Will You Be My Facebook Friend?

Do you get irritated by people who invites you to be his or her friend on Facebook? Or are you happy to be invited. What if you decline? Are you worried about offending someone? Richard Baum of Reuters writes about How to decline Facebook friends without offence. He offers some suggestions

One is to accept the invitation and then use Facebook's privacy settings to limit the flow of information between you and your new "friend." To do this, you can create a "colleagues" list from the Friends menu and then add to it your new friend. Then navigate to the privacy settings and use the "Profile Information" section to control what information people on the "colleagues" list can see.

An alternative, says workplace etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, is to suggest to the colleague that you connect instead on LinkedIn, a social network for professional relationships.

"You can just go ahead and ask them to join you on LinkedIn and hope they forget they sent you a Facebook friend request," said Pachter, the author of New Rules @ Work.

"Or you can say, Thanks for asking me. I'm keeping Facebook for my family and friends. I'm asking you to join me on my professional network instead.'"

Pachter said that whatever you do, it's important not to offend your colleague -- and that's not just because politeness is good etiquette.

"The person you offend might end up being your boss next year," she said.

Ha. That's unlikely for me but I do like to make friends on Facebook. Each friend brings new aspects and perspective of humanity. For a student of human nature like me, that is a bonus. Some reveal too much of themselves while others reveal too little. Yet each life is of value and I am constantly being amazed at the diversity of my friends' interests. I am also amazed at how much time some of my friends spend online with Facebook. I assume they do have a life somewhere.

It is interesting that Facebook was started only 4 years ago according to Wiki but 6 years ago according to founder Mark Zuckerberg in his Facebook blog. This is because Facebook seems to be around like forever. Entertainment Weekly notes its value, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" This was also during the peak of blogging. Nowadays, many bloggers are Facebookers (yes, there is such a term. I checked).

Many Facebookers are also gamers. The top 5 games on Facebook today are Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, Fishville and Zunga Poker. CNN Doug Gross gives us the highs and lows of The Facebook games millions love (or hate). No, I have not played any of these games yet. I am still trying to figure out Star Trek online.

Facebook is a virtual watering hole for the gathering of the futurists, the nerds, the internet addicts,the technocrats, the lonely, the bored, the seekers, the gurus, the joyful and the sad. Facebook is a pub in L-space. It is also a place of interconnectivity for people to connect with one another, keep abreast of each others' activities, and retain a sense of control in our fast moving fragmented world. It is also a safe place to hide from intimacy and the emotional investments of a 'real' human relationships. As in the television series Cheers, it is a place where everyone knows your name!

Update

After writing this post, I read a blog post on Facebook Friendship by my Facebook friend Bob.

picture credit

Introverts for Jesus

I am an extreme introvert so I find such books interesting.

Illustration by Amanda Duffy

BOOK REVIEW Introverts for Jesus, Unite! How to get along with the extroverts who populate the Western church. By Christine A. Scheller

Pastoral Concern for Migrant Communities

The latest from Thinking Faith...


A ministry of welcome
Why does our faith demand of us a pastoral concern for migrant communities? Bishop Pat Lynch introduces the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in which the Church’s mission to migrants is grounded. As we mark the World Day of Migrants and Refugees on 17 January, we are encouraged to welcome and accompany migrants as our brothers and sisters.
Read >>
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Theological Hospitality

With Christians moving from church to church for whatever reasons, and the decreasing emphasis on denominationalism, it is not unusual to find within a a single congregation, many different theological stands. How does the leadership maintain a unity within the church? Often these theological differences are potential time bombs and may lead to churches to split.

Dr David Dunbar from Biblical Seminary writing in the online Missional Journal issue January 2010 tells of theological hospitality.

The biblical exhortation to hospitality provides helpful imagery when thinking about the pursuit of unity. Christian hospitality is rooted in the character of God who welcomes us into his family through Christ. Various texts encourage believers to extend that same hospitality to one another and to the stranger in their midst (Romans 12:3; Heb. 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9). This was a virtue already commended in the Old Testament.

