Kony 2012 Tells Us What We Care About

By now, most of you know about Kony 2012, the 30 minute video gone viral. So many people have seen it, and the commentaries are multiplying.

But what does this massive sharing of links tell us about Americans?

Over at the Patheos blog Black, White, and Gray, I wrote a brief post -- Here’s my conclusion:

The campaign to “Stop Kony” is less about removing a brutal military overlord and more about what Americans showcase as their sacred values.

Read more here.

Is Steve Jobs a Saint?

The passing of Steve Jobs has created a sensation. Sympathy and adulation alongside a wonder whether he deserves so much attention.  Even more, the question of "sainthood" is providing a whole lot of additional reflection.

CNN's belief blog asked me to contribute a piece that posted today:

Short Takes: Are we turning Steve Jobs into a saint?

CNN asked four experts on religion and technology to weigh in on whether former Apple chief Steve Jobs is achieving a kind of secular sainthood. 


Excerpt from my brief take...

Let's be honest. Steve Jobs was no saint, that much is clear. Every day we know more about his character, most recently through the startling revelations in the best-selling biography published by Walter Isaacson.

Jobs could be callous and cold. He rejected paternity of his first daughter. He refused many co-workers the riches of company stock options. He thought of himself as smarter than just about anyone else he
ever met.

If "saintliness" is measured by the virtues of extraordinary kindness, generosity or humility, Jobs fails the test.

However, "saintliness" in religious practice is less measured by a person's moral perfection than his or her ability to serve as a mediator between the ordinary and the transcendent.

In lived religious experience, a saint is not always admired as a righteous person to be imitated. But a saint is always trusted as a negotiator, a bridge-builder, an esoteric "middleman," who removes obstacles, facilitates progress and promotes blessing.

Fundamentally, a saint is an intermediary who makes the intangible accessible and more readily available.

You can read the rest as well as others' responses to the question on the CNN Belief Blog.

Hacker Ethics and Higher Learning: The Moral Clash Determining the Future of Education

Special thanks to Joe Creech and the good people of the Lilly Fellows Program for an enjoyable time of conversation on the nature of "place" in our professional lives as scholars in higher education. 

I'm just recovering from a very full conference schedule with the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts annual conference held this year at Valparaiso University.  My warm thanks are extended to the many new friends and colleagues I met over several meals and dozens of conversations.

It was an honor to be invited to give a keynote address along with two other notable scholars.

Image via Wikipedia

The conference revolved on the notion of "place" in higher education and, appropriately, there was a scholar of art and architecture, a theologian working on issues of globalization, and myself, a sociologist who pays attention to religion and social change. I focused on the transformation of higher learning welling-up from the cumulative transformations in digital connectivity.

My talk revolved around two moral orientations, two moral "codes" if you will, that are clashing (rather than converging) in higher education today.  The first code is the formative retreat ethic that stresses the moral imperative of creating a cloistered space of education that works toward discipline and even piety. Our institutions of higher education have an underlying moral orientation: a formative retreat for the cultivation of virtuous adults. I speculate that the stronger the religious orientation of the college, the stronger the formative moral imperative of the institution.

On the other hand is a new ethic, a Hacker Ethic, that emphasizes openness, free access, and utter playfulness. The Hacker Code, Hacker Ethics, and Hacker Culture – these are terms I use heuristically to describe a nascent, overarching ethos that has fueled the development of our increasingly “connected” (I mean digitally, online, networked connected) lives from the 1950s until now. Various principles are involved (I give several lists and descriptions in my talk), and much of it centers on digital connectivity.

What I stressed to this esteemed group of scholars and administrators is that higher education is caught in a larger transition. Banks, phone companies, and our local and federal governments are all firmly committed to open internet connectivity. For example, the federal government just announced at the end of September that while we can still physically mail our returns, more people are e-filing and, as a cost cutting measure, the federal government will no longer mail tax forms, but we must access them online. Examples could be multiplied many times over.

Our schools are dominated by this connectivity as well – Barry Wellman on twitter recently wrote, “Student finds it impossible to go cold turkey off the grid because official announcements & research materials are only online.” The internet is not just a tool of knowledge and business but has become something much more.

Image via Wikipedia

We submit grades online, our students register for courses online, use electronic course reserves (72% of professors use course management systems), answer questions, set calendar appointments, distribute departmental information and committee reports, and even submit journal articles and whole book manuscripts. Increasingly we post syllabi and study content, we skype into meetings, we blog and tweet (about one-third of professors as far as I can find a statistic) our results.  Administrators are pushing internet connectivity to solve certain problems and scholars are using internet connectivity to solve others.

It took me a while… but I soon saw that there was a new set of ideals being promoted. What fuels the development of these new digital realms is not just clever innovation but a new morality, what’s been called the Hacker Ethic. Hackers represent those who were taking advantage of the new spaces and new possibilities opened by the creation of new structures. It’s an entire moral orientation.

