You should read the whole thing.
So I’ve worked hard at trying to be organised and stay organised but keep it low profile and easy-going. I’m also experimental and I enjoy trying things out, so here are a few tools, apps and websites that I use to get things done, a few others that haven’t worked out and some that are in trial mode right now. (more…)
So in this recent Elephant Room discussion MacDonald and Platt argue about the nature of radical sacrifice. I’m basing all this off some notes made (with appropriate caution added)and the helpful reflection by Trevin Wax. So there’s a chance that a third person could be wrong about all this and that would be me.
No I hadn’t thought of it terms of a strategy but that’s pretty much what it amounts to. He decided to create a page for himself that people who wanted to ‘follow’ him on could do and then he had a facebook account for friends and family. Sensible strategy.
If, of course, you’re a CEO of an international publishing company with a turnover in the tens of millions (if not more) and more than 2000 people read your blog.
Slightly presumptuous if you lead a small/medium sized church in Shrewsbury and write a blog read by a few hundred here and there.
But I like the general idea – I’m just not sure how to do it without coming across as an arrogant, full of himself twit. Of course I could do that and no one would ‘like’ me, that would bring my monstrous ego crashing down! What do you think people?
The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.
.
Facebook and it’s games generally get more of my time than they should. That’s just my general lack of will power and laziness. But that’s not my biggest issue – friendship and facebook is. Recently my one of my friends wrote this about facebook and community and wondered whether to cull her facebook friends.
The same thought has occurred to me. Somewhere along the line I’ve gathered more than 500 of them and a fair number of those I have never met in person or spoken to or have even the faintest clue about their life. I’m too busy playing games to look at their profile.
I enjoy keeping track of my friends thoughts and comings and goings, I enjoy the easy facility of leaving a playful comment, encouraging word or whatever. I enjoy the humour and occasional flashes of inspiration or heart warming tales. But there’s no way I can keep up with 500 of those days or even find them amongst all the triviality and banality that keeps coming up.
So I wonder what is Facebook for? It’s not business contacts – for that I could use LinkedIn, it’s not an online address book for that I use Plaxo, it’s not my key way of articulating thoughts and teaching (that’s here) and for short pithy links it’s often Twitter (Tim Chester has some interesting thoughts on Twitter). So Facebook is really just for keeping up with my friends and so I think for it to be more useful to me I need less not more friends.
Less is more, more friends on Facebook doesn’t make me any more loved just more connected, it doesn’t make me more known just more widely distributed, it doesn’t always make for more and sometimes makes for less.
So I’ve taken the facebook button off the blog, I’ve become more selective on friend requests and if I haven’t ever met you, spoken to you or know the first thing about you please don’t be offended if I say we’re not friends. But you’re more than welcome here and if we talk then, well, who knows.
I’m open to change on this, it’s not a settled once and for all policy but for Facebook to work for me and build community then something needs to change. What would you do?
Firstly, I began unsubscribing from countless sites I no longer visit and discovered that some sites are excellent in making it relatively easy, clear and simple to deactivate, delete or unsubscribe. Others, frustratingly did not. On more than a few there was no button, no page, no instruction – trapped. Sort of. As I’ve deactivated a few old email addresses I just updated my settings with an old email address that no longer works. That felt like a reasonable quid pro quo.
My action point from this is that I shall endeavour not to sign up to sites that don’t have an easy opt-out. I want to try new things and that means signing up but if it doesn’t work for me then I want to easily unsubscribe.
Secondly, the vast numbers of useless sites I’ve logged into means that I’ve not been very discerning or thoughtful about things I’ve tried. A more thoughtful and researched approach might be more time consuming but would be more fruitful and less of a consumerist approach. Off-line I pause before buying, sometimes for months. On-line I’ve bought into the idea of instant gratification and that’s not great.
As I’ve been doing this I’ve been thinking how I use social media and I’m going to make some changes to how I use Facebook and Twitter (I’ll put those in a separate post) and stream-line the programmes the online services and programmes I use. I’ll probably cull my bookmarks at some point too.
