How Netflix Is Changing The Church

Netflix bu Dekuwa on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Canadian pastor Carey Nieuwhof again today – this time on how Netflix and other services are changing social habits, with implications for how we do church. While there is a danger that in adopting these changes as far as we can needs to be done in a way that guards against an individualism that destroys community, do we need to listen carefully here?

Near the end of the article, Nieuwhof says:

A church that has a white-hot sense of mission will almost always have the resources it needs to do what the church is called to do. But churches who want to prop up what used to sort of work, won’t.

How are our churches adapting? Indeed, are they adapting?

Future Trends

What will the world we are heading into be like? Here are some ideas. In fact, some of them are already present. Will they affect how we proclaim the Gospel in word and deed, as we consider how people will perceive what it means to be human, as we see world hunger increase, and so on?

A Gift Of Christmas

Are you looking for an attractive leaflet to give out at your special Christmas services to your occasional visitors? Would you like to put something in the hands of your regular worshippers that they could give to friends?

The Methodist Church may just have what you are looking for. The latest addition to its ‘A Gift Of …’ series is ‘A Gift Of Christmas’. You can pick up information (including how to order it in print form) here. But you can also download it as a PDF or a PowerPoint.

In fact, why not have a look at the PowerPoint? This is what you will be getting:

Please note, ‘A Gift of Christmas’ is copyright the Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes, 2013.

The Bible Mini-Series

KJV Bible by David Campbell on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

More resources from Scripture Union, following yesterday’s post: ‘The Bible’, a 10-hour mini-series featuring some of the best-loved stories, is crossing the Atlantic and will be shown on Channel 5 TV during December. If you want to help your church and community engage with this, then SU have some resources to help. There is a Bible Bank smartphone app (available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone), and there is an e-book, Walking With The Bible.

Take a look and see whether these could help your outreach during Advent and Christmas this year.

Let Me Tell You A Story

Stories You Like by Mountainbread on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Modern Western presentations of the Gospel have resembled a set of propositions – the Four Spiritual Laws, for example. Is it time to recover the power of story, and see it as much more than something for children or for entertainment? Tom Steffen thinks so. What do you think? And how might we do it?

Methods Versus Core Values

Virgin America’s new way of doing the ‘safety talk’ before a flight has garnered millions of views on YouTube. Watch it for yourself:

Note what one tech blog said about it:

Virgin reminds me of companies with a culture that invents new ways of connecting with people.

Is that a lesson for the church? Do we sometimes confuse the core values we espouse (and to which we want to call people to embrace) with our treasured methods of implementing them in the past? Consider this story from as long ago as 1990:

There is a story of a company that manufactured drill bits for over forty years. It had been very successful, but the industry was maturing and profit margins were getting thin.

The son of the founder attended his first senior staff meeting after his father died.

“What business are we in?” he asked the older men, who had served alongside his father for many years.

“We make drill bits!” came the exasperated answer. “Our customers need drill bits.”

“No. Our customers need holes,” the young man quietly replied. Today the company is again successful. It addition to drill bits, it manufactures lasers that make very precise holes.

(Bryant Myers, ‘Doing research with eyes to see’, MARC Newsletter, December 1990, p 3.)

Could it be that the church’s message is more ‘drill bits’ than ‘holes’?