Dale Lature: cluetrain

Another Cluetrain-like Rant

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 18:41:55 GMT

A fairly substantial and important rant , if I can say so myself. I did it over on my MT blog , entitled Cluetrain and Theoblogical

jordoncooper.com :: how out-of-touch the Church is becoming

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 02:58:24 GMT

Whoa man! Some real "stickin' it to 'em/us" from Jordon Cooper in these three posts (this one and the two before/below it):

I wonder if the reason that churches are afraid to engaged in the online discussion is that we know how unattractive our churches are to the new generation of postmodern church attenders and instead of facing that and fixing it, we would just rather bury our head in the sand and leave it to the next person who pastors the church. As long as the church keeps focusing on unconnected builders and boomers, the harder the paradigm shift to those who are a part of the digital culture is going to be.

jordoncooper.com : How the Church ignores the online audience

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 02:54:12 GMT

Excellent point. I have also found myself shaking my head when I see the Church passing up the oppotunities to participate in REAL conversations. (I say REAL, because much of what we do now, IN THE CHURCH meetings, is not conversation at all. I have not felt known at all via traditional Church channels and activities in , oh, 11 or 12 years. Jordon continues:

People online aren't real because they don't sit in our pews, they don't help our numbers in our denominational reports, and they rarely tithe (although I believe people will give to a community they find compelling enough to give to).

Seeking Goes Digital...Church Stay Analogue

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 02:43:16 GMT

Great Stuff from Jordon Cooper:

...This hits at what I think is the root of why the church fears the web. Many churches generally won't allow individuals the freedom to create compelling content and enter into a conversation. Churches aren't friendly to conversation. The worship is lead from the worship leader. The sermon is prepared and presented by the pastor. The congregation watches. It is one way communication. Early on when I was fooling around online I was apart of a mailing list that was hosted by Ginghamsburg Church's web team. Around forty or fifty of us would talk about web ministry and help each other out. One of the topics that kept coming up was how do we fit the web team into the traditional command and control structure of the church and have content approved and things properly vetted. The church didn't trust anyone to create any content. It needed a committee to make sure it was all okay. It was before the Cluetrain Manifesto was out and articulated it for us but it was true, organizations can't have a conversation and I think organizations also fear the individual....

Turning Back and Avoiding Voice

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 01:10:12 GMT

A couple or 3 weeks ago, Ken Walker wrote an article that was a great Biblical articulation of something which I had noticed and written about in "Allowing Voice". I was bemoaning the tendency of Churches to want to "be the whole content"; to have the people depend upon it (and its leaders) for the whole shootin' match. That tends to make Churches a whole lot like marketers. They want to "define" the needs, and then provide the "right perspective" on them, and sends us home all warm and fuzzy, all the while most of us go home feeling like no more of ourselves has been known.

This is why this refusal of the Church to recognize the potential for the online tools in the "furtherance" of distributing our stories and our experiences to each other is SO infuriating to me. It keeps me, and people like me in this experience, from being known, and results in our "missing out" on each other, and in the process, on the opportunity to discover what we have to learn from one another. The temptation to be "the authorities" has , like it has the martketers, kept the Church from being able to see how its very life depends on the community. Pentecost depends upon it.

But instead, the Church takes on the "push" model of evangelism, and seeks to plan a program and "run us through it", a nd send us home, all "filled up". Like Ken points out in his reflection on Galatains 4:8-20, the Church is all ga-ga on getting things clicking, and utilizes business processes and "organizational skills" and somehow misses that there are numerous "callings" going on out there, as God works to call a people to various ministries. Marketers are concerned with identifying a need (or inventing one, based on mapnipulation of real needs) and then providing the solution in some product or service.

The Church , of course, can use all the resources it can get, but the most precious resource is the discernment of call, a nd hleping its members find that, or listen for it, and encourage one another as we all seek to understand how that is happening in our own lives; what gifts God has given us and how that enables us to address a particular problem by providing some way to call others into collaborative effort to rectify it (the identified problem). Ken writes: Paul doesn’t mince words when he describes the previous experience of the Galatians being "slavery" to this whole matter of observing particular holidays, going through ritual, and attempting to define themselves on the basis of their own religiosity. Note that this isn’t as if it’s an accident on the part of the Galatians: Paul doesn’t use the words "slip" or "stumble," as if there were some unpredictable outside force at work here. Instead, he uses the phrase "turn back." This was an active cultural movement on the part of the Galatian community.

