andi's perspective

PERSPECTIVE MATTERS

-> find Europe! :)

RODNEY STARK - DEUTSCH (DE)

Für alle, die der amerikanische Religionssoziologe Rodney Stark (siehe hier, hier und hier) interessiert, aber eine deutsche Version bevorzugen, hier die gute Nachricht: Marlin hat es getan - und das deutlich besser und ausführlicher als ich es konnte! Überhaupt scheint mir Marlins Blog eine großartige Ressource für deutschsprachige Gemeinde-Über-Denker!  Cool Marlin, weiter so!

VISUAL MAIL THREADS

ThreadVis is a remarkable Thunderbird Add-on which i highly recommend if your email inbox like mine is an infinite pool of complexly interrelated conversation threads. By including "sent emails" it goes far beyond the standard "cluster by theme" option without messing up the inbox.

The grafic shows the flow of an email conversation i am having with two colleagues: red starting, green answering, me replying to green, red replying, both replying to red, and finally red answering my reply. Each of the dots comes with By, Date, and About info in a mouse-over pop-up and hyperlinks to the corresponding email. Coolest of all: the time distance between two replies is given in minutes, hours or days and displays in correct proportions!
Now, this does not only give me  a better handle on the multitude of parallel threads, but it might have the potential to increase email response time as it so obviously shows the delays ;-)
I love it! How ever could we have emailed without it?

PERSON TO PERSON LENDING

Just now totally enthusiastic about the Kiva micro-loan scheme: the world's first person-to-person micro-lending service.  100% throughput to the entrepreneur!

"Kiva's mission is  to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty."

You "browse the catalogue", choose profiled entrepreneurs in the developing world, and lend $25 upwards enabling them to work themselves out of poverty or at least continue to survive in it!   

Are you the only Westerner without $25 to spare?

I think i love this!

CHURCH AS RELATIONAL ACTION

What if we would be church the following way:

• covenant with Him and celebrate life
• share our lives and celebrate each other
• open our eyes and together contradict evil around us?

Actionwise this could mean to

• teach each other how to live a good life with eternal perspectives (lecture, dialogue, workshop, training etc.)
• explore and celebrate each other (peer groups with story telling, listening & feedback, prophecy & intercession, fun & feasting...)
• meet each other's needs by sharing resources (ideas, time, money, equipment, space, contacts, know-how...)
• actively seek-out and solidarize with those in need (latch-key kids, lonely elderly, single parents, unemployed, your normal neighbor, anyone coming your way...) and find ways to do good (and no, i am not talking "servant-evangelism"!)
• understand and counteract destructive cultural  patterns around us and find ways to contradict evil in the public space (of media, professions, politics, curricula, the web, the street...)
• and to use the time freed up by less religious activities to do these things together!

Structurally this could mean to think about

• networks of and meetings with friends
• global/ local clusters of friendship networks 
• an extensive online social network environment
• specialists and interspecialists connections
• engaging the culture task forces
• specific outreach/ project/  neighborhood groups
• training workshops/ lectures
• area resource centers [term borrowed] etc.

I cannot imagine this is easily done. To start with a minimum budget of time i suggest we stop our overdose of religious activities (like singing and praying, reading and talking, and talking and reading and singing and praying...) and start Loving God, Each Other, Our Neighbor and This World together with Him.

Just for a change.