Although you can't see the Power Point slides emphasizing different points, here's part 2 of 4 parts of the keynote available on YouTube:

More on the "Hacker Ethic" can be found in part 3.

I'm grateful for the time at Valpo and a new set of conversations.  Certainly there are many others who understand these dynamics far better than I do and can speak far more articulately about them.  But this was my chance to package my best understanding of the things that affect my life and work everyday.  And I'm convinced they are propelling more substantial changes that threaten our traditional understandings of higher education in unanticipated ways.

Smartphone Religion at the Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog

Christmas season is in full gear at the Marti house -- finishing up my classes, the kids homework projects before the end of the year, community activities here in Davidson.

In the midst of it all, I've been able to take Jason Byasee's invitation to again contribute last week to the Faith & Leadership Blog at Duke Divinity.

My latest post on The Wi-Fi Church of the Future (and the Present) is tagged under Innovation | Liturgy | Technology ):

Image via Wikipedia

"The past two years have seen a rapid acceleration in the adoption of portable computing by the average person. This will inevitably prompt changes by church leaders."

It's prompted a good online exchange.

I'll encourage you to read the whole post on your own. But more than the post itself are the responses that follow it.

The Executive Director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity first describes his "knee jerk" reaction against churches leaning on such technology. Another believes "the app" already exists. And yet another comment brings concern for the poor and their access to wi-fi technology and information.

I appreciate the dialogue. I'm learning all the time, and the comments are helpful.

Overall what this exchange suggests to me is that we've arrived at an interesting moment in the relationship between technology and church.

Image via Wikipedia

The American culture has swallowed the use of smartphones almost whole -- after all, analysts can readily predict how many iPhones will be found under the Christmas tree this year.

But church leaders remain nervous about learning new techniques to harness the use of these advanced devices to their ministries.

Smartphones are not the future; they are already here.

So the failure lies not in ministry budgets (people have their own phones), it lies in the imagination of leaders to use these devices to advance their ministry.

Paper versus Digital - Paper Wins

So, it happened. After several months of keeping up with blogging (more or less), I've suddenly found my time shrinking dramatically and have had to cut corners, re-prioritize, and make new to-do lists. And, guess what?

Paper-based projects take priority over digital ones.

Image via Wikipedia

Let's start with the obvious. I've got journal articles in "the pipeline" that need attention, and draft chapters of my current book need revising (and quite a bit of writing left to go). These products will eventually become paper as the process of turning onscreen words into offscreen print is what drives the process overall.

At the end of the day, articles and books are also becoming online, digital entities. Just about everything I've ever published is available electronically. But the fact that these will be paper products -- and not just online -- makes it a priority because these products count more for my professional future.

In addition, my students turn in papers. Yep, I'm old-school about that, and my office is starting to collect a pile of papers that need evaluation for a final grade. I work these over with my pen, writing brief comments and assuring myself that I've understood their accomplishment which I then place into a matrix of my standards for the course.

And I continue to read, read, read. Although I've tried ebook readers and computer-downloaded content, I find I read more thoughtfully and more energetically when I have the physical paper in my hands. Yes, I even print out online articles to read on paper.

Wow, I'm feeling old.

Well, I will add more thoughts to this blog soon. I've been thinking about several things. I've also been asked to contribute to other blogs out there.

But, first, I've got to get these papers done.

Inside Look: Andy Stanley's North Point Church Describes Creative Process

Quick post: The media department of Andy Stanley's North Point church in the Atlanta area posted a blog today walking through their creative process for a new sermon series.

North Point in Atlanta is a large, multi-site church that invests time strategizing their communication process.

This is more than just "making sermons interesting." The ambitious effort to craft ideas based at the heart of Christian concerns that connect to a mainstream audience is routinely performed.

Here's one video that came through this particular process.

Promo: "Losing Your Religion" from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Of course, North Point is not alone in their concern to craft image-saturated, symbolically-rich content. In my own research I've described Mosaic in Los Angeles and Oasis in Hollywood at length (yes, yes, "read my book...").

Nevertheless, it is important to realize the degree to which religious creativity is channeled through the construction of mission-driven religious content.

iPhone Church - Religious Media Jumps on the Digital Bandwagon (Again)

As part of their expanding digital offerings, Pastor Wayne Cordeiro explains a new service provided through the IT department of New Hope Church in Hawaii. The "iPhone devotions" borrows the iconic Apple style to communicate relevance to the digital literati.

New Hope on iPhone from Peter Thourson on Vimeo.

Even more, entire church services at New Hope can be streamed live.

It appears that New Hope Christian Fellowship, a large Foursquare Church in Hawaii, is the first to launch iPhone services on July 4th of this year. A press release indicates that "live streaming to the iPhone was one of the most requested features from church attendees" and that the live streaming capabilities of the 3.0 software allowed this to happen.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Typically, churches are years behind other organizations when it comes to technology and innovation. We have tried to reverse that trend and pioneer new ways to spread the Gospel using the most current tools available," explains New Hope's Technology and Innovations Director, Michael Sharpe. "We don't mind the long hours and stress that comes with innovating because we know that if we can come up with something useful, it can be used by other churches around the world."

