Posted by Helen on: 04.30.2008 /
As I mentioned, I was at the Alban Institute yesterday for a one day Faith and Technology Conversation.
Anne Van Dusen did a wonderful job of organizing this event. There were about 25 of us: the Alban and Congregational Resource Guide staff and about 20 visitors. Two thirds of the visitors were from out of town. There were about the same number of men and women and the ages ranged from about 30 to 60. There were journalist/writers, priest/minister/pastors, technology professionals and researchers. The group felt diverse but there was no racial diversity - it was 100% white. I’m sure this was a ramification of who was there rather than there being any attempt to avoid racial diversity. But it would have added an interesting element had we not all been white.
Most of the people there were associated with mainline denominational forms of Christianity. Some as a personal vocation; some as writers/technology professionals/researchers whose work involves them with it. Andrea, the journalist taking notes to produce the guide based on yesterday is a former Christian who has converted to Islam, but I only knew that because someone mentioned it to me one on one on Monday evening. (And because she did mention ‘in my Mosque’ once) In one of the breaks I told Andrea I’d just heard Ingrid Mattson and was very impressed.
There were two evangelicals there: David Ambrose, pastor of spiritual formation at Bridgeway Community Church in Indiana and Jeff Kivett, who also attends there and owns a media company. As soon as they said anything it was clear they were evangelicals, because they’re very excited about a video site they’re working on which will answer spiritual questions. They said they weren’t quite sure why they were there, so I suppose, like me, they didn’t know anything about the Alban Institute before they got the invite. Their video site is certainly a good application of web 2.0 (to see a preview, click on the Just TV link on their church site). I think they’re crazy, not because they’re evangelicals but because they got a 4:30 a.m. flight on Tuesday instead of going out the night before. Even the people from New York came the night before. They were friendly guys who thanked Anne, the organizer, for the opportunity to be there.
I was sitting next to Rick Lord, an Episcopal rector who recently ventured into blogging. His blog is A World of your Making. He shared about how blogging and being on facebook has led to interesting interactions he wouldn’t have had otherwise. He also said, what really makes his week is having someone say to him on Sunday “I read your blog”. I enjoyed talking with Rick and I’m hoping he was kidding about banning me from commenting on his blog :). I think he gets the prize for blogging the event first - he already had a detailed post up about it yesterday evening! Go check out Rick’s summary of the event - it’s excellent.
I also enjoyed meeting and talking a little with two other mainline church leaders: Jan Edmiston, a PCUSA minister and Liz Hasen, an Episcopal priest who no longer has her own congregation and now founds and runs eMinistry. Jan blogs at A Church for Starving Artists..
I was very pleased that the group included several smart thoughtful professional women. The main presenter was a woman: Heidi Campbell, a professor at Texas A&M whose specialties are Computer Mediated Communication and Practical Theology. She has done a ton of research over a number of years. Her series of presentations nicely summarized the history of doing religion online: the opportunities, the challenges, the criticisms, how it has developed since it started and where it’s going.
She had some great comparisons. She talked about the changes in media; from linear to database, so now the ordering is flexible and there is no ‘right’ order; from ‘a window on the world’ to ‘a control panel’; from static to navigable. She went through the arguments against online community and showed they weren’t borne out by research. Online community is a supplement not a substitute for face to face community.
Heidi used examples throughout - one interesting one was ‘church of fools’, a short-lived project by ship of fools, very innovative for its time. It was an online service, presented in audio, I think, not video, but with a basic graphic image of people in a cathedral which would include your avatar if you signed up in time. Heidi said the services were rather boring so it didn’t work well - also why not use a more innovative graphic than the grey cathedral? - but there were very interesting conversations before and after the service in the crypt.
Heidi’s blog is When Religion meets New Media. It looks like she’ll be writing about yesterday soon.
Brian Brunius was the other presenter, but he didn’t have a formal presentation like Heidi. He talked about how he didn’t know anyone in his parish and never went to mass. One day he was included on an email from the parish and because of that a number of people asked him to be their facebook friend. He got to know them and now if they invite him to events at church he often goes. So, web 2.0 got him connected with his parish. There’s a facebook group page for the parish set up and maintained by a college kid. He tried to get it approved of by the parish authorities but after some back and forth of them wanting something unacceptable to him on the page, it remains unapproved of. Brian lives in Manhattan and his block has about 17,000 people on but he doesn’t know them apart from those he’s met through facebook.
Brian asked to see examples of what others are doing with web 2.0. He invited the guys from Indiana to demo their video site. They gladly did. It has video answers to questions and also ‘what God thinks’ videos - all of these seem to be of Dave speaking. There are also ‘real stories’ of various people sharing about how God helped them in some way or other. It certainly is neat use of web 2.0 technology and I was glad to hear the site will accept comments and have people available to respond. So it’s not just one-way. On the other hand the content didn’t seem at all attuned to the world of people who like internet video sites. It was very modernist: “what God thinks?” Answers? If the content is not innovative, then no matter how innovative the technology, it won’t hold peoples’ interest (in my opinion). Anyway perhaps I am wrong and multitudes will be saved through this site. And whether I’m wrong or right Dave and Jeff were decent friendly guys and maybe I’m just jealous because I don’t have a site that’s all cool videos :).
Brian also asked Jeremy, who works (worked?) with him at PBS, New York, to talk about his new community blog. Jeremy is as excited about this as Dave and Jeff are about their video site. Jeremy hasn’t actually set the blog up yet but plans to very soon. His vision is that it will be a faith/religion version of metafilter, a community blog which many people belong to and post short announcements on. Jeremy says any news is on metafilter.com before it hits the news media outlets. Jeremy promised he’d be actively soliciting all of us to join his blog and post on it.
Near the end, Anne asked if anyone else wanted to show what they’re doing with web 2.0. Helen Mosher showed people the Episcopal Cafe and revgalblogpals sites, both of which she’s involved in. She’s a social media strategist and avid blogger. Helen’s blog is here: helenmosher.com .
There were interesting comments and questions throughout the day. A number of people agreed with Brian about how facebook had helped them connect. In response to how people seek others like them online and sometimes are more successful at finding them online than offline, John (with the Congregational Resource Group, also involved in a social justice group) said church/the Body of Christ should be more than groups of people who are like each other. He said he’d be bored if that was all it was and didn’t Paul talk about different types of people in the Body of Christ? I really liked John because he seemed very kind.
People talked about the generation gap - how young people are totally into web 2.0 and older people don’t use it and don’t seem to want to, because it’s too hard for them to learn. How can that gap be bridged? Another topic was, there are limits to what you can do online. Sacraments cannot be taken online. People who develop online relationships generally want to meet those people face to face.
I need to think about how what was said relates to Off The Map’s online presence. Heidi shared a lot and there wasn’t time to process what she said and everyone else’s comments yesterday.
I appreciated being part of this event - I’m very glad I was invited to participate.
Comment by: Andrea Useem
1 05/1/08 12:11 PM | Comment Link |Hi Helen, thanks for the great write-up here, very helpful for me as I move forward with compiling this all into a booklet….your comments and insights were very helpful.
Comment by: Helen
2 05/1/08 1:08 PM | Comment Link |Thanks Andrea!