The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion [Hardcover]

Tim Challies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2011

Even the least technical among us are being pressed from all sides by advances in digital technology. We rely upon computers, cell phones, and the Internet for communication, commerce, and entertainment. Yet even though we live in this 'instant message' culture, many of us feel disconnected, and we question if all this technology is really good for our souls. In a manner that's accessible, thoughtful, and biblical, author Tim Challies addresses questions such as: * How has life---and faith---changed now that everyone is available all the time through mobile phones? * How does our constant connection to these digital devices affect our families and our church communities? * What does it mean that almost two billion humans are connected by the Internet ... with hundreds of millions more coming online each year? Providing the reader with a framework they can apply to any technology, Tim Challies explains how and why our society has become reliant on digital technology, what it means for our lives, and how it impacts the Christian faith.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Tim Challies knows technology and he knows the faith. So, when he writes on the intersection of technology and faith, it's a must read. The Next Story gives solid counsel to living out the gospel in the context of today's rapid progression of technology. -- Ed Stetzer <br><br>

About the Author

A pastor, noted speaker, and author of numerous articles, Tim Challies is a pioneer in the Christian blogosphere. Over 20,000 people visit Challies.com each day, making it one of the most widely read and recognized Christian blogs in the world. Tim is also the editor of DiscerningReader.com, a site dedicated to offering thoughtful reviews of books that are of interest to Christians. Tim is the author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and Sexual Detox. He and his family reside near Toronto, Ontario.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (April 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310329035
• ISBN-13: 978-0310329039
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #148,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I write books and blogs for fun while doing web consulting for a living. I worship and serve at Grace Fellowship Church, edit Discerning Reader and am a co-founder of Cruciform Press. My books include "The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment," "Sexual Detox," and "The Next Story."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faithful Guide for Christians Through the New Digital World, April 5, 2011

By 

Fr. Charles Erlandson (Tyler, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (Kindle Edition)

One of the most important issues facing the Church today is how to engage with the culture and to bring it the saving message of the gospel - without becoming like the culture. This issue has special relevance with regards to the digital communications that seem to govern and rule our lives.

I can't think of a person better qualified to address the place of the Christian in the midst of this digital explosion than Tim Challies. Challies is both a solid Christian with a Reformed background, as well as someone who is intimately familiar with the effects of the digital world on the lives of Christians. Challies is not only a web designer but also a very popular Christian blogger and book reviewer.

This past year, I've read a large number of books dealing with exactly the issue of how Christians should engage the digital world all around us: "The Next Story" is to date the best book I've read on the issue. There are a number of reasons for this. First, Challies ties what he says back to a theological foundation for what he writes. He brings a distinctly Christian perspective that avoids the extremes of jumping on the digital bandwagon or of being afraid to use the new technologies. Instead, he advocates what he calls "disciplined discernment," a trait that he himself manifests throughout the entire book. Second, Challies deals with a large number of relevant issues. While he provides something of a theological basis for what he says, he also writes about the particular issues that are most relevant to the digital world. In this way, "The Next Story" bridges the gap between theory and practice, between theology and real life. Third, Challies has provided what I think is the best overall discussion of the impact of the various digital technologies on our lives and souls - as well as the best discussion of some of the things that we as Christians must practice if we are not be to distracted and led astray by this omnipresent digital world. Throughout "The Next Story," Challies has read and interacted with the best thinkers in the area of media and its influence in our lives.

Let me be more specific about a few of the issues with which "The Next Story" deals. While the book is a little slow in the beginning, Challies really hits his stride in Part 2 of the book when he shows us how to put the theory into practice. In Chapter 4 on Communication, Challies hits the nail on the proverbial head when he dissects some of the ways in which digital communication can become idolatrous: we have fashioned idols of productivity, significance, and a desire for information.

