Why Should the Church Bother with Social Media?

Technological advances have always driven change, revolution and reform in church and society.  To give but one example, the printing press made the Reformation possible, or at least allowed the Reformation to spread quickly. With the invention of the printing press came a rise in the literacy rate, which meant that no longer would the people be dependent on a small cadre of religious leaders for their information. Now, the Bible could be put into their own hands, and they had control.

In the last century, first Radio, then Television, and finally the internet made it possible for people to connect in ways that opened up horizons never seen or heard before.  The world, in a sense, became smaller, even as one's grasp of the complexity of the world grew much larger.  No longer were we limited to the printed word, but now the oral and the visual could be shared broadly revolutionizing the way we see the world.  I remember growing up with the Vietnam War broadcast every evening on the national news.  By the time of the First Gulf War, I could watch the events occur live and in color from afar. 

Now at the dawn of the 21st century, we are seeing the impact of new forms of technology. They build upon what was, but they expand the influence and impact much more widely. Could the recent and current revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have happened so quickly without the ability of organizers to quickly mobilize large sectors of the population? They could do this because of Facebook and Twitter, two tools of technology that are less than a decade old. We are living in a new age where communication is instant and global.

We’ve seen what Facebook and Twitter have meant to these Revolutions, but what about the church? What influence will they have on the way we live and work and serve together? Will we receive them, even as we received the printing press, or will we shun them? It would seem that the groups and communities that most effectively utilize these tools will have a better opportunity to communicate a message and shape the conversation.

I’m of the belief that we must understand and make use of these tools, which in and of themselves are benign. Like any tool they can be used for good or ill, and so we must understand their use and value and decide how we are to use them. So, with that in mind, our congregation decided to work with Doug Pagitt to host a day long seminar on Social media (this past Thursday). This seminar is called a Social Phonics Boot Camp – for good reason. We rapidly moved through a “basic training” in the philosophy and use of social media – from Facebook to YouTube, from blogs to internet radio.

Although much of the day was hands-on, we began where we should – with the development of a Social Media philosophy. Why do this? Why use social media? Why not stick with the tried and true – like the mail and the printed word? What does this media add to our mission? Every church and every church leader must ask these kinds of questions, and the answers will prove enlightening and perhaps even revolutionary.

I want to close my comments with a word about my involvement with blogging. Doug asked me to help him with that portion of the seminar because I’m a pastor who blogs regularly. I didn’t provide the technical expertise, I helped with the philosophy. I started blogging five years ago (February 2006) because I like to write and I needed an outlet. As a blogger, I’m my own editor (unfortunately that includes being my own copy editor!) I started out just writing whatever came to mind, mostly about religion or politics, but I don’t know that I had really thought about why I was doing it. Then I read a piece that suggested that if you want to develop an audience you have to post regularly, and daily is best. So, I started to post daily, and continue to do so.

Still the question is why do this? And over time I’ve discovered that I have something to say, that there are people who find what I say helpful or useful, and that I can have a far larger audience through the blog than I can through my preaching or my teaching ministry. Now, I don’t know the extent of my influence. That’s not something easily gauged. I can check to see how many visitors or readers I get, but that doesn’t tell me a whole lot. Sometimes I get emails from readers and there are the comments that come. But here’s the basic philosophy. I believe that there are many different messages out there. Some of these messages, whether political or religious, can be harmful and destructive. My hope is that the words shared here are different. I pray that they lift up those who are struggling with life and with faith. I pray that these words might be healing, and I pray that they contribute to the common good. My voice is only one voice, but when we join our voices, then good things happen.

My word to my colleagues in ministry and leadership in the church, especially among progressive and moderate communities of faith – consider carefully this new technological revolution. We are entering what Doug calls the Inventive Age, an age that demands that we  recognize that change is happening quickly, and that creativity is key to engaging this new reality.  It is my belief, that if we don’t learn to engage the current technologies and unleash our creativity, then the message we wish to share will get drowned out by competing messages. If you don’t believe me, just think about who controls the religious dimensions of TV, the last great media revolution!

