A Place of Connectivity

Back to Church of the Saviour Web

The idea of the Web as a "place" has become a part of my vision for how the Church can build a place where people are encouraged to interact,  find common ground,  discover common callings,  and realize some match between their deepest longings and the indicators that similar dreams and visions are being explored by others.   I believe that this is ALWAYS the case.  It is by design from the head of the Church,  who is Christ.  Gifts are given for ministry,  and the Church's role is as incubators for the calls that God makes on any who would ask the question: What am I meant to be doing?  What place do I assume in the acts of God in our world?  How do I participate? 

I do believe that face to face is ultimately the most effective means,  but how do we "locate" these sacred places to which we are being called?  Where that work which we are meant to do is being envisioned and being "prepared" to take shape in some kind of structure which begins to build this thing?

I ended up making a pilgrimage to Washington , D.C. to visit the Church of the Saviour's locations of ministries in 1984 with a youth group from First Baptist Church of Keokuk, Iowa (where I was the Associate Pastor/Youth Minister).  I sought them out because I had first "heard their stories" via the writing of Elizabeth O'Connor.  The technology of writing never suggested to its readers that the entire experience should be known through the book,  but the book invited readers to "try on" the things being described;; the ways of being a community;  the "methods" used,  and see what happens.   So from the Midwest,  in the southeastern corner of Iowa,  we went to Washington D.C. and "toured" the then present day structures and ministries which were taking place as outcomes of the visions of people who responded to the calls they received to incarnate the response of a faithful people to a particular context of need.

The result of a "call to ministry" always culminates in a particular people creating a community of support.  It is unclear to me how much of the work can be done online and how much requires physical prescence,  particularly if the mission is to create a precence in the online world.

The "disconnect" between the "experience" of a Church when comparing their "atmosphere" in face-to-face events vs the "aura" of the online "place" is what I consider to be the best indicator of where to attack the problem of the lack of "aliveness" on Church Web sites.  Some would say this is as it should be,  that you can't do something so personal in an online setting.  But I know this to be wrong.  It is certainly possible to facilitate a place with personal energy and "prescence" in an online setting.  Even this Weblog itself places me in the context of something that places me in dialogue with people ,  both now and in the future, for it carries with it the stories that I relate which are shared online in order to invite others to "connect with me" and perhaps become "online support" by subscribing to my RSS feed,  posting comments,  linking to things on my Weblog from theirs (which I then "discover" in my referrer logs ---- which reminds me:  I want to investigate this TrackBack thing.  It seems to be a Movable Type thing,  but I am still unsure,  but from what I can gather,  it seems to be another way to "keep abreast" of what people are reacting to in what I have shared)

Another sense of "Connectivity" is emerging in the many different ways and styles of "Connecting".  The Cable Modem introduced the first Home experience of "Always On" connectivity,  which accentuated the feeling of being a participant in something ongoing;  that I am always on and able to "hear email arrive" and see a Web page refresh with new entries in a discussion,  or replies to smoething I have posted;  all of these things strengthen the sense of being connected to something which seems related to the Teilhardian network-global brain;  the "noosphere".  There seems to me to be something deeply spiritual at work.

A further development is in mobile technologies,  such as the things Howard Rheingold covers in his book "Smart Mobs".  The idea of having "Church Web Services" (as in the .Net or open source, XML-based "Web Services") that enable connectivity from "disconnected" , wireless devices.   This allows "participation" to continue and "invade" the day to day routines of commuting,  running errands,  standing in line,  all those things are no longer "islands" which separate us from access to up to the minute changes,  news,  expressions of concern or need,  news from the Church community,  or from people or organizations which we trust and have enlisted to be our "information and news" brokers.....in the Church,  we have need of hearing news that is seen from within the theological "filters" we employ as we seek to be in the world but not of it.

Back to Church of the Saviour Web  

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:38:08 PM.