mountain masala

the big year out is back!

i'm pleased to announce that the Big Year Out, our 'gap year' for young adults, will be back in 2010

thebigyearout.com

we're looking for a new Co-ordinator for the community & discipleship day, one day a week. if you know anyone in Adelaide with educational and theological ability that would be appropriate for leading young adults in a discipleship program, let me know!

australians and technology use

the australian communication and media authority (acma) has a number of research papers published here, including a report about young people's use of social media.

damper and billy tea

a great post from shane claiborne about his time at our national christian youth convention here.

thanks to sandy for the link.

and another word of affirmation for the whole ncyc 09 team, and to Age and cast for the submersion day!

we're working on some stuff here in SA to keep it going.

teenagers and online networking

here are a few links about young people and online netowrking:

Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (pdf)
this is a PhD thesis from dana boyd - source

Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices - gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices - self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.

My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties - persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability - and three dynamics - invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private - are examined and woven throughout the discussion.

While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens' engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.

 

Also a report on different age groups and social networking here.

I'll look forward to having a read. the four internet users in our house are all facebook friends, and I'm having the odd experience of finding out what my kids are doing, thinking and feeling in their bedrooms via facebook under the same roof!

bible study #3

for bible study #3 at ncyc we took the theme for the final day  -"diverge" or being sent. we recreated the lake galilee pool with blue cloth and stones, made a cross with the black cloth and decorated it with fairy lights, candles, pot pourri and bread rolls (hot cross buns actually - in january!). previously people had been seated in groups of four. on this occasion the seats were around the perimeter and we asked people to sit with someone they hadnt met before.

bible study #2

session 2 of the bible studies on mark took the theme of discipleship being costly and counter-cultural.

the entry experience featured a loop of the start of "powaqqatsi" of workers lugging sacks of dirt up a muddy hill, with a second pair of screens showing the "eye" loop from one small barking dog's "in motion" dvd. the music was "breath" and "float" from david bridie's "act of free choice".

we had set a black cloth with two kinds of fairy lights and candles at the front (you can see a "light" thing coming, can't you....)

the start sequence was the miniature earth animation.

i haven't blogged all year....

i'm still officially on holidays, but its been a bit quiet.

back from 10 days in melbourne, including a week at our national christian youth convention, aka ncyc, featuring a cast of thousands... (you know who you are...). we went over as a family - the twins at their third ncyc and me leading a bible study - there were nine options.

from what I heard there were about 1100 young people aged 16 to 30 and about 400 adults. an excellent week - good weather, good spirits, some great input. a large proportion of samoan and tongan people gave the event a different, lively and loud flavour - an excellent experience for we monocultural south australians.

off to ncyc

well the pizza blog will have to wait... we're packing tonight to head off to melbourne tomorrow for the uniting church's national christian youth convention, where I'm leading a bible study and the twins are participants.

i am foolishly taking a bunch of stuff for my bible study that i could have easily borrowed from people in melbourne. ah well, at least you know that you own black cloth is... er.... black!

should be a sensational week. my 12th ncyc...

effective parenting

i've started writing for devo'zine again. the article that I've just finished mentions dr. thomas gordon's notion of "I-messages" as a way of resolving conflict peacefully.

i first came across his "Parent Effectivesness Training" book as part of my children's & youth ministry training at Alcorn College in the early 1980's.

his website has some excellent free parent resources and school teacher resources. well worth a visit.

Gordon was a student of Carl Rogers, from whom he says he gleaned the following principles for 'group-centred leadership'.

• Leadership is a set of functions that are the property of the group and should be "distributed" to group members.
• The most effective leader is one who creates the conditions by which s/he will give up the typical leadership role and become more of a group member. Consequently, group members will then carry out some of the functions of the leader.
• Group problems require "participative group problem-solving."
• Leaders should create the conditions in which all the members feel safe to communicate their ideas and feelings.
• Group-centered leaders need to set a model of attending to others by using "reflection of feelings and meanings" or "empathic listening," the principal skill used by client-centered therapists.
• Group-centered leaders must convey "acceptance of the members' communication."

This is a nice corrective to some of the more hierarchincal models of leadership that seem to be floating around. More on this in my forthcoming post about communicative theologies.

youth specialties conference

I've spent the last couple of days helping out and meeting people at the youth specialties' national youth workers conference here in nashville. I think there are over 4,000 people here. it's sheer coincidence that its on while I'm here. since I wasn't registered, I borrowed an exhibitor's tag and helped the team in the displays area. youth ministry in the US is clearly BIG business, and the array of mission tour operators, t-shirt and web design companies, christian univeisities and numerous publishers made me feel rather ill after a while.

it's given me the chance to meet a number of people, including Terry Carty who runs the Youth Worker Movement, with 4000 members (go join - its free and you get discount stuff!), and Ed Trimmer who teaches youth ministry at Huntingdon College (among other things!), a Methodist College in Alabama. and buy a few more books. damn. that's the last time!

Plus I got to sign the volume of "The Way of Pilgrimage" that I authored...