Denver Seminary professor David Buschart uses this image as a guide for exploring eight different families or theological traditions within Protestantism. Theological hospitality is the practice of welcoming other Christians whose understanding of Scripture and theology may seem strange or challenging to us. This welcome is appropriate, says Buschart, in light of the ontological reality of the church's present unity in Christ and the assurance of complete unity at the return of Christ. Thus his examination of each tradition (Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, etc.) is an exercise in careful listening and friendly (but fair) evaluation...

We should understand, therefore, that commitment to a particular theological position or tradition is not in itself a hindrance to the faithful practice of hospitality. A crucial determinant is attitude. Do we see our tradition as a fortress (to be defended against the enemy!) or as a home (in which to welcome friends)? The latter requires us to practice humility, and this "entails admitting that one's theology is neither complete nor free of errors.... Such fallibility is often acknowledged, at least in principle, but theological hospitality requires acting upon this humility."

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The Blessings of Spiritual Friends

Spiritual friendship, according to the great twelfth century English Cistercian Abbot, Aelred of Rievaulx is “mutual harmony in affairs human and divine coupled with benevolence and charity” (Aelred, Spiritual Friendship, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications). What he meant is that spiritual friendship is the love of the Christians given by God that combines goodwill and charity and is only possible between those who resist sin and seek to follow Jesus. There are certain characteristics that make up spiritual friendship.

Firstly spiritual friendship has ‘sacred space’ that allows each of us to grow in our relationship with the Lord, with other people and with ourselves. The ‘sacred space’ is a safe space where we are free to make mistakes. It is also a space where we are to be non judgmental about each other. Therefore this ‘sacred space’ allows us to be ourselves, without the burden of putting on our false selves and trying to be someone else. In spiritual friendship there is an understanding of ‘agreeing to disagree.’ This meant that it is possible to hold differing opinions about politics, theology, lifestyle preferences, and cultural heritage without the need to prove ourselves right or to tear down the other person’s opinion. In many subtle ways, this will enrich our lives.

Secondly, spiritual friendship is a relationship with trust. This trust is about spiritual friends respecting each other’s confidentiality and privacy. It is in our psychological makeup that we need people we can trust so that we can open ourselves. This opening of ourselves is cathartic and results in our emotional well being. We need to be able to be free to verbalise our fears and desires. Confession is an important part of the process of repentance. Confession helps us to avoid the temptation of sidestepping our moral responsibilities. We cannot do all this if we do not trust our spiritual friends with our confidentiality.

Thirdly, spiritual friendship involves accountability. Spiritual friends are accountable to each other because they are brothers in Christ. Much of the problems of the world are the results of lack of accountability. Many Christian leaders fail because they do not allow themselves to be accountable to other Christians. Christian spiritual friends hold each other accountable in their spiritual life, thought fantasies, marital fidelity, fulfilling of promises, and management of finances. We need these check and balances because we are prone to self deception. The bible teaches that our hearts are very deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9).

Finally, spiritual friends make very good prayer partners. There is a certain joy in praying together with someone we know and loves. Praying together reminds us of our dependence on the Lord. One of the highlight of my working week is the weekly lunch-time prayer with a spiritual friend. Spiritual friends are able to discern the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of one another other and to offer spiritual direction. This is especially useful when major decisions need to be made.

How do we seek spiritual friends? We start by becoming friends with others. Gradually we will come to be aware that certain people may become our good spiritual friends. We are comfortable with these people because they offer us ‘sacred spaces.’ We know that we can trust them to keep our confidence (not a gossip), are willing to be accountable to each other, and willing to pray together with us. The friendship of David and Jonathan is one such example (Isaiah 18:1-4). In my spiritual journey I am grateful for the friendships of many spiritual friends who live in many countries all over the world. I thank God for all of them. When you have a spiritual friend, hang on to them because they are very precious and very rare. You may even have to travel thousands of miles for them.

Soli Deo Gloria

Gordon MacDonald on Church Leadership

From Christianity Today online

Gordon MacDonald's articles and books are insightful and are always worth the reading. I like this article where he applies principles from Jim Collins' book How the Mighty Fall to church leadership.

How a Mighty Church Falls

What it takes to prevent congregational decline.

Gordon MacDonald | posted 11/29/2009

Soon after I finished my theological education, I was asked to become pastor of a congregation in Southern Illinois. This was my first great awakening to the realities of pastoral leadership, and it was an uncomfortable experience.

