Greetings! Mike here again whilst Tim is in the Middle East. Today we’re going to look at some top futurist blogs. What’s a futurist, you ask? Futurism – or strategic foresight – is a social sciences discipline. It’s kind’ve like the mirror-image of history. Like history, which doesn’t determine what ‘actually happened’ (something rather impossible, not to mention undesirable given the rich array of perspectives that exist about any given moment of the past), futures (and its always plural) seeks to educate regarding possibilities thinking, a fully-funded imagination that can look at a range of possible future scenarios and pro-actively created desired futures in an empowering way. The reason that I got involved with the Presence families of ministries is largely because I’m a student of Strategic Foresight; Transmillenial eschatology sees the future as an open book, in which we have the sacred privilege of co-creating with God, one moment at a time. While the foresight field is ‘faith neutral’ (its actually historically a tad hostile to faith, though that is changing as more nuanced and integral views effect the discipline), its view of an open future is quite compatible with this “way of seeing.”

Here are futures blogs that my KedgeForward partner Frank Spencer and I pay closest attention to in the foresight community:

Avant Game – Jane McGonigal

Emergent by Design – Venessa Miemis

Far Other Worlds – Dominique Jaurola

Foresight Culture – John Mahaffie

Open the Future – Jamais Cascio

The Long Now

This past autumn I had the privilege of hosting my friends Spencer Burke and Mike Morrell at Gwynne & I’s place in the beautiful Black Forest of Colorado. While spending several days visiting together, we filmed this piece for Spencer’s show on TheOOZE.tv, Think:FWD. It was completely off-the-cuff, and shares my heart lately with regards to what Douglas Adams called “life, the universe, and everything.” I’d love to hear your feedback!

I’ve been reading widely lately, enjoying the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz; it’s amazing how looking at shared life experiences from the life of another can help re-focus your lenses in powerful new ways. I’m experiencing this same phenomenon with a contemporary writer, Samir Selmanovic, and his provocative book It’s Really All About God. Samir has walked in many shoes across his life. Ethnically he is Croatian. In faith, he is a Christian – a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor to be exact. But these labels don’t tell the whole story; there is more: At different times in his life, he has also been Muslim, and Atheist – and with strong affinities for Judaism – all lived out, these days, in the melting pot of New York City (see his work at Faith House Manhattan). In the crucible of these different identities he’s been able to hold all identity lightly and focus on what unites rather than divides us – what I’ve come to call meeting at the intersection of humility and mystery. Samir says it differently than I do, and I celebrate this difference as I’m reading his story.

As my friend Mike Morrell recently said on his blog regarding It’s Really All About God,

Do yourself a favor and read it. If you’re too cheap to immediately spring for a copy merely on my recommendation, listen to this recent talk he gave. And hear him read excerpts from his book. But then buy it! You’ll be glad you did.

Here’s Samir in his own words:

What are you reading right now that’s giving you life?

The event will be held at the Indian Hills Church and will have as participants Tim King and Kevin Beck of Post-Christian Connection, Mike Morrell of zoecarnate, leading futurist Frank Spencer, Trevor Harden of RockOm and many more.

Nashville’s own Christian rockers, The Redding Brothers will be performing all 4 days!

More details and an updated list of participants coming soon, stay tuned!