Nuts & Bolts

Alright, I've spent a lot of time talking about my ideology of communication.  Yes, some of it is dated, but I want to move on.  I want to write a bit about the "nuts and bolts."  I want to inspect more specifically how we put good communication into practice.

Over the last few months I have started an experiment by accident and I think we can learn something from it.  Let me tell you:

A few months ago I was in an unusual situation.  My church had decided to make major staffing changes, so I knew I was moving.  I went to the doctor and found out I had a brain tumor, and then my senior pastor went on vacation for a month.

When I went in to talk to my District Superintendent (the pastor who supervises my district of churches), she shook her finger at me and told me that I needed to communicate VERY CLEARLY and often with my church.  My job, she reminded me, was to minimize anxiety and keep the church informed.

She was right, but also I didn't want my wife burdened during (and after) my surgery with lists of people to call and email, nor did I want her to feel inundated with calls when she was going through a lot.  Hmmm.  Well, Facebook, Twitter and my blog turned out to be the solution.  It was perfect because friends, family, church family, and even the people who weren't yet on facebook could stay connected to my progress without much effort on my wife's part.  We ended up starting a new blog and by the end of that month we had over 6000 hits.  It was a great success.

It was an accident, but  it worked beautifully.  It wasn't just information, it wasn't just what happened, but it was about how I felt.  Perhaps more importantly, it wasn't just words but also video and pictures.  It turns out that I finally did all the things I'd been expounding on this blog for so long!  I was using social media to build relationships.  In the process of authentically expressing myself, I was sharing my life and faith with a larger audience than I preach to each Sunday.  How cool is that?  It was an accident, but I was actually doing the mission statement of the church... perhaps even more effectively than on Sunday morning.

Hanging On.

This blog has taken a backseat to VirtuesOfScripture and Musings...but don't fear, I'm still committed to it.  It's just hard to stay motivated when my other blogs have such wide readership and this one appeals to a...   ...to a much 'narrower' audience.  So if you see articles on this blog you like, be sure to "share" them on facebook and comment on them.  I think there is great value for the church in the conversation of good communication!
 

Title Image found at:  http://imagebase.davidniblack.com/main.php?g2_itemId=2405

What Would Jesus Tweet?

Image found on HuffPost

I'm going to steal some words from Leonard Sweet today:  It's not a question of whether Jesus would have tweeted or not.  It's a question of what Jesus would tweet.

You see, Jesus engaged in the community of the day and, I believe, continues to engage.  It's not a question of whether God would use twitter.  God is using Twitter and Facebook and Google...the church may not be, but God is present and active in community and our community is ever-shifting to the internet.

Today we have to ask ourselves a lot of questions about how we are going to communicate as a church.  We seem to think, these days, that the goal is to get our church on the internet and that will be 'good enough.' Maybe a website or a facebook page will get more people to come to us...where the real church is (behind a big stone wall).  No.  Not good enough.  We have to take our experiences of Christ into our online communities if we are to live out our faith authentically.

Do we remind people not just to "like" the church (which, btw, is waaayyy luke-warm) with our bulletin or do we ask people to check-in to show their friends they were at church.  Do we put an informational announcement out on our facebook page or do we RT (re-tweet) the pastor or church friend so that our followers become her or his followers?

What the "Googler" generation has grown up in (and what us older people may never catch onto) is a culture about relationships.  It is not just about what we say, but, just as importantly, how  we say it.  The church needs to delve into the relationship-building connections of the web.  We need to become more social and less institutional...and we need to find authentic ways to share God's love with the people of this world.

A New Church Audience: Online?

Image from flicker:  H Sundholm:  "This door belongs to Torshälla kyrka, i.e. the church in Torshälla, outside of Eskilstuna in Sweden."

The days of "going to" church are nearly over.  No, those days have been over for some time, now.  The days when people looked for their own denomination when they moved into town and came knocking at the doors to get in were lost in the 1960's.  There is a remnant, but the church has failed to respond to everyone else...

