Director's Blog: Multimedia Mania
"If you think that multimedia is limited to mega-churches with six-figure sound systems, think again." [continue reading]
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Congregational Resource Guide, January 17, 2012
Tweeting under the influence
By Phyllis Strupp
[Episcopal News Service] At a recent conference of training professionals, a speaker on social networking asked the audience how many were on Twitter. Few hands went up, a surprising response since the average age of participants was well under 40. The speaker went on to explain why they should be on Twitter. Yes, he agreed, Twitter can be a time-waster, but it allows you to be in the know about important world events as well as the thoughts of clients, co-workers, competitors, and potential employers. Based on the chit chat afterwards, he didn’t seem to make many converts. Twitter is a tough sell to busy people trying to meet daily demands at work and home. A major benefit of Twitter is the ability to communicate with others immediately—but first you must learn the language.
When you sign up for a free account, you provide a few words about yourself so others can get a sense of who you are and where your interests lie. If they like what you say, they can decide to follow you. You can also become the follower of those who write things you like. Someone who posts a comment no longer than 140 characters (tweet) on Twitter becomes a “tweeter.” You can be a Twitter voyeur, following others while never tweeting your own words. The several hundred million people involved with Twitter are called “tweeple.”
In 2011, Twitter and other social networking media had a profound impact on the world; the events of the Arab spring are a notable example. But one linguistic casualty of Twitter is associating the word “follow” with a keystroke. How easy it is, to follow strangers from around the corner or around the world who say things you like, for no cost other than a few minutes of your time.
In ancient times, the concept of following packed a much greater punch. The earliest hunter-gather members of the human species followed prey and spread throughout the world. Some ten thousand years ago, our ancestors followed the movements of the stars, enabling the prediction of seasons and the advent of agriculture and modern civilization.
Interest in following the stars remained strong, yielding astrology (Greek for ‘account of the stars’) some 5,000 years ago, considered to be a search for meaning in the sky. A central principle of astrology is integration within the cosmos. The individual, earth, and the environment are viewed as a single organism, all parts of which are correlated with each other.
The English word “influence” from the Latin “to flow into” comes from the ancient astrological concept that an invisible force emanated from the stars and affected human events, a notion underlying the zodiac and horoscope followed by many today. Astrology was a highly regarded scholarly tradition until modern science absorbed it under the label “astronomy” many centuries ago. So when the three wise men followed the star, this was a much more logical thing to do two thousand years ago than it is today.
This is the world that Jesus was born into, yet the Bible doesn’t have much to say about Jesus consulting the stars or checking out his horoscope. And when Jesus asked someone to follow him, there was eye contact, flesh and blood, and charisma—dynamic star power that emanated from the kingdom of heaven within him and all of us, according to Luke 17:20-21:
“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’”
Whether through stars, zodiac animals, or tweeters from around the world, the human mind doggedly looks for meaning and power in the outer world, while neglecting the even greater source of meaning and power within. Through our high-powered brains, we are uniquely equipped to feel God’s influence—the good within us that we can share with the Creation in thought, word and deed. Our evolving brains perceive our own inner goodness more easily through the minds of others. However, “who do you say that I am?” yields a more realistic answer in person than in cyberspace.
Jesus could have easily tweeted “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of people,” as this phrase has only 53 characters. But I’m not sure he would have used Twitter as a recruiting tool even if available in his times. He was looking for the kind of followers that could become disciples, models of a new way of life. To follow someone on Twitter is but a keystroke, rather than a response to God’s tugs on our heartstrings with commitment and action.
Phyllis Strupp is the author of Church Publishing’s Faith and Nature curriculum and the author of The Richest of Fare: Seeking Spiritual Security in the Sonoran Desert.
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Episcopal News Service, January 12, 2012
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The Online/Offline "D(efine)T(he)R(elationship)"
Among the many wonders of social media is the fact that we can now form relationships with people we've never even met "in real life." Does that fact render those relationships any less valid than those we form more traditionally? Let us challenge that assumption.
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Congregational Resource Guide, December 13, 2011
Congregational Resource Guide, December 20, 2011
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Blog: Survey Says...
"We live in a world of constant information gathering--and as ministers, you are gathering more than most. If you're technically adept, you face the overload anyone does who spends lots of time online. But then there is the overload that comes from listening to and dealing with the countless number of stories that your parishioners share with you week in and week out. Gathering information isn't the problem; knowing what to do with it, is."
