charismatic people online but do ya hear me going on about it?  No ya don't! (For the hard of thinking, that was a little humour right? ha ha!)

It’s about real connectedness. 

It’s about being thankful.

It's about using what we’ve already got to make a difference. 

6)  Have something to say or do that matters.

Is there something you think is so important the world needs to know about it?  Decide what that thing (or things) is, and build everything you do around it. 

We have one life. 

Everything we do should somehow connect to that “big idea”.

Yes, be a fanatic. 

Or be ordinary, beige, unremarkable, and be forgotten faster than this morning’s burnt toast.

We get to choose.

Picture credit:  Karynsig

7)  Make an impact. 

Do you want to?  Then do stuff that matters.  Forget the rest.

What does it mean to make an impact? 

I don’t know, you have to figure it out. 

It might be doing something massive, or just making someone laugh or baking them a pie (I totally love pies, all kinds, my fave is rhubarb, and for pudding, a gooseberry tart - send me one of each through the inter-web....oh no, best wait ‘till I see you in person).

8)  Strive to bring massive value to everyone we meet or connect with. 

Our value is measured only in relation to the amount of value we bring to others.  You may have a different measure, but that’s mine.  And yes, you’re still a valuable human being, no matter what!  But ya get my drift. 

Ask yourself “what can I do that’ll make everyone I encounter better off than they were before?”.

People don’t care about you or I or what we want.  They care about themselves and what they want.  Let’s be less selfish.  Let’s help others and most will love us back.  Can you see how that kind of thinking’s gonna get us what we want anyway, and make life a whole lot better?

9)  Be fantastically generous with our time, money, and kindness.

Much of the stuff that’s come into our life came despite our best efforts, or lack of them.  Lots of blessings and opportunities we already enjoy appeared at random. 

Most reading this post were not born on a rubbish dump in some hell hole. 

Good health, intelligence, a loving family, didn’t come to us because we deserved them but because we were lucky.  If we’re making the most of things, that’s great but don’t forget, our basic working materials could have been a lot less favourable.

Be generous.  Be kind.  Give and we will receive.  Always.

Picture credit:  vramak

10)  Be outrageously committed to making the world better.

Decide where you can apply your strengths in the service of something bigger than yourself.  Find a compelling way to engage your energies in solving problems, helping people, and making a difference.

Look at all the stuff that needs doing. 

Your boring blog isn’t worth the time.  Pick something massive to do instead, and share that. 

The world absolutely needs us to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.

11)  Relationships.  Relationships.  Relationships.  Take care to build and nurture them.

That’s it, the whole social web, the whole everything.

Summed up in three words;  Relationships.  Relationships.  Relationships.

There’s nothing more.  Our relationship to each other, to the planet, and to the spiritual dimension.

We can do nowt on our own.  We need each other. 

Online, and off.

 

Cheers for reading. I totally love your comments.  What commandments did I miss?  Do tell, it's always great to hear from you.  Much love, Ian.

 

Think Better.  Feel Better.  Take an Aspin.

Your comments:

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Bex Lewis says:
24/10/2010 13:30:58
Great list, hoping to add to @bigbible as think more people need to know these! Definitely 'authenticity FTW!' Interesting comment by John, and I guess those commandments will be echoed out through the way we all live!

John Hamilton says:
23/10/2010 10:34:08
Very though provoking, Ian, but you did miss these. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

Richard Littledale says:
23/10/2010 06:20:55
SOOO helpful, and so necessary to say. Thank you. Authenticity is what it is all about - online or offline.

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via reallygoodthinking.com

Ian Aspin spoke at the recent Christian New Media Conference at City University in London which was jointly run by Premier Christian Media and CODEC. Was a fantastic event which was illuminated even more by Ian's evangelistic performance calling for Christians to embrace new media. He's great. Here are some pretty straightforward Social Media Commandments

Allegedly "Oldsters beat twentysomethings at social networking" according to The Register - but I reckon their wrong! #cnmac10

We now know where Microsoft went wrong with its KIN "social phone": it mistakenly made twentysomething hipsters its target market.