What’s the point in all of this? I’m too distracted by the internet. It’s a good servant and a terrible master and so in my life needs a kick into place. I enjoy trying new things and experimenting with new tools but that too needs some balancing and readjusting. Simplicity and clarity are beautiful things almost everywhere (second-hand bookshops aside) and I want to apply some of that to the bloated monster that I fear my on-line life is becoming.
I live
d and worked for a year in Burundi and if you want to know what that was like you can read the relevant chapters from Ed Walker’s Reflections from a scorched earth because Ed was the guy who I handed over to when I left the country.
This year my friend Simon Guillebaud, who I met in Burundi, is publishing his second book, Dangerously alive : an african adventure of faith under fire – so expect more Burundi tales there.
Not long after I returned from Burundi I went and worked in Kosovo for three months and you can read about what Kosovo was like in Emma Stratton’s Famines and Face Packs. Because Emma is the lady I handed over to in Kosovo.
Now 
my friend Mark Powley has written Consumer Detox and my life is in there too. I went to university with Mark, we studied on the same course, shared many of the same friends and we shared a house together in our third year. We started Breathe together with some other friends. So some of the stories in this book are also stories from my life.
Now that’s three or four books covering the last ten years of my life and there wasn’t much in the first twenty years or so to write about. I guess I could be jealous but really it’s just a privilege to have lived a full life and been around these people and places. Has anyone else got this experience of their life in other people’s books?
I’ve noticed that as someone with reasonably high levels of curiosity I’ve signed up to loads of different things. I’ve probably dozens and dozens of accounts, my email address(es) liberally scattered over the interweb. This leads to clogging of my inbox and an increase in spam and junk mails but also a laziness and a digital cluttering. If my computer was a room it would be a cross between a study, a workshop and the cupboard under the stairs.
At last count I had 5 email addresses still active (I’ve no idea why), accounts to all sorts of sites and services I don’t use and may never use again. Moving in 2011 gives me an opportunity to simplify my physical possessions as we get rid of things we don’t use, won’t use and have forgotten why we ever got it in the first place. I’ve decided a similar approach to my digital life probably wouldn’t hurt either.
One of my goals for 2011 is to be more disciplined and focused (and limited) in my use of the internet, for it to be more of a tool than a distraction and a more disciplined approach to signing (or not signing) up to things and a decluttering of these accounts would be a good step in the right direction.
What do you think and any advice on how you’ve maintained a good approach to using the internet?
So not exactly sitting back and chilling out then….
Here are just some of the highlights:
January: Visited Pakistan;
April: Ran the London Marathon for the 2nd time (here are the numbers)
June: Began to hand over the bookshop business (completed in August)
July: Became the father of a daughter.
September: We visited Stockholm
October: Completed the legal process of forming Hope Church; began a building programme
December: Announced our intention to move to Sweden (a process that began in the spring)
And in the middle of all that we had our kitchen refitted, a visit from our Australian relatives, been to 6 conferences, preached more than 20 times, run hundreds of miles, read more than 30 books, run baptism classes, Alpha courses, kept this blog up, had several weddings and funerals to attend and a tonne of stuff I’ve probably forgotten. What seems more amazing is that as a family we’ve had loads of fun this year (well I think so) and so life while full has been thoroughly enjoyable. So much to be thankful and grateful for.
But now it’s been a whole year and it’s a chance to reflect on life without a TV. What have we gained and what, if anything, have we lost?
It’s harder to think about what we may have lost because on the whole I think it’s been an excellent decision for us. Initially there were evenings where the lack of easy access to entertainment felt like a loss but that was part of the problem and the point.
We’re not nearly as involved in the ‘cultural conversation’ any longer even though that conversation isn’t always very cultural. I have no idea who is even on Strictly Come Dancing and I’m oblivious to X-Factor. Frankly I’m OK with that. I don’t know who Wagner is, I don’t really want to know and I think my life is probably better off from not knowing. I plan on keeping it that way. But we’re not involved in that and because for so many people their conversation revolves around what they watch instead of what they’ve read or done then we’re not as connected to that.