Today we have an opportunity to share the experience of faith with remarkable crowds.  Don't believe me?  While I was preparing for and recovering from surgery I blogged.  Over the past 6 weeks my wife and I have averaged 1000 hits per week on that blog.  One of the posts, alone, boasts over 400 hits.  On a Sunday morning I don't preach to crowds that large, sadly.  That means that if we take our faith to the web in dynamic, interactive ways there are untapped ways to share the Gospel.

We don't need to advertise the upcoming rummage sale or fundraiser, we need to authentically share our experience of life and faith.  That is what changes lives.

Facing the Reality of the Facebook.

I’ve talked to a number of pastors and other Christians who have taken a stand.  They say, “that’s why I don’t facebook.”  And those who do facebook, seem to struggle with just what it should be.  They find themselves frustrated by a social media that is so popular (and even essential) yet doesn’t work for them or their church in terms of evangelism.  What a shame that our church is unable to share such an important story as Christ when companies are able to use facebook and twitter to so effectively to market cheetos and radio talk shows.

What is wrong with us?  Well the problem is not in the social media.  I mean, social media has its problems, but it has the potential to be a highly effective tool and it has the potential to be used for the greater good of growing people in faith.  So it seems that ignoring it is to turn our backs on a new frontier of evangelism.  Now, having said that, I don’t blame any pastor for turning their back...up until now.  This new frontier is scary and confusing.

The problem is that as churches we have become confused over which story it is we are sharing.  Too often we use social media to share the story of the institution.  Worse yet, it isn’t even really the “story” we share but information (and begging).  The primary story that we are to share is a story of faith, that is, the story of Christ told through our: lives, faith, circumstances and our reactions to those circumstances.

My suggestion to Christians, and especially pastors, is to share your life authentically using Facebook as a spiritual practice.  It isn’t until you have built relationships with your facebook friends that you should ever consider announcing an event or making invitations, because that story is secondary to the story of Christ as told through your life!

Just What Is Needed

   Like I’ve already written, people, today, don’t need to sift through large amounts of information.  If I want to find out the top news stories of the day I can just bring up my personalized igoogle page and I can see the top viewed news stories according to the search engine, I also have a module that shows me the featured CNN stories and Al Jezeera.  I no longer have to go to multiple websites, not to mention a newsstand.  I also no longer need to leaf through all the pages of a newspaper or watch an entire news program at 6 or 10.  This may make me lazy, but it also makes me a twenty-first century young man.

    Hulu has further developed this trend with entertainment programming.  I no longer need to be at home at a particular time during the week to see my favorite show, nor do I need to worry about missing an episode.  I simply login to Hulu and all of my favorite shows are queued up and ready to go.  It doesn’t matter if it is CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, Comedy Central, etc.  It also doesn’t matter if it is a Monday night or Thursday night show.  I get what I want, when I want it.

    The newspaper industry is floundering because they are still operating on the old paradigm that people will pay 75 cents to get the news from their paper.  Many people, of course, have subscriptions that the paper would come directly to them, but in our information age news the next morning it is already old.  More importantly, people have to seek that information through a subscription or going to a newsstand.  And it is only from one source for each purchase or subscription.

    As a church we still see the world through this old paradigm.  We think people will seek out a particular church and only be concerned for what that church’s materials and perspectives.  Even more peculiarly we, as churches, still seem to think that people will tack up the calendar from the bulletin or newsletter on their fridge; will surf to the web calendar several clicks into the church site; or, more surprisingly, think that people have a paper calendar they are writing everything on.  What people really have in their pockets -many at least- are PDA’s, or more likely internet connected cell phones.  What people are beginning to really value is calendars that are delivered directly to them.  Our church offices should be using calendars that can be subscribed to directly by our congregants so that our calendars are sitting side-by-side with theirs (such as google calendar)....but I’ve partly digressed from my point.  And the whole staff and leadership, more importantly, has to buy into this system.