Blog Readers West of the Mississippi?

I've been rather serious in my postings lately -- nothing too light.  I would have posted something quite joyous on Monday evening had the Ducks been able to pull that game out.  Oh, they should have won!  But, alas they didn't and we'll have to wait for next year.

So, this morning I want to reflect on blog readership statistics.  That seems light enough, doesn't it? 

Here's what I've been pondering from some time -- why so few visits to this blog from folks living west of the Mississippi River?  Is there a digital divide that separates the two halves of the nation?  Are they still laying cable over the prairies and the plains?  Are the Rockies too high of mountains to surmount with blog waves? 

I ask these questions because every time I check the map on my "sitereader" the eastern half of the country is covered, but further west it's as barren as the western plains of Kansas.  Yes, there are a few readers well out to the west in California and Oregon, but I get just about as many readers in Europe as in California, and I've lived a hardy portion of my life in California and Oregon! 

So, why is this?  Why is it that the map gets covered east of the Mississippi and not so much to the west?  Is it the religious nature of the topics?  Is this proof that Westerners are secularists with little time for religious talk?  Or could it be that there is a digital divide that runs along the Mississippi River? 

Enquiring minds want to know, so what do you think?!

Editors Not Bishops -- then and now

The Stone-Campbell Movement, of which the Disciples of Christ (my home tradition) has a lot of great slogans, such as "We're Christians Only, Not the only Christians" and "No Book but the Bible, No Creed but Christ."   There is another slogan that goes like this:  "We don't have bishops, we have editors."  That adage emerged early on because we were in our origins a rather loosely knit group with no official structure.  We did, however, have influential leaders, who while not having official titles had journals that they edited.  Alexander Campbell had two such journals, the Christian Baptist and later the Millennial Harbinger.  Barton Stone edited the Christian Messenger and Walter Scott The Evangelist.   Later on other journals would emerge, some of which became official or semi-official organs of different parts of the movement.  These included J.H. Garrison's Christian-Evangelist, which was the precursor to the Disciple, the last official Disciples journal, and Isaac Errett's Christian Standard, which still exists and is a primary magazine of what is called the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ.  A number of journals emerged that were edited by more conservative elements in the movement, which gave birth to the Churches of Christ -- journals edited by Benjamin Franklin, Moses Lard, and others.

The Disciples of Christ today have equivalents to bishops -- a General Minister (Rev. Sharon Watkins) and Regional Ministers, but we no longer have an official magazine.  In fact, we've been without one for sometime, but Disciples World, a separately funded and run journal existed for several years but finally stopped publication.  That reality has led many of us in Disciples circles to wonder out loud about what should take its place.  There doesn't seem to be any money or support for reestablishing a print magazine, whether official or unofficial.  Most of the options available are electronic and all lack official sanction.  There is, for instance a number of blogs that are designed for Disciples.  These include [D]mergent, to which I've become a contributing writer.  There are blogs like mine or that belonging to Keith Watkins' that are written by Disciples, but which have a broader focus.  There are Facebook groups and fan pages, and there is The Intersection, which is part of the Ning Network.  That network was launched as an adjunct to Disciples World and is the sole remaining part of that effort.  It is, however, in an uncertain place, for there is concern for costs and oversight. 

So, maybe we are entering into a world of many editors, none of whom have official titles or support or recognition, but who speak from within (but never for) the movement.  The question is this -- how do we stay connected?  How do we communicate with a sense of common purpose?  We value unity and speak of ourselves as a "Movement of Wholeness in a Fragmented World" (more about this later).  But if we don't have an official "organ" and there is a multitude of voices, how do we speak to the world and each other?  

I'd like to open a conversation, and if you are a blogger and are part of the Disciples of Christ tradition, then give a description and leave your URL!  Let's see who our modern editors are! 