Twentysomethings are the least likely age group to share information via text messages, and they use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook less frequently than baby-boomers in their fifties, according to an international survey of information workers.

Just 26 per cent of those in their 20s send text messages, and 40 per cent use social media. On the other end of the age spectrum, 47 per cent of boomers over 55 text, and 50 per cent use social media — at least according to a Forrester survey sponsored by Citrix Online, the not entirely disinterested provider of the GoToMeeting web-conferencing service.

Forrester also found the boomers' online surge has taken place in the last 12 months, when 79 per cent of older users embraced social networks and Web 2.0.

Gen Y — those twentysomethings that the media and tech companies tell us are on the vanguard of texting, Facebooking, and Twittering — are also least likely to use video conferencing, video chat, and web-conferencing tools in work situations.

Of course, it's possible to have too much social networking, especially when it comes to business meetings: seventy-seven per cent of respondents frowned on those who use their computer or smartphone during a meeting, compared to 88 per cent who believe side conversations are unacceptable.

The survey of nearly 800 people found that Americans have more meetings than any other nation — 90 per cent meet in person — with half engaged in meetings every day. Gen Yers, meanwhile, found meetings to be an inefficient activity, and are least likely of all the age groups to pay attention.

Bernardo de Albergaria, Citrix Online vice president and general manager of global marketing and ecommerce, said in a statement: "Despite admitting that in-person meetings are often inefficient and don't achieve their goals, workers still seem to like them. That's probably because people are hard-wired to see people and read body language."

You can see more results, with a breakdown by country, here.

via theregister.co.uk

I'm really not sure what the A Register is doing here. They have previously been critical of texting - so a quick google search brings us articles about sexting, bullying by text, American teens aren't texting or texting too much, about texting being good for teens after all. Notice that last one - after all. I just wonder whether there is an anti-texting author in action here rather than some sound research. Certainly the post doesn't match anecdotal evidence of uni students texting from classes, or the preference for text over f2f contact, or the Oxford Institute's Internet Usage report - which is matched by a whole host of global indices indicating a much richer engagement than this Citrix-based report finds.

Personally, my initial reaction to this is that it is an outlier and not the norm. In fact, the OIIS survey reckons that the Boomers/Busters are the least likely to engage with social media. As such, this survey would be turned completely on its head. The problem with the Kin was much deeper than this.

Hat-tip to Toby Scott for alerting me to this piece.

Pete

Digitized Dead Sea Scrolls to be available online – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs - tingram09's posterous

Editor's Note: CNN's Kevin Flower brings us this story from Jerusalem.

In an ambitious application of 21st century technology to a first century wonder, the Israel Antiquities Authority and internet search giant Google announced a plan Tuesday to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and make the entire collection available to the public online.

The authority's general director, Shuka Dorfman, called the project a milestone that will enhance the field of biblical studies and people's understanding of Judaism and early Christianity.

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivaled cultural heritage treasure, which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a click of the mouse will be able to access history in its fullest glamour"

Made up of 30,000 fragments from 900 manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered by many historians to be one of the most important archaeological finds ever made.

The ancient manuscripts, made of leather, papyrus and copper, were first discovered in 1947 by a nomadic shepherd in a cave near the Dead Sea. In the years that followed, more scroll fragments were located.

Dating back over 2,000 years, the scrolls reveal details about the development of Judaism during the Hellenistic period and shed light on the relationship between early Christian and Jewish religious traditions.

The project will employ the latest in spectral and infrared imaging technology to scan the thousands of scroll fragments into one large database.

"This is the ultimate image of the scroll you can get," explained project manager Pnina Shor as she showed reporters an example of the imaging. "It presents an authentic copy of the scroll that, once online, there is no need to expose the scrolls anymore"

Conservation of the ancient manuscripts is a major concern for the Israel Antiquities Authority, which recently began limiting photography of them. Flawed preservation and display practices in decades past had, in some cases, "catastrophic" consequences, Shor said, and the authority decided it needed to create a new active image record that would spare the manuscripts from further degradation.