On the plus side I’ve read 50% more books this year than the year before. I doubt that’s a co-incidence. I’ve accomplished more, I’ve felt like I’ve wasted time less and I’m not as tired. Partly because with the TV went console games which I initially missed a bit but the benefit to my spiritual life far outstripped not being able to play Call of Duty.
I still think we default too quickly to closing the door and opting for the screen as entertainment, to watching a DVD or film – the other options are all more effort. But you get out what you put in, right?
But I’m delighted to not have adverts in my home and in front of my kids. Our front room is set up to talk to people not watch a screen and there’s more space. I feel more in control of what we watch, when we watch and how much we watch – which is odd because I could have switched the TV off but mostly I didn’t.
Will we get a TV again one day? Maybe, who knows but what I do know is that right now life is better without and you won’t see an advert saying that this Christmas.
Worship was led by the inimitable Andy Flannagan and I highly recommend downloading his ‘we are blessed’, which makes it onto my social justice album. Andy is director of CSM and he’s making politics fun. I was representing Breathe and just really enjoyed the evening. I was inspired by the youthfulness of 75 year old Tom Sine and I’ll post some of the quotes that captured my thinking.
Tom and Christine live in a small community in Seattle and have spent their life helping the church think about how we live in a rapidly changing world and to embrace creative solutions to housing, mission and community. And perhaps above anything else as a result of listening to them I had ideas, imagination was stirred up and fostered and that’s pretty cool.
“Lifestyle change without community is impossible”
“The good life of God is the life given away.”
“The life taken on is greater than the life given up.”
“We don’t have to be satisfied with watching Idol and all that reality crap. We can celebrate better.”
The first stage of Ruth’s research is a short questionnaire and we need about 80 of us to complete it to make the research viable.
Please click on the link below, which will take you directly to the survey. It takes only about 10 minutes to complete. If you want more information, an information sheet is attached for you to read.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QPV25SG
The survey is open until October 31st, so please don’t delay: make yourself a drink and fill it in for us now!
Thank you!
“For the TV channel and its advertisers, really there’s no choice in lifestyle – everyone should be pushing for materialism.”
Which is why as Christians we need to exercise discernment when we watch the box. And why it’s good when Christians all over the world think about things like this
So the World Cup has just finished and of the total 64 possible I watched just 3 (two England matches and the final). Four years ago I watched more than that live in the stadiums let alone on TV and you know what, I don’t think I’ve missed anything. I watched the highlights on iPlayer and saw all the goals and read the reports, so my football interests were satisfied.
But I wasn’t caught up in the hype, I didn’t see a single advert, I wasn’t consumed by something that lasted a mere month. I think it helped with a bit of perspective which TV can skew so easily, the world is shaped by what we see, by what we react to on the TV as much as anything else. I don’t miss the TV and I’m glad that at the age of two my son still isn’t really aware of the existence of a TV.
To be honest I still live too much of my life in front of a screen but it’s down to just one screen now. I’m not wasting time on consoles (if you’re a parent you can scare yourself by reading this article and seeing the pictures! pdf) and we don’t have a TV any longer.
The battle is now with the laptop, to controlling the urge to check emails just before going to bed (how pointless is that?) or read the news headlines constantly. I’m resorting to strong measures (I’m using this programme) to help me focus and shift my energies into more worthwhile and enjoyable things.
Screens are everywhere now, life is mediated through a screen, and I’m becoming aware that for myself this technology is a great servant and a terrible master. I prefer real freedom and real life rather than the sort I see on TV.
I, unlike God, very much do grow weary. This has (and is) a testing time with developments at the shop, the recent and excellent Soul Purpose, last weekends Borderlands, working on a church merger, in addition to all the normal business involved in church leadership.