You can check out their dedicated e-church site here.

Twitter and Church - Accessible and Problematic

An interesting article in The New York Times shows how the accessibility of Twitter can make it problematic for religious use.

Turns out it's hard to keep the devotional content free of the riff-raff.

From Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers,

While hundreds of worshipers watched the traditional dramatization of the Crucifixion from pews in the church, one of New York’s oldest, thousands more around the world followed along on smartphones and computers as a staff member tweeted short bursts of dialogue and setting (“Darkness and earthquake,” “Crucify him!”).

The trouble began in the second hour.

Twitter’s interactivity — its essence — made it easy for an anonymous text-messager to insert an unscripted character into the Passion play:

a Roman guard who breezily claimed, “I’ve got dibs on his robe.”

When another texter introduced a rogue Mary Magdalene, the intrusion only confirmed the obvious: Twitter’s trademark limit of 140 characters per message is no bar against crudity.

The rest of the article is online.

Smartphone Spirituality - Terrible? or The New Normal?

A Twin Cities newspaper reports on the use of social networking and new technology by congregations -- not just Christian ones -- who appear to advocate a "shallow consumerism" for religion.


An article by Jeff Strickler from the Star Tribune features a now-familiar article about the incorporation of technology and the targeting of younger attenders among congregations. It seems that some of the fastest-growing congregations in Minnesota -- suburban, mostly evangelical Christian megachurches -- embraced marketing from the start. Their success has caused more-traditional congregations with dwindling memberships to take notice.

The article begins with one congregation --

This church, called Substance (they tend to have radical names,) is one of the most-successful in the Twin Cities, drawing several hundred worshippers each Sunday. They reach out to young people by cutting back on the ritual of traditional churches. There's also a rock band and multi-media.

Nice commentary on the church's name -- I guess "Substance" could be considered a radical name if you take the substance being referred to in a more ambiguous way...

Anyhow, the key to the article is how it's not just Christian churches getting into the act. The article quotes Rabbi Hayim Herring who stressed in a seminar to "fellow clergy that they should spend an hour a day on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter" and that "blogging should be considered mandatory." Rabbi Herring also recommends using video clips from YouTube in the service.

Image by David A G Wilson via Flickr

"They used to look at me as if I'd just said a four-letter word," said Herring, the former senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park and now the executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal). But in its seven years, the organization has seen more converts to what many call one of the dirtiest words in religion: marketing.

According to the article, it's younger people's "reliance" on electronic social networks that leaves religious leaders "no choice." As Rabbi Herring states, "If you're not out there, there's no chance of your message being heard."

Even Hindus are becoming technologically astute. Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, urged his religious organizations to use "smart-phones with BlackBerry, iPhone and Symbian." While they were at it, he suggested, they should check out Flickr, Habbo, hi5, Skyrock, Tagged, Bebo, Netlog, MyHeritage, Odnoklassniki, Sonico and VKontakte.

Overall, the article stirs up controversy by echoing reactions from alarmists concerend about "salesmanship tools" and "commercialism." It's the marketplace of religion (so they say), and quotes Greg Smith, a research fellow for the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, who says, "Whether they like it or not, religions are being forced to compete for members."

Image by timjeby via Flickr

The article then goes for the jugular - it's a religions "market" because congregations need to sustain streams of financial contributions to their ministry.

Bottom line: follow the money --

More than just bragging rights are at stake. Maintaining membership is critical for church finances, especially at a time of economic distress when contributions are dropping and endowment funds have taken a beating in the stock market. If belt-tightening members drop less money in the collection plate, the congregation needs to pack more people into the pews to make up the difference.

In my view, pointing to money as a core dynamic is just too crass. Religious leaders are sincerely wrestling with attempts to meet and minister to people about the things they really care about - bringing them into a closer relationship to the divine. And yet there is a struggle to define the role for new technology.

Rev. John Mayer who is executive director of City Vision, a Minneapolis organization that tracks religious demographics, said it well, saying,

"People see it as too worldly or gimmicky for the church to be marketing itself," he said. "But most of the same people who say it is sacrilegious also expect their church to have a website, a listing in the phone book or an ad in the phone book. To me, this is marketing."

In fact, he said, one of religion's classic icons could be considered a marketing tool: the church steeple.

"Yes, it's there for artistic reasons and to symbolize pointing to God," he said. "But it's also like a big sign to people saying: 'We are here. Come and check us out.'"

Steeples as marketing tool. Nice point.

The Rev. Scott Anderson at Eagle Brook Church, also tempers the discussion by saying that tailoring the delivery of the message to its intended audience is nothing new.

"We have to reach people through the culture we find ourselves in," he said. "If we want people to hear our message, we have to get them through the doors first."

