Whoa.
I’ve been to a hatful of meetings, with both clergy, church folk, and social service professionals over the last month, where everyone else at the meeting willing to speak up about “social media” all said, as if they’d gotten the same script in the mail (that’d be “snail mail”), that “All this stuff like the Twitter, or Facebooker, or these (insert anguished tones and negative adjective) blogs are really contributing to the breakdown of community and culture. They get in the way of, and replace, real/true (your choice) human community.”
Further discussion reveals the obvious, which is that they don’t use these online tools, and only know what they’ve heard at the gym, the coffee shop, or in the NYTBR about social media. They often go on to say, in my unfair and tendentious paraphrase, “I learned how to use e-mail, for pity’s sake, and i’m trying to update the church/agency website at least four times a year, so i’m not techno-phobic or anything, but this new stuff is just too confusing.”
At a congregational board meeting where a fairly healthy, vital, mission-minded group of leaders were talking about newer, younger families and how to connect them, ideas were broached like a euchre night (in the words of the theologian Dave Barry, “I am not making this up”), or more potlucks.
Another council member (yes, the youth minister) and i, at a pause in the worried conversation, pointed out to the group that there were 51 members of a Facebook group of younger, newer families, specifically identified as “Fans of [Church Name Here]” where they were already planning activities and studies for Lent amongst themselves, so we should jump in gently and help that approach along.
Someone asked, fair enough, “What’s Facebook?” The youth minister and i tried to explain, to which a senior staff member who will remain nameless said “Oh, like that Twitter thing – what a strange sounding name! And what do they call messages on that?”
“Tweets,” i said, smiling grimly, as the expected laughter rolled around the table, and then the discussion went back to when a potluck might be held where young families would be invited to come share recipes with each other (see entry, Dave Barry).
The youth pastor quietly slid his laptop over in front of me at our end of the table — the Facebook group had just silently clicked up to 52 members. The potluck was scheduled for the weekend after Easter, “so there will be time to get it in the newsletter.”
Jeff Gill is a supply preacher, storyteller/freelance writer, and juvenile court mediator in central Ohio. His blog is at http://knapsack.blogspot.com, and his Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/Knapsack.
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March 30, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Social Monday: Is It Resistance, or Is It Just Missing the Forest For All Those Darn Trees In the Way? « Twitter @ Information-Source-Online.Com
[…] Original post by knapsack77 […]
March 30, 2009 at 8:07 pm
knapsack77
Hey! A bright spot — http://www.disciplesworld.com/newsArticle.html?wsnID=15019
March 30, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Bill McConnell
I am a church transformation guy. Jeff hit the nail on the head. We in the church love the idea of transformation but we don’t like doing it. We want to change everything except what we are already doing and then expect transformation to take place. And it doesn’t. The new social networks are where I stay in touch with my 15-35 year old members. I Twitter and Facebook and Myspace and blog and e-mail and anything else I can do to stay in touch. They think it is great that their “old guy” pastor wants to be in community with them. But I must also say, “Long live the Pot Luck Dinner.” Thanks Jeff for some good words. As a friend recently commented about church transformation, “It feels like pushing a peanut uphill with your nose.”
March 31, 2009 at 6:27 am
knapsack77
Up a gravel road!
March 31, 2009 at 7:44 am
knapsack77
Ah, i should leave this topic alone for a bit, but i can’t resist — this is from Mark Bowden’s article in the latest Vanity Fair about the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/new-york-times200905?printable=true¤tPage=all]
“For 10 years or more, Arthur’s signature phrase about this seismic change in the news business, the one he repeats to show that he gets it, has been platform agnostic. “I am platform agnostic,” he proclaims proudly, meaning that it matters nothing to him where his customers go for New York Times content: the newspaper’s print version, television, radio, computer, cell phone, Kindle — whatever. The phrase itself reveals limited understanding. When the motion-picture camera was invented, many early filmmakers simply recorded stage plays, as if the camera’s value was just to preserve the theatrical performance and enlarge its audience. To be sure, this alone was a significant change. But the true pioneers realized that the camera was more revolutionary than that. It freed them from the confines of a theater. Audiences could be transported anywhere. To tell stories with pictures, and then with sound, directors developed a whole new language, using lighting and camera angles, close-ups and panoramas, to heighten drama and suspense. They could make an audience laugh by speeding up the action, or make it cry or quake by slowing it down. In short, the motion-picture camera was an entirely new tool for storytelling. To be platform agnostic is the equivalent of recording stage plays.”
March 31, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Danny
Not only was this a really cool article, but it inspired me to check out my own congregation’s facebook group, which I started a few months ago. I was surprised to discover 43 members!
April 4, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Brian Morse
That is so funny! You are right on. I get sick and tired of hearing about how the internet is ruining the sense of community. NONSENSE!!! Things evolve. The understanding of community evolves. Times change. Great post.
April 9, 2009 at 9:27 am
Ex Girlfiend
I follow your posts for quite a long time and should tell you that your articles are always valuable to readers.