Power, Virtue, and Common Sense -- (Keith Watkins)

My friend and mentor in all things related to worship and church, Dr. Keith Watkins, Professor Emeritus of Parish Ministry at Christian Theological Seminary, has launched a new blog -- Keith Watkins Historian:  Religious Historian; Aggressive Cyclist.  He will be posting essays that cover matters of religious history, practical theology, and cycling.   Keith is the author of a number of important books, including The Great Thanksgiving:  The Eucharistic Norm of Christian Worship (Chalice Press, 1995).  I offered to re-post some of his essays to introduce his new blog to readers.  I hope you will follow the link to Keith's blog and become a follower.  In this essay, Keith picks up the question of power as analyzed by Reinhold Niebuhr in his The Irony of American History.

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“The most important book ever written on American public policy,” if we can believe Andrew J. Bacevich, began as lectures delivered on college campuses shortly after the close of World War II. The lecturer was Reinhold Niebuhr, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and his speeches were published in 1949 as The Irony of American History.

President Obama is well versed in Niebuhr’s ideas, which may be one reason why the University of Chicago Press has reissued the book, sixty years after its first appearance. It has a new introduction by Bacevich whose 2008 book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, draws extensively upon Niebuhr’s work.

Niebuhr’s organizing motif is irony, which he describes as a situation with incongruities that on the surface seem unrelated, but upon closer examination are closely tied together. “Virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue,” and “strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt” the person or nation that is strong.

Applied to American life, irony comes in two patterns. First, the good in American life—our scientific developments, our emphasis upon the dignity of every person, our freedoms, our preeminence in world affairs—carries with it unrecognized tendencies which, if allowed to develop unchecked, undercut or destroy the good. Second, certain elements of American society that are undervalued or scorned—the young, the deviant, the culturally dispossessed, the uneducated—possess within themselves the possibilities of contributing new strength that can make the nation better.

Irony helps us understand that America’s necessity to exercise power carries with it the inescapable development of guilt.

Niebuhr’s illustration is the threat to use atomic weapons after World War II. As Americans, we had always thought of ourselves as a most innocent and virtuous nation, but after the war we also found ourselves the world’s most powerful. We were custodians of the most destructive weapon ever developed, and we could not disavow its use in order to maintain our virtue. Yet if we had used it, we would have covered ourselves with a terrible guilt.

For Americans, the irony is that “the greatness of our power is derived on the one hand from the technical efficiency of our industrial establishment and on the other from the success of our natural scientists. Yet it was assumed that science and business enterprise would insure the triumph of reason over power and passion in human history.” We know that this assumption was (and is) ill founded.

The ironic dimension of American foreign policy helps us understand current efforts to protect the world from forces that threaten freedom, dignity, and life itself. The exercise of power has been defended as the action of a nation that believes in freedom and wants to extend it to people around the world. Yet, the defense of freedom, supported by a significant body of intellectual analysis, has led the nation into preemptive wars in the Middle East.

Not only has this warfare brought violence and suffering; it has also caused our military forces to engage in actions that emulate many of the most coercive tactics of those whom we battle in the name of our superior freedoms and way of life.

Toward the end of his book, Niebuhr writes that in America common sense trumps theory. Truth “becomes falsehood, precisely when it is carried through too consistently.” Common sense prevents both of the primary theories (Niebuhr calls them wisdoms) now operating in America from being carried through to their logical conclusions.

Niebuhr writes as a theologian, often drawing upon the Bible in order to show the ironic point of view in full operation. His book is a splendid example of how theological ideas can be brought into public discourse in ways that transcend sectarianism. Social policy and political action would be improved if more of our public discourse were of this kind.

In the nation’s capitol and in legislative assemblies around the country, let this be remembered: Carried too far, held until the bitter end, our virtues become vices. When we are most certain of ourselves, those things we demean or despise may lead to positive change.

Niebuhr is right. A renewed awareness of the ironic character of American culture and politics could allow common sense to trump our ideologies again. The result: foreign policy and political action at home would both be much improved.

Keith Watkins Historian

Professor Emeritus

Christian Theological Seminary