A Church "Distributed"
This afternoon, I happened to catch the PBS weekly broadcast of Religion and Ethics Weekly. The subject of one of the reports was the impact of social media upon the way in which people experience both faith communities and the Faith in such a hyper-connected society. From a mega-non-denominational church in central Florida (with an average weekly worship attendance of around 15,000) to a significantly smaller community of nuns and every sort of gathering in-between, there's little doubt social media has impacted the way in which the Church goes about proclaiming its message and creating connections between both people of faith and those dealing with their doubts.
To see the media center in the mega-church was to see technology at its finest. The nuns weren't doing a bad job keeping up with the times either. Of course, the report managed to interview a good, solid mainline denomination pastor (who happened to be Presbyterian, but could have easily been Episcopalian!). To see the juxtaposition of the mega-church staff's iPAD, iPhone and multiple computers was impressive. To see the Sisters' Facebook page and watch them interacting with people who write into their site was inspirational. To watch the mainline pastor, dutifully sitting at his desk, highlighting text out of a book and writing notes on a legal pad without a piece of technology in sight...well, that was poignantly anachronistic.
Naturally, we mainline Christians are slow to adopt technology. We are suspect of anything that smacks of "remote church". I would claim, like the mainline minister in this report, that there's more to Christian community than watching a sermon on a TV screen. But Christian community is also far more dramatic and life-giving than a weekly gathering of a few scores of people in a building where a seminary trained "expert" leads the (mostly passive) "flock" through a series of ritual actions without any sense of how those actions actually connect to the lives they're living outside the doors of the church house.
Technology allows the conversation about matters of faith and spirituality to be much broader and include more people than ever before -- think the printing press to the 10th power (at least!). Of course this sort of grassroots theology always makes the "command and control" structures of denominations nervous.
How can we be sure of the qualifications of those engaged in the discussions? How do we prevent (horrors!) some bit of imaginative theology which might call our staid dogma into question?
And above all, if people stay home to chat and tweet about faith, how will we generate enough income to sustain our overhead -- the buildings, grounds and professional staff we've come to believe are essential to facilitate the community we claim can't be experienced remotely.
Maybe I'm overreaching, but our nervousness sounds a lot like the religious authorities' nervousness in Jesus' time. After all he hadn't been vetted through the proper channels. His birth narrative was "irregular" at best. He chose a ragtag bunch of rabble as his core leadership team. He seemed to have no appreciation for the power of tradition. After his death (the religious authorities of the time wouldn't own the possibility of resurrection), his followers continued his penchant for ignoring structure. They met for prayer and fellowship, in of all places, each other's homes! The "Church" in the Book of Acts didn't begin to grow until it left Jerusalem -- until it was distributed! The message of Jesus was distributed using the technologies of the day -- the most powerful of which was the Pax Romana -- the very Empire so hellbent on keeping control provided the means (roads, trade routes, language, etc) for the message to spread like wildfire.
Imagine that! The Gospel spreading like wildfire -- not marching in a stately procession behind an ornate cross at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning! The Gospel being "tweeted" and "retweeted"...spreading from person to person. I don't know about this sort of viral phenomenon -- it sounds a bit too dangerous. After all, we may want people everywhere to come to faith in Jesus, but don't we really mean, "Come to faith in Jesus the way we tell you to."?
This afternoon, I happened to catch the PBS weekly broadcast of Religion and Ethics Weekly. The subject of one of the reports was the impact of social media upon the way in which people experience both faith communities and the Faith in such a hyper-connected society. From a mega-non-denominational church in central Florida (with an average weekly worship attendance of around 15,000) to a significantly smaller community of nuns and every sort of gathering in-between, there's little doubt social media has impacted the way in which the Church goes about proclaiming its message and creating connections between both people of faith and those dealing with their doubts.
To see the media center in the mega-church was to see technology at its finest. The nuns weren't doing a bad job keeping up with the times either. Of course, the report managed to interview a good, solid mainline denomination pastor (who happened to be Presbyterian, but could have easily been Episcopalian!). To see the juxtaposition of the mega-church staff's iPAD, iPhone and multiple computers was impressive. To see the Sisters' Facebook page and watch them interacting with people who write into their site was inspirational. To watch the mainline pastor, dutifully sitting at his desk, highlighting text out of a book and writing notes on a legal pad without a piece of technology in sight...well, that was poignantly anachronistic.