What's even more interesting are the range of comments on the story. One comment from SMBowner3 writes,

"A church is a business and a religion is a brand, so they are smart to use technology to market themselves and their brand. You can learn about God in a bible - churches and religions are 'value add' services."

Image via Wikipedia

Another from kevinstirtz writes,

"The leaders who are moving (dragging?) their churches (and synagogues) into the 21st century by using social media tools and other technology are just plain smart. It's called meeting your customers where they are and it works. I applaud these pastors, ministers and rabbis who are simply trying harder to meet the needs of their people."

The whole article is interesting to me.

Looks like it will be awhile before the image of "traditional church" gets shifted far enough for these developments to not be considered so outlandish.

Twittering Religion in America - Part 2

Quick post: This is my second of two posts on the use of Twitter by congregational leaders. I'll focus on the use of Twitter by individuals rather than organizations...

Image via CrunchBase

Although congregations using Twitter during worship services has gotten some media attention, the use of religion through Twitter is more than just worship "tweets."

I'll pass on talking about other organizations that use Twitter like Islamic Relief (a non-profit organization) or Islamic Crunch (focusing on activities of all sorts in the Muslim community) or Talk Islam (blogging all things Islam) -- religious organizations of all sorts are finding Twitter provides a low-cost way to raise awareness and communicate updates.

Instead, I've started following a few church leaders on my own Twitter account and notice a few, distinct uses of the service.

(Caveat: Not all leaders do this ALL the time, but I'll suggest what I see as an informal pattern.)

1. Purposeful - Some leaders consistently stay "on message" through Twitter.

Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Leonard Sweet
Erwin McManus

Here's what I mean - some leaders remain vision-focused leaders through Twitter, keeping their followers encouraged, uplifted, and focused on the values and purposes of their life. This includes leaders who post aphorisms, proverbs, quotes, and key phrases with every tweet. Look at Len Sweet's quotes and expansion of Biblical key words. See Erwin McManus's references to being "wide awake."

2. Provocative - Leaders put out questions and "what if" statements to provoke responses.

Naeem Fazal
Alex McManus

There are other leaders who want to initiate dialogue and get reactions. Using a spare 14o characters, they attempt to provoke thinking and prompt follow-up posts from other people. Naeem Fazal tweets, "Question: Do you have an irrational confidence in the faithfullness of God?" and "Is failure resolved by success or by faithfulness ?" and "Was there a time that you trusted God more than you do now ... What happened?" Alex McManus tweets, "Does talent emerge due to external factors (Gladwell, Outliers), proper practice (Coyle, Talent Code), or nature (Gallup, Strengthsfinder)?" and "What would happen if we planted gardens and designed natural sanctuaries instead of planting and building churches?"

3. Promotional - Leaders use Twitter to keep people up to date with their books, speaking engagements, blog posts, and other resources and events surrounding their ministry.

Image by barron via Flickr

Eric Bryant
Ed Stetzer

Church leaders using Twitter are often busy people who travel, speak, write, and consult to groups nearly every day. Their life is a near-constant whirl of activity, and they use Twitter to let people (both friends and "fans") know what's new with them. Eric Bryant links his blog posts to his Twitter account and regularly gives away free copies of his book. And Ed Stetzer continually developes new material which he often makes available on the internet.

4. Personal - Still other leaders talk mostly about their leisure and family activities.

Alan Hirsch
Sam Radford

Church leaders can be very open about the movies they watch, the restaurants they try, and the various happenings with their spouse and children. Reading their posts, you get a feel for the rhythm of their lives away from "the office." Alan Hirsch and Sam Radford are two who keep us informed of their sleep habits, places they visit, conversations with friends, and any "plans-of-the-moment."

5. Mixed-Use

Image via Wikipedia

Jay Bakker
Dan Kimball

While some leaders have one primary "Twitter Profile," most have mixed uses. Through a series of tweets, they broadcast vision, provoke thoughts, indicate their speaking and writing activities, and talk about their day-to-day lives -- all in a single day! Jay Bakker and Dan Kimball are faithful in providing their Twitter followers a steady stream of thoughts and activities.

These are the 5 uses of Twitter I see among church leaders today.

Any others I've missed?

Conversation with 76 Yr Old Biblical Scholar Walter Brueggemann

Filmmakers sat down for an intimate chat with Old Testament scholar Dr. Walter Brueggemann and asked about the role of the visual media artist in the church, life in the Kingdom and anything else we could think of. Brueggemann responds with insight and honesty.


Here's an opportunity to see the expanded use of new media in American religion.

Produced by The Work Of the People, this media organization describes itself as "a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians, who create visual media for the church to re-orient God's people around Jesus' good news and mission to make all things new." Lit.ur.gy. noun. pl. liturgies. From the Greek word λειτουργια, (transliterated, “leitourgia”) meaning “the work of the people.”

