Catherine and I are spending the coming week at Following Christ 08, an amazing conference for graduate and professional students and faculty. The theme this year is "human flourishing," and the conference background paper on that subject is well worth reading. It's one of the many terrific things that InterVarsity Christian Fellowship produces. Some of the most thoughtful and soulful events, books, communities, and people we know have come from InterVarsity. (Including, of course, Culture Making from InterVarsity Press!) We love supporting several IVCF staff and events like Following Christ—partly because our own lives were so shaped by InterVarsity's work in college. We're doing our best to pay it forward.

charity, education, ministry, universities

Andy

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Are there universal elements of human flourishing, things that every person needs to flourish? If so, which of these are immediate gifts of God and which can be created, shaped, or nourished by the practice of the academic and professional disciplines?

Why do men and women fail to flourish? To what extent does sin, both personal and systemic, account for this failure?

In the face of such failure, how is the gospel good news and how does it help us flourish ourselves within our vocations and beyond?

Is it really true that to fully flourish one must be a follower of Jesus? How can such an outrageous claim be presented compellingly in our culture?

Must our bodies be doing well for us to flourish? In what ways does our embodiment affect our flourishing?

What does pursuing excellence have to do with human flourishing? Is elitism inherent in excellence, and does it impede human flourishing in a diverse society?

Will the career and personal path I’m on lead to my flourishing and that of others? Are my vocation and occupation in sync? Should I perhaps change paths, and how can I know?

What kinds of suffering stifle human flourishing, and what kinds can contribute to it?

How can we prepare to flourish and help others flourish in the face of an uncertain future and rapid social, cultural, economic, and technological change?

The best of the Internet bears some similarities with the best of cities, though I suppose we could say the same about the worst and in-between as well—e.g., "Is Web community a myth?"

community, gardens and cities, horizons of the possible, internet, networks, serindipity

Nate

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He was describing the ballet of the train station. But his description could just as easily have applied to the Internet. Think about it: Serendipitous encounters between people who know each other well, sort of well, and not at all. People of every type, and with every type of agenda, trying to meet up with others who share that same agenda. An environment that’s alive at all hours, populated by all types, and is, most of the time, pretty safe. What he was saying, really, was that New York had become the Web. Or perhaps more, even: that New York was the Web before the Web was the Web, characterized by the same free-flowing interaction, 24/7 rhythms, subgroups, and demimondes.

Just after my wife Catherine graduated from college, she spent a year volunteering at Harambee Christian Family Center, an urban ministry on the wrong side of the freeway in Pasadena, California. Another fresh-faced volunteer that year was Rodolpho Carrasco. Now Rudy is the executive director of Harambee and we are friends and supporters of the amazing variety of community development projects Rudy, his wife Kafi, and a talented, local staff oversee. Harambee is culture-making on a neighborhood scale, with dramatic and beautiful results. (We told part of the story in "Where Faith and Culture Meet.")

charity, cities, community, community development, neighborhoods, philanthropy

Andy

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In 1982, the neighborhood surrounding Harambee Center had the highest daytime crime rate in Southern California. The corner of Howard and Navarro, where we are located, was called “blood corner” because it was where the most drive-by shootings and failed drug deals occurred. Residents were held captive in their homes and there was little hope for change.

We believed the only legitimate way to become change-agents in this community was to become a part of it. Led by our founder, Dr. John Perkins, we moved into the community and became neighbors. For 20+ years we have served a 12-block target area, working with African American and Latino children and families.

“Harambee” means “Let’s get together and push” in Swahili. We seek to nurture and equip leadership that will wholistically minister to the community by sharing Biblical truths, in order to achieve the re-building of urban neighborhoods through relocation, reconciliation and redistribution.

I've been following the "long tail" debate with great interest, and this article in New Scientist sums up the research as well as any I've seen. It confirms my growing suspicion that far from being a paradise of user-created content, the Web (versions 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 and beyond) will in fact reinforce the dominance of a few blockbuster properties (and Web sites), just as new communication technologies and transportation patterns are consolidating American Christianity into the blockbusters of the church world: megachurches. Could it be that the more interconnected we are, the more homogenous we become?

commerce, communication, consumption, internet, scale, statistics

Andy

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So why, with the cornucopia of goodies now available to us, are blockbusters not just still here, but getting bigger? On the face of it, Anderson’s idea of a divergence of tastes in the digital era is logical. But if the long tail effect does not exist, or is not as pronounced as was thought, what is really going on?

Elberse says it’s a bit like the influence of multichannel television on the economics of sport. In the old days, if you wanted to watch soccer, you went to watch your local team in the flesh. Now, she says, in the UK you are more likely to decide to stay at home and watch Chelsea play Arsenal. This change of allegiance cuts the cash flowing into the ticket office of your local club while boosting advertising revenues for TV, which accrue disproportionately in favour of the already wealthy top clubs.

It is a phenomenon known to economists as the Matthew effect, after a quotation from the gospel of that name: “For unto every one that hath shall be given.” Just as for the long tail effect, there is a plausible explanation of why it should be happening in the modern media environment: easy digital replication and efficient communication through cellphones, email and social networking sites encourage fast-moving, fast-changing fads. The result is a homogenisation of tastes that boosts the chances of popular things becoming blockbusters, making the already successful even more successful.

This bit from the close of Walker Percy's novel is about as good an example I can recall of a sort of sublime cultural layering—the lovely, humble juxtaposition of the transcendent and the everyday, of fallenness and grace, and of taking our cues from the best of all that culture has to offer.

christmas, cultural worlds, food and drink, horizons of the possible, repentance

Nate

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Barbecuing in my sackcloth.

The turkey is smoking well. The children have gone to bed, but they’ll be up at dawn to open their presents.

The night is clear and cold. There is no moon. The light of the transmitter lies hard by Jupiter, ruby and diamond in the plush velvet sky. Ellen is busy in the kitchen fixing stuffing and sweet potatoes. Somewhere in the swamp a screech owl cries.

I’m dancing around to keep warm, hands in pockets. It is Christmas Day and the Lord is here, a holy night and surely that is all one needs.

On the other hand, I want a drink. Fetching the Early Times from a clump of palmetto, I take six drinks in six minutes. Now I’m dancing and singing old Sinatra songs and the Salve Regina, cutting the fool like David before the ark or like Walter Huston doing a jig when he struck it rich in the Sierra Madre.

One of the most brilliant cultural goods created in the last few years is World Vision's annual "gift catalog," featuring giving opportunities that support that organization's development efforts worldwide. Every other catalog that comes into our home goes straight into the recycling (after being flagged for entry into the fantastic stop-the-catalog service Catalog Choice). But this one goes on the dining room table, where our kids delight in finding "gifts" that match the interests of our various farflung relatives, and raid their piggy banks to be able to afford soccer balls in Africa, music lessons in South Asia, or a goat in Haiti. To be sure, World Vision's gift catalog is a bit of a convenient fiction—as is its child sponsorship program, in which we also participate. The last thing any development organization needs is donors micromanaging the delivery of a goat. And yet the great value of this cultural good is that it makes the concrete results of well-implemented programs of community development and crisis relief so visible and tangible to both children and grownups. This year almost all our Christmas gifts for relatives beyond our immediate family will be drawn from this catalog. Hooray.

charity, christmas, development, philanthropy, stewardship

Andy

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The early-morning bleating of a dairy goat is a happy sound for children in countries like Haiti and Kenya — they know it’s ready to be milked. A goat nourishes a family with protein-rich milk, cheese, and yogurt, and can offer a much-needed income boost by providing offspring and extra dairy products for sale at the market. It even provides fertilizer that can dramatically increase crop yields!