My own tendency is to get my head down and just work harder, to press through until I come out the other side. This fails on a number of levels but mostly because ministry becomes something I do and not something that God does through me. Weakness and tiredness reminds me that my ministry (such as it is) is not something to be built upon my strength or abilities (such as they are) but upon His grace, His goodness, His sovereign purposes and through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Of course it is perhaps harder to remember that when I’m not feeling tired, but that’s not how I’m feeling right now. Fortunately God does not grow weary, His power is not diminished by time or strenuous activity, His wisdom, knowledge and justice not compromised by a tired mind. Therefore He remains able to do all that He plans and wills, and as far as I’m concerned His grace is sufficient and He is enough for me.
And whether I am tired or not that is good to me.
The words ‘remember the poor’ ring loud in the Bible (Gal 2:10) and in recent years have had plenty of resonance in the movement of churches I belong to. The Lausanne Paper: An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-style which is stirring me greatly at the moment says,
“We are shocked by the poverty of millions, and disturbed by the injustices which cause it.” One quarter of the world’s population enjoys unparalleled prosperity, while another quarter endures grinding poverty. This gross disparity is an intolerable injustice,—we refuse to acquiesce in it.”
I agree with that but the reason why Christians in the the rich nations of the world should be far more concerned about consumerism than they currently are, is not because of the poor. (more…)
I posted a comment and in reply I got this post. The ante has been upped, the stakes have been raised and he challenged me for a response. So here it is (it’s a longer than usual post in reply)
Healthy debate makes for more interesting reading but there are a whole number of things that (boringly) I actually agree with. For example, it’s very easy to slip into self-righteousness about body image, the healthy and thin among us become examples of righteousness because of how we look. This is rubbish. 1 Samuel 16:7 famously tells us that God isn’t nearly as impressed by outward appearances as we are. While James is talking about material wealth you could easily apply his admonition against favouritism (James 2:1-4) to our perception of a person based on physical appearance. (more…)
It’s quite a headline really, when you stop to think about it. Pretty much everything these days seems to be about the environment. Climate change was one of the themes of the last decade and will be one for the next ten years too. If you’re sick of hearing about it, talking about it, thinking about it then I have some bad news for you, in all likelihood this train is only just beginning to pull.
There are massive forces at work reshaping the way our world works (and some fairly hefty forces resisting any such change), but governments (and importantly most of the big ones) are slowly changing too. Take recycling waste for example, almost everyone in the UK deals with household waste differently to ten years ago, more is recycled than ever and looking forward you’ll have increasingly less choice in the matter. Recycling will be what we all do, what we have to do.
Laws will make your cars more energy efficient, increasing numbers of electric vehicles will begin to appear, hybrids will change our petrol stations. Already incentives are available for households to generate electricity and grants available to reduce waste through insulation and new boilers. These are just a few of the ways your life is changing because scientists and governments believe our climate is changing (and not really for the better).
Tied to all of this political drive are the cultural battles taking place, those preparing for a brave new world where cars are obsolete, travel is restricted and everything gets local. It’s a back to the future kind of approach, a blending of nostalgia for ages past and a hopeful mix of new technology and thinking. At the same time a sizeable majority are appalled at the idea of not being able to buy strawberries in winter or driving to the shops in a 4×4. Development agencies are lobbying, oil companies are lobbying back. It’s grassroots against big business.
At the heart of much of the campaigning for change is the belief that our current way of living in developed nations is unsustainable, we simply can’t go on like this, goes the thinking. We buy too much, waste too much, need so little. This is mostly true. This is at the heart of consumerism. (more…)
“Jesus our Lord summons us to holiness, humility, simplicity and contentment. He also promises us his rest.”
Jesus is summoning me to simplicity and contentment. Simplicity is not then a matter of choice but a matter of obedience. It goes on to say,
“We intend to re-examine our income and expenditure, in order to manage on less and give away more. We lay down no rules or regulations, for either ourselves or others. Yet we resolve to renounce waste and oppose extravagance in personal living, clothing and housing, travel and church buildings. We also accept the distinction between necessities and luxuries, creative hobbies and empty status symbols, modesty and vanity, occasional celebrations and normal routine, and between the service of God and slavery to fashion.”
