If you haven’t seen this yet, you can catch up with this story from the Guardian.

Here’s a full copy of the research notes which have caused the stir. From my own experience of young people, it certainly seems to ring true.

My only question would be over the comments about HD-ready TVs being so much on the increase amongst teenagers. Whilst I’m sure that more families will be buying HD TVs, the idea that a teenager could get hold of one for themselves seems a little farfetched. I don’t yet know of a student household that has managed to get their hands on one – nor have I seen a flatscreen TV in a student house. But maybe Newport is too “street” for that.

The report has huge implications for the way companies advertise (if they listen to the research) – less banner ads and more creative, viral marketing can only be a good thing. Although, the decline of banner ads could have big effects on small web-based businesses that rely on this kind of advertising to keep themselves afloat. Would we see a decline in creativity and innovation in the area of social networking with less new websites appearing?

I really hope that these notes make a difference. This can only be good for young people’s participation in society and culture.

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• Sermon: Intimacy in Worship
• Sermon: Stuff – Living in the light of heaven
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With the exception of a couple of bits of information that need to go on there over the summer, it’s pretty much finished. We’ve gone for a minimal-ish, understated-ish design – something that hopefully captures a little of arty, creative (some would say slightly pretentious ;-) nature of The Lab.

Almost all of the images and banners on the site are collected from over the last few years. The banner on the homepage features the top half of Matt, who is now joining our team from September, and the first piece of graphic design I remember being done by some of first Labbers.

Please take a moment to explore the website, in particular the section on Alway.

I’m heading back home to Aberystwyth tonight for a week, making space to do some preparation for a seminar I’m doing soon and for going on holiday next week. Hopefully the break should also give me some time to get the first installment of my “missional” summer series done.

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Over July and August, on the blog I’ll be going through a series looking at our definition of mission, and particularly some specific keywords that inform our understanding.

With university work finally out of the way after the final push to get everything finished, and with The Lab beginning to quieten down for the summer, I thought it was about time to get back into blogging. So, in order to become more focused, and to get myself “back into shape” in terms of blogging, I thought it’d be good to work through a fairly simple, but quite interesting summer series.

Our understanding of mission is coloured so much by the different words we use to describe it and to understand it better. These are theological words – tranformation, salvation, liberation etc. – which, I think, all open different windows through which we build up a picture of mission. The plan is to dissect and explore some of these windows/words, and to look at how they should inform what we understand mission to be.

Here are the different posts that right now I intend to work through:

Mission as…

1. Liberation
2. Salvation
3. Healing (including why I’ve chosen to cover this separately to salvation)
4. Transformation
5. Proclamation
6. Redemption
7. Glorification

I’m planning to come at each of these viewpoints from three angles. Firstly the theological, doing the groundwork into what each term means and where in the biblical narrative it comes from. Secondly, the sociological, looking at each term’s relevance to today’s culture and finding evidence within the way society and culture works to back up or challenge the theological perspective. And finally, a practical look at what this means for the Church as we seek to be the bearer of the Mission of God.

So that’s the plan, anyway. I intend to put some real thought and research into these posts, so will be trying to average one every 1-2 weeks. If we overrun into September then it’s no biggie.

Let me know what you think.

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• From the garden to the city
• Surprised by Hope 1
• Making mix tapes

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• 5 books I really need to get around to finishing

1. Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith – Shane Hipps
2. How (Not) To Speak of God – Pete Rollins
3. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative – Christopher Wright
4. ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church – Hirsch and Frost
5. Preaching Re-imagined – Doug Pagitt

What books are others working their way through at the moment?

Technorati tags: Bible, Books, christ, Church, emergent, jesus, Mission, missional

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Go check it out.

Technorati tags: Church, Newport

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I’ve been thinking recently, inspired by some stuff from a recent lecture at CYM, about the whole biblical meta-narrative – and in particular this idea of the story beginning with the garden and ending in the city. Beginning with Eden and ending with the new Jerusalem. I think I’ve read a few authors who have pointed this out and tried to draw observations from it – in particular recently Rob Bell’s new book and NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope.