I often wonder if it is possible (and I think it is, especially in light of Ken's insight on this) for some of the "pagan" practices to be going on in the Churches? That the very community that took us in and showed us a better way and a healing way to once again "turn back" and sell out to some of the world's "proven methods" or "Best practices"? And these "best practcies", they fear the "messy" journey of seeking truth amongst the chaos of community.

A lot of people don't catch on to this because "Church" for them has been about "answers" , but those who realize that we are on a journey together and must "be a new story" just as the community at Pentecost, and at Galatia. I feel the pagan practices (and they feel very much like "show business" and "theological shows") because many of us feel there's way too little "being known" and "getting to know" in all of that. Celebrations are really celebrations when we observe the very personal discoveries we have made in this people God has placed us with. But how would we know this, if we make it so difficult to "get at"?

Where do we start?

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 18:41:22 GMT

A friend on another system asked a question:

if we are sure that this vision of the future that has blogs and online community as key facets is the right one, how do we make that future happen? What do we need to be doing to nudge society, even church societies, in that direction?

My immediate reply in "How We Can Begin" (but realizing , especially after I wrote it, that I started ranting, but good ranting, I think. In any event, more needs to be said. There never seems to be enough of the questions such as the one in italics above.

I also, in my reply linked above, broke into a lot of "Cluetrain-ish" kinds of "Come on, get a clue" type of confrontation (apologies to the Cluetrain authors, who do it and write it much better than I). Rest assured, I don't purport to have given all the answers, or maybe even one in that reply. But it was a reply that I fully intend to keep boucing up against and bouncing back for more. It will be with us a long time. They're attempts to "nudge" (maybe leading toward "busting in the dooor")

Allowing Voice

Tue, 27 May 2003 13:20:09 GMT

In Small Pieces, Loosely joined, Weinberger describes "Corporate-speak" as "bizarre", and indeed it is. I ask the question, when does "religious or theological language" become more like "corporate speak"? When does this organizational, "lets please all people all the time" approach become a conversation killer?

Companies talk in bizarre, stilted ways becuase they believe that such language expresses their perfection: omniscient, unflappable, precise, eleveated, and without accent or personality. The rhetoric is as glossy and unbelievable as the photos in the marketing brochure. Such talk kills conversation. That's excatly why companies talk that way. (p.90)

I know of a church where the pastor constantly complained about emails being sent to all the members on an email list (which consisted of people who volunteered their email addresses in order to be INCLUDED in such mailings). One member was keeping the list informed of various events of likely interest to some members of the congregation (this is a rather politically active congregation), and also on news about members, and matters which involved asking for prayer. The pastor instituted an "official email" statement on all emails sent to members , stating that this (and meaning "this and ONLY this") email is an OFFICIAL communication of churchname . The pastor also confronted the "renegade", "unofficial" communicator of "unauthorized" emails on the matter, complaining that the emails were unwanted.

Here we have a case where a Church "official" ; a "pastor", is opposing one of the earliest and still oft-used vehicles for carrying the "VOICE" which I believe is neccessary to a Church sounding human, and not canned. The "disclaimer" or "official" stamp on all Church email comes off very "authoritarian" and is putting itself in opposition to the mantra of the Web and online communications; and places it squarely in the tradition of companies employing "corporate speak" as a way of minimizing public discourse. This may not, and is probably not, even done as a conscious ploy to squelch anything, but merely a transference of the mechanisms of "order" and "organization" tactics employed by the business world and the corporate culture. But herein lies the problem. Companies so "mimicked" are often not concerned with accentuating the voice of their constituents; their customers. They are devoted to the "best practices" which a culture that has become cut off from what is human. This is particularly troublsome when it works its way into Church management. Indeed, there is often a problem when "management" is the terminology used. In Church communities, conversation is not friendly to being "handled" or "managed". Those very words smack of cover-up, avoidance, sweeping under the proverbial rug. Sometimes even "open forums" are a "strategy" meant to "appease" or be an "opiate" rather than achieve doialogue or repentance and reconciliation.

