Author: Jörn Herding

Individualisation is currently a trend of western society. In the past in society it was usually set, that the children follow the parents in the profession, the social clubs and the church beliefs. In The trends grow with the customers. The traditional churches face the challenge, that they have the historic buildings, the traditional songs. The bureaucracy to secure the uniform true belief. To save and secure the old generation that grew up with the traditional form of belief the churches might sacrifice to bring the gospel to the next generation. It is important not to change the message of the bible. But hold on the form of presentation of the message.

The big churches, are slow to bring the message to new social media. There is nothing like a Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer or Hillsong in Germany. As with all churches you can have different opinion, if they teach the “true” and right gospel, but at least they might win believers that start to read the bible and find the way to God.

It seems that individualisation is increasing. Perhaps the people grew older is a reason. The sub cultures. Of punks from the 1970s goes down, but still exists. The music styles, of rock, pop, classical music, metal, hip-hop, techno, house do all exist parallel. Although perhaps the perception is wrong an is due to the fact that the people grew older with the bands, both are popular when they are young, they perform as long as they can and then they die and with them the majority of their followers.

In the same way the political parties, I can see in Germany struggle between keeping the traditional voters and being open for new ones. The result is, that the traditional parties as Christian democrats and the socialists party is losing young voters to the “young, modern” green party. At the same time they face the challenge of individualisation, with the upcoming, of the left wing party and the right wing party. The decline of the traditional parties is therefore not surprising but.

Businesses react much faster to the trend of individualisation, as if they do not adapt to the development of society and technology they disappear much faster than churches, which had a monopoly. There are many different churches in the city I live in, but many are struggling to keep their believers. If one believer just keeps their own children a church should keep the number of their members, but they do not archive that. It seems difficult to keep the balance, between all the good things churches do in hospitals, kindergartens, schools and social services. What do they do with the traditional buildings, that are often more like museums than a place to live the message of the God? In psalms the sentence I recall to have read most often is that you should sing a new song to god. That could mean that you should go with the times of presentation. The message is eternal.

The company TransferWise developed an innovative banking service to reduce the banking fees for international money transfers. The idea is to match transfers from one country to another by transfers in the other direction. The money can stay in countries and the transfer of the funds can be saved. Therefore the fees can be much lower.

My limited personal experience with transfers by TranferWise is excellent.

 For donations and all smaler international transfers of funds this can save significant amounts and make donations more efficient. For the purpose of the Direct Donation Network international transfers should be credited immediately on the beneficiaries account, as an instant payment. So the recipient can use the donation and thank the donor. We will see when TransferWise or other banks and service providers can provide international instant payments.

Recently I read an interesting article about effective altruism. Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that applies evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. For example that it seems better instead of spending USD 5.000 for an electric wheelchair to use it for 25 operations of blind children in a developing country and give them sight back. The idea of effective altruism reflects in the direct donation network as it uses the internet to be able to to donate directly to poor people that are far away. The development of the direct donation network seems to be a good investment of time and funds in terms of effective altruism.