I love the heart, ‘to give away more’ – if anything should mark Christians out it should be our generosity, shouldn’t it?
“‘Life’ and ‘life-style’ obviously belong together and cannot be separated. All Christians claim to have received a new life from Jesus Christ. What life-style, then, is appropriate for them? If the life is new, the life-style should be new also. But what are to be its characteristics? In particular, how is it to be distinguished from the life-style of those who make no Christian profession? And how should it reflect the challenges of the contemporary world—its alienation both from God and from the earth’s resources which he created for the enjoyment of all?”
It’s a pretty deep conviction of mine that because the church has largely failed in its thinking and response to materialism and consumerism that the church is not at all distinguished from the life-style of those who don’t believe. A challenge to the simple living movement is also not to simply draw a new line with the environmentalists and eco-friendly brigade, not that that’s all bad. Instead we need to be thinking about redrawing the connections between our life style and Jesus. So I agree with this:
“Those of us who live in affluent circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple-lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.”
This latest rediscovery came from this book review on John Stott’s final book The Radical Disciple and it’s eight ways to live this radical Christ-like life. The review says,
“A fifth area is simplicity. John Stott speaks from a position of integrity on this subject, since his book sales and speaking engagements could have made him a millionaire, yet he practices what he preaches, giving all his book royalties towards the work of providing books for believers and pastors in poorer countries. He feels grieved that the International Consultation on Simple Lifestyle which took place in March 1980 received very little attention, and this chapter is simply given to republish their statement (which he co-wrote with Ron Sider). This is a very challenging chapter, and one that exposes deep-seated idols that we are reluctant to part with. It is sad that Stott seems to be something of a lone voice in the evangelical world on this subject.”
So I followed the links and discovered this and this. Breathe, (and I realise this is a bit ambitious), has taken up the baton for a simpler lifestyle. Perhaps we should call for a new International Consultation on Simple Lifestyle. It’s about time don’t you think?
Originally posted at Breathe
Journalist John Naish is an ardent environmentalist and anti-consumer campaigner. He’s the brain behind the Landfill Prize for example and Naish wants to start a movement of ‘enoughness’.
In essence Naish says, rightly, that we’ve lost all sense of what is enough in our lives. We do not know when to stop and this inability is hurting ourselves, our societies and our planet. Rediscovering a sense of ‘enough’ is necessary, essential even for our survival.
Through seven chapters (information, food, stuff, work, options, happiness, growth) Naish looks at how having more than enough is self-defeating and that discovering when we have enough is liberating. There’s much to commend it and it makes a lot of sense.
Not knowing when we’ve eaten enough will lead us to being obese, having too many options makes it harder to make a good choice, thinking we are not happy enough is a thankless task and so on.
Naish thinks that the clues to why we don’t know when we’ve had enough lies in the human brain, we have evolved this way to survive but now that our survival is rarely threatened by scarcity we need to fight our own brain wiring to learn new ways of thinking and living. It’s an interesting argument, but from a Christian perspective we would agree that humanity is wired to want more than we need (greed) and that reason is because we are fallen, sinful creatures.
Naish also embraces the spiritual, he advocates saying grace at meals (despite not really believing in God) and praying or meditating and even practising a ‘sabbath’. It’s a bit odd in the usual ways those who reject ‘religion’ but embrace ‘the spiritual’ are because it’s whatever you want it to be which usually ends up being not very much, while truth gets conveniently left at the yoga mat.
Enough is strongest in its analysis of the problem, with wry humour he skewers much of modern consumptive society in all its bloated glory but weakest when it comes to proposing solutions. It knocks self-help but in a framework of non-faith, if we don’t help ourselves who will?The gospel says we are liberated from our sinful passions and desires at the cross.