The Brueggemann "conversation" is a new venture for the organization. Here's a clip where Walter Brueggemann explores the question "Have we made the gospel too safe?" Always vulnerable, and not rushing to answers, Dr. Brueggemann's musings offer a different kind of Christian film experience, one intended to provoke careful reflection. 

I heard him speak when he was a guest at Rob Bell's church at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The film captures the tone and posture of this man. His writings are fascinating, and there are many books he has written. He may be best known for The Prophetic Imagination.  I appreciated his book on the Psalms and his fat-tome on the Theology Of The Old Testament.  

The Work Of the People also produces "visual liturgy." These can be used individually (they are not very expensive), but I anticipate that they are used in the context of church services as a twist on incorporating media in a manner that is not disruptive to the liturgical flow of "higher church" services. Two samples are below:

LABORERS NEEDED

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Music by Tracy Howe. www.restorationvillage.com

STRANGER

If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If your enemies are thirsty, give them something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Music by The Restoration Project. www.restorationvillage.com.

Twittering Religion in America - Part 1

After posting about churches in North Carolina encouraging attenders to tweet during Easter services, now Time has picked up the story on how churches across the country are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. Here's Part 1 of "Twittering Religion in America."

Image via CrunchBase

John Voelz and David McDonald, senior pastors at Westwinds Community Church, a tech-savvy congregation in Jackson, Michigan, spent two weeks educating their congregation about Twitter. Congregants brought in their laptops, iPhones and Blackberrys.

They also pumped up the bandwidth in the auditorium. During services, the church publicly broadcasts tweets that look like this:

"Nice shirt JVo"

"So glad they are doing Lenny Kravitz"

"I have a hard time recognizing God in the middle of everything"

"The more I press in to Him, the more He presses me out to be useful"

"sometimes healing is painful"

It may seem odd to some, but more churches integrate text-messaging into worship, asking people to bring the act of texting into their relationship with God."

Other churches in the "quirky minority" using Twitter include Seattle's Mars Hill, New York City's Trinity Church, and Next Level Church outside Charlotte.

Image by Shira Golding via Flickr

Will it catch on? I don't know. The issue of the use of twitter should probably be seen as part of the general discussion on church and technology.  I'll try to write more about this later....

But as to the use of Twitter, Pastor Voelz reports getting at least 5 emails a week from people asking about how to launch twitter in thier church. They ask, "How did you rig the screen resolution so people could read the tweets?" "What was members' reaction?" And, not surprisingly: "Got any tips to persuade church leadership this is way cool?"

Not everyone is convinced Twitter is a spiritually "good" thing.

One worry about bringing Twitter into church services is how it might alter the experience of worship. 

The Time article writes, "The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires." Of course, this relates to an assumption that "quiet reflection" is a bottom-line necessity for "spirituality." The 140 character "chatter" of Twitter does not qualify for deep spritual activity for most people.

Image via Wikipedia

Shallow spirituality is not a concern for Robbie McLaughlin who is an attender at Next Level Church.   His experience is interesting to note. 

Although Twitter is not a formal part of the services,

"The graphic designer twittered the Sunday after Easter Sunday and he intends to do it again and again, caught up in the way it has transformed the way he worships.

He likes the way it helps him see what God is doing in other people's lives during the service.

(And there's another benefit too: no more misplaced musings jotted down on that day's program. "With Twitter," he points out, "your notes are there forever.")

So, we might exercise caution in suggesting twittering is not compatible with a deeper spirituality.

I'll post Part 2 of "Twittering Religion in America" this week.

Related articles

• New York church brings Good Friday to Twitter (news.cnet.com)
• Church Tweets the Passion of Christ (abcnews.go.com)
• What Jesus Christ Tells Us About Social Networking (ariwriter.com)
• Bishops Urge High-Tech Lenten Fast (cbsnews.com)
• Mark Trapp: Twittering at the Vatican (via Google Reader) (deacbench.blogspot.com)
• Barna: The Techno Generational Gap in the Church (bloggingministry.com)
• Catholics Urged to Give Up Tech for Lent (abcnews.go.com)

Revival and Relevance in the Sticks (towns 75k or less...)

Interesting new conference -- "The Sticks" -- takes a southern and mid-western sensibility to initiating contemporary, mission-driven ministry to the small towns of the United States.

With a website complete with videos of t-shirt and wireless-mike wearing pastors, The Sticks conference is designed to inspire smaller town pastors to go for innovative ministry styled on the successful models of larger churches around the country.

The conference is an interesting example of the extent of influence from successful, evangelical megachurches in America, the pervasive use of technology in American religion, and the continued concern for attracting young adults in church ministry. Here you will find a mission-driven form of accommodation, acculturation, and experimentation in response to social change.

Stimulating ambition for churches outside Metro areas, The Sticks makes leadership philosophy and a reflection of contemporary practices accessible to smaller towns. Its stated mission --

Do you live out in the sticks? [small cities and towns of 75K or less]

Image by myoldpostcards via Flickr

Do you want to make a big impact?
Tired of small towns being left out of the conversation?