The skills (or gifts) that led the congregation to invite me to be their spiritual leader were probably my enthusiasm, my preaching, and my apparent ability, even as a young man, to reach out to people and make them feel cared for.

The position description called for me to report to a board of deacons who, while well-intentioned, were not highly experienced in organizational leadership. It also said that I was responsible to lead a staff that consisted of a secretary, a Christian education assistant, two day-school teachers, a part-time choir director, and a janitor.

What it didn't say was that the congregation was seriously divided and disillusioned due to an acrimonious split in which the previous pastor had persuaded a hundred people to join him in leaving the church to form a new one down the road.

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Coffee Fellowship

One in Christ or Coffee?

The danger of replacing Communion with a coffee bar.

by Paul Louis Metzger

It's very difficult for many contemporary Christians to recognize how much we have been shaped by the consumer culture in which we live—it is in the air we breathe and the water (or coffee) we drink.

Consider that in many churches the coffee bar has displaced the Lord's Table as the place where real community happens. Due in part to the neutralizing of sacred space that has been popular since the 1980s, churches began removing or deemphasizing the Lord's Table and introducing coffee bars. Without doubt the desire has been to build community by offering people a culturally familiar setting to engage one another. But we must ask: What formative message does a coffee bar convey?

A coffee bar mostly carries the values of our culture. We've come to expect coffee bars to offer a number of choices to meet our desires (decaf, tea, hot chocolate), and the setting is one of leisure and comfort. We usually gather in affinity groups. We sip the beverages not because we're thirsty but because we're conditioned to want them.

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Read the full article at LeadershipJournal.net

Paul Louis Metzger is professor of Christian theology & theology of culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

Doctors in Detention

Doctors in detention and the Hippocratic Oath

Meera Selvakone, MD

Family physician
Richmond Hill, Ont.

Every year, many newly qualified doctors recite the Hippocratic Oath upon graduating. But how many of us would actually put those words to the test if our own lives were in jeopardy? Half a world away, three physicians faced this dilemma.

During the first five months of 2009, an intense war played out in the densely populated coastline of northeastern Sri Lanka. More than 300 000 civilians were trapped between battle lines. A government-imposed media blackout meant the world was largely unaware of what the United Nations called a "bloodbath."

I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity.¹

Doctors Thangamuthu Sathiyamoorthy, Thurairajah Varatharajah and Veerakaththi Shanmugarajah were employed by the government to work in the conflict zone. Dr. Shanmugarajah might easily have been working in a peaceful nation; several years ago, he emigrated to Canada only to return to Sri Lanka to serve the developing nation.

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CMAJ • November 10, 2009; 181 (10). First published October 19, 2009; doi:10.1503/cmaj.091527
© 2009 Canadian Medical Association

Image courtesy of Fred Sebastian

Helping Hands

In light of the recent natural disasters in Indonesia and the Philippines, the Johor Bahru Pastor Fellowship is initiating a relief project. Please help.

Happy Deepavali

Wishing all a Happy Deepavali

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Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Wishing all my Muslim readers

A Call to Spiritual Formation (7)

Paragraph Four

Spiritual formation happens in community. As we long to know and follow Jesus and be formed into his likeness, we journey with those who share this longing. God is calling the church to be a place of transformation. Here we struggle to fulfill our calling to love. Here we learn to attend to the invitations of God’s Spirit. Here we follow the presence of God in our midst. Spiritual community is the catalyst for our transformation and a sending base for our mission of love to the world.

Christian spiritual formation occurs best in a community of faith. While a community of faith often refers to a church, it may also refers to a small group of Christians gathering together for bible study and fellowship, an accountability group or a few regular friends chatting over coffee. James Wilhoit emphasizes in Spiritual Formation as if Church Matters that “spiritual formation is the task of the church.”

A community of faith has two roles in Christian spiritual formation. The first role is the role of a nurturing community. A nurturing community contributes to spiritual formation by providing a framework in which individual members are taught about the Word and the traditions of the church, is a safe place to make mistakes, provides skills to deepen the spiritual life, love and care for one another, and share in the joys and sorrows of life events. Its strength is that the community nurtures by using the members’ spiritual gifts.