By Pat McCaughan
Social Media Can Serve Your Mission
We're still in the early years of figuring out how to use social media to engage each other and the world around us. But one thing is for sure: social media is social. It allows us to connect with others, to deepen existing relationships, and to form new ones. How about, instead of fearing that time spent engaging social media is time poorly (or distractedly) spent, congregational leaders embrace the opportunity to reach out to others? That is, social media can serve your mission.
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Congregational Resource Guide, November 22, 2011
Developing policies is a challenge, observers say
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] When the Episcopal Church's Province III Youth Ministry Network earlier this month issued a set of guidelines for interacting with young people through social media, it was on the cutting edge of a growing effort to help guide ministers as they walk through the digital landscape.
Two or three years ago when Elizabeth Drescher was researching her book "Tweet if You ♥ Jesus," she said, the "big conversation was about why do we need to do this at all -- why does it matter?"
Now, she said, "that conversation is pretty much over … now they're really starting to wrestle with what's the best way to do that in light of our standards and practices for professional ministry. That's just unfolding. There's not really a clear standard for how that's working."
The Rev. Jake Dell, Episcopal News Service's senior manager of marketing and advertising, agreed, noting that the digital environment is not static, but instead "is so new and changing so quickly that policy will have a hard time keeping up."
The church is playing catch-up in this environment, said the Rev. Victoria Duncan, the head of the Episcopal Church's Office of Transition Ministry. "We're trying to embrace what the culture is way ahead of us on," she said. Through the transition ministry office, people seeking church employment may maintain electronic portfolios on which they can list their online media presence, such as Facebook or LinkedIn accounts.
The issue of how clergy ought to connect with church members is an old one, but social media's porous boundaries between public and private communication raise questions about where and how clergy should maintain a digital presence. Those questions take on heightened attention when dealing with youth; hence Province III's guidelines that suggest ways "to apply commonly accepted principles of healthy boundaries for digital networking and communication."
Traditionally, clergy are expected to be mindful of their relationships with the people in their congregations so that the needs of the congregants are served rather than those of the cleric, and so that the power inherent in the cleric's position is not abused.
"We have to remember that we're not better than, worse than, but that we are in a different category and that comes with things that are terrific and things that aren't fun that we have to live with," Duncan said.
Often the concerns boil down to whether a priest can be friends with his or her parishioners. And, friend or not, most dioceses have policies about whether and how a departing rector can continue to be in relationship with parishioners. A cleric's spouse or partner is often expected to abide by those policies - a tough requirement if they have chosen to be digitally connected to congregants even if the cleric has not.
Dell said that while there is "wisdom" in those policies, "I don't know that anyone at this time would be ready or is comfortable saying that upon leaving a ministry you must terminate your Facebook account and un-friend all your parishioners."
Yet, Drescher said, she knows ministers who have done just that. A Presbyterian pastor who was leaving his congregation announced to all his Facebook friends that because of the denomination's policy against maintaining contact, he would close his Facebook page when he left and open one to which he invited only personal friends. His former congregants, he said, would be able to re-friend him in one year, if they still wanted to be connected.
The Rev. Alex Dyer, priest-in-charge at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul & St. James in New Haven, Connecticut, said that finding the proper online stance "is not that different in many ways. The same boundary issues apply… you've just got to be careful."
While some clergy people want to avoid the social-media milieu altogether because they feel overwhelmed by the choices and fearful of their implications, others say avoidance is not possible, counterproductive and precludes use of a powerful evangelism tool.
Dell added the caution that it is crucial to claim one's identity in the new land. People ought to create a presence on Facebook so as not to have their identity hijacked, which has happened to clergy. "You can't simply hide from it. You can't just simply say I am not going to go on it," he said. "At the very least you have to claim that little piece of the internet that you want for yourself."
With 750 million Facebook users, Drescher notes that the social networking site would be the third largest in the world if it were a physical nation. Studies show that 60 percent of women older than 18 are on Facebook and the figure is close to that for men, she said. In addition, people who are the most active on social networking sites are most likely to be engaged in the world, Drescher said, noting "really strong positive correlations" between social networking participation and volunteerism, and between volunteerism and religious engagement.
"It's a huge landscape and we need to be there," she said. "It's really important that people in leadership in the church understand what the digital media landscape looks like" and how, for instance, Twitter is different from Facebook and LinkedIn.
"We need to think long and hard about how we participate in that world based on the practices that are already part of our tradition," Drescher said. "There aren't new practices that we need to invent. We just need to know what the new landscape looks like."
One feature of the social-media landscape is that it is "intensely networked so you are likely to have the experience of bumping into someone in the digital grocery store more often than you might in your local context," she said. In other words: can anyone really put up a hard boundary between public and private?
