Is cyberchurch a viable option for Christians?

EN asks if if an exclusively online church is a viable option for Christians? The article is written in the context of a rapidly growing movement promoting the idea of an exclusively online church. The Church of England and the Methodist Church have already launched versions of online church, and in March of this year a group committed to the development of online churches met in London.

Read the full article Cyberchurch - the future church? which addresses some concerns about online-only and emphasises the importance of the local church and the necessity for all Christians to belong to a local church.

Twinings competition

Twinings are inviting tea-lovers to describe their favourite Everyday moment on the Twinings Discoveries blog; they will send you "a little something" if they like your suggestion best.

Also, the famous Twinings shop on London's Strand has just been renovated, with a new tea-tasting bar. For example, you can try out the autumnal infusions – like Blueberry & Apple or Camomile & Spiced Apple.

Blog Action Day 09‏ (the ecocidal moment)

Today is Blog Action Day - an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will focus on climate change and will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. Follow the action on Twitter in anticipation, with updates from around the world every minute.

I've chosen to post a link to an essay from the Archbishop of Canterbury on the ecocidal moment. In this he discusses his view that the climate and financial crises reveal an amnesia about the human calling:

The Christian story lays out a model of reconnection with an alienated world: it tells us of a material human life inhabited by God and raised transfigured from death; of a sharing of material food which makes us sharers in eternal life; of a community whose life together seeks to express within creation the care of the creator. In the words used by both Moses and St Paul, this is not a message remote from us in heaven or buried under the earth: it is near, on our lips and hearts. And, as Moses immediately goes on to say in the Old Testament passage, "You know it and can quote it, so now obey it. Today I am giving you a choice between good and evil, between life and death … Choose life."

[The Guardian article is an edited extract from the 2009 Operation Noah lecture]

Second Blogaversary

The Infusion blog clocks up its second birthday today, and will probably reach 500 posts this month.

See also: Blogging Birthday and Welcome to the Infusion blog!

Infusion blogs ESTP

A new website, Typealyzer, will analyse a blog and identify the Myers-Briggs type based on the blog content. I submitted this blog and the result was ESTP - The Doers:

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

If we had a wider range of bloggers, would the blog personality change?

What matters to Infusion

The Infusion wordle gives an impression of what we focus on and back in May, when the Infusion blog was a year old, we looked at the most frequent topics on this blog. Here's an update 18 months after Infusion entered the blogosphere:

• Faith (68)
• Environment (41)
• Food (37)
• Internet (36)
• Walks (30)
• Tea (29)
• Christmas Countdown (24)
• Books (24)
• Church (22)
• Fairtrade (21)
• Stewardship (18)

By May we had clocked up 21 posts on tea and 14 on coffee; there are now 29 posts on tea but only 16 on coffee.

A meta-blog post*

Just discovered that our blog post on money-related resources from Christian organisations gets an honourable mention in the Church Times blog. The Church Times blog is written and drawn by Dave Walker and features cartoons, commentary and links. We've included some of Dave's cartoons in this blog, always following his copyright guidelines.

*This is a blog post about a blog post about a blog post from this blog....

Ten cyberspace commandments

Podcasts from the recent EA meeting for Christian bloggers are now available for download, together with ten cyberspace commandments "to give bloggers a moral edge in a virtual age".

Godblogs

The Evangelical Alliance hosted a gathering for Christian bloggers on 23 September at its Headquarters in London. The event was “designed to give Christian bloggers an opportunity to network face-to-face and to think through a godly approach to blogging”. One of the intentions of the event was to begin to develop “a code of conduct for godly blogging”, to help Christians communicate in cyberspace in a Christ-like way.

Read a write-up about the event from one of the speakers, Mark Meynell, who provided a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Christian Blogosphere. The EA website says that a podcast will be forthcoming.

Time Travel: Is Life Without Plastic Possible?

Following on from all those reports about what plastic is doing to sea life (cf David Shukman's reports from Midway island in the Pacific), and how it is absorbing toxins which are then introduced into the foodchain, BBC reporter Chris Jeavans has taken on the challenge to spend the month of August without plastic. (Where she fails, she is collecting the evidence and comparing it against her usual amount of plastic, to see how much it is possible to cut down.) Cutting down plastic when you live a wasteful lifestyle already is probably pretty easy, but cutting it out entirely sounds like no mean feat & I'll be interested to read how she gets on.

Blogging break over

The recent blogging break has been unintentional - it was in part due to a new job and the resultant tiredness when adjusting to a new routine, coupled with no longer having access to a really fast laptop. Then came our summer holiday and a hotel with a slow Internet connection.

All this time, though, possible blog topics and links have been bookmarked and a selection will get posted over the next few weeks. The Infusion blog is back....

Blogging Birthday!

The Infusion blog was launched a year ago on Friday 4 May 2008, and this is post number 258. These are the topics that crop up most frequently:

• faith (50)
• environment (26)
• food (25)
• Christmas Countdown (24)
• Internet (23)
• tea (21)
• church (19)
• walks (19)
• Fairtrade (17)
• Lent (17)
• books (17)
• coffee (14)