In the first message of an amazing 3-part series, Fran maintains that I may know a lot about how technology is changing, and yet be ignorant to how it’s changing me. Addressing a conference hall of 500 college students from a dozen universities in five states, he challenges them to reject the labels that researchers and social media moguls paint them with. Drawing extensively from secular scholars and researchers from a wide spectrum, he builds a compelling case that we seem to resemble our gadgets more than our parents. (47 min.)

This second message explores the way we look and think about ourselves as people, and our assumptions about what really is “progress.” Fran seeks to forge an understanding of personhood that has one foot rooted firmly in the ancient scriptures, and the other in the modern world. He insists that the modern American obsession with “virtuosity” ignores and abandons the vital need for virtue, and is producing people who think in terms of themselves rather than others. This is, or should be, especially disconcerting to Christians because it is the antithesis of the model we have in Jesus. (56 min)

In this final message, “You Are NOT The Point!” Fran explores what he calls the “New Normal vs the Ancient Radical,” in terms of how we relate to people. He contrasts the American obsession with “individualism” — independence and autonomy, with “individuation“—having a sense of self, forged in community. He shows, in a very compelling way, that the fastest way to influence the world for good and the gospel, has always been and always will be, face-to-face. Discipleship can never be done in a crowd, or…in the cloud. (38 min)