There are many people who want to see open dialogue on public issues, political issues, a nd theological issues. there are also people who want to find peronal, intimate dialogue. I believe that both can be accomodated online (not exclusively, but better "only there' than "nowhere"; and often online dialogue will lead to a breaking down of the face-to-face barriers to "breaching the subject", because the online thread has given them permission to continue; it has confirmed that this topic is not foreign or unwanted.

Experts and The Threat of the Net

Mon, 26 May 2003 17:20:49 GMT

Thinking back to the discussion at Vanderbilt led by Weinberger and AKMA, and the debate that arose over the nature, role, status, and value of "the expert", I was just thinking about the way the Church leaders of Luther's day looked at him and his use of "printing" as a channel to circulate his views. They immediately procalimed the printing press as "evil" because it allowed "just anybody" to be heard by a larger public than they as "official leaders" had gained over the centuries. The Church had, in conjuntion and cahoots with the crown, a mponopoly on the "truth" and the "education" of the day, and so wielded enormous power. Read more in "Some Peasant Monk"

Clueless review

Sun, 25 May 2003 17:34:31 GMT

I found this link at the Smallpieces.com site, and had to click and see what his problem was.

from the review by this guy at the Washington Post, who has a little diatribe of his own, giving us a good example of the thing he is criticizing about The Cluetrain Manifesto and of Small Pieces Loosely joined, by exhibiting how he simply doesn't get it about Sociology and the Web. Read my response in Large Chunks, Thoroughly Missed

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Sun, 25 May 2003 17:13:19 GMT

This site for the Book has all the text (it looks like it does) and discussions branching out in all directions, creating a lot of "loosely joined pieces"

Small Places, Joined by Interest

Sun, 25 May 2003 17:08:33 GMT

From Small Pieces. Loosely Joined (p.49):

Consider the three places – Adbusters, NetBaby, and RageBoy’s site – on the Myrtle site that we explored. What do they really have in common? One is a political site, one is a game spot for children, and one is an idiosyncratic collection of essays by a writer with too much personality for his own good. All that holds them together is that someone at Myrtle found them interesting. For that reason alone, the three sites have been placed near one another, creating a small virtual village of sorts. On the Web, nearness is created by interest. | the Amazon link to Small Pieces

There is something here for Churches to take notice and "think upon" as a key strategy for making their Webs more like "being at Church" (in a good way). Weinberger talks about surfing a reccommended link, and finds links to other things while there. The "serendipity" happens as a sort of "guided" tour of the interests and humor of the Web author, taking him through some anti-advertising writings, an amusing game site, and RageBoy's well written rants. The variety gives a flavor of that Web author in a very unique way.

For a Church to have "voice", it seems that Weblogs naturally lead the writer to give such "tours" ; it is a sort of map of ideas and moods. It is an avenue of self-expression. Links often give a taste of a way the author feels at the moment, or to something thatthey consider important and want us to also experience it. What better example do we have of the "testimony". Weblogs, via their propensity to link, effectively communicate a variety that is at once artistic (self -expressive) and informational. It is a "shortcut to the psyche" that is often used when the writer wants to say something, but perhaps just wants to note it and give the reader a way to experience the thing that has caused an idea or a reaction to meerge in the writer, or as the "source" of a written comment or opinion. It's a new way of providing a context to a communication of some importance to the author (else they would not have bothered even to link it or comment upon it).

Churches need to be investigating NOW what can be accomplished by providing weblog services, to add to the communication mix. If the Church is interested in "connecting people", and they expend all this energy in "traditional small group development", much of which misses the mark, how is this avenue to "connecting people" getting missed?

Theses 8 to 10

Sun, 18 May 2003 17:38:07 GMT

In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Second, powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange are emerging. The Weblog, the wiki, "Social Software", tools that border on "emergent"; these are things in which the Church should be KEENLY interested.

