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Preachers or Pushers?

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A friend of mine challenged a group of church creatives with a deceptively simple question: how do you experience God in a fresh way?. He reminded us of a Hillsong release called Fresh Wind . The chorus claims we need a fresh wind, a fresh experience of God offered by His Spirit. The song's a beautiful meditation on our continual need for a touch from God, like a dopamine hit.  Don't get me wrong. I like the song. My reference to dopamine isn't a cynical commentary on the song or its message. As my friend challenged us to share with one another how and where we find a fresh, invigorating encounter with God, he was vulnerable and shared part of his own story. He spoke of the grind that a megachurch can be, where creative team staffers stumble from Sunday to Sunday. The incessant rhythm of production never quite affords them the opportunity for a fresh touch of God's Spirit. My friend was challenging us to find a place for that fresh touch of God. He then asked where we e...
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Being White Isn't About PIgment

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It's hard for most white people not to think about race in terms of skin pigmentation. I get it. As a child of the 60s, I ingested civil rights ideals with my mother's milk. Oddly enough, my parents were raised by people who used the N-word as casually as they might say, "Hello." And some of their parents participated in genocide during the frontier wars of the American West. I love my family, warts and all. I'm not about to throw them under the bus. My ancestors may have been racists, but they were more than that. Fortunately, the tide began to turn with my generation. We were—I was—taught that skin color didn't matter. Character did. My parents told me that I must never say the N-word, that it was as bad as the F-word. They told me skin color shouldn't matter. Our schools began to be integrated. We were taught that Dr. King was right and racial supremacy was wrong. As a result, things did begin to change, slowly and to a point. They did get better. ...
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Why 1984 Was Exactly Like 1984.

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  In 1984, Apple Computer Co. introduced the MacIntoch with a video concept that ran only once as a paid advertisement during the Superbowl. The commercial was directed by Ridley Scott, who created an inspired short film, claiming that the MacIntoch personal computer held the promise to democratize power, keeping an autocratic entity from manipulating the masses. It was brilliant. It was also brilliantly wrong. In the 2020 documentary, the Social Dilemna , filmmaker Jeff Orlowski, rips the mask from big tech, showing how the Silicon Valley of1984 ushered in a revolution that virtually guaranteed our world would become exactly like the one depicted in Orwell's 1984. Using a mixture of dramatic performance and interviews with some of tech's social media pioneers, Orlowski shows how the sophisticated machine learning of major social media platforms is expressly designed to manipulate us, turning people into a product. The goal is to get us to spend as much time as possible on our...
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