The second role is that of corporate spiritual formation. Being part of the community itself is transforming. A community is like an organism and it grows and responds to the external world. This is also true of communities of faith. Communities of faith grow, develop and create its own identity. Paul often addresses the churches in the singular, as in his call for the church (singular sense) to put on the armour of God (Ephesians 6:11-13).

In summary, Christian spiritual formation develops best in a community of faith. It is in the context of interaction with other persons that we are transformed into the likeness of Christ. It is in the context of persons-in-community that we become the Body of Christ.

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The City as Educator

Cities, Youth, and Technology:Toward a Pedagogy of Autonomy
Robert McClintock
Institute for Learning Technologies
Teachers College, Columbia University
A Contribution to the International Symposium
Zukunft der Jugend
ORF RadioKulturhaus
Vienna, September 20, 2000

This is an excellent insightful lecture about youth, the new media and the role of cities. I really enjoyed it.

With the new media, in school and outside of it, we are putting very powerful tools of inquiry and communication into the hands of students. This action may change significantly the educational ecology prevailing within the city. Reforms, which did not work under prior conditions, may now flourish under emerging conditions. The limitations that undercut the progressive solution to the educational weakness of city life may be quickly overcome. The new media transfer a great deal of educational control to the student. The new media amplify the power of communication and interaction that each young person can employ. A pedagogy of open ended inquiry, which once would inexorably end in frustration and mystification, can now dependably lead to a deep, expansive engagement with powerful ideas and concepts. The exercise of choice, so characteristic of urban life throughout all ages, becomes the driving means of educational work in a well-wired classroom. The power to communicate ideas and accomplishments, essential in the urban effort to create a persona, becomes feasible for anyone who has learned to use the Internet as a locus of self-expression.

The city, extended and universalized with new media, may become the locus where all persons at all places and all times can pursue an intellectually rigorous progressive education. When that happens, the city as educator will be perfected and complete.

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picture source

The City as Educator

Cities, Youth, and Technology:Toward a Pedagogy of Autonomy
Robert McClintock
Institute for Learning Technologies
Teachers College, Columbia University
A Contribution to the International Symposium
Zukunft der Jugend
ORF RadioKulturhaus
Vienna, September 20, 2000

This is an excellent insightful lecture about youth, the new media and the role of cities. I really enjoyed it.

With the new media, in school and outside of it, we are putting very powerful tools of inquiry and communication into the hands of students. This action may change significantly the educational ecology prevailing within the city. Reforms, which did not work under prior conditions, may now flourish under emerging conditions. The limitations that undercut the progressive solution to the educational weakness of city life may be quickly overcome. The new media transfer a great deal of educational control to the student. The new media amplify the power of communication and interaction that each young person can employ. A pedagogy of open ended inquiry, which once would inexorably end in frustration and mystification, can now dependably lead to a deep, expansive engagement with powerful ideas and concepts. The exercise of choice, so characteristic of urban life throughout all ages, becomes the driving means of educational work in a well-wired classroom. The power to communicate ideas and accomplishments, essential in the urban effort to create a persona, becomes feasible for anyone who has learned to use the Internet as a locus of self-expression.

The city, extended and universalized with new media, may become the locus where all persons at all places and all times can pursue an intellectually rigorous progressive education. When that happens, the city as educator will be perfected and complete.

read more

picture source

Movie Review on Fight Club

"You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

With this memorable words narrated by Edward Norton began the 1999 movie, Fight Club. Norton met Tyler Durben in a bar and end up fighting. They find the bare knuckle street fighting so enjoyable that more and more people joined in. The Fight Club was so popular that it became a franchise and went worldwide. That is until Tyler Durben came out with Operation Mayhem! And the surprising revelation of who Tyler really is.

On the surface this is a movie about street brawls. However it is a social commentary about the raging anger most people felt inside them in living in a society that is so frustrating and chaotic. Most people are on the lookout for ways to release these anger. Street brawling became the means of release of anger and male empowerment. These fight clubs gave them a sense of community, belonging, liberation, release, rebellion and rejection of the middle class consumerism values they have to live by. In the fight clubs, some people through their pain experience some form of 'religious' experience.

