Communicating Faith in a Web 2.0 World. According to the Presbyterian Communicators Network website, apparently I have something to say on this topic. I will be at the Midwest Regional Conference of the Presbyterian Communicators Network August 25-27 at the Stronghold Conference Center in Oregon, IL. I will be presenting the opening plenary at the conference; my topic is “Communicating Faith in a Web 2.0 World” and this is the description of what I am supposed to speak about:
What are the ups and downs of communicating faith in a Web 2.0 world? Where do ethics fit in, and how might this affect our communications and the future of the church? We will learn some of these answers from Adam who blogs regularly at Pomomusings.
As I begin to prepare my presentation, is there anything you think I really need to hit on, based on the description? What burning questions would you have on this topic? What do you think Presbyterians need to focus on, related to faith in a Web 2.0 world?
Hopefully, we’ll find a way to get my presentation up on Ustream.tv and maybe we’ll get a live-blog up during the presentation, as long as everyone promises to be nice (especially some folks).
Related posts:
Share This Post:
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
A few thoughts: To what extent is your audience going to be aware of the distinction between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0? And…to what extent will the conversation focus on the distinction between communicating faith and communicating polity?
I’m particularly interested in our ability to have constructive, Spirit-filled dialogue through the blogosphere. Not the “you talk with those who are like you” conversations with the folks in your blogroll, but conversations with those who are radically “the other.” I’ve had extended exchanges with fundamentalists and the ultra-orthodox that have started hammer and tongs and ended in surprising civility. I’ve had similar conversations with atheists. These online exchanges are an opportunity to both witness to and personally manifest the grace of Christ…sorta like the PUP report recommended.
I’ll be as nice to you as you were to me in the GA live blog…
:P
Interesting… When I hit the Ustream link, I found my friend David Gray, another Presbyterian pastor at the New American Foundation, interviewing someone about terror, torture, and the dark side….
Just goes to show how powerful the 2.0 world can be in gathering social justice networking.
I look forward to tuning into the discussion.
What do I think Presbyterians need to focus on? That is a loaded question. I’m going to choose one thought and try my ADD best to stick with it. I hope energy will be put back into the support of smaller communities using online and social media. Some of you might remember when Presbynet (http://www.pcusa.org/presbynet) came out and others of you might be too young. When it first launched it created this new way of being Presbyterian online. It created a new community to meet other Presbyterians from this country and around the world. It was social networking in the 90′s. In many ways it was ahead of its time and because of that it was never truly accepted. Since the internet boom the cost of developing online communities has dropped and Presbyterians have became splintered online. Were having similar conversations in a 1,000 different online forums. There is a Google, yahoo and ning group discussing the same stewardship campaign ideas. I love what decently.org has done. Their partnership with the Presbyterian outlook is exciting but I have to admit it’s another site that I have to remember to check. I would like the pcusa to consider developing an open application for the various social networks such as facebook, myspace and Google. This application would give Presbyterians the opportunity to start conversations, share pictures and video from their experiences throughout the church in one place. It would also allow folks to stay within the social network they are currently using. Creating a new unique pcusa social network would be nice but would probably have a pretty low adoption rate. Let’s put our energy and resources into meeting folks where they are online. Let’s make communicating as Presbyterians easier. Lets be more unified.
I think something that is really basic, but enormously important to remember in a web 2.0 world is the fact that you’re communicating with real people and in a medium accessible to anyone and everyone. Often we do not treat fellow-bloggers with the same respect we would show to a person were we speaking with them face-to-face.
Pretty basic and can be said briefly, but I think it’s huge. The Golden Rule applies just as much to web 2.0 as it does day-to-day interactions with people you meet in the workplace, at church, or in your neighborhood.
I’m sure they (and I would too) would love to know what you think the next “big” thing will be after blogging and Facebook. Where does our hyper communication in the 21st century go now?
One obvious thing is the very postmodern process of two way faith interaction need to know that they do not have to have a blog or facebook page to be heard in the 2.0 universe. Help them get on line, give them places to go to comment, show examples of interesting dialogs between both geographically disperse and theologically disperse people. IT is no longer about getting the “right” perspective out to the masses, but to get the masses to participate in the dialog shaping perspectives. This is the big change with web 2.0 to me, mass participation without a lot of structure.
Scary for the decently and in order folks, but very essential to the wired folks.
Let my experience be a cautionary tale about the bringing of offline disputes online.
hope it goes really well for you. i am speaking on a similar topic at Greenbelt festival in UK next month – on “transforming mission for the 10/24 wwwindow” which will deal with native forms of mission and church as well as sharing faith online.
if you remind me in a few weeks, i will email you my stuff.
I’m not promising anything….
Seriously, that would rock.
I have a suggestion. If you could talk seriously about the problem of fantasy in relation to theoblogy, your talk would fascinate me, for one. For instance, within the world of “web 2.0 theological production,” what is the difference between substance and fluff? How do readers of theological blogs know where to draw the line between theological fantasies and theological facts? How much of what “happens” on the web of blogged theology is not actual dialogue but closer to hypothetical or imagined monologue? These are some of the biggest pitfalls I see emerging (pun intended) in relation to web 2.0 and the church. I would love to hear you address such questions, if, of course, you consider them live questions.
