Fortress Forum, a social community for religious academics, has posted an interview with Walter Brueggemann. “Given the current frailty of the capitalist system and the fact that the ‘big money’ continues to grow while ordinary people increasingly become poor and homeless, I suspect that this character [God], embedded in this tradition, is a wake-up call for contemporary social-political thought. It is not difficult to imagine that dominant ideologies and narrative explanations of reality have reached a dead end. For that reason I judge that it is a worth-while effort, regardless of one’s ‘faith commitments,’ to continue to pay attention to and exposit this character and the tradition that clusters around the character. I understand that to be the work of biblical theology. Such a perspective refuses to be boxed in by the critical categories of Enlightenment rationality, for it is a reach behind that rationality to see about the haunting that cannot be so readily dismissed.” Brueggemann’s newest book is titled An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible.
Shane Claiborne wrote a letter to non-believers in Esquire(!) titled What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff? “The entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay ‘out there’ but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, ‘Nothing good could come.’ It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.”
The Age of the Informavore: A Talk With Frank Schirrmacher is currently featured in Edge, along with responses from thinkers like Nicholas Carr and Steven Pinker. “We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on.” So much good stuff in there. Related: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Here’s a new Pew report on Social Isolation and New Technology for your perusal. “Sociologists Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew Brashears suggest that new technologies, such as the internet and mobile phone, may play a role in advancing this trend [of becoming more socially isolated]. Specifically, they argue that the type of social ties supported by these technologies are relatively weak and geographically dispersed, not the strong, often locally-based ties that tend to be a part of peoples’ core discussion network.”
A while back I wrote a gushing blog post about a company called Tatango, whose aim is to make it dead simple for anybody to harness the useful technology of mass or group text messaging. Those of us involved in youth ministry are undoubtedly aware that text messaging is an indispensable tool for effective communication with our students, so I wanted to give another push for Tatango and the services they offer. And because I love you so much, at the end of this post you will find a code for 15% off of any plan Tatango offers.
Below is a short tutorial video that covers the basics of Tatango. Since the service has recently gone under a moderate redesign/update, I’m sure that current users will find the video helpful as well:
Let me say a few quick words regarding other youth ministry texting options.
If you’ve bought into Doug Fields’ Simply Youth Ministry Simply Txt, then I laud you for knowing that texting is important, but I promise you that Tatango is a better bang for your buck. Just compare Simply Txt’s $30/mo plan with Tatango’s $20/mo plan. For $10 less per month, you get 280 more group messages, unlimited more contacts, and two keywords (which, as far as I can tell, Simply Txt doesn’t offer).1
I’m also aware that TXT Signal was all the rage in youth ministry circles for a while, but it simply can’t keep up with the services Tatango offers. A quick comparison of pricing plans for TXT Signal and Tatango will convince you more quickly than I could here.
Anyway, if you’re still on the fence about whether or not Tatango’s group messaging service is a good fit for your ministry, try it out free for 30 days. When your trial is over, the good people from Tatango have offered readers of JakeBouma.com a code good for 15% off any plan (The 15% is continuous, and is good for the lifetime of the plan). Just enter K7D0TRCL when you check out and enjoy the savings!
Catalista has released an iPhone app that connects volunteers with opportunities. “Even beyond the mobile access to volunteer opportunity listings, what seems especially compelling about Catalista is the possibility that it could facilitate spontaneous, ad-hoc volunteering, whereby people with a few hours of unscheduled time on their hands can find and participate in local opportunities that they might not have been able to plan for otherwise.”
Here’s the deal: At least five days a week I spend $1.70 in the morning on a small dark roast coffee at Caribou. It’s enough to get me through the morning, but in the afternoons I’ll often spend $2-5 on a latte or double-shot on ice or some other sort of tasty pick-me-up. I don’t work on Friday or Saturday (usually), and sometimes I don’t buy coffee on those days — but lots of times I do.
So let’s do some math. If we add the average the price of the afternoon coffee ($3.50) with the morning coffee ($1.70), we get $5.20/day spent on coffee. Which, assuming I only buy coffee five days a week, amounts to $26/week, or $104/month, or $1352/year. One thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars. Per year. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Simply put, it’s odious.
That’s where No Caribou October comes in. For the entire month of October, I will not spend a penny of my own money at Caribou Coffee. And just so we’re clear, when I say “Caribou Coffee” what I mean is “any coffee shop whatsoever”. I think we can all agree that No Any Coffee Shop Whatsoever October is a bit of a lingual traffic jam.
Instead of buying my coffee from a shop every single day ($1352/year!), I have developed the following personal coffee plan for the month of October:
Philosopher and theologian Philip Clayton is writing a new monthly column for Religion Dispatches. His first offering is Religion and Science: Toward a Postmodern Truce. “In the American public square today, it’s hard to find discussions of the interplay between science and religion that achieve what our society most needs: genuine self-criticism on both sides, born of the recognition that both sides will have to do some bending if any sort of truce is to be achieved.” His new book, Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society, is available for pre-order.
James K.A. Smith’s advice on establishing a practice of reading: “Keep books in every room of the house. Pile them up on the end table or nightstand or back of the toilet. Have the books there, staring at you, inviting you, wooing you, calling to you, shaming you. Keep bumping into them. Pick them up and look at them. And even if you have a first job, resist signing up for cable and spend the end of each day reading. Then find a friend who loves to read (and, if possible, a spouse) and talk about books.”