Having said that I wish more churches would teach and practice ‘enoughness’.
It’s a national monument and a symbol of the respect that Pakistanis continue to have for their founder. It’s guarded and people come from all over to visit the tomb.
It’s a peaceful place, the mausoleum is set in an attractive park, even though the fountains weren’t working and not every pool was full of water. The Mausoleum is simple yet striking and the interior the same.I appreciated the simple beauty of the place especially in a city not known for its beauty.
Interestingly although it’s not a mosque people pray there, whether they pray to Jinnah or seek divine inspiration from praying in this place who knows, but it’s become more than a place of remembrance it’s become a sacred place, a holy place.
The comparison is stark, the founder of my nation (and I’m not talking the United Kingdom but the kingdom of heaven) isn’t dead. There is no tomb, no mausoleum, no place to revere the dead. He is ‘God of the living’ (Luke 20:38), he is alive, we serve the living, risen one.
I can find inspiration anywhere, pray anywhere at anytime, I can come into his presence through the Spirit of God and find relationship with my Father. Don’t neglect that privilege or forget the daily wonder of being made alive in Him who conquered death.
Today is a busy day as most days usually are. But today it is snowing. While most of the UK has had decent amounts of the white stuff Shrewsbury has been scratching around in tiny amounts of it. Today it is snowing.
Today Noah gets up shouts ‘SNOWING’ followed by ‘Bosh’ and ‘Tray’. Translated it means ‘I want to go sliding and playing in the snow, daddy’. But today is a busy day.
I don’t always make the right decision in moments like this. Too often I choose the work, today I chose to play. And as Noah is only 18 months old, it wasn’t ever likely to be for very long, so slide down a bank on a, now very dented, tea tray and we boshed snow and fell over and got back up again.
I wonder if at the heart of the Mary and Martha story, Jesus is hoping that Martha would just choose to be with her. Work needs doing, but I wonder if sometimes God wants us to go and play, to enjoy all the bountiful goodness of all that he has made, and not spend anything in doing it.
I haven’t missed it. Hardly at all, we’ve watched some films on computers and a couple of progammes online, but most of the time just not thought about it (not even enough to blog about it). (more…)
Got any more?
I notice it when I start another piece of work instead of heading home, when my schedule fills up and my quiet times fall down. Work takes over, preaching becomes a task not a privilege, pastoral meetings become chores not opportunities to grow in compassion, prayer becomes an obligation not a passion. And yet all the time the jobs just keep on growing, the to-do list never shrinks, the wheels keep turning and if you’re not careful they grind you down. My guess is that no matter what your profession this can happen, but it’s quite dangerous if your profession is ‘shepherd of God’s flock’ (1 Pet 5:2).
When work becomes an idol, personal relationships can suffer, when work becomes the number one thing, we end up making sacrifices in all the wrong places. Even the options seem limited or non-existent. That’s another trap I’ve spotted.
What’s the solution? Sometimes I confess that I have no idea, I’m as all at sea as the next person. But I wonder if the clues don’t lie in the direction of seeing life as a gift (have a read of this Promise of Life) and realising that my job today is not to achieve, nor to strive, but to obey and to trust. I am not God and that’s a good place to start learning. But I must remind myself of this truth daily, I am not God nor is my work, my money, my home, my relationships, my hopes and ambitions. I must cast down the idols within me.
As I do that, I begin to find rest and grace from God to do the best I can. To love my family, serve my church and work through my inbox and if I don’t get it all done, who knows maybe there’s tomorrow. I do all this in His presence, with Him throughout my day, sometimes I remember that and sometimes I don’t. It’s easier when I do.
For some excellent words on idols and not just casting them down but replacing them with a greater affection read Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods. Review coming soon.
I believe Jesus when he said 'life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions'. I believe he offers something better. This blog is mostly about that search.
I'm also a husband, a father, church planter, keen runner, reader, and motorcyclist. These and a few other things make guest appearances from time to time.
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Picasa
