Notes from 1st March: We focussed on email and mobile phones (you can't tackle everything in one go!).  Some issues included:

- We spend alot of our time looking at screens. It's hard to manage all the communications we get from work / friends / church / etc

- email creates a virtual community.  We don't have to 'copy' in anyone we don't want to.  There's a danger of a self-chosen, self-funded clique that bears no relation to our geographical neighbours and may exclude the poor.

- It's much easier to argue and offend people on email - where there aren't the subtle cues you get from face to face communication

- Mobiles and email make us less relaible - it's so easy to cancel and shift things, making an arrangement doesn't mean what it once did

- We get worth from our mobiles - from how they look; the technology they feature; from being wanted; from hearing that ever-so-addictive ring tone; from being 'in the loop'.  The proof of this is when we find it hard to swich them off!

- Mobiles have brought in a new ettiquette: it's OK to interrupt someone if you've been called; no one is ever 100% with the person they're with - you can always be interrupted by someone more 'important'  

How can we move in a different direction?

- Choose to be uncontactable sometimes - keep the phone on silent

- Make sure you get your worth from God (first thing in the morning, while the phone is still off), and be present to him first before anything else

- Learn to be fully present with people, or to be truly on your own with God.  Offer people 3-D flesh and blood friendship (like God offered himself to us in the incarnation).  By doing this we can outclass consumerism, even if our social circles are smaller

(Mark Powley)