Chapter 5 is even better, when Challies discusses the nature of the mediated world we live in. He sustains an important discussion of the way that digital technologies are disembodying us or "disincarnating" us. One all too real example is the notion of how in the digital world identity is fluid and something we create for ourselves. We take "avatars" for ourselves, and multiple ones at that. We begin to think of ourselves as something apart from our bodies and as beings we can re-create in any image we desire to. We also pursue "networked individualism," based not on a real community but only on the basis of similar, ephemeral shared interests.

Chapter 6 deals with Distraction, a topic I'm keenly aware of as a father of five children and as a high school teacher. Distraction, Challies argues, leads to shallow thinking, which in turn leads to shallow living. And the truth is that we are all more distracted by our digital technologies than we recognize. Even multi-tasking turns out to be highly overrated as a strategy for dealing with our communication overload.

One of my favorite chapters is Chapter 8, on Truth and Authority. Challies' reflection on the "authority" that Wikipedia has developed for itself is worth the price of the book all by itself. Isn't it a little scary that the number one page that shows up on Google for almost any search is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia which has only relatively poor oversight and which has been known to have inaccuracies? What happens when authority is based on popularity, rather than expertise, tradition, or revelation?

Make sure you read the Epilogue, in which Challies reveals to us some of the ways in which he personally has learned to combat the challenges of the digital world. In so doing, he begins to teach us some of the spiritual disciplines we will all need to undertake if we don't want the digital technologies to distract us from Christ. Challies also provides additional suggestions at the end of each of the chapters in Part 2 of the book.

Highly recommended for any Christian who wants to live more faithfully in this digital world!

Here's an outline of the book so you can better see the flow of Challies' thought:

Part 1
Chapter 1 - Discerning Technology
Chapter 2 - Understanding Technology
Chapter 3 - A Digital History

Part 2
Chapter 4 - Speaking, Truthing, Loving, Living (Communication)
Chapter 5 - Life in the Real World (Mediation/ Identity)
Chapter 6 - Turn Off and Tune In (Distraction)
Chapter 7 - More is Better (Informationism)
Chapter 8 - Here Comes Everybody (Truth/Authority)
Chapter 9 - Seeing and Believing (Visibility and Privacy)
Epilogue- The Next Story and the Next Story after That . . .

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great help in thinking theologically about the massive influx of information, April 5, 2011

By 

Matthew Heerema "matt" (Ames, IA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (Kindle Edition)

If you are interested in how a Christian worldview sees the current tsunami-like influx of media technology, this is a book to read.

What is wonderful about the book is that it won't tell you what to think about technology, but it strives to help with how to think, theologically, philosophically, and technologically, about different facets of the information tidal wave.

Seeking to help us gain a better understanding of the nature of our current technological scene, Tim gives a brief overview history of the progression of technology, offering good insights such as the fact that prior to the nationwide expansion of the railroad, no information in the world travelled faster than a horse. (Though, I'd question the outcome of a race between a horse and carrier pigeon perhaps?). This was followed shortly on by the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television, and the Internet. In short, in a short 150 years, the entire nature of information flow has been fundamentally altered.

We are not dealing simply with a new tool we need to know how to master, we are dealing with a new reality, requiring new skills, new disciplines, new discernment, and fresh thought. Ironically, if we are to succeed, we must implement these new modes of operation using ancient wisdom. Tim helps bring this to bear.

He then goes on with some practical implications of this new reality, again not giving us methods and how-to's, or what-to-think's but rather the more helpful how-to-think-about's. One of my favorite concepts he unpacks is the idea of "mediacy". Most of our communication no longer happens face-to-face, but through a medium (e-mail, text, phone or voice chat, video chat, etc).

This medium, by definition acts as a "mediator" (something that stands between), and it has effects on the communication. As I learned in my 101 speech class in college, the medium literally distorts the message, and so requires effort on the part of the communicator and receiver in order to understand properly. Understanding how various media impact your communication will help you apply the correct effort.