The entire collection of Dead Sea Scrolls was photographed in 1950s, but access to the photos and the documents themselves has been limited. Only four conservationists are allowed to handle the scroll fragments and scholars are limited in how much time they can spend studying them in person.

Google, with its high-powered search and translation services, will help catalog the mass of material, but the internet heavyweight says the project is not for profit and not exclusive.

"I can envision scholars or other companies contributing their own technologies so as to get some additional value over the data " said Yossi Matias, Google's head of research and development center in Israel.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has raised $3.5 million to fund the project, and project managers say the first images could be online within months.

Matias said it is too early to detail how the scrolls will be displayed online, but he assured that "the idea is an open platform and an open approach"

via tingram09.posterous.com

Interesting prospect here. Will advance scholarship no end. Access to primary texts is so much better than secondary resources.

Pete

Social Media for Social Change - good conference coming up post #cnmac10

via eauk.org

Day Conference in Durham 18 Oct: Theol Refract with AKM Adam, Heidi Campbell, Bex Lewis #bigbible #cnmac10 - if you can't make London - come along to this

Download now or preview on posterous

DurhamRefract.pdf (391 KB)

See the attached pdf for the programme and details. Have you got a short paper idea to share with us?

Pete

The home group » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker

via cartoonchurch.com

Excellent piece on housegroup/homegroup - from one of the very best cartoonists!

Who’s afraid of Dan Brown… « Richard Littledale's Preacher's A – Z #biblefresh #bigbible

…or Richard Dawkins for that matter?

I think the answer would be “a lot of people”. Four years ago, when Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code was about to hit the cinemas, I launched an experimental Bible School (more details to follow on the Biblefresh website). This was to be an in depth course on everything from New Testament Greek to Biblical genres. As the invitation went out I was very sceptical that anyone would want to come. In fact, so great was my scepticism that I said I would not run the course unless at least half a dozen people came. In the event twenty five people came for two hours on six Saturday mornings. They then came back for another series on the four gospels, and an all day session on Christmas, and some have now returned for a refresher course.  Last week’s opening session included a variety of people from former leaders of the church through to a new Christian fresh out of the Alpha course. People don’t want to run scared from the critics of the Bible – but nor do they want to feel naked when they face them.

Maybe preachers who strive to “correctly handle the word of truth” need to think about doing so outside the pulpit as well as inside it. Too often we fight shy of taking a seriously critical look at the Bible within the church, whilst all the while there are plenty of people prepared to do it outside. There may be many reasons for this:

1. We are afraid of damaging people’s faith
2. We don’t feel we have the expertise or the time to do it
3. We wouldn’t know where to start
4. We rather enjoy being the keeper of the  mysteries of biblical interpretation and don’t want to divulge them.

Of course it may be that the best way to tackle some of this is to encourage people to attend a course such as LST’s Saturday workshops. However, my own experience has been that people feel safer expressing their ignorance and their fears in a safe and familiar environment.

Many years ago a young man who was born to missionary parents came to see me. having ‘gone along with’ his parents faith for many years, he was not sure he believed it any longer himself.  He had a classics degree and was quite comfortable reading Greek text, so we made a pact. We would go through Luke’s Gospel in the original, leaving no critical stone un-turned and no awkward question un-asked. We did exactly that…and at the end he sat in my office and made a deeply personal and genuine Christian commitment.

As we gear up for Biblefresh in 2011, let’s not be afraid of asking questions about the Bible . Our scrutiny is far more likely to strengthen our faith than to damage it.

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via richardlittledale.wordpress.com

Richard is keen on his shocking tweets which draw attention to some really good thinking on biblical interpretation and biblical literacy.

And I thought everyone had forgotten Dan Brown!

Pete