[Live Video] Media Theology Toolkit: Education

In the 26th video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology Adam continues the overview of his Media Theology Toolkit ebook that he has been working on in the background.

[Live Video] Media Theology Toolkit

In the 20th video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology Adam provides an overview of his Media Theology Toolkit ebook that he has been working on in the background.

Thinking Beyond Content: Carey & Communication

In the eighth video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology Adam again engages with the idea of thinking beyond content.In this live video he explains the work of James W Carey in dividing communication theory in two main categories.

[Live Video] Thinking Beyond Content. ThankYou Australia as an example.

In the sixth video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology Adam provides an example of what it means to think beyond the content that is created.

[Live Video] Hopelessness and Christian Storytelling.

This is the fifth video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology. In it Adam talks about the role of hopelessness in Christian storytelling.

[Live Video] Transformers and Proclaimers: What's that all about?

This is the fourth video of Adam Niven' s #FBLiveVideoChallenge for Media Theology. In it Adam expands on the terms Transformers and Proclaimers as they are presented in Woods and Patton's Prophetically Incorrect: A Christian Introduction to Media Criticism.

[Live Video] For those you came in late - What is Media Theology all about?

It seemed prudent to start out giving some context to why I chose the term Media Theology for the symbol of what I try to talk, teach and inspire on. You can read a bit more about it over on the About page. But even better, you can check out what I had to say in the video below:

Music Speaks in Volumes - but "Worship" Speaks in Monotones.

This last week has been a bittersweet one for me with the official announcement that Showbread is showdead. But as I sat and watched the documentary they released of their 10 year anniversary show, there was something really confronting that stood out to me. In one section of the doco, as a whole lot of those waiting to be let into the show were interviewed.

Again and again they spoke of finding a sense of belonging in the music of Showbread, and an expression of Christian faith that resonated with them, that they couldn't find in the Church.

Which made me think, is "worship" music really just speaking in monotones, when their is such a range of expressive tones that could be embraced?
 

#mcprobe: New Media Aren't Tools for the Church; They're Tools that Alter the Church

With new media devices and new media technologies, the Church continues to consider how these tools may be put in service of the Church. But like the rest of culture, the Church is not immune to the way these tools go to work at reshaping it as they are embraced.

Are you a Christian Leader Ambivalent About Social Media? Perhaps you should be more respectful.

So in the first post of this series I laid out the three most likely positions when it comes to social media platforms. And number two was ambivalence.

Not really into it, but you've maybe got a social profile on a platform or two.

Which ultimately can become quite a disrespectful stance to have. Just like any social situation, there are rules to abide by on social media platforms. And one of the key rules that enables social media platforms is that you need to be social.

The Church is the Medium: So the Gospel is (Part 2/2)

Over in part one of this post I bounced off Shane Hipps' assertion that the Church is the medium of the Gospel to explore what that means the Gospel isn't.
Having done that, it helps us to see then, what the Gospel is. And just like last time, don't expect to see a list of "if this isn't in your Gospel you've got it right/wrong" items. This isn't about what's in the Gospel; but about the "isness" of the Gospel.

#mcprobe: Daily Bible Readings are for the Privileged Educated Individual

There's a whole industry of publishing built on the notion that good Christians read their Bibles daily. It's most likely part of the reason that the Bible remains an all time best-seller. It's certainly the reason that any Christian bookstore worth its weight will have a wide selection of "365 days of X for Y" type books. But, this activity, a daily reading of the Bible - normally to be carried out individually and accompanied by some kind of quiet reflection (que the journal industry) - is jammed packed full of privileged educated individual bias.

Washing Machines are Telling You Something About Life :: You've Just Never Had a Chance to Hear it.

This weekend we had a couple we'd met recently over for a meal. We met them through the release of a documentary about their journey in starting Milk and Honey - an Australian organisation operating an English School in Sihanoukille, Cambodia. Having been to Cambodia ourselves a number of times working alongside Serve Cambodia it was easy to be able to talk about a shared experiences. One of which was having to hand wash laundry.

The Church is the Medium: So the Gospel is not... (Part 1/2)

In his popular book Flickering Pixels, Shane Hipps draws the following conclusion:

If God's chosen medium for his message was the person of Jesus Christ, and the church is the body of Christ, that means God has chosen the church to extend his revelation in a special way...If the medium is the message, the message of the gospel is conveyed by the medium of the church's life in the world.

You cannot separate the medium from the message. The church is simply an expression of the Gospel. The church is sent to be - not just to proclaim - a message of healing and hope to the world.

We are the message.

But how does this shape how we understand the message? That is, how does it shape how we see what the Gospel is?

#mcprobe :: it started here

Being too young to have been exposed to McLuhan in his heyday, my discovery came a number of years ago was kind of like pulling a loose thread on a woolen sweater. Like many, my first exposure was to his most infamous aphorism

the medium is the message

but without notice, it became: the medium is the massage; the medium is the mess-age; the medium is the mass-age; the tedium is the message; and  the tedium is the mass-age. All of a sudden I had my hands full of loose wool and McLuhan was saying "See, it's a unicorn".

M.E. Monday #6

Today's a little late (and not quite Monday) M.E. Monday comes from James Carey....perhaps not seen as an official Media Ecologist....but his contribution to the field of communication and its overflow into media ecology is worth noting:

"...one can draw a definition of communication of disarming simplicity, yet, I think, of some intellectual power and scope: communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed" (Communication as Culture 1989).