I think one thing to communicate is that the web is one of a number of communications tools. Our tools range all the way from freight, US (snail) mail, fax, blogging/forums, e-mail, voice mail, phone texting, phone conversation, “meat”-space, meetspace to one-on-one conversation. Somehow, the web can be the tool that not only facilitates itself, but also facilitates these other communications tools.
A good woodworker can do remarkable things with tools from Harbor Freight; conversely, a trip to Rockler or Woodworker’s Supply won’t make you a craftsman. Ideally, your toobox will have a mix of both. Hopefully, you will meet mentors at both stores, too. The web can help Presbyterians belong. Also believe. But nobody believes until they belong. That comes first.
Surprisingly (or not so – that-s whu we have the emerging church) Christians are poor belongers. I connect online with lots of people (as well as in the aisles of Harbor Freight and Rockler) over topics like planes, trains and automobiles, as well as computers and gardening. I can fix a Volvo seat or get a fuel filter out of a Toyota, but I can’t get a Christian to return e-mail!
Presbyterians seem to be the best of the “connectile-dysfunction” church, so building on what you have and following the path of least resistance maight be the best way to go. Both for yourselves, as well as an example for other denominations, manifestations (emerging) and faiths.
I’ll be doing the same for the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa in October. I’m currently trying to get a draft of what I’d like to say together, so when your post appeared on my reader I immediately read the comments.
So, no suggestions, but would like to hear thoughts on the same questions.
I love this:
“A good woodworker can do remarkable things with tools from Harbor Freight; conversely, a trip to Rockler or Woodworker’s Supply won’t make you a craftsman. Ideally, your toobox will have a mix of both.”
See also Plato’s Phaedrus, or, for a more indirect approach, the opening pages of Neil Postman’s Technopoly.
Considering a majority of Christians and Presbyterians around the world do not have a “web presence,” how do we communicate faith and build community, using the web to uplift the whole community without alienating parts of the community.
Presbyterian tradition and polity, for me, feed naturally into the Web around the issue of authority. When I moved from an episcopal system (United Methodist) to the connectionalism and participatory democracy of Presbyterianism, what stuck tightest was the priesthood of all, the imaginative community of faith, the recognition that “theological facts” are hard or maybe impossible to come by. All any of us can or probably should try to communicate is our own faith, and the hope that it’s a living thing. The challenge is to maintain the tempering, enriching, challenging cloud of witnesses and to keep everyone remembering that they’re brothers and sisters, all beloved children of one God.
One nagging question brought up by a kid during confirmation class this past year comes to mind. He asked “Why do I need to come to church on Sunday if I can just watch a preacher on TV at home?”
For me, one of the important questions to ask about the Web 2.0 focus on networking, community, and mass participation online is, “What’s the place and purpose of flesh-and-blood communities of faith in a Web 2.0 world?” I’m curious as to whether you think these parallel communities are sustainable as-is, or whether changes need to be made on either side in order for both to survive. How can we build bridges between in-person gatherings and online communities, and how can the church utilize the best of each world?
Sounds like you ought to revisit Shane Hipps book, “The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church”.
I have found the web to be an ever-increasing place for legit dialogue. It is a good place for sharing ideas and thoughts when connecting physically is impossible. Our online searches for truth are also public – and therefore world-wide witnesses – displays of our faith. transfigurating.blogspot.com
I think you’d first want to challenge the description “a Web 2.0 world.” It would be hard to make sense of God creating a web 2.0 world. So resist that as a starting point. Reframe as web 2.0 as part of God’s creation. There are the challenges to community which come from a highly mobile culture which communicates without bodily interaction. I’d want to hear something about that, but you could also talk about story telling through things like blogs and how that might drive us to the particularity of the concrete manifestations of the church universal in the particularity of specific communities. This is another way of saying that universality of the web reminds of a universality which exists through God’s activity, even if that universality operates in a rootedness which the web cannot achieve. Making the web flashier doesn’t help this, but there is something to be said for design and beauty.
Keep on, brother.
Speaking of creation and its ills, here’s one more thing you’ll need to account for: the fact that the “Google generation” is looking more and more like medieval Germany than renaissance Italy. What to make of the biblical call to Wisdom in an age like this?
Here’s an article that kind of relates…even if it is a little flat.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but my world looks a lot like Renaissance Florence. The internet is a tool. I still do the things I always did, only faster, better and more efficiently. Vision – the internet is my telescope and microscope. Focus – yes, some distractions are a waste of time, others provide more insight. Lots of yang, lots of yin.
Perhaps Web 2.0 is really how to develop conative thinking in the candy store? :)
Oh have fun at the Stronghold. We would do all of our retreats there, I’m going to miss it. Hope you get to stay in the castle.
Whew, lots of comments. My second thought was that you might want to comment on the elements of good blogging…and why it’s not for everyone (i.e. sometimes the time spent on a blog or maintaining a certain type of web presence just isn’t worth it…or maybe even counterproductive).