I was horrified by the outrageous behavior of Tyler Durben, ably played by Brad Pitts. But what he did was to thumb his nose at many of the social norms of the North American society. I enjoyed the movie in spite of the gory fight scenes. I watched this movie with a sinking feeling in my stomach. It is due to the realization that somehow the church has failed in her task to provide for these people. And this failure was the reason they find meaning in the fight clubs.

Not suitable for children. Good for group discussion.

picture source here and here

Movie Review on Fight Club

"You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

With this memorable words narrated by Edward Norton began the 1999 movie, Fight Club. Norton met Tyler Durben in a bar and end up fighting. They find the bare knuckle street fighting so enjoyable that more and more people joined in. The Fight Club was so popular that it became a franchise and went worldwide. That is until Tyler Durben came out with Operation Mayhem! And the surprising revelation of who Tyler really is.

On the surface this is a movie about street brawls. However it is a social commentary about the raging anger most people felt inside them in living in a society that is so frustrating and chaotic. Most people are on the lookout for ways to release these anger. Street brawling became the means of release of anger and male empowerment. These fight clubs gave them a sense of community, belonging, liberation, release, rebellion and rejection of the middle class consumerism values they have to live by. In the fight clubs, some people through their pain experience some form of 'religious' experience.

I was horrified by the outrageous behavior of Tyler Durben, ably played by Brad Pitts. But what he did was to thumb his nose at many of the social norms of the North American society. I enjoyed the movie in spite of the gory fight scenes. I watched this movie with a sinking feeling in my stomach. It is due to the realization that somehow the church has failed in her task to provide for these people. And this failure was the reason they find meaning in the fight clubs.

Not suitable for children. Good for group discussion.

picture source here and here

Formation In Faith

Sondra Higgins Matthaei (2008), Formation in Faith: The Congregational Ministry of making Disciples, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Sondra Higgins Matthaei is professor of Christian Religious Education at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. I have been following her writings closely and have enjoyed her other book, Making Disciples: Faith Formation in the Wesley Tradition.

This book builds on her thesis of her previous book that spiritual maturity involves three stages; invitation to communion, deepening communion, and full communion. However she has taken the further step to suggest how her thesis may be translated into a congregation that is making disciples. She looks at the development of such a congregation in terms of relationships, structures and practices. I like this book because Matthaei is making a genuine effort to apply the results of her thesis. Many Christian educators are very good in suggesting theoretical models but often fails to teach us how to apply it to the grass root level of the church.

There is much to recommend for her model. However it could have been better if she had paid more attention to the leadership of the church in her model. Any disciplemaking processes in the church depends heavily on the support and commitment of the upper echolon leadership of the church. If the upper echelon are not interested in faith formation but more in building their own empires, then whatever model will fails. I wish she have given us some indicators how how she will convince church leaders to be spiritual leaders rather than glorified adminstrators.

A good book to read.

Formation In Faith

Sondra Higgins Matthaei (2008), Formation in Faith: The Congregational Ministry of making Disciples, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Sondra Higgins Matthaei is professor of Christian Religious Education at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. I have been following her writings closely and have enjoyed her other book, Making Disciples: Faith Formation in the Wesley Tradition.

This book builds on her thesis of her previous book that spiritual maturity involves three stages; invitation to communion, deepening communion, and full communion. However she has taken the further step to suggest how her thesis may be translated into a congregation that is making disciples. She looks at the development of such a congregation in terms of relationships, structures and practices. I like this book because Matthaei is making a genuine effort to apply the results of her thesis. Many Christian educators are very good in suggesting theoretical models but often fails to teach us how to apply it to the grass root level of the church.

There is much to recommend for her model. However it could have been better if she had paid more attention to the leadership of the church in her model. Any disciplemaking processes in the church depends heavily on the support and commitment of the upper echolon leadership of the church. If the upper echelon are not interested in faith formation but more in building their own empires, then whatever model will fails. I wish she have given us some indicators how how she will convince church leaders to be spiritual leaders rather than glorified adminstrators.

A good book to read.

The Depressed Christian

Depression and the Christian Life

Sermon Statement
It is a myth that Christians do not suffer from depression. The community of faith must be prepared to help those suffering from depression.

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The Depressed Christian

Depression and the Christian Life

Sermon Statement
It is a myth that Christians do not suffer from depression. The community of faith must be prepared to help those suffering from depression.

read more