| I sit this morning during what is traditionally considered the middle of the worship hour at Church, and sip coffee at my desk in front of my computer. I searched in vain last night for possiblities of churches we might try, as we search on, in quest of a community more local to where we live, a place where our son and daughter will know some of the participants from school, and a place where my visions as a Web developer might somehow aid in enabling the church to express its personality and mission in the "place" called ......what is it called?....it's not "cyberspace" anymore, although that had a nice ring to it "a place called cyberspace". Now it's just "The Net" or "The Web".
Anyway, the most alienating thing for me about my present Church community is that it suffers from the malady that also pervades the workplace in society: Cluelessness among the people in control.....and not in the sense of knowing what Church is or how to be Church...but more specifically: how to be the Church online, where exploration and reflection are the default approach. (In this sense, "in control" is an oxymoron, because if are clueless about key strategies to communicating with clients/members/large segments of society----in this case, net-enabled people who are online and discussing the state of the world, and who would be enriched by a perspective informed by what our community calls "the Jesus story"----if we are clueless about this; if we "ignore" this audience, then how are we in control? It's the 'illusion' of control, or the belief that one needs to be appear in control that is one of the attributes of Cluelessness in the sense of the Cluetrain perspective.
I use the word "Clueless" a lot lately since I read The Cluetrain Manifesto. I had sort of silenced myself a number of times since taking the Web Development job I now have. At that time, in early 1997, I was working on a doctorate of ministry at a seminary where I had first begun my curiosities and experiments in computer communication. After my Master of Arts in Religious Commuication (1991), designated "MARC" and known as the (prounounced) 'MARK' program, I took an electronics sales job in order to learn via training (for selling computers) the world of the PC. Soon after, I started the studies which led me into exploring the coming and growing impact of online communications upon us....and led me to begin sounding the call to the Church to sit up and take notice about the new context that would become an increasingly "required knowledge or literacy" for the Church if it was to speak the language of a culture that was becoming increasingly "digital" (ala Negroponte's "Being Digital" and later, Tapscott's "Growing Up Digital").
I have begun to re-read "Growing Up Digital" as I have begun to attempt to find my way through, and become "conversant" with the new net subculture emerging in the field of weblogs. My entry into the fray takes the same theme as it did when I first entered the Internet: the marriage of online with theologcal community, and thus, my chosen name as I attempt to blend into the blogosphere: Theoblogical Community. My scatches and screeds and rants are chronicled in http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dlature, which began in early June, but took most of that month to get the minimum skills to post with any semblance of attempting to be regular. Throughout July and August I have picked up a head of steam.
I feel a lot of "shift" coming in the same way that I felt it as the Web picked up a following in 1993 (hardly anybody in the business world, certainly nooone in the Church ....except a faint "geeky" few...at least they were perceived as geeky, which usually gets assigned to anyone who touts something not yet seen to be what it will ultimately become......and then in 94, the mags started gushing about it, in 95, the first seriously financially backed sites, and in 97, my present employer came calling.
I think I have found weblogging at a time when I needed it most. It's style that it encourages is free-wheeeling, and deeply related to the context to which a weblogger supposedly writes: to whomever is interested in what I'm thinking, who I am, and what I think about what's going on in my corner of the world. My corner is what I perceive as the Theological Community in general, and in particular, the way the community responds to and participates in the extensions of that community into the online world. This online world has long represented, for me, an opportunity to organize, reflect, aggregate, and communicate. PDA's, cellphones, broadband Internet, and more and more and on and on (Rheingold's about to be published book that deals with the wireless revolution is something that will interest me greatly ---- I have been falling so far behind in that arena due to constraints of money ---- no PDA, no wireless net, no laptop even----- and domination of time at work with older, less emerging technologies, such as web development in stuff that hasn't changed since 1998-99-----and so I have no employer subsidized tech gadgets other than having my cable modem connection subsidized, which is better than some I suppose.
Anyway, this is too long a post. I have to pace myself if I hope for anybody to pick up on any of the already numerous themes I have touched on. I'm gettin' at somethin' here though. I hope you read on. Getting a Clue in the Church |