Drescher said no. Even clergy who interact with parishioners only on their congregational Facebook page and create a different page or group for their family and non-parish friends can't ensure that those two environments are separate. If a person has friends in both locations, they can repost and share things from either page, and so "there's no 'private' on Facebook," she said.
Yet, Dyer said, "you control what gets put up there. People think that their whole life is going to be this big open book and that's not the case. It can be, but that's your choice."
Dyer does not have a personal Facebook page but, the one he maintains is "totally professional." On that page he will occasionally post information that might be deemed personal by others, such as what he is doing on vacation.
"I think there's some benefit to letting people in on my personal life," he said. "People can see a different side of me than what they may see on Sunday morning and connect with me on a different level. I become a bit more real - little more human and little less institutional."
Those benefits work both ways, he said. Friending people on Facebook can be pastorally beneficial because, Dyer said, it allows him to check on people he hasn't seen in church lately without sounding like he is nagging them about their attendance.
The Rev. Diana Clark was contemplating retirement as rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, as Facebook was becoming more and more popular. She got friend requests from parishioners but did not accept them. "It just felt like Facebook would not be a proper place for me to relate to parishioners unless it was specifically St. John's Facebook page," she said.
"If I had set up a Facebook page so parishioners could be on Facebook with me, then what do I do, 'unfriend' them when I leave?" she added.
With so many young people using social media and texting as their primary modes of communication, more questions arise. For instance, is there an ethical difference between a young member of a congregation "friending" an adult such as the youth minister, and the youth minister "friending" youngsters? Are there any legal obligations surrounding statements and behavior that a youth minister might become aware of via Facebook interactions with young people?
Drescher said she has spent the last three years trying to find canon lawyers and others who will talk about what might be legally appropriate in a digital environment but, "because there hasn't been any litigation on it, nobody wants to talk about it."
In the end, while standards are developing and the landscape keeps changing, it seems that the old rules can always apply.
Dyer urged common sense. "There's going be people who always have problems with boundaries and unfortunately Facebook is just an opportunity again for them to cross over boundaries," he said.
People tend to think that technology is doing something to their relationships, Drescher said, but she insisted it is not, and clergy don't have to do anything "radically different."
"What's important is not to make the way we communicate human being to human being any more exotic than it is in our face-to-face experience," Drescher said. "We need to be open and kind and caring and clear with others in both spaces."
What Steve Jobs Can Teach the Church
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Those words could have been spoken by Jesus but they were actually uttered by Steve Jobs at the
Steve Jobs was a very complex person. Spiritually he was a Buddhist and a visionary, almost a mystic, whose most exhilarating experience was walking in a Zen garden in
He was not perfect, to be sure. He could be the best and worst boss at the same time. He was something of a bully, firing and rehiring people the same day, intense, direct, strong-willed, a control freak with a binary view of the world. He did not suffer fools gladly, did not enjoy small talk, and would turn off people who did not interest him. His management style will never be touted in leadership books. He would not make a good parish priest or even bishop, nor would he fit well into most churches, especially ones with lots of rules and regulations.
And yet, I greatly admire Steve Jobs and will miss him, even though we never met personally. Of all his many attributes, the one I especially appreciate is his conviction that we are on this earth for a limited time, that we will someday die, and that we will be cleared away so that others can take our place. For Jobs this meant making the most of life while we have it; living passionately, intentionally, and deliberately; not wasting or squandering the precious time we have on this earth.
Jobs put it like this to the Stanford graduates: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
In Steve Jobs we hear echoes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the New England Transcendentalists. His personal and business philosophy went beyond the boundaries of conventional thinking. He would not use the past to shape the future. He didn’t drive his company by looking into the rearview mirror. He didn’t settle for doing what others already knew - only better. Instead, he managed to fuse together a core business with disruptive innovation. He combined the intellectual with the artistic. He balanced the rational with the lunatic. He refused to admit that something was impossible because it had not yet been done. He found ways where there was no way, because life for him was one of possibilities more than limitations.
Steve Jobs understood the paradox that disruptive innovation is essential to any healthy, growing organization. When he returned to Apple, he developed an ad which said: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
The problem with being a rebel, a misfit, a troublemaker is that you are not likely to be cheered by the authorities. Think of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi and the dissension they caused in their own communities. Think of the many theologians and scientists who were condemned by the church - Galileo in the 17th century, Darwin in the 19th century and Teilhard de Chardin in the 20th century. Even Steve Jobs was lambasted before he was praised. It took him years to come up with a turnaround strategy that showed what Apple could do. People forget the years between 1996 and 2001 where much of the market called him more insane, than insanely great.
