Connect and reconnect

From The Cantata 147 of J. S. Bach (1685-1750)  The New Beginnings Lutheran and Mount Olive Lutheran Choirs sing during The Bach Concert on February 18, 2:00pm at Mount Olive. The concert was the first event of the celebration of our 70th Anniversary in 2023.  Lucas Albrecht - Conductor Paulo Brum - Organist https://youtu.be/ZLkCM49c0SQ   Jesus is my joy forever. He the balm that calms my strife. Jesus comforts all my sorrow, with His strength sustains my life. He my eyes' delight and pleasure. He my soul's most costly treasure. Never will I lose His light from my heart and from my sight.

I've logged into ChatGPT to test it with my areas of research interest. I typed: " Write an essay connecting Lutheran congregations, digital well being and mobile apps"\ Here's what I got: "Lutheran congregations have been an integral part of Christian worship for centuries. The traditional approach to worship involves attending church physically, but with the advent of technology, digital well-being has become an increasingly important aspect of worship. Mobile apps are now being used by Lutheran congregations to foster digital well-being and promote a deeper connection with God.   Digital well-being involves the proper use of technology to enhance one's mental, physical, and emotional well-being. The use of mobile apps has made it easier for Lutheran congregations to keep in touch with their members, especially during the pandemic when physical meetings were restricted. Mobile apps offer various features that help to enhance digital well-being, including pu

  1.      Wolf, Maryanne. Reader, Come Home the Reading Brain in a Digital World . First Harper paperbacks edition. New York: Harper, 2019.   Maryanne Wolf explores years of research of the human brain especially related to the digital era. One of her points of concern, to which she summons society to a watchful vigilance, is to avoid that “the quality of our attention and memory, the perception of beauty and recognition of truth, and the complex decision-making capacities based on all of these atrophy along the way”. That may contribute to this atrophy is the fluidity of our attention, as we go from “one stimulus to another… with consequences none could have predicted.” Wolf understands that the bigger impact of technology on the human brain, especially in children, is the ability of deep reading that traditionally would be obtained with physical books. This concept includes processes of connecting background knowledge to new information, the activity of making analogies and d

 from my comments on the discussion board of our Spring Course. ________________________ God is dead points to the fact that our former structure of interpretation of everything, in which God was taken for granted as the higher value and the lens through which reality was understood, is gone. There is no longer a higher source outside of humanity to which to appeal to on what is true, good and right. It doesn't mean so much that God is not worshipped or believed anymore. God doesn't even need to exist for many Churches to exist - believers will have reasons for their own believing, but not for everyone believing. It is more so that normal nihilism has settled, where higher values are devalued by its use. Now different structures of interpretation compete in the same sale of values and worldviews. One concrete way in which American Churches reinforce the death of God is by teaching theology of glory/prosperity. In it God is not the higher structure of interpretation of the world

A slightly modified version of an essay presented in the Fall 2022 Course.  Digital well being, mobile app technology and the Church ________________   DIGITAL WELL BEING - Challenges and opportunities of mobile phone technology     The contrast happens inside my own house. My three-year-old daughter comes close to where I am sitting with my phone in hands. She pulls my shirt, asking for attention, and sometimes, what I give her is a few words, hardly disconnecting my eyes from the screen. After some insistence, she finally gets my attention, but not in full. I might tend to her just enough to supply her immediate need and go back to my browsing. Then, on the other end of the living room, my six-year-old son plays with a “real life” globe next to the TV. When I ask him the location of random countries around it, he will nail them all down. Where is that knowledge from? He watches videos and apps about world maps, quizzes about capitals and flags. His math abilities have also