Have you bought into the lies...
'we can't do that' or 'we don't have the funds to pull that off'?

the sticks is a gathering where revival meets relevance. It is a gathering to inspire and equip pastors in small to medium towns to make a big impact for the Kingdom!

Break out sessions over two days in three different sites work through youth ministry, outrreach, the use of social networking sites, multi-site ministry, and leadership developments.

The speakers are native to each area, successful pastors who have grown vibrant ministries in these areas like Perry Noble, founding and senior pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson and Greenville, South Carolina.

Church is All A-Twitter

Easter Services provide atttenders opportunity to pray, worship, and "tweet" during services.

At Next Level Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Pastor Todd Hahn encouraged guests and member to bring laptops and pull out their iPhones and Blackberrys to Twitter through the service.

The picture on the right shows Scarlett Hollingsworth using her Blackberry to Tweet as her daughter Jillian Hollingsworth, 10, texts on her own cell phone during Sunday's Easter service.

An article from the Charlotte Observor titled "The church that tweets together...", tells about a photographer Kristen Hinson -- who is 24 years old -- who "felt liberated by the Easter message – and her ability to pass it along via cell phone. 'I love Next Level Church,' she Twittered. 'The resurrection is like a sales receipt from God, a guarantee of what's to come!!!'”

Other Twitter messages from Next Level Church on Easter:

melissajackson3: Awesome foo fighters song to start the service at nextlevel.

imkay: Nothing u do 4 the lord is in vain.

desimae: I remember the day when Easter meant dressing up against my will and being bored for three hours at church …thanks, nextlevel for change!

psalm46: Resurrection is real; … He is still raising us day by day from this level on to the nextlevel, higher up and further in.

renwicks_lady: Getting ready for Nextlevel church, getting my texting thumbs stretched and ready to go!!!!

charburns: nextlevel had awesome music today and yes i am twittering in church.

Next Level Church is described as "a rock 'n' roll-style church" with a Creative Team of twentysomethings who wanted to do something "special" for Easter.

Image via CrunchBase

The article says, "Charlotte native Hahn acknowledged that the church's accent on Twitter is partly a marketing tool. But he said it can also enhance members' religious experience and build community."

"With so many old and new churches competing for young people, some like Next Level are trying to stand out by embracing the latest technology: Web sites, blogs, and now Twitter."

A 44 year old member added, "If you don't jump on the new technology, you're going to lose opportunities.... We use it for work and for life. Why not church?”

What's a Blue Kiwi? Innovation through Social Network Software

Quick post: My interest in innovation and online social networking led me to discovering new software designed to stimulate organizational innovation.

In Europe, blueKiwi 2009 was launched last November with a bold presentation on the interaction between the web and human interaction. Working with sociological principles, the software re-thinks the interconnection of networks and the play of organizational management dynamics.

Too many of us take software design for granted. But the ingenuity of software design aligned with the understanding of human social interaction is coming into its own -- especially as social computing becomes more portable and more readily available.

Now we've all got to be schooled in how to use more than "Microsoft Word" and email. Social networking is becoming just as important as the telephone. And as organizations harness the use of these technological innovations, we will find new ways to communicate, brainstorm, share content, and "group think" in dynamic, yet-not-entirely-forseen ways.

In short, the new wave of project management and committee work will move online.


According to a post by Jon Husband, "Starting from the vantage point of the Web 2.0-savvy user, they have designed and built blueKiwi to be user-centric whilst responding to the business issues that require the building, distributing and and deploying of business-focused knowledge … the essence of social business computing, in my opinion."

Husband describes blueKiwi as "centered on the building, nourishing and sustaining of business-focused relationships - building useful knowledge and getting things done."

[M]ost collaboration systems start from the point of view of technical capabilities and do not make it easy, or overlook, the building and growing of relationships. In the past, users of collaborative platforms had to go about building their business relationships, both internally and externally, outside of the collaboration system / platform. blueKiwi2009 is first and foremost a means of building valuable and value-added relationships in the course of doing one’s work … it can enable, contain and manage all the activity in a business ecosystem.

An online "ecosystem" is exactly the right term for describing the vision of these software designers.

Here is an interesting and, to me, persuasive attempt to foster a stimulating space of content and interaction. And once businesses really get behind the building of such systems, the leaders of science, education and religion will not be far behind.

Husband continues in describing the uniqueness of blueKiwi --

[A]ll collaboration platforms offer spaces where people can connect, gather, share and exchange information. Thus far, the mainstream approach has been to offer spaces where people can connect and gather, and then share content … information about issues, problems, and areas of interest, and as people exchange and collaborate, useful knowledge is built.

bK2009 turns this upside down, or around (you choose). It is designed on the principle that the collaborative space is there for content and its distribution, and the individual user then chooses which groups she or he wishes to engage with. Thus, any individual user can be a member of the groups they have chosen to interact with. And of course it has a Twitter clone as one of its features.

