Kester Brewin

In a comment on the last post on leadership ‘Emerger’ asked: “What does this mean in real life? The most I can draw out so far is that we facilitate conversation. I don’t think that in itself is enough.” He/she then goes on to propose some thoughts on work by Carver and Bell (“John Carver [...]

Very interesting feature in the journal Nature (article here; podcast here) about new research that shows that chimps have absolutely no altruistic bones in their bodies. Given carefully constructed opportunities to do a friend a favour… they just didn’t. This research doesn’t, of course, prove that true altruism exists in humankind. Many would say it [...]

It seems that my hunch about the link between sleep and our complex/emergent brains was right, at least according to this article in The Guardian today. In an article I wrote some time back, I expanded on this a little more, but to summarize: It is when we sleep that our brains do the ‘post-processing’ [...]

For those who might just be looking in, I’ve been writing a series of posts concerning leadership in the Emerging Church. I say ‘concerning’ because I have some concerns that unless we actually deal with the leadership issue properly we will simply end up with the same church situation we are critiquing. But with tea-lights. [...]

I mentioned in the title for the Blah… talk something about urban exoskeletons, but didn’t get to it, so I thought I’d just fill in here. Manuel de Landa, in his excellent book 1000 Years of Non-Linear History talks about the evolution of species and cities in some really interesting ways. One of the comments [...]

Phil, who was at Blah… last night raises the question in a comment on the previous post: “Previously theology has been at the centre of any discussion about church development but increasingly those engaged in the emerging church conversation seem to be listening more to cultural analysists, psychologists, philosophers and sociologists and less to theologians…” [...]

Had a great few days away, and things seemed to go well at Blah… in Manchester last night. The Nexus space that is getting going there seems excellent. For anyone who is interested, the (very sketchy) notes I spoke from I’ve uploaded as a PDF here: I’d actually mentioned something about exoskeletons in the brief [...]

I’m going to be away from Saturday until the following weekend. Holiday in Wales, then to Manchester on Thursday 20th to speak at Blah… on Cities, God and the Urban etc. Be good to see people there. In the mean time, many thanks to Saga (more of soon) for the link to these wonderful images [...]

This morning I was sent an article to look over, which contained reference to Baumann’s work on ‘liquid modernity’, taken up by Pete Ward in his book ‘Liquid Church’. It set me thinking again, as I had done when discussing Pete’s thesis at a very early Blah…, about how much Baumann knew about the science [...]

A number of people have asked how they can get hold of the book from the US/Canada/Oz etc. It seems import taxes, custom delays etc. have hampered getting the book from amazon.co.uk. To get round the problem you can now get the book direct from me (signed if you wish!) for US$25 including all p&p. [...]