So, what might churches learn from Steve Jobs at this present moment in history as we struggle to do ministry in a rapidly changing world? Here are six insights to reflect upon.
First, be open to the Holy Spirit, to God’s plan for new times and seasons, and to the Spirit’s working in the world. Steve Jobs was able to see things in a way that other people did not. His biographer Walter Isaacson refers to him as a “visionary” - and that he was. Christians have the Holy Spirit to help us see clearly, discern our choices and act courageously into the future. In the Spirit we can make Jesus central to everything we do as a church, and everything else secondary. We can re-examine the assumptions in how we do ministry. We can overcome “hardening of the categories” by getting rid of the traditions that no longer make sense. Instead of asking, “What are we going to lose by moving into God’s new times and seasons?” we can ask instead, “What is the kingdom of God going to gain?” Or, to put it another way, “How can the church position itself to respond to what God is doing in the world?”
Second, master unlearning. Not everything we learned is wrong or outdated, but we live in a world where yesterday’s successes are tomorrow’s failures. We need to be flexible, agile, and ready to move outside the conventional way of thinking and doing ministry. We need to reshape tradition to the present context of ministry rather than be stuck in the past. In a world at warp speed, only the fast survive. Steve Jobs knew this. In January 2007, while unveiling the iPhone, he made a very telling comment about his business philosophy. He said, “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I loved. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple, since the very, very beginning. And we always will.” Could the church do the same?
Third, be willing to look beyond the church for answers. The knowledge we need for the future may not exist inside the church. If we believe that the Spirit is at work in the world as well as the church, then the world may have something to teach us about how we do church. Jobs never was ashamed to look beyond Apple for innovations that he could make better. When everyone was praising the invention of the e-Reader, Apple came out with the iPad. Jobs not only made something better, he transformed it into a revolutionary new product with multiple uses. Might we in the Anglican Church look to non-Anglican churches and even secular organizations for ways to improve our mission and ministry? We don’t have to accept their message, but we can learn from their methods.
Fourth, experiment, fail and try again. Steve Jobs understood that the future will not look like the past, nor can anyone fully predict the future. Charting new paths, even in failure, became characteristic of his way of moving forward. So with the church there is no clear strategy into the future. We see the future dimly, and no one is likely to get it right the first time. So why not allow parishes to be places of exploration, trying new things, taking risks, experimenting, and even accepting failure as a way of learning new ways of doing ministry? Institutionally, this means becoming permission-giving rather than permission-denying because there is no “one size fits all” approach anymore. Consensus in synods or even among bishops seldom represents the cutting edge. Instead we need to listen to the voices on the margin and not just the mainstream, because often the answers we seek will come from places we least expect to find them.
Fifth, expect the uncomfortable. To minister effectively in a secular, post-modern, post-Christian world means that at some point we can’t keep doing what got us here. Remember Einstein’s famous maxim: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” We need to step out in faith, move beyond our comfort zone, look into the lens of the future and imagine what could be. Safety, security and the status quo lead only to death. Today it is not enough to manage an institution. We must also lead a movement. If we only manage yesterday’s church, we forfeit the opportunity to shape tomorrow’s Christians.
Lastly, maintain your passion. By passion I mean holding on to what you love. Steve Jobs, in reflecting on the days after he was fired from the company he built, said this to the Stanford graduates: “Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Do you remember Steve Jobs famous conversation with John Sculley that brought him to Apple? Sculley, who then worked for Pepsi-Cola, told Jobs he could not accept his offer to join the company. At that point, Jobs confronted Sculley with a crucial choice: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” Translation: Do you really want to spend the rest of your days on work that fails to inspire, or stuff that fails to count, for reasons that fail to touch the soul of anyone? The question knocked the wind out of Sculley, and he went on to join Apple.
That’s the challenge before us in the Anglican Church of Canada. Do we want to continue to live just somehow, or would we like, in Christ’s name, to live triumphantly and be part of changing the world, our lives, and the lives of others? The ball is in our court. Hit it back - or let it die there bouncing slowly, slowly, slowly, while we hesitate and procrastinate.
Steve Jobs knew what to do - and he did it with love, passion and gusto.
How about us?
The Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi
October 18, 2011
Diocese of
Steve Jobs's passing this past week got us thinking whether there's a connection between the world of One Infinite Loop and ministry. Deep in the archives of recorded Jobsian speak, it turns out, there is. It has to do with locomtion, bicycles, and progress.
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Congregational Resource Guide, October 11, 2011
By Ali Symons, General Synod web writer