This book is worth a read.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living Virtuously in the Digital World, April 5, 2011

By 

Michael Krahn "Michael Krahn" (St. Thomas, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (Kindle Edition)

Like many of us who are not true digital natives, Challies is a fully assimilated digital immigrant struggling to manage the limitless opportunities this new digital world provides.

I have read a lot about technology and social media. From Neil Postman to, more recently, Nicholas Carr to Marshall McLuhan's seminal works, I've read a lot.

I have also been a user of social media for close to 20 years, stretching back to the early 90s and that wonderful forerunner of the Internet known as the BBS. I even do some consulting and speaking on the topics of technology and social media.

I mention all of this to make a point: I have read a lot about technology and have long embraced the technologies that Tim Challies writes about in "The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion" and I still learned a lot from this book.

Why? Because Challies is concerned with more than just how wonderful new technologies are (there are plenty of books that will tell you that), and he's concerned about more than what effects - positive and negative - these technologies might have on the scope of human progress. He takes care to examine the effects that these technologies might be having on our souls as well.

Challies is well qualified to address the topic. As the sole content producer of a blog that registers over 15,000 hits per day, he is one of the most widely read and trusted voices in the Christian blogosphere. Add to this the fact that he is also an elder in his church and it gives him a unique perspective.

His analysis of current technologies and their effects is concise, his prescriptions for dealing with the implications of these technologies are well researched and wise. He speaks as one with authority on these matters because he is one with authority in these matters.

Citizens of the Digital World
The great strength of the book lies in the fact that Tim Challies is like so many of us who inhabit the same digital world: he's excited about the prospects of new technologies while at the same time deeply aware of their potential to harm the health of our relationship with God and the human beings closest to us. Like many of us who are not true digital natives, Challies is a fully assimilated digital immigrant struggling to manage the limitless opportunities this new digital world provides.

"More and more of us are finding that we just can't stop long enough to read. We can't sustain our attention long enough to study," he says, "Where prayer used to be the first activity of every day, we now begin our daily routine by checking e-mail. Where the Bible used to be a special book we read and studied, now it's an e-book that competes with our voice mail, text messages, e-mails, and the ever-present lure of the Internet."

He points out that we cannot blindly embrace every technological advance as "progress", but neither can we simply shun and ignore them and pretend they don't exist. Instead, we must be wise in using technology to advance the Kingdom of God and avoid uses that lead us in the opposite direction.

Technology, like every good gift, is a gift from God. And as we're prone to do with God's other good gifts, we can make an idol of this one as well. "The challenge for the Christian," says Challies, "is to learn to use these media with all the opportunities they bring to speak and to tell of this God who speaks through us."

Another great strength of the book is that it goes beyond mere analysis and calls you to action. In his epilogue Challies examines his own life and habits by the standards he has set in the book, relating his experiences of self-examination and the life changes he has made as a result of his findings.

Summary
"The Next Story" is not a beginner's guide to digital technology, but it is also not written in a way that a newcomer to these technologies will find intimidating. There is enough here for both the newcomer and the veteran to make it a worthwhile read.

If you are a newcomer to digital technology and social media, I recommend this book to you as a great way to get up to speed on the digital world. Read it and use it to guide your navigation in this vast new place we call "cyberspace". It will help you to steer clear of many of the mistakes we digital veterans have made along the way.

If you are a veteran of digital technology and social media, I recommend this book to you as a wake-up call to examine your use (and probable OVER-use) of these new technologies. Read it and ask yourself the tough questions that Tim Challies, a fellow traveler in this new world, has been asking himself.

Of course very few books about current technology can be timeless, but "The Next Story" will have a longer shelf life than most because it establishes biblical principles for living with and using technology for the glory of God.

If "The Next Story" has the same effect on you that it had on me, it will cause you repent of some of your technological habits, to refine many others, and to refocus your attention on the true goal of all that you do, both online and off - to bring glory to God.