Talk amongst yourselves

Sun, 18 May 2003 17:35:47 GMT

Cluetrain theses 8 thru 10

In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

People seak to one another differently than they do to the "authorities" and the "vendors". They relate to one another with a knowledge that there is no "dependence" on the other's part that we react and reply in a certain way. People outside of the company selling a product are not beholden to that product or company, but simply interested in finding the best value.

There is the fear in some denominations that to let people speak in their own voice would be to open the door to chaos, and to allow people to "badmouth" them. Keeping those people out also filters out the trust, for if the "dialogue" is too "sterile" and questions and challenges are not posed, then that "dialogue" will expose itself as a fraud, and the dilaogue will migrate elsewhere. It seems to me that the denominations have a stake in helping the "ecumenical" networks to succeed. Kind of like the "Macy's Santa Claus" in the movie "Miracle on 34th Street". His concern was for finding what the children wanted, undaunted by the wishes of his employers. Turns out , they discovered the value of such direct-ness in the goodwill that gesture generated (toward them as well, for playing host to such generoisty)

AKMA on Weinberger in AKMA-land

Sat, 17 May 2003 20:48:48 GMT

AKMA, in blogging the presentation Weinberger gave at Seabury-Western

A global recommendation system has sprung up, making us interested in things we never knew we would be interested in. While there’s value to straining toward objectivity, the Web provides a massively interlinked intersubjective network, giving some of the weight that objectivity always used to have.

For me, this is the thing in which lies the greatest potential for the Church and online communications. Because we can now find a veriety of things related to particular search words, we can find others who are writing about the topics which interest us, and, in the process, find out things that we may not have realized were connected, or things we knew existed, because of the connection with these others. It's a variation on the Amazon theme, "People who bought this also bought that"; Peple who are interested in this smae topic are also interested in these other things. It seems a good kind of algorithm to use for matching up people on mission; people seeking connection with "kindred souls" , to get some support and resourceful information, but also to discover a vast array of heretofore unknown, unrealized connections.

Bridging the Gap and Enabling Voice

Sat, 17 May 2003 17:50:25 GMT

Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends, whether workers or customers. While this change is in many ways understandable — huge factories took the place of village shops; the marketplace moved from the center of the town and came to depend on far-flung mercantile trade — the result has been to interpose a vast chasm between buyers and sellers. (p.10 The Cluetrain Manifesto)

Danger for communications: As official statements and pronouncements circulate on the denominational communication channels, the process of "chasm building" mentioned above can take place. Only where there is an intention to spark "dialogue" can these "opinions" of the world of "experts" really have an impact.

For me, to "feature" the "offical pronouncements" and provide no link to encourage dialogue is a bity of a heresy. It is to promote the idea that this stuff is not profoundly related to the "theological process" which us neccessarily "lay" and "grassroots". If it remains an intellectual assent thing; if the people receive notices (like "memos") of what "the bishops say", apart from the "call to conversation" , the subject matter is in the process of being "de-voiced"; in danger of becoming detached and irrelevant.

The Cluetrain authors are advancing a "recovery" of voice for commerce. They're not "against" commerce. Trade must happen. But the most effective, persuasive aproach is to bring the "one on one" and "many to many" back into the equation, so that the there is a vast pool of "evaluation" information that comes not from the manipulative drivel of the mass-marketer, but from users who speak the language of interest group who seek such products. In the Church, the "market" is multi-level: the members, seeking rersources for their ministries, the "observers": the ones who are involved and attending but whom the Church is hopefully seeking to invite to deeper involvement, and the "world out there" to which "outreach" is extended; to find ways to "invite them into the community". In all three, VOICE is crucial. The membership are more susceptible to the "church-speak", because of familiarity with the "theological language", and so unaware of where this terminology may lack voice. AKMA alludes to this:

It sounds little and hollow, but people can tell--that's part of the Cluetrain affirmation, and I'm on board with that. Not that no one can fake integrity, but that corporate-speak and ad-speak don't even begin to try, and in church circles growth-speak and (what to call it?) goopy-pious-speak don't communicate integrity either. |Integrity from AKMA's Disseminary Blog

The best way to overcome this is to enable and encourage the proliferation of voice by building online places which encourage expression and dialogue.