What eventuates is a network of interaction around pertinent content, and thus over time an ecosystem around issues in which engagement is de facto defined by the users’ interest and willingness to engage. This then leads to the ability to watch and quantify the volume of interactions and obtain a better, and visible , understanding of the value that is being created (responsiveness, innovation, deepening understanding and so on).

In what Husband calls “natural sociology of knowledge work,” the software allows people to enter and exit any "information ecosystem" they wish. The combining of features we know through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogging -- as well as the archiving of documents and drafts -- allows a constructive yet constantly changing space of idea-generation and product-design. Husband says, "the result after several years of intense design, development and deployment is a collaborative platform that in my opinion more closely mirrors the natural sociology of knowledge work than any other platform about which I know."

Individuals can be known by the "reputation" they build for being involved in different ecosystems in addition to whatever "profile" they create to identify themselves.




The software is oriented around Metcalfe's Law of Networks "whereby the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected members of the network" even though not everyone agrees on this "law." Nevertheless, the software is based on a belief that "organizations should realize that collaboration in connected networks is the way work will be done all the time in the near future, and so organizations should seek to enroll and engage the entire organization in the use of the collaborative platform."

Image via CrunchBase

I find this fascinating. Once all of us (including tech-infatuated people like me) get over what may initially seem "complicated," "unnecessary," and "too much time to learn," I think we will find such software to be remarkably helpful.

The software here is already available on iPhone -- which means that the accessibility to working with a "portable knowledge community" from the comfort of your local cafe will surely change the way we "think" in the world.

I'll speculate and say I think we're seeing the future of the "new normal." Another decade and this will be a natural way to share ideas.

Other Articles

• blueKiwi 2009 - The Sociology of Productivity is a Core Design Principle (fastforwardblog.com)
• Nomee Is An All-In-One Social Networking Aggregator And RSS Feed (techcrunch.com)
• Author Clara Shih on the Facebook Era, and what it means for businesses (venturebeat.com)
• Chi.mp: Not Just Another Data Aggregator | Black Web 2.0 (via delicious) (blackweb20.com)
• Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric (bokardo.com)
• Yahoo Mobile: Now With New Design, Customization, and Social Features (mashable.com)
• Social Networks or Networking Socially: Picking a social networking site! (ceoworld.biz)
• Facebook's valuation and the network effect (kottke.org)
• Added Twitter To My Toolbox (thecriticalpath.info)
• Conversations as Data: We need new UI (newcommbiz.com)

Born Digital, Dissecting the First Generation of Digital Natives

Just received a book announcement --

Cover via Amazon

Born Digital:
Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser

This seems like an interesting portrait of the younger generation who grew up with computing as part of their natural environment.

In a world of ubiquitous computing power and portable technology, the book provides an occasion to consider how pedagogy and organizational structures that pre-date the 1980s may need to further reconsider adaptations to this growing wave of our population.

From the publisher:

The most enduring change wrought by the digial revolution is neither the new business models nor the new search algorithms, but rather the massive generation gap between those who were born digital and those who were not. The first generation of "digital natives"—children who were born into and raised in the digital world—is now coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our cultural life, even our families will be forever transformed.

But who are these digital natives? In Born Digital, leading Internet and technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer a sociological portrait of this exotic tribe of young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.

Based on original reserach and advaving new theories, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical.

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Development of American Religion

On Monday, March 23rd, PBS will air Sister Aimee, a provocative documentary on the life of the astounding American evangelist.

If you don't know Sister Aimee, now is the time. The show is based on a wonderful book, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, by religious historian Matthew Avery Sutton.

Aimee Semple McPherson is so important, it is hard to summarize all she accomplished in the scope of modern Christianity. Among them is the incorporation of drama into church services, the promotion of media (she founded KFSG in Los Angeles), and the negotiation of women's religious roles.

The PBS website to accompany the documentary is full of fantastic materials:

- a gallery of pictures of Sister Aimee (my favorite is her "Gospel Car" driven across country doing revivals in 1918)

- a brief biography of her life (she founded the Four Square Gospel denomination)

- resources for teachers on history, religion, culture, and the connection between religion and racism and feminism

Angelus Temple and KFSG Radio Towers. Image via Wikipedia

- a list of websites and books (besides Sutton's book, I also really enjoyed Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson by Mark Epstein)

- pictures and history of The Angelus Temple, important moment in church architecture that pre-dates Willow Creek by over half a century, and the current home of the Dream Center

- the full transcript of the documentary

Be sure to set your DVRs.

Idea Camp is Live Streaming Video Starting Thurs Nite

Image via Wikipedia

Quick post:  

The innovative incubator "Idea Camp" for church leaders happening in my native Orange County, California, is streaming live video tonight and tomorrow.  Check it out for an online, front-row seat to this "unconference"  --

http://theideacamp.ning.com/

http://www.theideacamplive.com/

You might need to register yourself into the site first.

