Future Wildcards: are these good ideas?

If you had a pair of glasses that contained a computer always connected wirelessly to the Internet and projected a 4-foot monitor in front of your eyes that that only you could see, would your spouse think it was a great idea?
Would a cow that makes penicillin instead of milk be a good idea?
If you [...]

Tom Sine’s Four Streams

Tom Sine defines four new streams of Christianity “with an Anabaptist accent”: emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic. Missional “is little more than buzz” at the present. However, what interested me was the description of the new monastics who have little interest in church planting yet are moving into cities all over the world, living in [...]

Things will get better

At least that’s what Ray Kurzweil believes. His Law of Accelerating Returns that has been used to accurately predict technological inventions for the future. An excellent article would apply his theories to missions.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategicnetwork.org%2F2008%2F06%2Fthings-will-get-better%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Things+will+get+better’;
addthis_pub = ”;

Following Sudan

ReliefWeb has these great analyses of current conflicts and humanitarian crises; if you are advocating for Sudan you want to be subscribed to these RSS feeds.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategicnetwork.org%2F2008%2F06%2Ffollowing-sudan%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Following+Sudan’;
addthis_pub = ”;

Oil much in the news

This professor reiterates the idea that oil production has reached its peak (yet advocates exploring more oil fields–go figure). This article talks about the global impact of oil prices: South Korea, Kashmir, Europe. Everyone wants the price of fuel to be cut, or subsidized, but no one wants to pay more in taxes. What’s a [...]

The risk of drought to world stability

Drought may be (one of?) “the biggest risks” to the world (The Telegraph)

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategicnetwork.org%2F2008%2F06%2Fthe-risk-of-drought-to-world-stability%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘The+risk+of+drought+to+world+stability’;
addthis_pub = ”;

Amazon Kindle: missionary resource

In 1998 I wrote about the future of books, and speculated about the implications of the electronic availability of books. That day is now here: the Amazon Kindle with a 2GB SD card can carry nearly 2,000 books; and an 8GB SD card is easily available. While over 120,000 books in Kindle format are available [...]

Seizing Tomorrow

Three issues–and how African believers respond to them–will determine what the African church of tomorrow looks like.

How much can change in 10 years?

How much can change in 10 years? Consider, on January 1, 1990:
Russia was still the Soviet Union, but Russian troops had just withdrawn from Afghanistan.
The wall between West and East Berlin had just fallen, but Germany has not yet reunified.
Hong Kong still belongs to Great Britain.
Protests against apartheid will result in its end this year.
The [...]

The impact of nanotechnology on the church

Nanotechnology deals with the manipulation of material at the atomic level. It is mainly concerned with construction, but it has wide ranging implications for computers and technology. One example of the potential usage of nanotechnology is to deploy a ‘nanofactory’ which could build a church building out of a large mound of dirt, rocks, water, [...]