+

Experiencing God in a Digital Age Dr Bex LewisDirector, Digital FingerprintResearch Fellow in Social Media and Online Learning, CODEC Centre for Digital Theology, Durham UniversityJune 2015 for The Retreat Associationhttp://www.slideshare.net/drbexl/experiencing-god-in-a-digital-age

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

+Session Overview

Intros

21st Century: A digital age 24/7 Discipleship ‘Reality’ of online experiences

Experiencing God in digital spaces Worship Creativity Relationship Building

Healthy Boundaries

+Introductions

IntroducingDr Bex Lewis

Research Fellow in Social Media & Online Learning

CODEC, St John’s College, DurhamDirector, Digital Fingerprint

T: @drbexlF: /drbexl

W: drbexl.co.uk

+21st Century: A Digital Age

+Martha Lane-Fox, 2015

The internet is the organising principle of our age, touching all our lives, every day. As the late activist Aaron Swartz put it, “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore”.

http://www.doteveryone.org.uk/

http://youtu.be/jottDMuLesU

+

"If you want to build a presence in the social media platform, then you need to be

present."

- @unmarketing

https://twitter.com/hanelly/status/405754162555944960/photo/1

https://twitter.com/LeistCatalano/status/473076349394255872/photo/1

Even though in practice, face-to-face communication can, of course, be angry, negligent, resistant, deceitful and inflexible, somehow it remains the ideal against which mediated communication is judged as flawed.Prof Sonia Livingstone, Children and the Internet: Great Expectations and Challenging Realities. 2009, p26

+https://youtu.be/-bnYpCiwV2Q

+24/7 Discipleship

Image Source: http://chainsawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/201208081.png

+https://youtu.be/7eQ7D-A00Bw

+[If we are…] means by which God communicates and reveals himself through his Spirit, then our blog posts, status updates, tweets, artistic images, and online comments should be products of a life transformed by Christ and indwelled by his Spirit. As restored image bearers, our online presence and activity should image the Triune God.

Byers, A. Theomedia (2013, 196)

+

“No life of faith can be lived privately. There must be overflow into the lives of others.” C.S. LewisH/T @jaybutcher

+‘Reality’ of online

+https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+12:1&version=MSG

+

A good [wo]man brings good things out of the good stored up in his/her heart, and an evil [wo]man brings evil things out of

the evil stored up in his/her heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is

full of.

Luke 6:45 (New International Version)

+24/7 Values? What do you stand FOR?

Authentic – be a consistent ‘you’

Transparent – be honest, where’s the source?

Self-aware – note your ‘tone of voice’

Integrity – own your own content

Self-control – be aware of consequences

Patience – hold the trigger finger before send

Non-manipulative – ‘love Jesus’ = send this! No!

Kindness – encourage others

+Experiencing God in Digital Spaces

+Worship

+John Ortberg

“I need to worship because without it I can forget that I have a Big God beside me and live in fear. I need to worship because without it I can forget his calling and begin to live in a spirit of self-preoccupation. I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on. I need worship because my natural tendency is toward self-reliance and stubborn independence.”

+Digital Worship?

Illustration by @Mattart1Art

+@drbexl

+Creativity

+Relationship Building

It is also a motivating factor for us as believers while we are still living here on earth. We are to look for any opportunity, whether it be an open door to sharing, or initiating a conversation to begin to open a door. As long as there are broken lives, Jesus will be sending His Spirit to bring strength, health, love, wisdom, peace, joy, self-control, faithfulness, and unity

Cris Rogers, Immeasurably More (2015) p217

+

+Healthy Boundaries

+Taking the Pulse…

@drbexl

+

“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

@drbexl

+Dodgy Health Information

A fifteen-year-old girl tries to diet but finds herself bingeing soon afterwards. Ashamed, and even more concerned about how this will affect her weight, she searches for help online, but finds a “pro-mia” website. Or a fifty-three-year-old man, faced with redundancy, wonders how he will manage without his work and income. Too ashamed to talk to his wife or his GP, he enters a forum for those suffering from depression, but instead of support, he finds aggressive interactions and accounts of self-harm.

Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, 2011

@drbexl

+

“As young people develop their identities they need guidance and support, particularly from the significant adults in their lives. The behaviour that those adults model, whether it’s with regard to digital technologies or great historical events such as the Holocaust, or even in the way the cleaner is treated, is important in helping children define their own identity, values, and attitudes.”

Raising Children in a Digital Age, p.101

@drbexl

+(Work) Boundaries

Expectations of your availability: not NOW

Journaling your habits

Working at home: a dedicated ‘work space’?

Buzzing with ideas? Note it down & move on

Disable push notifications

Create separate user profiles in Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en

@drbexl

+Time Stewardship?

@drbexl

+

“Accept some of your own limits today – not out of laziness or fear, but out of contentment and assurance”

Brian Draper, Lent E-Mail Series, 2015

http://briandraper.org/engage

Image Credit: Purchased from Stockfresh

+http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/

+Spiritual Disciplines?

“Jesus sets an example for us of how to boost our spiritual health. He engaged in spiritual disciplines such as solitude, silence, service, study, prayer, worship and fasting.”

@drbexl

+Taking time out..

“It's about family togetherness, personal growth and development, and being masters over our environment - rather than enabling our fast-moving, sophisticated world and electronic equipment to dominate us.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29751577

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis speaking of ‘Shabbat UK’, October 2014

@drbexl

+Conversation

“The epiphany for me was that I’d become a terrific broadcaster and a terrible communicator…. There was an awful lot of telling going on and not a lot of listening”

Daniel Sieberg, The Digital Diet, 2011, p.26

@drbexl

+WISDOM!

Image Source: RGB Stock

+@drbexl @codecuk