Expanding Our Digital Selves - It's a Small World After All

The New York Times comes through again -- here's' an extended article Kelly Rutherford pointed out on my facebook account originally published last September on the growth and consequences of our increasingly intimate online presence.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

An article I missed from September in the New York Times by Clive Thompson gives a nice summary of the growth and implications of our expanding digital selves.

Here's a brief abstract of what I found most interesting. Thompson writes,

Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?


It's Called "Ambient Awareness"

Image via Wikipedia

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there has been a boom in tools for “microblogging”: posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing.

There are other services for reporting where you’re traveling (Dopplr) or for quickly tossing online a stream of the pictures, videos or Web sites you’re looking at (Tumblr). And there are even tools that give your location. When the new iPhone, with built-in tracking, was introduced in July, one million people began using Loopt, a piece of software that automatically tells all your friends exactly where you are.


Social Interactions as Constant Status Updates

For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb? The growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme — the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world.

Ben Haley, a 39-year-old documentation specialist for a software firm who lives in Seattle, told me that when he first heard about Twitter last year from an early-adopter friend who used it, his first reaction was that it seemed silly. But a few of his friends decided to give it a try, and they urged him to sign up, too.

Image via CrunchBase

Each day, Haley logged on to his account, and his friends’ updates would appear as a long page of one- or two-line notes. He would check and recheck the account several times a day, or even several times an hour. The updates were indeed pretty banal. One friend would post about starting to feel sick; one posted random thoughts like “I really hate it when people clip their nails on the bus”; another Twittered whenever she made a sandwich — and she made a sandwich every day. Each so-called tweet was so brief as to be virtually meaningless.

But as the days went by, something changed. Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

Keeping in Tune with Individual Moods

Image by luc legay via Flickr

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

“It’s like I can distantly read everyone’s mind,” Haley went on to say. “I love that. I feel like I’m getting to something raw about my friends. It’s like I’ve got this heads-up display for them.” It can also lead to more real-life contact, because when one member of Haley’s group decides to go out to a bar or see a band and Twitters about his plans, the others see it, and some decide to drop by — ad hoc, self-organizing socializing. And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.


Co-Presence Dates from Digital Phones

Image via Wikipedia

Facebook and Twitter may have pushed things into overdrive, but the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.

“It’s an aggregate phenomenon,” Marc Davis, a chief scientist at Yahoo and former professor of information science at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “No message is the single-most-important message. It’s sort of like when you’re sitting with someone and you look over and they smile at you. You’re sitting here reading the paper, and you’re doing your side-by-side thing, and you just sort of let people know you’re aware of them.” Yet it is also why it can be extremely hard to understand the phenomenon until you’ve experienced it. Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter or Facebook feed isn’t interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.


The Benefit of Socially "Loose-Ties"

Many maintained that their circle of true intimates, their very close friends and family, had not become bigger. Constant online contact had made those ties immeasurably richer, but it hadn’t actually increased the number of them; deep relationships are still predicated on face time, and there are only so many hours in the day for that.But where their sociality had truly exploded was in their “weak ties” — loose acquaintances, people they knew less well. It might be someone they met at a conference, or someone from high school who recently “friended” them on Facebook, or somebody from last year’s holiday party. In their pre-Internet lives, these sorts of acquaintances would have quickly faded from their attention. But when one of these far-flung people suddenly posts a personal note to your feed, it is essentially a reminder that they exist.

This rapid growth of weak ties can be a very good thing. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. For example, if you’re looking for a job and ask your friends, they won’t be much help; they’re too similar to you, and thus probably won’t have any leads that you don’t already have yourself. Remote acquaintances will be much more useful, because they’re farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out.

Image via Wikipedia

This is the ultimate effect of the new awareness: It brings back the dynamics of small-town life, where everybody knows your business. Young people at college are the ones to experience this most viscerally, because, with more than 90 percent of their peers using Facebook, it is especially difficult for them to opt out.

Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has closely studied how college-age users are reacting to the world of awareness, told me that athletes used to sneak off to parties illicitly, breaking the no-drinking rule for team members. But then camera phones and Facebook came along, with students posting photos of the drunken carousing during the party; savvy coaches could see which athletes were breaking the rules. First the athletes tried to fight back by waking up early the morning after the party in a hungover daze to detag photos of themselves so they wouldn’t be searchable. But that didn’t work, because the coaches sometimes viewed the pictures live, as they went online at 2 a.m. So parties simply began banning all camera phones in a last-ditch attempt to preserve privacy.

“It’s just like living in a village, where it’s actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already,” Tufekci said. “The current generation is never unconnected. They’re never losing touch with their friends. So we’re going back to a more normal place, historically. If you look at human history, the idea that you would drift through life, going from new relation to new relation, that’s very new. It’s just the 20th century.”

You can read the full article at the New York Times website.