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As I pondered over the past few days the last post, and dealing with my frustration with the way people pigeonhole the whole online community concept based on an article they've read or one experience they've had (or even more than one), I struggled for an answer as to why it turned out the way for us in an early Web-forum that our church tried.
It happened on the Sunday just after September 11 (THE September 11, meaning 2001). Our Church has the trradition of dialogue in response to the sermon that day. People are encouraged to share their reflections on the word brought to them that day. Well, everyone knew what subject the message would breach, and our pastor delievered on that. And the word was an appropriate response to all of that in a context of a Church which has always set itself apart in its response to the way our culture typically responds to military challenges. But what happened after the sermon was an announcement that we would be observing silence in place of dialogue. The week before, during the dialogue time, something considered by many who were there to be inappropriate for that context had been shared (including myself as I heard about it). The silence was offered as a way to reflect on the meaning of the response time, and was set to last until Advent (a couple of months away).
To many, the issue was not one of whether or not the previous week's sharing was one that should or should not warrant pondering of the way we share things in the response time. There seemed to be little disagreement about this. The question and the concern was a legitimate one. The problem was the timing of the "moratorium"; a time that many considered to be a crucial time to voice and articulate our deepest reacions, reflections, and responses. There was much buzzing and discussion all around the room after the service ended as people asked each other "Was this the thing to do, today of all days?". People gathered around the pastors and asked this question, and many more waited to voice their concern. The time came for an after church committee meeting, and I got the attention of the senior pastor to voice the same concern she had doubtless heard several times already that day, but time was cramped now, and there were meetings to be started, and so my received response seemed abrupt and dismissing.
I had been starting to build a "discussion board" on our Church's website, and had been envisioning an "extension" of the Response time as one of its reasons for existing, since there were no doubt many people who hesitate to share certain things before a group out of either inimidation, timidity, lack of confidence in one's choice of words, or just simply not having that idea get far enough to the surface because of listening to the ones who do share, or , in most cases, finding the online context much less stressf ul. Less stressful because:
- words can be chosen more carefully
- less concern about using up group time in one's attempt to adequately communicate the idea shared
- more at ease with writing than with public speech
- more confidence in one's written communicative skills than in extemporaneous speech
So I opened the forum with what I heard people talking about that day, which was the above events. I later heard that there were those who thought the matter did not belong online. There were those who protested that such a matter should have been brought to a staff member first (which I did, contrary to how this "opening forum" was characterized. Also, it simply "extended" into an online space what was already taking place in discussions buzzing around the place for weeks.
There was concern that this was not something we wanted "public", as if people were "stumbling upon this discussion" in hordes. This discussion was announced by emailing members with a notice that the board was up. A link from the home page was provided. No other avenue for finding these discussions , even by internet search engines was possible since all the message content resided in a database, unreachable by search engine indexing spiders.
I posted a message days later after the reactions posted to the board had subsided, and posed the challenge of how the September 11 events had affected us, rather than the fact that we did not discuss it during the response time as many had expected. This was the key reason for the forum anyway: to discuss the events. But without Church endorsement, and with the dismay of some about how this online forum had sprung up as if by revolt, the online forums were practically vacated after September.
Perhaps further email notifications about subsequent discussions should have been mailed out, to encourage persons who saw and did not want to enter into online discussion about the silence question could throw their hat in the ring on more the global questions of an appropriate response by Christians in the US.
7:27:00 PM 
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