• Where are we doing well in mission and ministry?
• "Aspirationals"
• Non European migrants. Many of the largest churches will be almst entirely non European in the next few years
• "Returners"
• In Denmark and Sweden, we are probably seeing the last Christian generation
• Where are we failing: EVERYWHERE ElSE
• Missionary myths: Change the shape of the church, saved by cool (one study suggested that even if church was 100% relevant, only 14% of people woud come), become less ..... (but we seem to admit that the church as a whole is not good), go out (become missional)
• By now we should be "superflat"
• You will fail in ministry if you don't get a correct diagnosis of the culture
• What is secularism in Australia?
• Rejection of God? No, 82% of Australians believe in God.
• Rejection of the church's version of spirituality? No, more people practice Christian spirituality than any other form.
• Be happy, have fun, don't hurt anyone else.
• Sucked dry of anything that is deep.
• Living in the moment, but with a "green" tinge.
• Death of absolute truth. People are starting to question this. [Is this really true? I would say "No one is allowed to be wrong" is more the cardinal rule.]
• Changing our language is an important way of enhancing our ministry effectiveness.
• Japan's "Superflat" art. They even recruit for armed forces and police service with anime characters!
• We are seeing not only Americanising, but Japanesising.
• Superflat culture is : Glitzy, shiny, pretty, shallow.

1. The disenchanted world

• cosmic vacuum cleaner which sucks out all mystery, spirituality, unexplainable. Historical overview: a. pagan world, Quote from "A Secular Age", Charles Taylor about paganism's integration of religion into all aspects of life. b. Christianity comes to Europe and the church becomes the essence of the sacred and the channel between everyday life and the spiritual world. c. The Reformation comes along and takes out the superstition of church practice, but removes the sacred from the church along with it. d. Natural science comes along and takes away the sacred from creation. Demythologisation takes it out of the Scriptures also. e. Secularism ends up with nothing sacred anywhere. We have a "morally insigificant universe" - nothing actually matters.
• Otto: the sacred consists of mystery, terror, and fascination
• Sex has lost its sacredness; monogamy is not valued. How i met your mother defines hotel sex: having sex so you don't have to pay for hotel rooms. Not just women are objectified - everything is objectified. People like "Gospel music" without believing - even Christianity is objectified. Double life syndrome. When you take away the sacred and people aren't a unified whole, you have to be a split personality in each different arena of life. No connection to the land. Removal of story and history from everyday life. It is "the great forgetting". Friendships are objectified as well - everything is utilitarian; people become tools to be used.
• "What existential crisis?" No one can have crises of faith and contemplate the meaning of life. We have to have pop music pumping and advertising everywhere all the time.
• Distraction and idle chatter. Gossip is an industry
• Substitutionary transcendence: consumerism, sex, travel, sport, home improvement, exercise, food, technology, the environment, education, romance, experience, music, movies.
• Binge drinking is being a huge problem because people are trying to draw more meaning out of drinking than it can possibly be expected to provide.
• "No marketplace" of ideas to talk about faith; no one has provided a place to discuss religion at all.
• People have special interest groups (e.g. Basque cooking) and nothing bigger is ever talked about
• Prophets in the Bible had the job of feeling the pain of God. The prophet had a hammer, which can fulfill two purposes: to destroy idols, and to build houses. They play the role of the playful questioner. Where do you need to use the hammer in your life? What do you need to smash? Where do you need to build?
• [We need to remember that the God who we worship is the one who provides the transcendence. It is not manufactured by us in setting up the environment.]

2. Post covenantal

• Australians believe in God, but what sort of god is he?
• We actually have a model of commitment in mobile phone contracts, with punitive damages for breaking it, but covenant requires much more.
• There are three levels of interaction - meta, communal, and individual. The communal zone is the covenantal zone. But in recent years, individual and meta have taken most of the territory previously held by the communal zone.
• But the church has a role to play in modelling covenantal behaviour: we have kept covenant in sex, but not in local church, neighbours, the poor, the environment, indigenous people, etc.
• One of the best things you can do is open your homes and invite people in to eat with you. The most radical and subversive thing you can do is a dinner party.
• Book: John Cavanah, "How to follow Christ in a consumer society"
• Mothers wanting to be their daughters' friends: "Gilmore Girl" syndrome, "peerants", they want peer respect, not parental respect. In Boomers & Gen X, God is the distant angry father; in Gen Y, God is the co-dependent mother who gives me everything.