God's web developers?

Sat, 17 May 2003 17:22:06 GMT

I see Church publishers and organizations providing us with plenty of "religious versions" of "marketer-speak'; phrases and lingo that does not quite ring true. Absent, are the "testimonies", the expressions; the passion. CHurches and their "communication" agencies have been mysteriiously absent from any discussions , say for instance, in the "Social Software" arena.

The Pope's Astrophysicist article in WIRED back in the December issue brought home to me how the Church has missed the boat, and continues to do so, when it comes to seeking an understanding of the way people are communicating and expressing themselves via Social Software. If the Catholic Church can spend a significant amount of money for astronomy research, in order to "address the questions of the origins of life", how is it that , by and large, the Churches MISS the significance of studying the social worlds being constructed, inhabited, and hosting numerous conversations, questions, expressions of humanity, and ultimately, spiritual questions.

While questions around the origin of the universe and the beginning of life certainly have a significance, and are worthwhile questions, they don't seem quite so directly related to the ministry issues at stake in the communicaton issues: like, how well do we communicate with a significant and growing portion of human society? How well do we , as a people, devote our resources to worthwhile ministry pursuits that directly address the problem of what people are searching for?

Cluetrain Tidbits

Thu, 08 May 2003 22:01:51 GMT

In looking through the intro in The Cluetrain Manifesto, the following stand out and strike me very theologically:

Because the Internet is so technically efficient, it has also been adopted by companies seeking to become more productive.

What is "productivity" in the Church context? Is it not very near and dear to the heart of the mission of the Church to "tell its story"? To "equip the saints" in a Web world is to help them to appropriate recognizable modes and channels of communication, and to do so in a way that accentuates the VOICE; the HUMAN VOICE; if we let the human voice speak, then we in the Church believe that in the community of saints, this VOICE will inherently proclaim the mighty works of God; it will bring forth a "reason for the hope that is within us".

Hypertext is inherently nonhierarchical and antibureaucratic. It does not reinforce loyalty and obedience; it encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.

The result is not just new things learned but a vastly enhanced ability to learn things.

This was bandied about in the meetings at Vanderbilt yesterday with AKMA and Dave Weinberger. If we can somehow capture the undercurrents, the things goijng on in people's minds as we all "sit and listen" (as with a classroom lecture or a preacher's sermon), and thoughts are swirling, each in our own heads, how valuable and energizing would it be to be able to explore the things in other people's minds as they "blog" in their head --- and if people can "blog" afterwards from a recording (with time code, using either video or audio) and "blog" or respond to certain parts of a presentation, and "submit this" to the "community blog" so that we have a variety of "overlays" to the presentation --- and any of those overlays can be "subject to overlay" themselves, then a vast Web of interaction happens, with opportunity for everybody involved to read everyone else, and therefore share a new kind of "interaction". Some people can "blog" events very well and still follow what is happening....like taking notes....others might want to blog the transcript or archive, saved as notes, perhaps recordings, like DV Video with time code, and a blog tool linked to a database that grabs as a "time stamp" the time code and then can "link" frm thet recording to "TrackBacks" in other blogs that link to the video (I suppose the same can be done for audio in digital format....maybe such things already exist in the MP3 world. I have yet to really immerse myself in that world. Maybe if things as I describe them above begin to take place, I will begin the immersion process bigtime.

More at Home Online

Sun, 04 May 2003 15:07:21 GMT

Doesn't it say something extremely bad about the Church when I feel more "at home" and "valued" by the online community than I do when I'm "at Church"? This morning, looking through my News Feeds, I see Dave Winer's post :

Theoblogical explains how Cluetrain applies to churches.