Naturally, we mainline Christians are slow to adopt technology. We are suspect of anything that smacks of "remote church". I would claim, like the mainline minister in this report, that there's more to Christian community than watching a sermon on a TV screen. But Christian community is also far more dramatic and life-giving than a weekly gathering of a few scores of people in a building where a seminary trained "expert" leads the (mostly passive) "flock" through a series of ritual actions without any sense of how those actions actually connect to the lives they're living outside the doors of the church house.
Technology allows the conversation about matters of faith and spirituality to be much broader and include more people than ever before -- think the printing press to the 10th power (at least!). Of course this sort of grassroots theology always makes the "command and control" structures of denominations nervous.
How can we be sure of the qualifications of those engaged in the discussions? How do we prevent (horrors!) some bit of imaginative theology which might call our staid dogma into question?
And above all, if people stay home to chat and tweet about faith, how will we generate enough income to sustain our overhead -- the buildings, grounds and professional staff we've come to believe are essential to facilitate the community we claim can't be experienced remotely.
Maybe I'm overreaching, but our nervousness sounds a lot like the religious authorities' nervousness in Jesus' time. After all he hadn't been vetted through the proper channels. His birth narrative was "irregular" at best. He chose a ragtag bunch of rabble as his core leadership team. He seemed to have no appreciation for the power of tradition. After his death (the religious authorities of the time wouldn't own the possibility of resurrection), his followers continued his penchant for ignoring structure. They met for prayer and fellowship, in of all places, each other's homes! The "Church" in the Book of Acts didn't begin to grow until it left Jerusalem -- until it was distributed! The message of Jesus was distributed using the technologies of the day -- the most powerful of which was the Pax Romana -- the very Empire so hellbent on keeping control provided the means (roads, trade routes, language, etc) for the message to spread like wildfire.
Imagine that! The Gospel spreading like wildfire -- not marching in a stately procession behind an ornate cross at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning! The Gospel being "tweeted" and "retweeted"...spreading from person to person. I don't know about this sort of viral phenomenon -- it sounds a bit too dangerous. After all, we may want people everywhere to come to faith in Jesus, but don't we really mean, "Come to faith in Jesus the way we tell you to."?
posted by FrGaryB | 10:19 PM
4 Comments:
Here's the link to the PBS report mentioned in this post:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/april-1-2011/religion-and-social-media/8470/
Wow! Again your take both surprises and reassures me. I could not agree more with your take on this interesting story. As always for me it is not how the message is delivered but the accuracy and truth of the message as backed by scripture. Tradition is pretty much about as long as our grandparent can remember. We have had this debate time and again on what traditional vs. contemporary means. ie. our different music styles and how we present the service. If we are not careful, we can get caught up in the discussion too much so that we forget to keep the very message we have been commissioned to give with the partial aid of these different medias.
Brad...I think the point of the story is that social media is one means of folks connecting, a bit at a time, to the entire notion of "community". We churchy-types can easily forget that our "warm and friendly" congregations are often perceived as "aloof and cold" by visitors. The part of the story that was most telling to me was about the group of neighbors who gather around the big screen to watch the message of the day and then spend time with each other in prayer and conversation in a form of house church -- because they had not found a church home since moving into the area. I actually see this as a way in which the Church is going back to the future. Spreading the faith without the overhead of buildings, grounds, "staff" and paid religious professionals like me makes lots of sense...and could well lead us toward more of an understanding of Church as organic community and away from Church as (mostly dead) institution.
I agree with the that the group of people gathering in their living room was interesting and probably effective idea. You and I have touched on this home church before and this seems to take it another step. My word of caution still goes back to content and internet. This remote viewing is not at all new. My grandma went to church at her TV set every Sunday for as long as I could remember. But there was 1 thing missing - Matthew 18:20. Too many can be lead astray by the Bakker style of broadcast and the wide scope and easy access of the internet just increases that type of possibility. So I guess I don't need the brick and mortar but I do need the community. So is it time for the Fr. Gary Online Revelation Nation?
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