    The church needs to stop using proprietary website stuff.  No more calendars that can only be viewed online or need to be updated by one particular person with web design expertise.  Videos should not be put on the site in such a way that people must go to the website to see it.  Youtube (or vimeo), google calendar and other avenues of communication that people are already using should be implemented, instead.  If we do this then, yes, the website can be more dynamic and more up-to-date for people who go there, but more importantly the stories and content are out on the web for people to stumble across, to subscribe to, and to share on social media with friends.  Why not setup the church website with “share” buttons so that stories, photos and videos can easily be shared to their facebook, youtube, twitter and email friends?

    The church has to get outside of the old paradigm.  We have to take our story outside of the new boundaries of church:  the church website.  ...and don’t forget we’re taking stories and faith, not information!

Blogging As Spiritual Discipline

    As I’ve begun to consider how the church (the people of Christ) must re-imagine how it shares its story with the world and one another, I keep coming back to blogging.  Blogging has been around for quite some time now, but it is not going anywhere.  If anything, it is gaining in popularity.  I think we have underestimated this form of communication.  Let me share a non-church example:

    One of my professors, Dr. Brook Lester, integrated blogging into his Introductory class on the Hebrew Scriptures.  He is convinced that the blog is going to become mainstream for communication in education. You see, so far there has been a sense that PhD’s are not taken seriously if they blog, yet serious -even ground breaking- work is being shared through blogs.  There are several reasons that blogging could be a powerful tool to education:

1. First-of-all professors have access to new and exciting projects and work instantly, there is no waiting for publishers.
2. Because the work of these academics can be tagged and searched, “pipes” of information can be setup so that all of the most cutting edge research (down to the moment) can be seen side-by-side in, nearly, real-time.
3. The communication is raw and narrative in style...but more importantly it is two-way. Comments and photos can be quickly posted by others so that a new collegial environment can be formed.

    So, let’s break this down for the church.  The church website has always been far too static to do the church much good.  It is just another way for the church to put up information in hopes that people will come looking for it.  Imagine, instead a church that encouraged interested members and leaders to begin blogging as a spiritual practice.  Using Yahoo “Pipes”, they setup the church website so that church members whose blogs have a certain tag in them are piped into the website.  When ‘edna’ blogs about how she was spiritually transformed through a recent bout with cancer.... or John blogs each day of a church mission trip; the stories are being shared with the community of faith.  Best yet, their friends are seeing faith stories naturally.  You see, our church member’s friends can see these blogs in a number of ways and it is not just another avenue to creating ‘dynamic, emotive [and narrative] content’ but also an avenue of bringing people to the website and even to the church, perhaps.

    To get there: FIRST, pastors and other church leaders must begin blogging about their lives and need to make it part of their spiritual practice (not just something to check off a list at the end of the week).  SECOND, as we talk with our congregations about spiritual practices and Christian witnessing.... we need to talk seriously about this new, American schizophrenia where we lead two lives a “real life” and, then, a virtual facebook life where we say things or post pictures we would otherwise never show!  We need to begin modeling what it means to have an authentic witness not just during an hour on sunday morning but out in the world and even in the cyber-world.  THIRD, we must be willing to let go of content control.  Someone may post something inappropriate or, perhaps, not-flattering about the church....but as a community of faith, that is always possible right in the sanctuary of our church.  We must trust our communities to respond to negativity with optimism and love.

    As I understand it, John Wesley kept two journals:  one set of private journals and one set of public journals.  These were both for his own spiritual growth, but the more public journal was also intended that others would grow in faith.  If we are to continue this Methodist legacy, it seems that blogging is the twenty first century solution.  Let us grow our faith as well as help others as they seek to grow in Christ. Hmmm...Let’s take our faith outside of the church walls!  Let’s not just tell an ancient bible story yet again, but tell our own stories relating them to faith!