I had emailed Doc, Chris Locke, and David Weinberger yesterday with this email:

Doc, Chris, David, and Rick (wherever you are),

For what it's worth, I wanted to let you guys know that you've been a constant source of "wake up call" and encouragement to me. I've been unemployed (last job was a Church related publisher, where I worked for 5 and half years, and exited mainly as a result of my boss was "Clueless" along with most of the organization. I wrote some stuff on my Weblog (which Chris inspired when he wrote about weblogs in Gonzo Marketing. I was reading Gonzo, and before that, Small Pieces by DW, as a result of having read Cluetrain, and in that book I found a lot of meat to ponder from a "Church theology" perspective, and have it at http://theoblogical.org/dlature/categories/cluetrain (I linked to the online version of the book as a popup window). MY focus is always on the "Story" and "Voice", just as I believe it to be in your writings, and wanted to let you guys know that I'm trying to help the Church "get it" and start letting the people tell the story instead of relying on "religious versions" of marketing techniques, and mouthing pious platitudes that are devoid of "voice" and that most of the people "out there" recognize as such.

Anyway, I would be thrilled with any comments from any of you (and if anybody knows Rick Levine's email, forward him a copy of this

When I saw Winer's post, I knew that one of the other three must have blogged it. I received an email back, almost immediately from DW , and I replied. I was so glad to get that reply from David Weinberger (DW) yesterday, BTW. I was pretty down earlier in the day. The job search seems to be big-time stalled again (except that I have the Sunday classifieds job section sitting next to me just waiting for a good perusing and hopefully a couple of more places to send my resume), and I was feeling a bit "cut off" from the "buzz" of the blogosphere and the chatter about things theoblogical. It seems that the comments and replies have been almost non-existent, and even my "non-blog" interactions (ie. People who often email me to check on me, or tell me about something, and contributions to my "Ecunet" discussions where I have a few tpics such as "Community on the Net" and "Blogging Theologically" and "Portal For the Church" have likewise gone "ghost-town"). Of course, all of this seems all-too-obvious during times when I'm down on myself. So DW's email was a pick-me-up, and then this morning, Winer's and Doc's psot sent my Referrer log spiking, and I felt "noticed" and a little more "important". I know these are just strokes, and my real contribution and abilities do not depend on my referrer log (cuz if they did, I'd be one sad dude, since these little spikes only happen when guys like Winder or Doc or D.Weinberger, or even "Blogs4God" point to me). More in "Call to Be Online"

The Conversations the Churches Need

Fri, 02 May 2003 15:50:50 GMT

The Web itself is a good case inpoint that illustrates how Hyperlinks indeed subvert Heirarchy. Church related folks are already out there "subverting", doing Weblogs, linking to valuable conversations, thinking about how this thing called the Web can help the Communication tasks in the Church. Staff to Members, staff to staff, layleaders to members, staff and layleaders to public; how do we "help the Church tell its story"?

Meanwhile, conversations are conspicuously absent on Church sites, Denominational sites, and almost any kind of Church related site. Where forums are offered, they are not actively linked and promoted and encouraged. Churches say that they emphasize laity and then betray this philosophy by non-verbal, contextual clues such as putting the pulpit at the center --- putting the sermon at the highest point of emphasis, publishing the articles of staff to the exclusion of stories of experiences and opinions of the laity. The Websites of Churches emphasize brochure stuff like Worship Service times, pictures of the staff, directions to the Church, and some newsletters (although the Web version is often more than a month behind the version of the Monthly newsletter already in the hands of members).

The days when the clergy are more educated than the laity are gone. In fact, where technology is concerned, it's almost never been the case. Businesses and the "Business World" are on the forefront of promoting tools that connect people for every reason under the sun other than the enabling of conversation and shared knowledge among Church communities. Weblogs are swarming over every topic under the sun, and Church denominations are asking "What's weblog?", and so the visions and ideas about what the Church can do to assimilate some technology strategies remain "in the trenches" and out of the Denominational heirarchies.

The Arrogance of Heirarchy

Fri, 02 May 2003 15:36:53 GMT

There seems to be a deadly arrogance amongst Christian publishers that THEY know better than the "customer" what the customer wants or needs. I've heard people say that online discussions would only promote "people who don't know what they're talking about". While it is certain that there will be "unwanted" opinions, isn't that just too bad? How dare we insinuate that there are "requirements" for what gets published as "what the people want" ! Isn't it just "what the people want"? What they ACTUALLY say they want? Is there not some ability "out there" amongs the "masses" to be partners in sensing what the needs are?