It’s really interesting to see how we can play around with the interaction between this little bit of theology and all kinds of ideas about the way society and culture develops.

We often talk about the idea of the “myth” of progress which is instilled in the modern worldview – the idea that we are constantly developing towards something better. However, this little bit of theology could say, well actually, why can’t that be true?

Tom Wright talks about the significance of the city of Jerusalem as a symbol of God’s presence – and the same could be argued about Eden. Both are symbols of God’s dwelling amongst his people. In this mix, we can also add the idea of the tabernacle and the temple – all of these are used in the bible to try and express God’s particular presence with his people.

God dwells in the garden amongst his people, in the tabernacle he travels amongst his people, in the temple he kind of presides at the heart of his people, and in the new Jerusalem his presence once again fills the earth and is with his people. There is no need for a temple – because God’s presence finally reaches a fulfillment.

So what can this tell us about God and the way he interacts with culture?

There’s a sort of emergence to the presence of God and to the culture of humanity. Our interactions – and our perceptions of God – emerge over time to become more complex. Or does the complexity simply become more obvious as we journey towards the city?

Can we understand God’s presence within our culture as a presence that will emerge to encompass the whole of culture? How is this different for a culture where we find no temple or church at the centre of society, but instead find God’s presence relegated to the margins?

Should we instead be looking for God at the centre? Or was he at the margins all along?

Does the presence of God – or at least our perception of it – only emerge and develop as our own culture develops? As our understanding of our own interactions between humans develops, does also our understanding of the complexity of God develop?

Interesting questions. Feel free to comment.

Technorati tags: Bible, Books, christ, Church, culture, CYM, emergence, jesus, presence, society, theology

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Marketing is telling a story that sticks, that spreads and that changes the way people act. The story you tell is far more important than the way you tell it. Don’t worry so much about being cool, and worry a lot more about resonating your story with my worldview. If you don’t have a story, then a great show isn’t going to help much.

His thoughts have a really interesting application to mission – in putting on a great show have we forgotten the story? Or turned the story into a series of teaching points?

Technorati tags: marketing, Mission

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Feel free to listen (hope you find some of it interesting at least) and comment.

[See post to listen to audio online]

Download the mp3 (21.9mb)
Download my script/notes – pdf

Technorati tags: Mission, Newport

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One of my big personal struggles has always been to juggle future plans with being content and satisfied in the present. From being very young, I’ve always wanted to make dreams and plans way ahead of myself – so it wasn’t surprising to me really that I was a Dreamer on the Myers-Briggs test. And constantly being about two or three steps ahead of myself has proved a great advantage in terms of leadership and long term planning.

But the struggle that this means I’ve always faced is being able to execute my plans, and to deal with it when they ultimately work less than perfectly – which is life. And I’m not suicidal or anything, but this gap in my mind between the present and the future has always left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It’s not that I’m trying to live up to being more than I can be (although I am) so much as that I’m impatient for the future to come now. I want to skip the hard stuff and get onto to the point where everything has come together.

My personality makes me particularly likely to sense this struggle with dissatisfaction – but I don’t think I’m alone. I think this is also a symptom of my generation (gen Y) as a whole. And the culture around us seems to encourage even more – how many films and romanticised tales are told about people who just dreamed big and got what they dreamed for?

So, for me, I need to be able to constantly re-examine myself to check where my heart is – whether it’s here in the present or gone off on another trip into the future. And to teach myself more and more to look to God for satisfaction rather than my own plans. But it’s a funny paradox that one of the things that I consider so key to my own identity – and one of my strengths – is also possibly a weakness.

Are there any other people – possibly leaders – who also struggle with dreaming too far ahead? How do you try to keep yourself stuck in the present?

Technorati tags: culture, Film, leadership

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