Hyperlinks Subvert Heirarchy

Fri, 02 May 2003 15:29:13 GMT

It is a cardinal sin of the Church and its organizations to avoid the "masses". On site after site, Church site, denomination site, Publisher site, almost to a tee there is a widespread avoidance of the actual conversations taking place. Even amidst supposed "dialogue" about "what are we going to do as a Church in order to be relevant?", there is a hesitancy, no , a REFUSAL to host the conversations in a way that encourages people to see what is being discussed. Emails are requested. "Tell us what you think", and a Web form is presented , expecting people to fill it out without knowing the flavor of the others who are contributing. These are one to one conversations, instead of many to many, and these miss the mark. I am RARELY , if ever, prone to "contribute" without having an idea of what the "conversation" is. These appeals for amounts to a "blind" contribution throws up a barrier at the outset. I get the feeling that there is a group of "editors" and "survey evluators" receiving the responses and "ranking" it or "categorizing it" into a mass amalgam of "response types". This is the way heirarchy thinks. If we can analyze the "real needs" that we supposedly cull from a set of "response types", then we can "decide for the Church" what the people REALLY want. Our surveys give us "Information" on which we can base OUR decisions on what's best for the Church.

What kinds of enabling are needed for the conversation of our community?

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 14:52:32 GMT

This thesis (number 6) is an important one for "Biblical Interpretation", since I feel that the Biblical Record is most valuable to us as an ancient conversation that seeks to tell the story of a trek with God. Some call it "Salvation History". Even within its pages, the Bible shows an evolution in the writings toward conversartion. Paul writes "letters" to specific communities, with questions posed and issues raised. I have often wondered that if Paul were doing this today, or if the Internet were avialble then, that the record would have included the responses and conversations around the subjects of his epistles.

That the Internet "enables new kinds of conversations" should have bearing for us on how we view the role of revelation today. I do not believe there ever should have been a "closing of the canon". This seems to imply that the stream of revelation from God to the world stopped when the Council met and determined the canon. There we had a defining moment that seemed to have been geared toward limiting the scope of the "inspired works" to the selected pieces which the educated felt they had "authority".

The Bible was a "mass media" of the heirarchy - and perhaps, for its time, needed some sense of "containment" in order to guard against contamination with competing philosophies.

Dvorak Drool

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 14:35:11 GMT

In The Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto, John Dvorak sums up his take by concluding "They're right! I don't get it.". He certainly doesn't. LIke this comment I found by searching on the whole phrase of thesis number 6 on Google:

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media. Oh? Like what? IM's? Crummy e-mail? Spam? Note the cult word enabling. Look for empowering coming soon.

Egads! Duh! Of Course there are BAD uses, irritating uses, meaningless uses, but obviously Dvorak doesn't think too highly or much at all about the object of the "enabling". He simply dismisses it as a "cult word". He sounds like a fundamentalist, railing against new age rhetoric. How did "enabling" become such a dirty word to him? OK, from the bad uses of it. Here's one for ya' John: You are CLUELESS, and way too jaded and cynical for me.

Cluetrain Theses 6: Conversations of an entirely different kind

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 14:09:42 GMT

Number 6: The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Speaking of which, one thing that occurs to me is the hyperlink thing: The kinds of conversations we can have now have never before been attempted, one of which is the ability to "do margin notes" on anything, and you have an infinite amount of space in which to do so. Linking enables multiple directions for a conversation to take, and the diverse branches that lead here and there can be joined at any point in time by new contributors to the conversation. I was looking at this 6th of the 95 theses, and wondering where in the text of the Cluetrain manifesto that this particular item is discussed. Cluetrain's site needs cross referencing, or has somebody already done so?

"The Bible as Hypertext" is a further exploration along these lines

Cluetrain Theses Number 5: People recognize voice

Sat, 01 Mar 2003 16:40:59 GMT

People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

People are drawn to authenticity. It communicates to them that their own uniqueness will be appreciated, and that their own strengths will be encouraged and enabled in such an environment. Read more in "Theses 5"